It's Tuesday So It Must Be Canada: Thailand

We want an excuse to post some of our cool photo's from SE Asia. So, we've decided to do a series of posts, one from each person from each country. This one is my take on Thailand.

I'll spare you the details of the long haul flight. Although, I have to recommend Thai Airways; the flight was great, and the staff were excellent - they wouldn't stop feeding us!

We landed in Bangkok at about 4am. And it was hot. We got to the hotel we'd booked and went straight to bed, where we spent most of the day.

Dawn in Bangkok

The next day we caught a bus into the centre of Bangkok, which is when it finally hit me that we were really in another country. Bangkok is huge, I think about three times as big as Sydney. The smells were almost tangible - traffic fumes, spices and frying meat from the ubiquitous street vendors, sewerage, and sweat. The humidity was also like a physical assault, and the continuous shocks from being outside and then going inside to frigid air conditioning made my head spin.

The bus we were on was bright red, old and rattley, with a steering wheel the size of a truck tire. In addition to the driver, there was a woman in a white uniform, dispensing tickets. She was amazingly helpful to us, and was probably the only reason why we got off at the right stop. Whenever she was bored, she would wander over to the driver, lean over his shoulder, and mash the horn a couple of times! Meanwhile, Elli and I were mesmerized by the juxtapositions of Bangkok's architecture - shacks and gleaming towers, palm trees, huge highways and overpasses - some that abruptly ended, cliff-like, in a row of skeletal support pylons; and also by the total insanity of the traffic and constant tooting of horns.

Anyway, I'm just trying to convey the sense of culture shock I was experiencing. We wandered around in Bangkok for a couple of days, seeing some of the Buddhist temples. We also took a day trip out to see the Damnoen Saduak floating markets. A little advice - you can get to the floating market via one of the longtail boats along the canals, but I would suggest walking around the market itself - the whole time we were there, there was a massive "boat-jam", full of poor sweaty tourists baking in the hot sun and not moving at all.

We also went to a coconut farm, where we had coconut sugar (yummmm). It was quite cool, they used every part of the coconut - discarded husks and palm leaves were used to fuel the fires, and some of the husks and the palm trunks were used for carving.

Speaking of carving, we also went to a wood carving centre. The quality of the carvings was mind-blowing (as were the prices!). There was also a snake farm, which we kind of regretted going to after the fact - it was basically some guys "battling" cobras, mangrove snakes etc, and also a fight between a mongoose and a cobra (the mongoose would have killed it had they not been separated). None of the animals were hurt, but I can't imagine it's a very enjoyable life for them.

A Beach on Koh Phi Phi

After a couple of days in Bangkok we ventured down to the fabled beaches in the southern provinces. We spent a couple of days at Ao Nang, in the Grabi province, including a day-trip by speed boat out to Koh Phi Phi. We saw monkeys, got thoroughly jounced by the waves, stopped for lunch on Koh Phi Phi and paddled in the ocean a bit. The next day, we crossed to the eastern side of the peninsula and took a ferry to Koh Pang Ngan.

The sea in the Gulf of Thailand is calm and warm, with hundreds of limestone karsts rising majestically out of the ocean, covered in dense jungle and stained orange by the salt. You see the same kind of thing in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, and apparently a place in China whose name I forget (Lili? Scott?). It really is breathtaking.

Koh Pang Ngan is heavily touristed, but you can see why. It's a gorgeous island, cobalt ocean and brilliant white beaches. We went scuba diving at Sail Rock, about half way between Koh Pang Ngan and Koh Tao. They were probably the best dives I've ever been on (maybe a close second to the seal dive, but a good deal warmer!); we saw a huge school of ponderous Bat Fish, a Moray, Angel Fish, Hexagonal Groupers, an orderly row of Squirrel Fish hiding in a crevice, Scribble Fish, the hard-to-spot Scorpion Fish, a Trigger Fish, and of course hundreds of varieties of coral and anemones.

We had dinner each night at a small restaurant which had stained teak decking that extended out over the beach. We lazed around at the low tables on hammocks or low turkish-style cushions, sipping delicious pina coladas (made with fresh tropical pineapples and coconuts), and chatting with a couple of people we had met at our bungalows, a German guy and a Canadian girl. We took them out one day to Bottle Beach, which you can only reach by boat, and spent a day snorkeling and playing beach volleyball. All-in-all, our stay on Koh Pang Ngan was hard work.

"Mr. Dan", taking us to Bottle Beach in his longtail

We had to leave eventually, to meet my little sister back in Bangkok. She would be traveling with us for the next month or so. We arrived back in Bangkok at about 4:30am, picked her up at the airport, then whizzed her around all over the place. Bangkok is a pretty confusing place to navigate, but by now we had a bit of a handle on it, and we'd chosen a hotel nearer to the centre this time, close to a SkyTrain stop. We took her to Wat Arun (the temple of the dawn), Wat Po, through china town and on various river taxis along the Mae Nam Chao Phraya, the river that runs through Bangkok. Then, we set off on our epic journey through Cambodia.