Happy Ending In Thailand
Trip Start
Oct 18, 2010
1
9
Trip End
Dec 15, 2010
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Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sunday, December 12, 2010
We arrived in Bangkok early evening on December 5 and took the airport train into the city as far as it could take us. It turned out that December 5 is the King's birthday. The King is practically a deity in Thailand, and his photo is everywhere, in lots of hilarious poses: King as dog lover, King as monk, King as naval officer, King as photographer, King as hot young man, King as husband with beautiful wife. He is getting old and frail, so his birthday seemed to be an especially big deal this year. We got into a cab to cover the last few miles to where we wanted to stay just as fireworks started up. It turned out that the celebration was right down the road from the area we were headed, and traffic quickly ground to a halt. Our cabbie freaked out in a very un-Thai manner and started demanding about four times the normal fare to take us the rest of the way. We took the Thai road, smiled, paid our fare up to that point and got out and walked instead. Not the best start, but fun to see Bangkok's big party up close.
We spent most of the next day trying to decide what to do during our Thailand stay, and, after much indecision, we made the impulsive last-minute choice to buy train tickets to the city of Chiang Mai, located in the hills in northern Thailand. Chiang Mai was not the most creative or ambitious of our options -- not only had we had spent time there during our last trip, it is one of the most visited places in Thailand. But our guts told us that's where we needed to go, and we weren't let down. We visited several Buddhist temples, which seemed even more beautiful this time around. We became morning regulars at a coffee stall next to a produce market. At night, we ate tons of good Thai food in streetside food markets. We took our second Thai cooking course (the first also was taken in Chiang Mai when we were there last time with Jeff's parents) -- just give us an excuse to cook up a Thai feast. We each got several inexpensive Thai massages (kind of a combination of Shiatsu and yoga). A couple of days we rented bicycles and visited further flung areas of town, including its hip university area and a quiet, almost rural area along its riverside. And we generally realized that we had substantially under-appreciated the charms of Thailand and its friendly people during our last trip.
We also did a lot of shopping in Chiang Mai, culminating in our decision the last day to buy a complete new set of ceramic dishes and serving pieces. We made this decision after our typical hours of deliberation and notwithstanding the fact that the three boxes would have to be transported over the next three days from the store, to our hotel, to the Chiang Mai train station, to Bangkok where they would have to be stored in the train station for about 12 hours, to the Bangkok airport where they would be checked through Seoul to O'Hare, to the El, to Union Station where we would finally catch a train to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. So much for traveling light.
Our last night in Thailand was spent on an overnight train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. Because cheaper options had already booked up, we "reluctantly" accepted that we'd have to travel in a private, first class cabin. First class isn't anything fancy, and but the wider, softer beds and ability to turn off the lights meant that we got much more sleep than we got on our way up to Chiang Mai. Good thing, because we had a full day in Bangkok ahead of us before our official trip home began just after midnight that night.
In Bangkok, we did more typically Thai things. We visited a couple of its most impressive temples, one of which we'd visited 5 years ago (Wat Pho, home of a gold reclining Buddha approaching the size of a warship) and the other being new to us (Wat Arun, an incredibly tall old temple -- probably something like 10 stories high -- that we climbed to the top for great views of the city). We ate some street food in Chinatown (most memorable: these amazing cups made of palm leaves filled with a combination of crab and red curry). We also got the most incredible (though occasionally painful) Thai massages at a temple that runs one the premier massage schools in Thailand - Jeff didn't know his back could crack so many times. And, somehow, we ended up in the city's commercial center and spent part of the last evening roaming around a couple quirky malls, before getting a couple cups of coffee, heading back to the train station, and getting in a taxi for our flights back home. The journey home was the standard 24-hour-plus sleep-deprived blur, but eventually we found ourselves, with no broken dishes, in frigid, snowy Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for Brown family Christmas.
So, that's all. We are leaving Wisconsin tomorrow and are off to Chicago to find a place to live, before spending some time in Michigan for Reimann Christmas and then returning to Chicago for the foreseeable future. Stay in touch everyone!
Comments
I have to see these dishes! Send pictures asap.