After leaving Cheow Lan Lake (an incredibly beautiful setting where we stayed in a floating river house surrounded by enormous cliffs and hooting gibbons.  What an amazing song they sing!), we were uncertain what to do next.  Our passports were (are) still at the Vietnam embassy in Bangkok, where we very much needed to go collect them, but there was still Khao Sok National Park to see, as well as something called a homestay program that we’d read about in our guidebook. We figured we’d skip the park and call the NGO that ran the homestay.  If they could accomodate us right then for a night or two, we’d go to them.  Otherwise, we’d hop the bus to Bangkok, grab our passports and be on our way to Cambodia.

So we called.  Kelly answered the phone at Andaman Discoveries and told us to come on over, they’d find a place for us.  Our connection was bad and even after speaking with her we had no idea what to expect and we weren’t sure whatever it was, was something we wanted to do. It was unknown, unfamiliar, and when you’re traveling and tired there is something very like inertia that can take over.  Because EVERYTHING is unknown, unfamiliar, sometimes there’s the temptation to just fall back on the known, do what’s easy.  Fortunately for us, we battled that demon and said, what the heck?  A homestay sounds cool.

After a harrowing bus ride from Ban Ta Khun to Takua Pa, we arrived safely in Khuraburi. I know Ramon has described this ride elsewhere, and let me say he is NOT exaggerating.  He did indeed lean over and tell me he loved me in a this-is-it, goodbye-cruel-world type of way.  And he read my mind completely.  As we hurtled around mountain curves, swerving around the other cars, all I could do was picture us lying in the twisted wreckage of the bus, pinned under burning metal, crying out to the rescue squad the only words we knew in Thai -

“Hello!”  “Thank you!”  “Delicious!”

So.  We arrived. Dizzied, but safe, and were taken by Kelly to a village just outside of Khuraburi called Tharn Kirin, where we thought we’d stay two nights, max. 

That was a week ago.  Since then we’ve been teaching English at the local high school (highlight being Ramon & I co-teaching a class to sing John Denver’s “Country Roads”), making recylced paper, but most rewardingly spending time with the people in the village.  Our extended homestay family has been so welcoming and so nurturing part of me never wants to leave.  We’re moving on today to go to Bangkok, and this morning we sat on our stoop filled with sadness.

It’s difficult to describe what a sweet and family oriented lifestyle the villagers live.  Two nights before we left, a man from the village we’d never met brought us over a tray of cut-up fruit as a gift.  He was leaving the next morning for business and wanted to make sure he got to say goodbye to us.  He shook our hands and patted us, smile and nodded.  Our homestay “auntie” Tik said to imagine that the whole village was one big home; if you visit anyone’s home in the village, you’re visiting everyone’s home.

One of the most amazing days was when Pi Su (homestay mom, she’s about 28), Gor Dam(homestay dad, he’s about 56), and Tik (29, Gor Dam’s daughter from a previous marriage, speaks very good English) took us and about 10 of the children from the village to the swimming hole for the day.  Amazing.  We rode out there all crammed in the back of a pickup and had an incredible picnic and had a good long frolic in the water. 

 

The landscape here actually reminds me a bit of Tennessee, though it’s about a billion times hotter here.  It’s mountainous and green with some rivers and creeks around.

   

The village itself is a new one, built by Secours Populaire Francaise when the original village, Bak Jok, was destroyed in the Tsunami.    As a result, the homes look very European on the outside:

 

Inside the homes are more traditional Thai, with Asian toilets and a big, open-air kitchen.

Our host family escaped the Tsunami by climbing up a tree.  One tree in the village, Pi Su said.  Ten people in it.  We visited another, more remote village called Tung Nang Dam for a brief overnight homestay there. 

   

It is the surviving village on an island that once had two.  Everyone in the other village was killed except for a single baby.  

The company we’re here visiting through, Andaman Discoveries, is part of a larger NGO, North Andaman Tsunami Relief, that has worked with the villagers since the Tsunami to developalternate means of generating income, homestays being one of them.  All I can say is, our stay was INCREDIBLE.  If you come here, be sure to stay in Tharn Kirin.  The people will melt your heart completely.

If you don’t come here, you can see more about their work at their website, www.andamandiscoveries.com.  Our host mother Pi Su has also started her own card-making business with the aid of the program.  She makes recycled paper using leftover paper from the school (a pretty labor-intensive process), then she uses that paper to make gift cards.

   

    

Thank you so much homestay family!!!  We miss you already.

 

January 22

It’s like we’re defective.  When we’re traveling in Thailand.  Really.  It’s like we’re defective.  Since we speak virtually no Thai whatsoever, the bus and ferry companies put stickers on our shirts that say where we’re going, in Thai, so the ticket folk can tell us when to get off.  Meanwhile, we look around and cluelessly try to understand what’s going on around us as we’re herded from one spot to the next.

