THAILAND

Okay, the computer is acting up, so I’ll just compose the entry in a word document and then transfer it over later. At least if I write it out, it will be there and simple to copy paste once my internet decides to work again.

Gosh, now it was so long ago. I will definitely forget things or remember them in a wrong order. This time the blog is just for others, I already wrote my Thailand adventures down in my paper journal. So…. day one. Sunday I was super early to the airport. Oh, I should back up. Nancy and I went to Taipei on Saturday and we didn’t have one last hurrah, we ended up staying in the lobby of the hostel talking with the other people there. At 3am I decided that I was going to try to take a 45 minute nap before I had to take a taxi to the bus station. So I did, I got a 45 minute nap in, then I took a cab to the bus station (surprisingly enough, it was way easy to get a cab at 4am), took a bus to the airport and was way early to the airport. The time came when my group was supposed to meet and the tour guide came up to me and asked for my passport and got me my ticket. One lady had her 18 year old daughter and 20 something year old son with her. The mom spoke a little bit of English and tried to talk to me for a little while, but then went to talk with her own kids. A few more people joined our group. There was one lady that came with her two young daughters, and I noticed that she was telling her youngest daughter, “Oh, I’m so sorry, so sorry” because she had scratched her face on accident or something. Notice that she wasn’t saying “dui bu qui”, she was saying “I’m sorry.” We checked in our luggage and I went to exchange my money and we still had an hour before boarding. I wandered down to the gate to make sure I knew where it was, but then I walked back and grabbed a quick bite to eat.

When I went to the gate, the mother with the two young girls started to talk to me. It turns out that she and her daughters (Valerie- 8 years old and Ester- 12 years old) are from Los Angeles. Yuling (the Mom) was raised in Taipei, but moved to LA after graduating high school, so she’d been there a while. She told me that I could just stick with her the whole trip and she would make sure I knew where we were going and what we were doing. Oh boy did I stick with her. I missed a lot of the history and stuff because she didn’t translate ANY of that, but at least I knew when to meet for breakfast and how much I had to pay for the extra trips they had scheduled. The plane ride was 3 hours long and so I got some sleep in, but mainly I stayed up to write in my journal about what I’d done the night before (a whole lot of nothing, don’t worry, I’m not editing anything exciting).

The bus took us directly to the amusement park, Dream World. That was pretty fun. It was way dinky, but it was entertaining. Inside of the park they had a purse shop that apparently is really popular and cheap, so we went in there right before we left and I ended up getting 4 bags (only 1 of which I plan on giving away) but one of them was a coin pouch, so it hardly counts. After the park, we still didn’t go to the hotel (which was super unfortunate because we went on a couple of wet rides and my jeans wouldn’t dry. Instead of going to the hotel, we went to dinner and to see the transvestite show. Wow! Those men were super attractive. When they spoke, you knew they were men, but just looking at them, not really. Okay, there were a few that were most definitely males, but seriously, I felt so ugly looking at the transvestites. How sad is that?! After the show we finally went to the hotel. It was way nice and had some things I wanted to check out, but it was pretty late and I was so tired (you know, the whole only getting 45 minutes of rest before a huge day) and I just went to bed. I was signed up to stay with one of the members of the family with the mom and 18 year old girl and the 20+ year old boy, but they decided to all stay in one room. I had an extra bed and so Yuling asked if Ester could sleep in my room. So she did. I wasn’t using the bed, and I need to show Yuling my appreciation some how for letting me tag along with her all day.

Monday we woke up, ate breakfast in the fancy-shamncy hotel and then took off. We went to look at some temple ruins. We visited what used to be the largest temple in Thailand, but during some foreign conquest, invaders burned the temple to melt the gold. The temple burned for 7 days. We didn’t stay a super long time, but I bought a pamphlet in English about it, so if I missed something, I can read about it later. We drove past another temple ruins sight, but we didn’t stop to look at it. That one looked cooler, so I don’t know why we didn’t look at that one. I guess that this group wasn’t too keen on history. Our next stop was the zoo. The first thing you see when you walk into the zoo is a giant mother pig feeding two piglets and three tiger cubs. Because the tigers are so young, they don’t know who their mom is, they just know they’re hungry and want milk. Later that day we also saw a dog, a pig, and a tiger that all live together. I guess since they put them together when they were all babies, they don’t care what species they are. At the zoo I was able to hold a baby tiger (and pay for a picture), I was able to take (and pay for) a picture with the scorpion queen, who walks around with scorpions on her (I had scorpions on me, I’m kind of proud of that one), and I also took a picture with orangutans (don’t worry, that one cost money too). While we were there was saw a crocodile show (we came in at the very end, but what I saw was pretty neat), we saw pig races and a pig that could do math, Ester and Valerie helped a crocodile hatch out of its egg, and that’s about all.

