Adventure to the North (Chiang Mai, Pai, and Laos)

 I spent the past two weeks traveling around Northern Thailand and making the trek to Laos via land transportation. Before we left for our travels, we decided to have a final Phang-nga dinner at the Muslim fishing village. We ordered two whole fish (one fried with onions, one steamed with fresh chillies), a plate of prawns, four freshly caught blue crabs (they brought in a tub of live crabs as we sat down to eat...those were our dinner), and an enormous bowl of steamed rice. We were four people and the meal cost 400 baht total, including water (that's about $15).

Oh yeah...and we saw the most spectacular sunset.

The next morning, bright and early, we headed to Phuket to catch a flight to Chiang Mai and then a minivan from Chiang Mai to the town of Pai. We spent about three days in Pai where our daily activities included hot springs...

and breakfasts at the Witchin' Well, a restaurant whose book shelves were filled with prized possessions such as these:

Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells including love potions, voodoo curses, invisibility boxes, etc.

We also celebrated my birthday in Pai with a delectable cake from the only bakery in town.

Recognizing that one can only withstand so much time in a backpacker town, we headed back to Chiang Mai where we spent two days exploring the silk markets and the temples.

To get a rope bracelet blessed by the monks of the temple I had to don the fashionable attire you see here. Zipped up sweatshirt + floor length skirt inside a tiny room on a Thai afternoon = unfortunate.

I am convinced that this monk is the real-life version of Yoda.

These bells are rung in order from one end to the other. Long hours at a temple (or a science museum) are made infinitely better by hands-on activities.

The best way to wind down from a long day of wandering the streets of Chiang Mai is to attend a Muay Thai Boxing match. 

We bid farewell to Chiang Mai and headed further north to the city of Chiang Rai where the only real attraction, other than the short-lived fun of rhyming "Chiang Rai" with "Chiang Mai," is the clock tower at the center of town which lights up and sings every hour. I think it might win The World's Most Annoying Thing to Live Next To.

Now it's gold...

And now it's pink. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

The next morning we headed from Chaing Rai to the border of Thailand and Laos. The border = the river.

Our transportation to enter Laos was a boat so unstable that the current basically forced it to drive perpendicular to the river.

After having our passports and visas cleared by the Laos Border Police, we headed to the slow boat (emphasis on the slow) that would be our mode of transport for the next two days. The first day's journey took about six hours but luckily the views made the cushion-less wooden benches that were our seats infinitely more bearable...

After six hours on the slow boat we were ready for dry land...our boat was a bit crowded.

We spent the night at the fishing village of Pakbeng where we enjoyed some Beer Lao and a game of pool in a "pool hall" where the kids outside played soccer with one of their shoes.

The next morning we got back on the slow boat and spent the next 8.5 hours on the Mekong River headed to the city of Luang Prabang. Although we were able to snag the comfortable seats in the back of the boat, we were unfortunately seated next to the women who ran the boat's snack table. I am not exaggerating when I say that they talked for the entire 8.5 hours. That is a lot of time to spend talking. And I'm all for the extended conversation but 8.5 hours?! I wish I spoke Lao so I could have joined in on what was surely a most epic discourse on the meaning of life. Luckily I was armed with a good book so I read for the whole boat trip and was easily able to ignore the incessant chatter of the Laos Ladies Who Lunch. The river provided us with some exciting things aside from its Willy Wonka Chocolate Fountain color...

A dead catfish floated by (some of them get to be 7 feet long).

One of the Thai men jumped out into the muddy river to pull the rotting fish onto the boat. His dinner? Show and tell? The meal I ate that night? Who knows.