Today, we left Maenam and headed for Cheow Lan Lake.  Keeping in mind that these 2 places are less than 150 miles apart (though the trip does start on an island), we had to take a TAXI, then BUS, then FERRY, then back on the same BUS, transfer to SONGTHAEW

wait at station, into a MINIVAN, on to a new BUS, then a MINIBUS, and finally a LONGTAIL BOAT.  We left at 6:45 AM and arrived at 5 PM.  Come to think of it, it’s pretty amazing we didn’t make any wrong turns along the way.

OK so the lake is totally worth it.  It’s incredibly beautiful and dramatic, like nothing either of us has ever seen.  It’s surrounded by karst (limestone rocks) which are humongous and drop off into the lake like cliffs.  They’re filled with trees and, supposedly, wildlife.

We’re staying in a floating bamboo hut run by the national park service. 

It’s AMAZING.  It cricks and creaks as you walk on it and when it’s moved by the wake of the docking longtails.  The first thing we do on arrival is dive in to cool off from a day full of  being stuck on hot buses.  Tonight is a full moon and the light is incredible, making each walk to the mainland to use the bathroom well worth it.  The only drag about this whole thing is that there’s a good deal of hidden fees which will make a longer stay here impossible.

January 23

Today has been fantastic.  Best day of the trip so far.  We woke up at 6AM to do a self guided kayak safari.  We followed the sounds of the hooting gibbons (monkeys) who sing like crazy! Their sounds, in combination with the millions of other bird and insect calls, and the white mist lifting off the limestone as the sun began to appear was absolutely stunning.  There was also this high pitched band-saw like noise and I don’t know what makes it but it’s intense.

We headed into a cove and heard, just on the other side of some branches, all sorts of loud splashing.  Amy and I both wanted to get closer but were afraid (especially me) as we’d heard that though they were rare, there were some big cats by the lake.  We went in a little further but weren’t able to see what we heard.

Shortly after this, we head to another cove and there they were…monkeys!  Swinging high up in the branches, these were little brown guys (gibbons?  macaques?) and they were completely awesome.  There were maybe a half dozen or so, just doing what they do…climbing, eating leaves, swinging from branch to branch 80 feet above the ground (the best!)

Back to the hut for breakfast and then , immediately afterward, we went out for a guided (though non-english speaking) tour of Crystal Cave.  We reached it after a longtail ride, 30 minute hike. and then an awesome bamboo raft ride which made us feel like we were in a Mark Twain book.  The cave was really beautiful and I sure do wish we’d brought a camera but we were afraid it would get wet. 

I’m not sure how to describe it, but we basically climbed inside a huge rock inside of which were a series of interconnected rooms with incredibly bulbous already formed (and still forming) stalactites and stalagmites.  I’ve never done much spelunking but after this I’d definitely be into trying it again.

Another neat thing about what we saw in there was that our guides were carrying backpacks which housed what looked like car batteries, and in their hands they held a fluorescent light and a spotlight, each of which were connected to the car battery by a jumper cable that was hardwired from the light.  No ordinary flashlights here.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and swimming in the lake.  We broke out the instruments and entertained some of the newly arrived German tourists for a short while.  We head back to the mainland tomorrow.

Maenam Beach on Ko Samui
 
We arrive in Ko Samui (the island of Samui) on the 18th after an overnight train ride and then a ferry filled with snotty backpackers and 60 year old German man who spends the 2 hour ride groping his 15 year old Thai ‘girlfriend’s ass.  Sick.  We’re on the island after a fairly rough ride and I’m very happy to disembark.  From here we make it to Maenam and the beach.  It’s a good deal more developed than we were lead to believe by the Rough Guide to Thailand, but we’re able to overlook that because of how beautiful and calm it is.

 
The first few days are spent doing, just as we had planned, nothing much.  Awake early and on the beach early, Amy’s getting massages and I’m getting burned.  Highlights of the first few days are when we stumble across a ginormous water buffalo getting a bath.  Those things look mean, but this one’s attached by a rope through it’s nose to a man, so it’s uncomfortable, but we’re safe.

 
Later on, we walk by a pretty serious game of ‘takraw’.  It’s basically volleyball, except you can’t use your hands, so really it’s like soccer mixed with volleyball.  The ball is made of rattan and these guys played it barefoot in the dirt.  Unfortunately we didn’t get any pics of it, but this is kind of how each point finishes.

