Adrift and At Peace

With teaching finished, we are now afforded some much-deserved travel time.  We want to see everything Thailand has to offer, but we’ve only got til the money runs out so these travels are a lesson in frugality…well it was until we got to the Sunday Night Walking Street Market in Chiang Mai, but that’s a different story.

After leaving Krabi, we hopped an overnight bus to Bangkok.  Since our school was paying for it, we spared no expense and happily gave them a receipt for the most expensive bus we could find.  Hey, they owed us after four months of 45-student classes!  The three of us chose seats at the bottom level of the bus where we were three of only six lucky people to sit away from the annoying baby screaming away upstairs.  We had tons of leg room and huge chairs!

Stacy had no where to put her neck pillow
on the bus, so she wore it like the Natalie
Portman character in Star Wars

We arrived in Bangkok before 5am, and if anyone is wondering if it is possible to negotiate with the cab drivers at this ungodly hour of the morning, I can tell you – it is not.  Since we had no clue where to go in Bangkok and literally the only place we knew was Khao San Road (the horrifyingly seedy, backpacker part of Bangkok where the longer you stay, the more your morals and personal hygiene deteriorate) so that is where we directed our cab driver.  Of course, he did not take us to Khao San, but rather to a hotel we could not afford in an area we’d never been.  Being so damn early in the morning though, we figured we’d just bite the bullet and pay for the expensive hotel room.  We would, after all, be getting two sleeps out of only one night (all three of us passed out on the king-sized bed within minutes of entering the room and slept until 10am and then would sleep there again that night) so whatever. 

Breakfast at a bagel place (which again we couldn’t afford, but try telling that to three girls starving for cream cheese who hadn’t seen bagels since Phuket) meant a brief meeting with six other OEG teachers, all on their way to some far-off place to enjoy the time off school.  We got a bit lost in the many shopping malls and sucked in by the sheer American-ness of the big, glowing Forever 21, but we did figure out how to navigate on the Sky Train – something which would decrease stress levels in the future to be sure.

Around 2am, my freshman year roommate Jenny arrived from the airport for her two-week visit, and we snuck her into our hotel room (they thought there was only three people in there).  We thought we were being stealthy, but I really doubt anyone noticed at 2am.  Bagels again the next morning (we really, really love bagels) before catching our bus to Kanchanaburi.

Kwai-Noi River

We found a lovely little guesthouse along the River Kwai (yes, that River Kwai) and met up with yet more OEG teachers (we are everywhere!) for dinner.  We ate at their guesthouse, the Jolly Frog, where the rooms were cute, the food was great, and the staff so did not want to be there.  It was actually hilarious how much the staff seemed to resent the customers.

Holding Flat Garrett and looking slightly freaked out
because the tiger started to move.

The next day was one of mixed emotions.  We took a trip to the Kanchanaburi Tiger Temple.  Here we were allowed to take pictures with and pet tigers that looked like they were heavily sedated.  It definitely got my adrenaline pumping to be touching the majestic animals, but we couldn’t help but feel like maybe something was up.  As we were leaving the picture area, the manically upbeat American man (most of the workers appeared to be farangs) who had ushered us in asked how it was for us.  All four of us made funny noises under our breaths and only Carlyn had the balls to speak up and say it was a bit weird.  It was clear the man had been brainwashed trained for this sort of reaction and swiftly asked if we had any questions.  Not wanting to come right out and ask if they drugged the tigers, Carlyn smartly asked “How do you get them to be so…calm?”  The man insisted that they feed and exercise the tigers in the morning and that this part of the day (to be fair, the “pet the tigers” window was actually quite a small time frame) was when the tigers were full and exhausted and too hot to do much of anything.  Not sure whether he was giving us the party line or if it was actually the truth, we continued on through the rest of the park debating how much of what he had said was true.  He had really seemed to believe what he told us, but that’s how everyone in a cult acts, right?

Playful teen cubs

Tattooed monks

Awww, he loves him!!