Aside from the catfish, the only other noteworthy occurrence was the arrival of a man, woman (who was Pocahontas' doppelganger) and a baby. This picture is a better description than any I could fathom in words:

The baby had no diapers; instead, an additional pair of pants was brought out when the situation required it. Instead of a toy, the woman handed the baby an aluminum foil wrapped candy bar to play with. I'm sure that many people who have visited the world that comprises the places in which we have never and will never live are familiar with the sentiments I experienced as I sat in my seat, wearing jeans and a bra and a clean shirt, facing a woman whose shirt was stained by dirt and her breast milk. I felt ridiculous and helpless and utterly unsure of what I should do or what I even wanted to do. While she lay on a dirty blanket on the floor of the boat nursing her baby, I picked up the cushion of my seat and placed it on her flimsy plastic chair. When she stood up from the floor, she immediately removed the cushion, put it on the floor, and spent the next five hours sitting on the hard plastic. What was I supposed to do? Should I have given her my clothes? My money? All the hand sanitizer I had in my backpack? What was my moral obligation?

After the 8+ hour slow boat trip, we arrived at Luang Prabang in search of some baguettes (the French influence is still very much a part of culture in Luang Prabang) and real (ie. non-instant) coffee. The following morning we went to the Kuang Si waterfalls, which should be on everyone's Must-See List of The World's Natural Wonders (I know I'm not the only one who has that list).

Extreme Sports: Laos Edition

Doesn't look real, does it?

Little Becca, Big Waterfall.

On our last morning in Luang Prabang, we woke up at five to give the morning alms to the monks. Other than a desire to wake up before the sun has risen, the morning alms require nothing more than a bowl of sticky rice (which can be purchased at the morning market for a mere 10,000 kip or $1), dropping to your knees on the sidewalk while the monks walk by, and handing them wads of balled up sticky rice. 

(That's not me.)

(But this is.)

Random Stories

A couple of weeks ago, I made the trek from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Thailand. The trip involved a nine hour ride from Phnom Penh to an island called Koh Chang. The ride was in a van with no AC or seat belts. Our suitcases were strapped to the back of the van, covered with a tarp, and then three legs of raw, fatty meat were tied to the tarp-covered luggage.

Another example of the "WTF is in/on that truck?" game I like to play in Southeast Asia.

Koh Chang was pretty...I guess.

On the way from Koh Chang to Pattaya, where I completed my training, we stopped at the Khlong Phlu Waterfall in the Koh Chang National Park. A mile long hike along a green river led us to a towering waterfall, complete with natural swimming pools and ridiculously strong currents.

After our hike, we had lunch at what appeared to be a somewhat sketchy restaurant. My how first impressions can err. We were served three rotisserie chickens whose meat was so tender it literally fell off the bone, sticky rice to roll the chicken in, and two absolutely delicious sauces to dip the chicken/sticky rice combo in. The Thai lady across the street from the restaurant sold us coconut patties for dessert with corn and scallions.

Now onto Pattaya. Pattaya is referred to in most guidebooks as a sweaty testament to the profits of the sex-crazed and pleasure-seeking. It was...an interesting place to spend two weeks but thankfully I spent my days teaching at the Attitan Kindergarten in Sattahip, about an hour drive from the saintly city of Pattaya. I showed up on the first day in my "professional" pants and button-down, collared shirt ready to teach the four and five year olds all sorts of wonderful things about the alphabet and colors of the rainbow...

Ready to teach/go to business school (I wanted to make a good first impression).

Only to find that my "classroom" was really more of a door/wall-less open air pavilion with two fans, no desks, no black or whiteboards and no paper. I spent the next two hours sweating absolutely profusely as I tried to make-do with no Thai TA (most classrooms have a translator/TA) to translate simple phrases and no materials aside from the crayons I brought and two picnic tables.

But the kids made everything worthwhile; they were wonderful and adorable and loved high fives and giggled when I dropped things.

The teachers at Attitan went out of their way to make my time easier, whether that meant bringing me much needed coffee and snacks in between my two classes or taking me out to lunch. On one of the drives back to Pattaya, Teacher Ann handed me a plastic bag with a giant bowl of noodles and two bags of sauce (one with chicken feet) and said, "The kids love you.  They make you lunch to take home."

(Ambiguous.)