On the bus ride back, Yuling was explaining to me what extra activities were available (for a large charge) and as the tour guide was collecting the money and signing people up, one of the guys in the group (his English name is Rain and he’s 25) started freaking out a little bit. He has taken a picture with the scorpion queen too, and one of the scorpions on him stowed away in his jacket pocket. He got a free souvenir. He had a glass bottle that he put it in and he ended up keeping it the whole time we were in Thailand. The bus dropped us off to dinner and then we went to the mall. After the mall we walked over to a restaurant where most of the group had paid the 400 baht (Thailand money, close enough to New Taiwanese Dollars that I wasn’t too confused about the pricing) to try coconut juice with bird spit in it. Luckily Yuling gave me a taste of hers so I didn’t have to spend the $12+ to try it. It was actually pretty good, but there was no way I would have been able to finish the whole thing so I’m glad I didn’t get one. After the bird spit, we went to get massages (one of the extras we had to pay for). This was a non-nakey massage, so that was good. It was mainly doing stretches and then they pounded on me with really hot hot pads. I walked out feeling pretty relaxed, but I had hoped I would have felt better then that. We checked into the hotel that we would be staying at for the next 3 days. It was definitely dumpier then the one from the night before. But, seeing as I’m not really high maintenance, it didn’t really bother me.

Tuesday was our island day. We went parasailing first. That was pretty fun. They have this down to an exact science though, they really know how to crank people in and out of the parachutes so they can get as many people through as possible. It was just one circle around the dock, but the harness wasn’t really that comfortable, so one circle was a-okay with me. Next we took a boat out to the actual island where we rode on a banana boat and a jet ski. Okay, let me tell you how dinky these rides were. We sat down on the banana boat, then jet ski pulled it out maybe 50 feet, then it turned around and came back. Oh, the jet ski is worse. You sit on the jet ski, someone else drives you out for 50 feet, turns around and drives you back- that’s it. Good thing Dad owns some and I can ride them on my own sometime because that did not cut it for me. I don’t know what the rest of the group did, but Valerie, Ester, and I went swimming. That didn’t last long however, for a couple of reasons. One, we saw a lady drowning and no one helping her- finally a jet ski came over and the guy pulled her out of the water- but I was really close to telling the girls to stay put while I went and grabbed her. Second, the girls kept saying that they were getting stung by something. I thought they were crazy until something stung me, then we left. On our way back in we saw another body on shore. This one was blue and they were giving him CPR. We found out later that the blue body we saw was the husband of the lady who we saw drowning. Because we hadn’t seen him that means that he was already down when they rescued the woman, and it wasn’t till a while later that they found him. I never found out if he survived or not. Yikes. It’s a good thing we didn’t stay in there very long. We did some shopping and bargaining on the island. I picked up a watch and some chopsticks- that’s it.

We took the boat back and went to the spa (this is the one that was included in the package trip). This massage was more of what you would imagine when you think of a massage, not a weird stretching one where they beat you with hot clothes. We showered off, went into a sauna, then into a mini pool with herbs in it, and then we went to the massage table and got rubbed out. That one felt good.