 
 
One day before leaving Ko Samui, we took a day trip to Ang Thon Marine Park, a 42 island archipelago where the Leonardo Di Caprio movie, The Beach is set.  We spend a few hours kayaking around these beautiful and huge limestone cliffs and spotting big ol’ jellyfish. 

 

The snorkeling which is advertised is non-existent.  It’s not that you can’t do it, it’s just there’s nothing to see.  And Amy said it an earlier post but it’s really hitting home for me today…plastic is ruining our world.  There’s trash everywhere in the ocean, and nobody even lives out here, it ’s just accumulated from boat trips.  Ugh.  makes swimming unappealing and is just generally disheartening.
 
We’ve met some nice tourists on the way this time, a brother and sister from Berkeley, CA who give us the lowdown on what to expect in Angkor Wat…massive beauty, heat, and poverty.  One last noodle soup from the street vendors, and we’re ready for the long journey to Khao Sok tomorrow.

January 15

We arrived in Bangkok at midnight and make our first ventures into the city this morning. The first thing to learn abut Bangkok is that it is crowed as hell and really difficult to get around. It took us about 3 hours from the airport hopping from one bus to another just to get us into Chinatown. It’s not where we wanted to be, but we couldn’t take sitting around any longer so we just dove in.

Chinatown. HOLY SHIT! It’s intense. Can you say overstimulation?  The street markets are everywhere, spilling all over the sidewalks making it damn near impossible to walk.  The air is thick with the scent of all kinds of noodles, dumplings,  savory and sweet fried treats, all mixed with the exhaust fumes of a million mopeds, cars, trucks , and buses, that don’t adhere to any emissions standards.  Oh, and did I mention that it was over 90 degrees?

In addition to the food for sale is every kind of trinket imaginable with a particular emphasis on gold buddhas and mini temples.  Oh yeah, you can also get all kinds of firearms, particularly those of the semiautomatic variety.  Above all what make’s Chinatown so intense is it’s volume.  Imagine the Italian Market only if it covered the area from Front to 9th and Washington to Market, and it’s twice as crowded as a Saturday morning.

Pretty much immediately we’re wiped out, so we stop off in a park and eat some dragonfruit

 

head over to a temple featuring a 150 foot long reclining buddha and call it a day. 

 

January 16

We’re headed South today, out of Bangkok towards the beach, but before we leave, we decide on a quick walk around the neighborhood we’re staying in and stumble upon a small river from which you can see tons of really big, huge mouthed catfish (i think).  Across the river, is a modest but lovely Wat which we stroll through and into the surrounding community which, as it turns out is poor.  Really poor.  The streets aren’t really that but more a combination of alleys and backyards.  And the backyards themselves constitute half of the living quarters of the homes.  We see people sleeping on hammocks and old rice bags filled with leaves.  The kitchens are out back, with sinks and single burner stoves.  The rest of these homes consist of one room whose walls and roof are made up of corrugated metal and tarps thrown in when metal can’t be found.  And the trash!  Trash is everywhere, especially plastic bags and rubber tires.  It’s filthy, and very sad, because otherwise the landscape is filled with abundant vegetation, and the Thai use anything they can find (including tires!) to fashion pots for plants and flowers, and so those same filthy backyards are teeming with life. 

Through all of this, the people are really happy to see us and nearly all greet us with a smile and “Sawat dee ka!”  The children in particular are thrilled to see us whiteys and are excited to practice their hello’s.  All in all a lovely way to start a day.

On our way south towards the beaches we decide to stop off in Petchaburi, a halfway point of sorts after a very slow train ride.   It’s dark when we get there and we proceed to immediately get lost while searching for our guest house.  We do eventually find it, and check in only to find out that the room is disgusting.  It’s filled with rotting furniture, tons of mosquitoes, and feels like the interior of Eastern State Penitentiary.  Gloomy.  So we look around and find another, slightly less bad place,  switch to it, but lose our money on the first spot.

The new place has a fantastic restaurant which we will come to love over the next day and a half, but these rooms too are pretty bad, with less than ideal shared bathrooms, and a window which faces out to the loudest street in town.  We put up the mosquito net, crawl on to the 1/2 inch thick mattresses (2 singles pushed together), and do our best to sleep.

January 17

Last night was loud and it was hot.  I’m beginning to reek as I haven’t had a shower since the USA (Jan. 13) but there’s no way I’m taking one here.   The plan is to just hang out most of the day and wait around until our next train passes through tonight.  I need a haircut, so we head to the local barber.  Since I can’t speak Thai and nobody here speaks English, and it’s hot as hell anyway,  I just make the ’shave my head’ motion along with the sound of clippers and he understands.  5 minutes later and  how dirty I am seems more manageable.

