Thailand

So the font on my last post was totally messed up. Sorry about that, actually nobody has read it so I don't really have anyone to apologize too. It's ok, Taiwan seems like a distant memory now. I have been in Thailand for a little over three weeks now and it has been great. I see why they call it the "land of smiles". Everybody seems to be happy and not stressed but there is something deeper that I will get to later.

My first four days I stayed at this place I found on couchsurfing called The Overstay. It is a very interesting place which consists of part bar/part hostel/part art studio/part squathouse. Basically there are 10-15 people that stay at this place every night, some on couches, but most on mattresses sprawled all over the fourth floor (It has 6). I definitely met some interesting people there but after four days my foot was covered in about a 100 bug bites and the conditions were not the cleanest so I decided to try my luck on Koh San Road. Koh San Road is a backpackers haven. Bangkok has been called the gateway into southeast asia because it is different enough than the West but has most of the luxuries of home. Koh San Road is the epitome of this. It is a road filled with nothing but guesthouses, restaurants, bars and street vendors selling various clothing and souvenirs. Some people come to Bangkok and never leave Koh San which is sad because what is the point of coming to a new place? During my time on Koh San, I had a few interviews for an English teaching position. It's a real pain in the ass to have to live out of a backpack and put on nice clothes for an interview. Also the second you step outside you instantly start sweating and by the time I arrived at these interviews it had felt like I just took a bath in my own sweat. Thailand is HUMID. After coming from the dry heat of Arizona for five years, this is going to take some getting used to.

After about a week in Bangkok, three of my friends from semester at sea arrived, Jen, Randi, and Tim. It was nice to see some familiar faces and we had a great time traveling around Thailand. We went to Chiang Mai in the north where we had a fun elephant riding, white water rafting and bamboo rafting experience. Bamboo rafting which is supposed to be calm and relaxing where you just sit aboard a bamboo raft and move slowly down a calm river turned about to be the most dangerous activity of them all. I somehow was nominated to steer which basically means putting a big long bamboo stick in the ground to point yourself in the right direction. Well one of the bamboo shoots? (logs) was loose and my leg slipped so that it was stuck between two shoots. It was quite the hilarious yet painful experience. I should also mention our guide on this days experience. He spoke broken English but we could understand him. One of the activities on our tour was a hike through the jungle to a waterfall. Throughout the hike our guide would hide behind trees and bushes and jump out and try to scare us. He would also throw rocks in our direction pretending like it was a monkey. He did scare us a couple of times but he thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world. I guess if you do the same thing day after day you have to think of other ways to keep yourself entertained. We also had this German guy as part of our group, and for whatever reason our guide would not stop touching him throughout the tour. Let's just say the German got pretty agitated and I thought it was going to come to blows, but thankfully it did not go that far. Rafting was our last activity and the whole ride back it was pouring. We were riding in the back of a pickup truck that has a top and two benches in the back, these all serve as buses in parts of Thailand. Riding through the jungle was a really cool site to see as well as watching the crazy Thai motorcycle drivers behind us. (Sidenote. In Thailand and the rest of SE Asia the motorbike is probably the most common form of transport. It is not uncommon to see a whole family, dad driving, wife in the back, and small child in front on one. The kids start driving motorbikes at like 8, it's really crazy.

That night in Chiang Mai we went to a Muay Thai fight. I was really looking forward to it, but it turned out to be more of a circus show. All of the fights were between 13-15 year old kids. 99% of the crowd were foreigners and the announcer lady would give someone in the crowd the microphone to commentate the fight each round. It was kind of a cool idea but I would have preferred to see a legit grown men fight.

After Chiang Mai we hit up two islands in the southeast, Ko Phagnon where the famed full-moon parties are, and Ko Tao. The highlight of Ko Phagnon was renting motorbikes (more like scooters) and riding around the island. There is a stretch of road right by the main beach where the backpackers go and where we were staying that is nothing but huge hills and one of the motorbikes couldn't make it up one of them with two people. Thankfully ours (Jen and I) didn't have that problem.