After the massage we tried to go to a zip line at Thailand’s tallest building on the coast, but because it was windy, it was closed. Instead, we went to a tiny museum that talked about a group of people that don’t have citizenship in China (where they’re from) or in Thailand (where they live) because they are the descendants of soldiers who were fighting a in a drug war but decided to turn against their leader and so they were cut off. I’m still not sure why they get their own museum, but I do know that the tour guide definitely offered me some free heroine. At the start of the museum we watched a video about the drug war (it was in Chinese with English subtitles that were covered up most of the time by Chinese subtitles), then a Thai soldier showed us some pictures and talked in Chinese, then he took us to a room with stones and weapons and spoke some more in Chinese, then we went to this little hut where some men were smoking a long pipe. The Thai soldier points to me and then points to the men. The one thing that Yuling decided to translate for me the whole time we were there was, “Um, he wants to know if you want to try it, it’s free.” “What is it?” “Heroine, it’s okay, it’s legal in London or something.” No worries, I passed on that offer.

Most of the group went to an X-rated show next (I’m not even kidding you). I decided to walk around with the kids (Valerie and Ester). After the show we met up with everyone else and we went to the board walk- ish area to do some shopping. I didn’t get anything, but I was close, they wouldn’t lower the price quite low enough and I didn’t want it bad enough to pay the price they were offering. After going back to the hotel I was getting ready for bed when one of the guys in the group (his English name is Click and he’s 25) knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to go and get something to eat with a group of them. I told him no, but when Yuling invited me 5 minutes later I decided I would go. Well, I didn’t socialize with them much and I didn’t eat anything, so I kind of wished that I would have stayed in, but at least I made the effort to go out with the group.
Wednesday we rode elephants and went to an elephant show. Again, the ride wasn’t that long (in Thailand I guess they keep ride down to an absolute minimum time), but at least I can say that I’ve ridden an elephant. After the elephant ride we went to look at a giant golden Buddha that was engraved in the side of a mountain. After that we went to watch an elephant show. That was pretty cool because the elephants danced, played soccer, played basketball, threw darts, painted, hula-hooped, and Yuling was called into the middle of the arena to get spanked by an elephant. Oh yeah, I paid 50 Baht for an elephant to lift me up with his trunk. I hope that picture turned out. Oh yeah, I should mention at some point in time that Yuling noticed right away that her camera was way better then mine and so she offered to take lots of pictures of me and for me with her camera and then she would just e-mail them to me later. I’m still waiting for that e-mail.

After the elephant show we went back to the zip line. It wasn’t windy, so it was open, but it wasn’t a zip line. It was SOOOOOOO slow. There was a pretty view as I went down, but it was nothing like I had expected it to be. They strap you in and then you are pulled down the line ever so slowly. I can’t believe that people in my group actually got scared of it. Maybe I’m way more adventurous then I ever realized, but that did not fulfill my need for adventure or my need for speed.

Oh, here’s the part about why I bought a new camera in Taipei. Although I didn’t take too many pictures with my camera, I did fill up my memory card on Wednesday. I asked Yuling if she could ask the tour guide if there was a place I could burn my pictures onto a CD so that I could clear the memory card, but Yuling suggested that I just buy another memory card because those always come in handy. She looked at the one I had and laughed out loud. I had a memory card that was 128MB. Apparently the smallest ones they make now are 512MB. We went back to the mall to do some shopping and so I went over to the department store to buy a new memory card. Yuling and I went to the counter and asked for a 512MB SD card and the guy pointed to one that was 590 Baht. I saw one that was 550 Baht and pointed that I wanted that one. The guy reached down for the one that was 590 and I told him no. He looked around and said, “I give you this one, 500 Baht” Oh, okay, I took it. He had me pull out my camera and he put the card in for me to make sure that it worked. It did, and he told me to pay for it there. Okay, I handed him 1000 Baht. He asked if I had 500, and I told him that was the smallest I had. He told me he’d be back in “one, no, two minutes.” I saw him go over to his friend and his friend slipped him the change (notice that the friend didn’t hand him the change, he slipped it to him). I didn’t even realize until after I walked away that something was shady. Well, I took the camera back to the hotel and was testing it out later that night and it the camera shut itself off. I thought that the batteries had died and so I put new ones in. The camera still shut itself off. Weird- I could have sworn that those ones were fully charged. Oh well, it’s a good thing that I had bought a brand new pair of rechargeable batteries in Taiwan right before leaving. I ripped the batteries open and put them in. No, the camera still turned itself off. I was so upset. I just paid $15 to break my camera. I was so confused about how a memory card could affect the power in my camera, but I figured that it had shocked the whole system or something because even when I tried to put my old memory card back in it still wouldn’t turn on. Luckily Yuling was taking pictures for me anyway. But that’s the story behind why I needed to buy a camera in Taipei Friday night. The story behind why I didn’t need to buy a camera in Taipei Friday night is that I really was sold some shady batteries, not a shady memory card. I tried my camera one last time today (July 2) and it turned on and works just fine!

