Bangkok, the return

The Oriental: a slight upgrade from my prior Bangkok experience


The rare tuk-tuk piloted by a member of the fairer sex


Good night, Bangkok. Good bye, swift river.

Buddha in Chiang Mai

Why did the monk cross the road?


Temple detail ...


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The title of this post was a pun, see.

On the move

Panoramas are pretty awesome


Last breakfast in Pai

Pai Pai

The above title requires some expanation. Despite all the Pai-derived puns that stand as business names around town -- e.g. Pairadise, Pai in the Sky, Apple Pai -- the Thai pronunciation is more similar to Bye than to Pie. So there it is.

I can easily see myself a happy resident of Pai. And I have been quite happy as a short-term visitor of Pai. But the town does not encourage the middle ground, and I am ready to pack up my earlier judgment and move on. The routine to end all routines threatens to become too routine.

Had I six months to launch a whistling career in the cafe circuit of Pai, falling in with the mix of good-but-not-too-good musicians from all around the world, I would really love it here.

But I am on the outside. I am just another face getting off the bus only to get back on the bus in a few days. I am neither a hippie nor a honeymooner. I am Korean, but unlike most Koreans in town I am not entirely from Korea. There are few Americans to speak of.

So I am out of here before I get tired of this lovely little place. I have been armed with some rudimentary Thai cooking skills that I am eager to unleash back home, where I will hopefully regain my former appetite for Thai food.

Tomorrow: bus back to Chiang Mai, where I will try to acquire a bamboo saxophone. I have some more time in Thailand, but I am very much looking forward to Hawaii.


Let Wok! Put in hard vegetables! Taste now! Take off heat!


I knew it was time to leave when scenes like this began to seem routine

Wish you were here

The beauty of Pai is that it is more or less the same every day. The sun comes up; there is a five-minute rain; the temperature rises, and the dogs curl up in the shade; hippies get off the bus and mill around town with their backpacks; one drinks a coffee, maybe a shake, listening to some blues or raggae in an open-air bar, talking to the resident Thais about where one comes from, where one is going; the sky gets crazy, there is another five-minute rain, and then the light falls on Pai like Buddha's fingers through the clouds; there is dinner to be had, not just Thai food but pretty good pizza, pasta, burgers, and even Tex-Mex; live music starts to get going around town, and one sits in a cafe while chewing the fat with some random German or Brit about nothing much at all; then, as one heads back to the bungalow on the ridge across the river, the air cools down and the frogs begin their nightly chorus. This may sound boring, but it is completely fulfilling. This is a routine to end all routines. And as much as I enjoy wandering around by myself, I do wish I could share this with people I love, because there is much more to feel here than to describe on a keyboard.

Today I am learning how to cook Thai food with Bebe, a chill dude with a kitchen and a stereo pumping Cake as we pound away on our curry paste. With me are Paul and Joanne, a couple from the windward side of Oahu. The morning session covered the curries, and my Mussaman was more than serviceable, even delicious, if I may say so myself. And after stuffing myself with our creations, I am headed back to my porch for an afternoon nap; we will gather again in the evening for rice, soups and salads.


Foot on hammock. Note the flip-flop injuries.


There are only so many pictures you can take from a stationary position on the hammock.


For a man who practically invented ascetic life, Buddha's got a lot of ornate monuments under his view.


The sky above Pai gets pretty crazy.


I cannot resist a picture when I walk this way in the late afternoon.

Pai

The non-air-conditioned bus to Pai, a bargain at about $2.50


Climbing bus


My bungalow at Pairadise.


Pai, and the mountains beyond


Monkey, dog, laundry

Chumphon to Bangkok to Chiang Mai

One nice thing about the 24-hour trip was that I had plenty of time for pictures.


Train to Bangkok coming into the station


Second-class upper berth. Were I an inch taller I would not have been comfortable.


Hulamphong train station, 6:30AM


Rice growing under the watch of the big man himself






The central plains giving way to the northern hills

More Ko Tao

Fishing boats in the afternoon


Divemaster Simsi on the beach after a few spliffs


Ban Chalok in the sun


Big Bubble lounge


Fishing boats home for the night in Chumphon

Arriving in Ko Tao

Night train running past the noodle cart, Chumphon


Ban Chalok, as seen from the Viewpoint restaurant


More Ban Chalok


Mosquito net. Useless against ants, and no help against the hand-sized spiders in the bathroom. Offers some protection, however, against gecko droppings from the foot-long beast on my ceiling.


Main street, Ko Tao

Chinatown, BKK

Welcome to Chinatown


Possible corollary: if it don't shine, I am sitting on it


I could have taken the train down to Canal St and seen much the same, yeah?