Ko Tao was had more of a chill vibe and is known for SCUBA. There are 40 or so odd SCUBA operators though and many people go there to get their SCUBA certification. We weren't certified so we went on a "discover dive" which is a legit dive you just don't go any deeper that 12 meters. It was a really awesome experience. Getting that perspective and being under the sea like that, seeing the fish swim in front of your face was truly amazing. On our second of two dives though, as I was going up to the surface, I took a breath and didn't feel like I was getting any air. When I reached the surface I checked my air guage, and I had indeed run out of air! It was a pretty crazy experience. I don't know what went wrong because all my friends guage showed a 100 and mine was at 0. I told our guide and he just kind of shrugged it off. Well I made it out safely but it was a scary thought knowing that I had run out of air, not scary enough to discourage me from going again though, just have to keep a closer eye next time and actually check my air guage. One of our nights in Ko Tao we went to a Ladyboy Cabaret show which was quite the entertaining experience. Unfortunately our time in Ko Tao came to an end much to soon and we took a night ferry back to Suratthani where we were catching a flight back to Bangkok. I thought the night ferry would just consist of some seats inside which where what the other two ferries were like, but no. There were mattresses spread all over two floors and it was like a giant slumber party. It was a really cool looking set up but I couldn't sleep at all because I was freezing from the sea breeze coming in through the windows. I eventually went to the bottom level and just squeezed myself in between two people sleeping. I probably looked like a total creeper, but I didn't care I needed some sleep! Unfortunately we arrived about an hour late and then got to the airport about 8 hours before our flight. So naturally we played spades to kill the time. My friends had one final night in Bangkok before their departures back home which was not too eventful.

After my friends left, I realized that I was on my own now. No more friends coming, nothing to fall back to. I was in Thailand with no flight home and had to figure out what I was doing. I felt a momentary panic but that went away and for the next few days I continued my job search. After being offered a job in Rayong which is a few hours south of Bangkok I really thought about what I was doing here. If I took the job I would have to sign a one year contract that would keep me here until October of next year. Also Rayong is a town that doesn't have a large foreigner population and there is not much to do. So after much deliberation I decided not to take the job and really not to try to look for another one. I came to Thailand because I wanted to live in another country but more so because I wanted to do something meaningful that would try to help figure out what I am doing with my life. Getting a teaching job in Bangkok would be fun but honestly it wouldn't be so different from living in the U.S. I would go out on the weekends, make some friends who would probably be foreigners and live a pretty normal life. The only big difference being the language. It would be nice just to ingrain myself and live in another country but I don't know if I would really be doing that here. So I have decided that I am going to do a volunteer program helping teach Burmese refugees English and other things as well. I have been accepted into a program and can basically start whenever I want, I just have to volunteer for a minimum of three months. So I think I'm just going to travel around SE Asia for a few months and then start that in January. I have to leave Thailand in a week anyways because my visa is running out so mine as well explore some other countries while I'm there. I'm leaning towards going to Malaysia first and then perhaps checking out Singapore and Indonesia as well. I heard Malaysia is a good country for hitchiking and I have also wanted to try it. I have met travelers who have hitchiked through many places and it is something I want to experience so I think I may try my luck in Malaysia.

Today I met up with the Soi Dawgz or Bangkok's Ultimate Frisbee Club. It was a ton of fun and that is something I'm going to miss out on by traveling and not settling in Bangkok for a while. I want to really experience Bangkok by joining social clubs like Ultimate and other things but I think I would rather travel and volunteer instead, at least for now.

Getting back to the Thailand lifestyle. It is a simple one for the most part. Eric Weiner in his book "Geography of Bliss" said something to the effect Thai people are so happy because they don't think about anything. I think he put it very well, Thai people are relaxed and carefree. They hang out with friends and socialize but don't think or discuss serious topics. I don't think I could handle living in that environment for very long. I need intellectual stimulation even if I'm reading about the terrible things that go on around the world. Thailand is a place I could definitely spend a year or two and I could see how and why people don't want to leave. But to truly revel in Thailand's glory you have to turn off your brain a little bit.

Another aspect of Thailand and Bangkok especially that I have trouble with is the sex tourism. Bangkok is one of the worlds leaders in sex tourism. You see prostitutes walking down Sukhumvit, Bangkok's main Business street. You also see tons of white men walking around with Thai women. Many are legitimate but many are paid for and I get this weird feeling everytime I see a white foreigner with a Thai woman. Something that makes me kind of sick. Maybe Thai women are attracted to white men but it seems as though men come to Thailand to find themselves a wife and settle here. It's accepted in the country from what I can tell but there something deeper to it that I can't put into words. Don't get me wrong, Thai women are absolutely gorgeous but I don't know if I would feel comfortable walking down the street holding one's hand. Something about me would just feel wrong.

Well this has been a long post without many good stories, hopefully that will change. I haven't really done much exciting but hopefully that will start to change as I make my way out of Thailand and on to the start of my traveling.