We spend the rest of the day doing a self guided wat tour (there are over 30 in Petchaburi alone).  It’s nothing spectacular, but a decent way to kill some time, knowing that the beach is next. In the evening we head to the market for Petchaburi’s local specialty, (egg custard, which is great!) and try, unsuccessfully, to get my broken camera (which I bought 2 days before the trip) fixed.  By 9:30 we’re on the train and out of Petchaburi.

Part 1:  3 days in and, depending on my mood, I think one of the following: 

1) Plastic has ruined our world. 

2) There are wild dogs everywhere!

3) Flowers grow even in the sewer here. 

Presently stuck on a hot, stinky bus with 60 other white people, many of whose habits brought me near shaking anger earlier.  I felt like I was in middle school again.  People pushing, cutting in line, jockeying for a seat on the bus.  But, as we near our destination, I’m looking forward to relaxing and staying in one place for a few days. 

Part 2:  We have arrived at Moonhut Bungalows, Maenam Beach on Ko Samui in the south of Thailand.  We took the overnight train from Phetchaburi, which was our first real touristic stop outside of Bangkok.  We stayed in a century-old wooden guesthouse on the bank of the Phetchaburi river. 

 

The mosquitos there were INTENSE, as were the Wats (Bhuddist temples).  Our guesthouse had an amazing restaurant (the drunken descriptions of which are recorded elsehwere, transcriptions coming soon.) 

 

Very sweet staff, who sneaked me information about getting wash done at a local laundromat.  You see, earlier that morning (was that only yesterday?), I shat my pants.  Yes, it’s true, friends.  Despite my ravenous appetite and love of exotic food, I have a very weak stomach.  When I travel, I shit.  A lot. 

I think this time around it was the boiled peanuts I bought on the train.  Not always a great idea, that buying food on the train….Mostly it’s made by people who are poor and live in very unsanitary conditions. Some of it looks delicious, but watch out, folks.  When I say unsanitary, I mean some pretty serious stuff.  Thailand is a land of extremes, where gilded images of the much-revered king are EVERYWHERE.  On calendars, street signs, stamps; on giant, sky-scraper-sized projections in downtown Bangkok.  Glistening golden Bhudda figures pop up in every corner.  All very beautiful, all very shiny.  And then, there’s the trash.  Lots of it.  Lots of people living in corrugated-tin shacks.  Housing under bridges.  Underneath the railroad tracks.  In sewers.  It’s pretty dramatic.  Coming from Philly, I’ve seen a lot of urban poverty, people living in heartbreaking conditions, homeless people rotting on the streets.  So I’m not shocked, but the extreme poverty seems pretty widespread, almost as ever-present as the image of the king.  I’m covered in tiny welts from the game Ramon & I have going – first one to see an image of the king gets to pinch the other one.  I hope that’s not considered disrespectful, because criticizing the monarchy is a criminal offense in Thailand.  More later on Bangkok, the sex industry in the South (aka ‘What We Saw on the Ferry’), and an expansion of points 1, 2, & 3 from part 1 of this entry. 

Hasta pronto! 

6 months sounds like a long time to travel, but the world, as it turns out, is frickin’ huge. You could travel all of your life and still want more. It seems sad in a way that you can never see all of the things you want to see, but I guess that’s part of the beauty of it. Better to end one’s life still curious, still interested, still seeking. Better than bored, no?

We had a difficult time narrowing down the places we wanted to go on this trip. At the top of the list were Thailand, India, China, Japan, Eastern Europe, Africa, Nepal. Impossible! We realized that traveling for six months straight was likely to be exhausting, so we decided we would break the trip into two month chunks and try to focus on one region for each chunk. Amy had always wanted to go to Thailand, if only for the food. We have a friend living in Nairobi who offered to put us up and show us around. Ramon really wanted to revisit Spain, having spent every summer there growing up. And voila! An itinerary was born.

Chunk one: Thaliand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos
Chunk two: Kenya & Addis Abbaba
Chunk three: Morocco & Spain

And for spice, a trip in the middle to the Himalayan Bhuddist kingdom of Bhutan. Not at ALL a budget destination, but we were both so enthralled by the place that for our wedding registry, we asked for donations to visit this country. The costs associated are quite steep. As a traveling group of two, it’ll cost us $230 per person per day to be in the country. Now that includes all food and accommodation, but compare it to our $35 per person per day budget for the rest of the trip, and you’ll get the idea. So after Southeast Asia, we’ll have 8 fine days in Bhutan, then on to Kenya…we hope. These plans were made before the current political upheaval happening in the country. We’re keeping an eye on the situation and will change our plans as necessary. That come-as-it-may attitude is, well, foreign to anxiety-inclined Amy and highly-organized Ramon, but we’ll keep at it. 6 months on the road is bound to help.