Keeping a lookout for Jim Jones, we came to another area of the park where teenage tiger cubs were rough-housing with one another.  The smallness of the enclosure and the murkiness of their pond made me ill at ease, but then we came to another area where the tigers were being lovingly handled by monks.  Here being the reason we had to come to this place in long pants and shirts with sleeves when with the weather what it was, we would have much rather been naked, we were at least glad to see that the monks appeared to treat the tigers with genuine affection.  Feeling slightly better that at least some people in this place were for real, we were further reassured when it was time to walk the tigers out of their enclosures to some other, supposedly larger area of the park.  So it turned out that the small play areas were just for the short part of the day when the tigers were available to humans, and the rest of the day they got to roam freely somewhere else – we hope.  We left with a better vibe than what we started with but still with a strange feeling of unease and more questions than answers.

This one was a little frisky, but beautiful!

After the unusual experience at the Tiger Temple, we were happy to spend the next day on a guided tour through some of Kanchanaburi’s more famous and beautiful places.  With a small group of thirteen people, we were led by Nan, the most adorable tour guide ever.  She was a tourism student at one of Kanchanaburi’s universities and this was something of an internship I suppose, but she hardly looked any older than twelve!  Her English was phenomenal though, and she let us practice a bit of Thai with her as she led us through Erawan National Park.

Erawan National Park is named as such because the main attraction of the park is Erawan Falls, a waterfall named after the erawan, the Thai name for the three-headed white elephant of Hindu mythology, Airavata – the seven-tiered falls are said to resemble the erawan.  I didn’t see the resemblance, but I didn’t look very hard.  We trekked the roughly 2km up the mountain to the seventh waterfall where we took pictures and swam in the freezing water.  I’ll never understand why some people find it so difficult to get the heck out of the way when others are taking pictures.  I so do not want randos in all of my pictures!  I tried my best to glare at the strange women invading our spaces, but they were too annoyingly happy to care that I was eye-daggering them to get the hell out of my shot!  There was for some reason an unusual number of butterflies and giant bees in the area and when we went to retrieve our things, Jenny’s shoes were covered in nine bees.  Mine were covered in what I though was butterfly poop, but upon closer inspection appeared to be mud.  On the way back to the bottom, we checked out the other six falls and stopped for a bit at Waterfall #5 where we slid down the giant rock slide into the pool below. 

Roommate reunion!

They were shooting a movie in the park and we were hoping that
 it was the movie Ryan Gosling has been shooting here since he's
 been sighted by other teachers in Bangkok, but no such luck,
we unfortunately did not run into him or his fine abs.

Waterfall #7

Butterflies everywhere!!

Stacy and I getting our asses
kicked by Waterfall #7

Sliding down Waterfall #5

Creating some movie magic - this did NOT smell good.

After lunch in the park, the next stop was the Burma-Thailand Death Railway where Allied prisoners of war were forced by the Japanese to work building the railroad connecting Thailand to Burma (now Myanmar) during the war.  We took a ride on the train along the railroad.  The scenery was beautiful, but we emerged sweaty messes.  I sat across from a French girl who was so the picture of me as a teenager that it was all I could do not to laugh and tell her to unclench.  She wore her hair in that typical teenager bangs-sprayed-across-my-face-even-though-I-can’t-see-a-damn-thing-and-my-forehead-is-sweating way, chomped on her gum like her life depended on it and rolled her eyes at nearly everything her parents or brother said.  Ohh how much of a headache I musta been!  My parents deserve medals….or y’know a vacation to Thailand.  Oh, wait…. J

Kwai-Yai River

Death Railway

The final stop of the day was at the Bridge Over the River Kwai – famous from the movie.  Contrary to how most Americans say the name of the river, it is actually pronounced kwae and the bridge actually spans the River Kwai-Noi, meaning Little Kwai.  The Kwai-Yai, near the railroad is the bigger of the two rivers and the three meet up in Kanchanaburi to form the Mae Klong River which empties into the Gulf of Thailand.  Three rivers just like at home!!  As was the case with the railway (so named Death Railway for the many casualties occurring during construction), the bridge and one parallel to it was constructed by British, American and Dutch prisoners of war during WWII.  During the war, the Allies bombed the bridge to keep the Japanese from transporting supplies.  The center of the bridge has since been rebuilt.

Bridge Over the River Kwai

Flat Garrett with a prime seat to view the famous bridge.

Our final night in Kanchanaburi was spent on the deck of our guesthouse where while enjoying some much-sought-after WiFi, a giant cockroach crawled up my pant leg.  Yeah, that happened.

Next stop:  Chiang Rai  J (Full disclosure, I've already been through Chiang Rai and am now at a cafe in Pai, but its entirely too difficult to keep this for reals up to date, so deal with it)