When I got to school on one morning, Teacher Win said, "We go to market now. You teach one class. I teach you how make paht thai and som tam (spicy papaya salad)." So, to the market we went and I had my first experience with the chaos of Thai markets (think Fairway/Citarella on the weekends, only in Thailand). We bought cabbage, long green beans, papaya, tomatoes, fresh chilies, "coconut paste" (I'm pretty sure something was lost in translation here), an enormous bag of peanuts, white noodles, scallions, two blocks of tofu, a bag of dried shrimp, and a gazillion garlic heads. After I taught my one class, I headed to Attitan's kitchen with Teacher Win and we proceeded to spend the next two hours mashing and mixing and woking. The result was some of the best spicy papaya salad and paht thai I've had in Asia, and I even got a little baggie of the leftovers to take home.

The last random story from the past three weeks is about Koh Payam, aka the Cashew Farm Island. It's a 4 hour drive from Phang-nga, but that assumes that you don't encounter the treacherous thunderstorms that I luckily encountered. Koh Payam has no electricity except between 7 and 11 PM, so the experience is...authentic, to say the least. But it's well worth the long drive, two hour ferry ride, and nights spent in utter darkness while rabid dogs lurk outside your window.

First stop on the drive to Koh Payam was Khao Lak, one of the towns that was devastated by the tsunami. It is probably the most beautiful place on Earth so get ready to be jealous.

Now onto Koh Payam. Unfortunately, the cashew season is in the early spring so I was not greeted with barrels of freshly roasted cashews upon arriving at the pier as I'd hoped. 

Instead, we were greeted by a torrential downpour (hence the really cool Big Bird yellow poncho) that turned sunny just as we got onto the ferry. This is the before shot...

And this is the after/I'm-on-a-boat shot.

Once we landed at Koh Payam, we headed out on the trusty motorbike to explore the "hotels" (ie. bungalows/cabins without electricity literally on the beach). We drove along paths with single boards and roads through ponds and the hibernating cashew farms. After finding the shack that fit our only requirement, that it be on sand, we set out for an afternoon of exploring the deserted beach before the return of the ubiquitous rain.

Sad face to be leaving Koh Payam.

The fishing boats on the pier that bade us farewell as we returned to the mainland.

On the drive from Ranong (the city from which the ferry departs for Koh Payam) to Phang-nga, the motorbike broke down on the side of a road in the middle of a mountain. As it sputtered and wheezed, the wheels finally gave up and stopped moving. In a star-crossed moment, a man in a leather jacket, who could easily play the Thai Danny Zuko in Grease spotted us from the other side of the road and pulled across to our side. Neither of our skills in the other's language could suffice but he looked at the bike and understood the worldwide body language of "we're in trouble, please help." So I hopped on the back of his super cool motorcycle and he towed our bike with his toe and pushed it up the road and around curves for a good twenty minutes. He guided us to a completely random hut on the side of the road where he could explain, in Thai, to a mechanic what was going on with our bike. Deeply grateful for his willingness to drive twenty minutes in the opposite of where he was going, we handed him 100 baht. He smiled, shook his head and refused to take the money. Instead, he sat with us while the mechanic took apart the bottom of the bike and worked on the bike's (many) problems. When it appeared that all was well with the bike, he bade us farewell and hopped back on his motorcycle and sped away into the mountains. When he initially drove over to us, I immediately hesitated and my inner voice of sage wisdom started telling me that two farongs (foreigners) who have a broken bike are a prime target. Even as I sat on the back of this Danny Zuko's sweet ride, I couldn't help but think that something was off about the whole situation. It wasn't until he left, after refusing our money and still sitting with us for the forty five minutes it took for the mechanic to fix the bike, that I realized he wasn't the "off" part of the situation, I was. It was my skewed perception of people's innate generosity that was blinding me from the awesomeness of the situation, of how wonderful it is to see what we all secretly hope is an intrinsic tendency of people manifested in a stranger's willingness to help someone in need.