Pairadise

After saying goodbye to my French (by way of London) dive-buddy Damien and my fellow German/Austrian divers, I left little Ko Tao on a 4PM ferry. Then I spent the next 2 hours on a boat, 2 hours in Chumphon (where one can find huge cockroaches and rats scurrying around on the train platform), 9 hours on a sleeper train to Bangkok, 2 hours at the train station and, finally, 12 terrible hours on a "Sprinter"-class train up to Chiang Mai, which revealed itself to be an unpleasant city full of expat English teachers. It was something like a provincial Shanghai.

So the following day (which happens to be today) I boarded a 4-hour bus to a little hippie outpost called Pai, which despite its earthiness is a beautiful place that seems to be just my speed.

A river runs through Pai, and all around it are mountains, as far as you can see. The streets are bustling with Chinese Muslims, Shan women from the hill country, tattooed Farangs, Japanese hippies and, of course, friendly Thais. I am staying at a beautiful place called Pairadise a short walk from town.

I just dropped off my laundry at a little house, and out front was a baby monkey playing with a neighborhood dog. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Pai.

An update from Ko Tao

I have not touched the Inter-Nets in the past four days and the updates have been piling up. Rather than put up the tedious paragraphs in whole, I will summarize in a few Powerpoint-friendly bullets:

- Escape from Bangkok: Chinatown, malls, heat and humidity, and finally the train station

- Second-class sleeper down to Chumpon, red-eye ferry over to Ko Tao

- Advanced Open Water certification over five dives with a bunch of Germans. Night dive (ludicrously awesome). Further fraternizing with the Teutonic divers at what has to be the chillest bar in all of Thailand.

- Finally, ticket back to Bankok tomorrow, and then immediately up to Chiang Mai. I'll spend one night there and then try to head to Pai.

Once I again have access to cheap and fast access to the Inter-Nets, I will no doubt put up some pictures as well as the tedious details in full.

I, too, am curious.


Street art


Suk 11


Jetlag = night photos


Suk 11

Suhkumvit, Bangkok

On my flight to Thailand I sat next to a woman from Richmond who was on her way to visiting her globe-trekking daughter. She told me that she had previously been to Egypt (I LOOOOVVVED Egypt!), the Phillipines (I LOOOOOVVVED the Phillipines!), Honduras and Costa Rica (I LOOOOVVVVED Honduras! I LOOOOOOVVVVVVED Costa Rica!), and a few other countries that she most likely loved very much. I checked my watch: only sixteen more hours to go.

What little I have seen of Bangkok is more or less what I expected. I am staying at a pleasant place called Suk 11, which is full of backpackers and pulled-luggagers alike. The neighborhood is a hotbed of sexual commerce, and I can hear, even now at five in the morning, the very faint thumping beat of aweful trance music from the girlie bar around the corner. Old and overweight caucasian gentlemen walk the streets with their young Thai girlfriends.

After walking and sweating I realized that the Skytrain and the subway were more hydrating means of getting around. Unable to work up the courage for the street vendors, I wolfed down some fried rice and laksa at an indoor food mall that looked like a chic cafeteria. Then I managed to get a train ticket out of here. Tonight I leave Bangkok on the overnight sleeper to Chumphon, where I will take a bus and a ferry to Ko Tao.

Suk 11

Ji-Soo: Intrepid Adventurer, Man of Mystery

There's not much to admire about solitary travel. The lone traveler imagines a personal adventure in the third person, assigns to himself such qualities as fearlessness, curiosity and tolerance, and goes about "discovering" the foreign land. But the lone traveler mostly engages in introspection, and the unfamiliar backdrop fuels his self-consciousness. Even this self-discovery is mostly fiction; having removed himself from his everyday existence and the judgments of those who know him, he is free to invent an idealized version of himself -- one that he hopes will last for some time when he returns to the world as he knows it. So solitary travel is just a high form of self-absorption, and the lone traveler is just wallowing in crude therapy.

I don't mean to exclude myself from the above verdict, or to apologize for my wannabe trip. I have a knack for self-absorption, and it is perhaps my defining personality trait. I fully intend to glorify every bit of my insignificant journey through Thailand, and to use these experiences to draw bold conclusions -- mostly positive -- about my character. The above crap about solitary travel targets the handful of people on whom I may impose these brutal observations, and hopefully it will preempt some of the eye-rolling and reflexive gagging that may accompany the consumption of my running commentary. The effort might be unnecessary, given that my mother is likely the only person who cares at all to keep up with my travels (hi mom!). She is blinded by a biological bond that renders her incapable of seeing any irony in what I do or say.

But if there is anyone else out there, please indulge me.

We treasure ourselves for looking forward, anticipating what's to come. We also measure the past -- collectively, obsessively. One leads to the other, but neither serves us well.

Now is a good time, see.