Thailand…there has always been a certain imagery tied to that word for me. Visions of temples and monks, of jungles and monkeys, of opium poppies and cobras pop in my head just thinking about the place. Jess and I had wanted to go there for quite some time, and were so psyched when Bud and Karen said that they would pay for plane tickets as a wedding gift. Our honeymoon!
Jess took care of most of the logistics for getting us there. She’s good at that, which is a great thing because I’m not so detail oriented. In the weeks up to our departure, she made sure that all the details were in place and that everything was taken care of. I took care of my finals and little more.
We left Salt Lake on ________ and flew into Los Angelos, then Tai Pei, then finally Bangcok. Thankful though we were to finally touch down in Southeast Asia, we were instantly in another world--a bewildering congestion of unfamiliar faces and strange sounds. Our first task--getting a taxi to the hotel--ended up with us unintentionally paying extra for a night time tour of Bangcok expressways. After an hour we got to the hotel--a very fancy Weston that Karen and Bud had gotten for us by trading a timeshare.
Holy crap. It caught up with us. We were in Thailand. Neat!
The next day we traveled around the city by taxi and tuk-tuk. A tuk-tuk is a three-wheeled motorbike
with a covered bench on back. The drivers do a good job of narrowly avoiding would-be accidents...but not at the expense of their passengers' heart palpitations. We ended up in an enormous open air market which sold everything from live chickens to 10-foot tall buddha sculptures to Bob Marley t-shirts. The market was enormous--there were supposed to be over 15,000 vendors and I certainly wouldn't doubt that estimate. Jess and I got used to being the tallest people around and tried some of the food from the local vendors. This involved a leap of faith, one that wasn't entirely rewarded when I found a couple chicken feet in my curry. Are those supposed to be there? The food smells delicious but looks chaotic--metal trays containing slurries of meats and veggies in brightly colored broths. It was impossible to say what was what, but it all tasted good.We also checked out the Grand Wat; a temple turned tourist attraction. Ornate is not a word that begins to describe the Grand Wat. If it were in the U.S., it would probably be called gaudy, but in Thailand it seemed appropriate and authentic. Golden-plated buildings, hundreds of stone statues, bouquets of flowers, jade carvings, and dramatic architecture dominated in all 360 directions.
It was like being in Disneyland, if Disneyland was all about culture and religion. And if all the dressed-up Mickeys and Goofies were now bald headed monks. And if all the tourists were tourists. Well, I guess that part still fits.We spent a couple days in Bangkok, exploring little nooks and crannies of the city, before boarding a bus bound for Ao Nang. The bus was full of multi-nationals, had a party feeling to it, and was slow. I think we only ran over a couple goats during our 15 hour drive, but it could have been more. At Ao Nang, we hired a boat to take us to Railey.
Railey and Tonsai are two small towns that sit at the end of the peninsula. There are no roads that go there, so transport via long, jumbo shaped canoes is the only way to get there. Both towns owe most of their existence to tourists, and almost all the tourists are climbers. It used to be sleepy and casual, but like most things has grown significantly in the past decade. Nonetheless, the peninsula is incredible. Limestone reef juts out of the ocean and is capped by think jungle...the jungle hangs over the cliffs like a pageboy haircut hanging over the brow of one of the Beatles. Mangrove forests extend into the tidal range and monkeys (damn monkeys!) compete with the humans for who is the best climber. Monkeys win.
Over the next few days, Jess and I climbed intermittently. Lauren and Mike Ditolla were also there for their honeymoon (!) and we spent time together climbing and trekking through the jungle. We found a tidal lagoon in a Karst pit with caves braiding out from all sides. We swam in the ocean, popping into small coves when it felt right. We went for a jungle trek on the back of an elephant, which is an unbelievably cheesy thing to do, but undeniably wonderful. And given Jess' love of all things pachyderm, very memorable. Nights were spent sitting in open air bars, throwing back some Thai beer and sometimes stronger things. We'd meet other climbers, relax, talk about weird stuff, and finally stumble back to the bungalow.One of my favorite memories is of Jess surveying the beach as she walked down it, eyes transfixed on the few feet in front of her. She was on the lookout for shells, and she collected them until her hands couldn't hold anymore. Then she'd be faced with a conundrum: when she found another one that she liked, she'd have to figure out which of the dozen or so in her fists she would have to leave behind to make room for her new favorite. All of these shells are now sitting on our counter, or in a planter, or in baskets all around the house.
I had really gotten used to the food by now. It was great. One of the best things about it was that the portions were fairly small, so you could order several items and feel okay about it. I routinely had 6 meals a day, maybe more depending on your definition of a snack. That might seem excessive, but I was here for the culture, man, the culture! Part of experiencing the culture was submitting ourselves to Thai massages. We didn't do it for the relaxation, but as an objective attempt to experience an ancient cultural tradition. I kind of have a high tolerance for massages, so even as the barefoot woman standing on my back dug her toes into my back I dozed in and out of sleep. Unfortunately it's hard to take notes when you're asleep, so I'm unable to report on how Thai culture is expressed through traditional massage. I'll be sure to go back for another the next time I'm in Siam.After about ten days it was time to return to Bangkok. This time we took an overnight train back, not wanting to see the bus kill any more goats. It deposited us back in Bangkok early the next morning, where we learned that there had been several bombings in the city the previous evening. Unnerved to be sure, but still wanting to see the city, we hung out in the infamous red-light Pat Pong District, seeing the sights, crude as they may be, to get the whole of the
Bangkok experience. We didn't go in any of the establishments, but were handed flyers from solicitors outside them that graphically explained what wonders could be found within. No; no manboywoman for me today thank you, and you can keep your pet monkey to yourself; I don't care what he can do with a ping pong ball.On the outskirts of Pat Pong we sat down to our last dinner in Thailand. A menagerie of street life surrounded us, and the neon glow from the neon signs was the perfect accompaniment to our pad thai. Jess had a look of true contentment on her face. We were both really happy with our wonderful honeymoon in Thailand. Tomorrow we'd wake up and return to the good ole' U.S. of A.
And if you want a manboywoman with a pet monkey I can point you in the right direction.
Cheers,
Nate
