Thailand

So I recently went on vacation to Thailand, and it was great. The weather there was really nice, about 80-85 degrees (I think). I stayed in Bangkok Saturday night-Monday afternoon, then went to Koh Phi Phi, an island on the southwest side of the country, then back to Bangkok Saturday to fly back to Korea.

Bangkok was a very cool place. It's literally lousy with temples... they're just everywhere! And they're absolutely beautiful. I've been to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, which is my favorite church ever (well, possibly the Sacre-Coeur in Paris for a tie), but Asian temples are just so very different from Western churches. They're just all covered in mosaics and gold and mirrors, and they're incredibly intricate. Bangkok itself though, I was glad I wasn't there for too long. I felt like every single Thai person I met was trying to hustle me one way or the other, and it got really tiring having to be on my guard all the time. The cab drivers were the worst - sometimes they'd refuse to turn on the meter so I had to argue with them until they'd finally turn it on, and often we would just negotiate a flat fee before getting in, and then I'd find out later we got ripped off. The good thing is that getting ripped on in Thailand is kind of a joke since everything's so inexpensive, but it just got old. For example, the security guard at our hotel called us a cab, and he told us how much it would cost to get from the hotel to the temple we wanted to visit, and so we got in the cab and drove for like five minutes, then the cabbie pulled over and was like, Oh sorry the car's out of gas. Huh? Then magically another cab pulls up in front of us and our driver was like, Oh you can go take that one. Well thanks, cab driver, now we have to pay you to get here and pay a whole new starting fee. Scammed much? It could have been legitimate, but it seemed very fishy to me. I think if I lived in Thailand I would figure out how to keep from getting hustled all the time, but just being there for a short period of time made it hard. Also Thai cab drivers are even crazier than Korean cab drivers.

The hotel we stayed at had this deal where you could take one free tour, so my friend and I decided we'd go on the gondola tour. I had heard that Bangkok was called the "Venice of the East" because it used to rely primarily on waterways just like Venice, although they had moved away from that system. Anyway, we went out on a longboat ("Just like in James Bond, the Man with the Golden Gun!" our tour guide assured us). It was cool to go out on the boat and see houses and such. The tour group had picked us up from our hotel and was supposed to drop us off as well. So we were done with the tour and headed back to the van, and once we were inside the tour guide told us that we were going to head to a gem factory to learn all about Thai gems, etc. then they would drop us off wherever we wanted to go. We go to the gem place, watched a seven minute movie on Thailand and gems, and then were invited to walk into the stonecutting room, which actually was interesting. However, immediately I knew why we got a free tour - they wanted us to buy jewelry! As soon as we stepped into the stonecutting room a woman working there was like, Oh come look at the finished pieces! We went into the next room, and it was absolutely crammed with foreigners and jewelry. Like I said, everything in Bangkok is some kind of scam. If you can't trust your hotel staff, who can you trust? My friend and I just said we were too poor to afford anything, so could we just head out? So our tour guide showed us where to get a ride back.

Anyway, Bangkok was a really interesting place to visit. On Monday we took the overnight train south to get to Koh Phi Phi. In the long run this turned out to be a massive mistake. Take my advice - the overnight train itself is fine, but if you're short on time, don't take it to Phuket or Koh Phi Phi or basically anywhere on the west coast. If you're staying on the east coast on Koh Samui or Koh Phangan you'll be fine, but getting to the west coast was a nightmare. First of all the overnight train was really full so we could only get one sleeper seat and one sitting seat. I volunteered to sit in the sitting seat first with the idea that my friend and I would switch about midway through the ride (which was about 11 hours). So I sat in this rickety old train car, no AC (but it wasn't that hot), in this dingy old seat. I did manage to get seated next to the only other foreign girl in my car though. She was English and very pleasant. It was handy because she watched my luggage when I went to the bathroom or to go check on my friend. Anyway, it was unlucky for me because they locked the sleeping cars, presumably to stop the sitting people from swiping empty sleeping bunks or from robbing those who were sleeping or whatever. So I ended up having to spend the night in my sitting chair, which reclined farther than airplane seats but not much.

The train was supposed to leave at 7:30pm on Monday and arrive at 6:30am or so Tuesday morning. It left about 30-45 minutes late and arrived about an hour and 15 minutes late in Surat Thani, this town on the east coast. We had bought our bus tickets at the same time we got train tickets, and so we put our luggage on a coach bus and boarded. Whoops - turns out there wasn't enough room, and our luggage was already buried on the bus. The driver told us that another bus would show up to get us, so don't worry, our luggage is going to the same place. Well, we were nervous about this but fortunately a second, smaller bus showed up five minutes later. We drove to yet another station about 15 minutes away and phew, our luggage came too. So from there a midsize van comes, we load up, get on - whoops, AGAIN there isn't enough room for everyone. Of the four people in our group, only two of us fit. The woman in charge told us we had to go because the van needed to be full, but I was like, Lady you are crazy if you think I'm about to split our group in half, travel three hours across the country, and hope to find each other? So we hopped off, insisted we grab our luggage, then had to wait and hop on an open-air truck that took us 15 minutes back into town where we started. Then we got on a coach bus and rode three hours to Krabi, our next destination.

