Bangkok is a wild city, not really my atmosphere. There is lots to do, but its way to chaotic for me. Vehicles don't obey the rules of the road and everyone seems to be ok with that. We would often see cars dodging stopped/slow traffic by driving in the opposite lane against oncoming traffic. If you're a bigger car or you have more motorbikes in your crew, you can do whatever you want out there. And there are tons of motorbikes and little three wheeled rickshaw-like vehicles called tuk-tuks (cheap taxis) that pinch through whatever small cracks they can find through traffic.
The other thing that makes Bangkok chaotic is the amount of people that look at you and just see dollar signs. We were often treated like either Royalty or like ATMs, neither of which I'm comfortable with. On the one hand, you get people who treat you with an uncomfortable amount of respect and on the other hand you get people who harass you to buy their stuff or ride in their tuk-tuks. I'm talking aggressively try to convince you to give them your money. There are entire scam systems where a cheery man in a nice suit will stop you in the street and ask where your going, seeming really helpful. He'll line you up with a tuk-tuk driver who will only charge you about 20 baht ($0.60). But then the driver wont take you to your destination and instead drops you off at some promotion where salesmen will swarm you and try to convince you to buy their stuff, often by trying to guilt you into it. Its harmless, but very annoying and time wasting.
But in general, Thai people are very generous and welcoming- just not as much in Bangkok. Ayutthaya and Lop Buri were fantastic visits. We saw so many incredible ruins and played with monkeys. The pictures say more than words can. After playing with monkeys in Lop Buri, we took a 12 hour overnight train north across the country to Chiang Mai. There we went on a wild 3-day jungle trek. Again, the pictures say it all. We climbed over hills and swam in rivers, rode bamboo rafts and elephants. It was really off the beaten path. We slept two nights in the jungle in bamboo huts in two different villages, if you can call them that. The villages were really just one or two farming families that had built a few guest huts to make some side money off of trekkers.
After the jungle trek, we spent a couple days in Chiang Mai. Two highlights from this city were the monk chat and the muay thai gym. We walked around the city for a while and stumbled into a Buddhist temple where some monks were sitting around chatting. They could speak a bit of english, so we talked to them about Buddhism, their practices, and meditation. Really sweet conversation, those guys rock. Later that day we saw some people training in a muay thai gym on one of the main streets, so we went in a paid a few bucks to learn some muay thai. Those guys rock too. Needless to say, we learned a lot of cool things in a day.
That's whats so awesome about backpacking around a new country: you experience so many new things in such a short period of time and it makes two weeks feel like so much longer. Everything is new and exciting and if you have the right attitude about it and have the confidence to explore and try new things you can get so much out of it. Its so exciting to think I have so much time ahead of me. I recommend this kind of a trip to anyone.
And on top of that, you meet so many cool people. In university, I've been involved in orientation week a lot, working a lot with first year students in residence. I always preach this idea that residence is such an awesome place to meet people because everyone is in the same stage of life and everyone is like-minded, creating an atmosphere that is really conducive to making friends. Backpacking is really similar in that you live in hostels and meet people all over the world who are doing the same thing: traveling around to experience new things. We have often found ourselves spending entire afternoons and evenings with different people from all over the world who we just met. Its amazing!
Its cool to gain backpacker experience too. It's really challenging to navigate a country where everything is written like this "าสหกดฟ่าหกแป้แอสฟาหกดเาสฟหือ" and people can't speak your language. You end up having lots of awkward conversations where you just cant communicate and you sometimes have to play a bit of charades to get the message across. But as long as you approach an interaction with a genuine smile and positive body language you can't go wrong (I know that's super cheesy, but its the truth).
These last two weeks have been adventurous and we've been to a lot of different places. But we are traveling for a long time and we want to balance out the exploratory side of traveling by settling ourselves in a particular area and making some kind of contributions to a community. So right now we've met up with Dr. Dave, the Hill-Tribe docotr I volunteered with back in May (see globalthailand2012.blogspot.ca). We're going to live in Burmese Refugee Hill Tribe Villages for the next couple weeks where we'll be building some toilets and water supply systems. We're at Dr. Dave's place now in Chiang Rai, and tomorrow we have a bunch volunteers coming in from Singapore (42 in total) who we will lead in the building projects. Guaranteed to be an interesting experience. Will post again after that's all over! Until next time.
Brian
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