We went octopi fishing later that night (we had to pay extra for that one). We were told that it was the season for the octopi to be out and so we were all supposed to catch one without a problem. Um, not true. The tour guide caught two squid- a big one and a small one, and the mom and daughter of the “happy family” (the one with the 18 and 20+ year old) caught little squid, but that’s all that was caught. After fishing time was over, we went to the top of the “boat” and waited while they prepared the squid. We watched some pretty interesting entertainment and were pulled up stage to dance a little bit. After the dancing our food came out. We had some bar-b-qued squid, but they also brought it out to us “fresh” meaning they cleaned it and cut it, but that’s about it. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t terrible. Plus, it’s more about the experience and not about the food. After the squid some transvestites came out to dance with the audience. The three guys in our group went up and danced with them. But after the transvestites it was time to go.

We left the fishing place and walked down this street. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was not a place that I felt good walking around. It was full of bars with pole dancers, there were plenty of strip clubs with girls in scanty outfits holding signs to entice guys in, there were some transvestite hookers on the corners, and it just was not a good place to be. Poor Valerie and Ester had to walk down that road too. I don’t know what the tour guide was thinking. It’s all apart of the Thai culture I guess.

The group split up after that. Some people went back to the hotel to sleep, and some people went out to a club. Guess which group I went with…. You got it right, I went back to the hotel. Just teasing, I went to the club. I didn’t know that it would cost 800 Baht ($20) to get in, but it was too late by time I figured that part out. On the ride over the tour guide kept asking me if I wanted to drink whiskey. I told him no, but he kept on asking if I wanted to try just a little. The whole ride over I was yelling “NO!” at him, and it finally sank in. In the club I only had coke. When we first walked into the club there was a group performing the “I Wanna Know” song that Nancy and I love/don’t really know how it goes and so I got way excited. No one in my group really danced much, so the clubbing wasn’t really all that fun. It was enjoyable, but it could have definitely been better. If only Nancy hadn’t gone home to America, imagine the possibilities :o)

Okay, in the word document, I’m already getting close to the bottom of page 5, but I think that I can cover the last two days pretty quickly. Thursday was absolutely lame. We went to the Trade Center where they manufacture gems. Okay, it was pretty neat to see all the beautiful jewelry, but we were there for an hour or more because 3 people in our group actually bought things. Gracious me, I couldn’t even really look at the jewelry because if I paused for a moment, there was a sales person asking if I needed help. When I told them I was just looking, they gave me dirty looks. I don’t like dirty looks so I stopped looking.

After the jewelry place we went to look at snakes. Well, we looked at the snakes for 5 minutes and then went into tiny room to hear a 30 minute lecture (in Chinese) about the benefits of snake medicine. After the lecture they brought in the capsules so you could buy some. For some reason Yuilng was surprised I didn’t buy anything (uh, does she think I understood what the lecturer said? Or that I would really buy snake penis capsules?). After that we went down the street into a store that sells purses, wallets, and belts made out of elephant, sting ray, and crocodile skin. Okay, I’ve got to admit that some of those products were really nice, but they were way too much money so I knew I wasn’t going to buy anything. But most of the people in the group did buy things so again, we were in there forever. And the sales people were even more jumpy and on your case in this store so I had to stand off to one side of the store where they didn’t sell anything or else get hassled by pushy sales ladies.

Don’t worry, we did even more shopping after that. Yuling didn’t tell me that this was the absolute last place to shop and that they would package all of your stuff into a box that would go straight onto the plane until after we were back on the bus. So I missed out a little bit, but then again, the stuff at that place was like the stuff everywhere and I didn’t have a problem passing it up. That was all of Thursday. Most of the trip was pretty good, why did they have to end it with such a LAME day?

Friday we woke up, ate breakfast and went to the airport. What I did once I got back to Taipei is written in the Taipei blog, read it there.