We arrive in Krabi and then buy ferry tickets. We had to wait for maybe an hour at this little gas station/bus station/dropoff point place until yet another open-air truck pulled up to take us to the ferry. We drove maybe five minutes and finally arrived at the ferry station. We got on the ferry, which took off about 45 minutes late, then the trip itself was an hour and 45 minutes. FINALLY we arrived on Phi Phi.

Phi Phi was gorgeous. Thai islands are absolutely amazing. However, I've never been to the tropics before - I've never been to Hawaii, Bermuda, the Bahamas, heck, even Mexico, so maybe I haven't seen that many beaches. Regardless, these were ridiculously nice beaches! I had read that the Thai islands had been "ruined" by tourism, but frankly I didn't think they were too bad. Was Phi Phi jammed full of tourist booths, restaurants, bars, shops, hotels, and spas? Yes, it was. However, I didn't think there was an insane amount of people, and honestly, what do you expect from a tropical paradise like that? That it will be secluded? I mean, it draws tourists, so I would think there would be a lot of people there visiting.

Thai food is delicious. I had a lot of curries and fried rice as well as fruit shakes. One of my favorite parts was how there was pineapple everywhere! You could buy half a pineapple for less than a dollar! I think I was having reverse scurvy because I definitely broke out in a minor rash on my face, which I think you can get from overdosing on vitamin C. Whatever, it was worth it. We went on two snorkeling tours. They were also super cheap - $1 is about 30 baht, so $3 is about 100 baht, and a half day snorkeling trip only cost 250 baht. They provided masks and snorkels, and they took you out in groups of maybe 8-12 on these longboats for a few hours. There were tons of fish as well, and it was such beautiful scenery and such clear water. We went to Maya Beach, which I guess is where Leonardo DiCaprio filmed the movie "The Beach," which I've never seen. Either way it was gorgeous.

The first day we just did the snorkeling tour, but the second day we went cliff jumping! They provided us with rubber shoes and gloves, which I quickly found out was because you had to scale a rock wall to get to the jump site. At first I was NOT okay with that because I am a terrible rock climber, plus there was no equipment or anything, so if you fell you'd basically just fall straight onto razor sharp rocks. Great. Anyway, it was actually much easier than it looked. The rocks were super sharp, yes, but they were really jagged and easy to grab. The hardest part was getting started because waves kept crashing around you and you had to be careful that you weren't thrown onto the rocks because you'd really get cut up. Just brushing against them gave me scrapes. So I got to the top and there were three jumps: 8 meters (26.3 feet), 10 meters (33 feet) and 20 meters (66 feet). I had planned just to go off 10 meters straightaway, mostly because I wasn't sure if I wanted to climb the rock face again. However, the tour guide wouldn't let me! This scrawny little Thai guy who looked younger than me was like, "Oh no miss, you have to go off the 8 meter." "Do I have to? I can't just go off the 10?" "No miss, 8 first, then 10." I was irritated because I'm positive it's because I'm a girl, since I was the only girl jumping and he didn't make the guys go off the 8 meter jump first. Whatever. So I jumped off and it actually wasn't that scary. Before I could chicken out I quickly swam back and started climbing up, all the while questioning what was I getting myself into. So I popped up at 10 meters and the guy gave me the go-ahead, though he did say I had to go to the boat after I jumped because we were leaving. I jumped off and swam to the boat. I wasn't happy though - even though I wasn't sure if I could handle the 20 meter jump, I would have liked to at least have the chance. Because I had to do 8m first, all the guys did 10 and then straight to 20. Plus they were up there for ages debating about jumping, and I definitely would have had time to climb back up. But I'm not going to kid myself, 66 feet is insanely high.

I was very nervous about traveling back to Bangkok, mostly because there were so many transfers we had to make and no one seemed to be able to give me a straight answer on what to expect (remember how I bought my bus ticket in advance only to have the bus be full?). I was NOT going to miss my flight to Korea. We took the 9am ferry on Friday from Koh Phi Phi because there were only two ferries, one at 9am and one at 3pm or so.
Ferry ride - 9am to 10:45ish
Anxious milling around after the ferry, waiting for truck pick up
Open air truck to bus stop
More milling around at bus stop
Uncomfortable van ride from Krabi to Surat Thani town - 11:15-2:15pm
Open air truck from Surat Thani town to train station - 2:15pm-3pm
Milling around train station
Train - 7pm-6am Saturday (sleeper car this time though, thank goodness)
Taxi - 6:30am-6:50am
Flight - 11:55am-11:05pm (thanks, layover in Hong Kong plus time difference)

Phew. We left Koh Phi Phi at 9am Friday morning and I arrived back in Buyeo at like 2pm on Sunday. Like I said, a truly ridiculous amount of traveling. The only upside is that from now on, if I want to go home for a week, a 12 hour flight no longer seems like such a journey! Now that it's over, it really wasn't so bad - the majority of the stress came from just not knowing if it would work out. Would the bus really show up? Would there be enough room for us? Would the train be massively late? All that stuff is where stress comes into play.

What I've learned from my Thailand trip is a lot about traveling and planning and knowing how long it will take to get places. Thailand is an amazing place that I think everyone should go to - the food and sights are just incredible. I wish I would have had more time there. I really hope to go back, especially to the islands, but I also want to go to Chiang Mai in the north, plus there's so many other awesome Asian countries and so little time. Pictures to come soon - I'm currently deskwarming, so I'm at school and don't have access to my pictures to upload.