Friday, July 15, 2011

Thailand

Alright, I've put off these last couple of posts for as long as possible. Basically, my first year in Korea is over which leaves my blog quite obsolete. So I tried to avoid documenting my vacation. But it must be done. I'll be heading back to Korea in August to start another year of teaching. I haven't decided how to move forward with documenting my experiences. I've had some trouble keeping up with blogger so I've thought about switching to tumblr. I don't know. Maybe I'll save it as a surprise or something. Whatever.

Moving right along, this post is about the first part of my vacation. And it's gonna be my longest post to date, so I'll try to keep the text minimal and use a lot of pictures. Most of you already know about my trip to Thailand, but if you're unfamiliar let me fill you in.



In choosing which countries to visit for my vacation, I thought about where my friends were living globally. When I travel, I like to go around with people I know (mainly because I'm terrible with directions and also that language barrier is a killer). So the first place that came to mind was Thailand because my friend Amanda has been living there for the last couple of years. And where's the first place she took me in Bangkok? An Irish Pub for Happy Hour. Felt just like home.



The next morning, we ate breakfast and hopped a bus to Kanchanaburi. It's about 2 hours west of Bangkok and is a popular destination for travelers. On the bus ride I took pictures out of the window. But the window was all dirty and smudged, so the pictures might be blurry.







Let me tell you something about the weather in Thailand. It's hot, it's humid, it's muggy and it envelopes you like a spacesuit. But the beautiful scenery makes it totally worth it. I've never seen sky so blue and foliage so green. So taking pictures from inside of an air-conditioned bus was ideal.



Thai Fun Fact: Thailand is governed under a monarchy. There's a Prime Minister who runs the government, but the Head of State is His Majesty King Rama IX. They absolutely adore this man, so you'll see pictures of him EVERYWHERE. He's on all the money, he's on billboards, and when you go to the movies, you have to stand for a short video clip that features him (sidenote: I saw the Hangover Part 2 in Bangkok, how cool am I?)



So after the bus ride we hopped in a taxi (which was actually a pick-up truck with an open cab over the back) to our hotel. The brochure made it sound much cooler than it really was, but it was still gorgeous and really cheap (like everything else in Thailand)







That night we went to a bar down the street that advertised drinks for 10 Baht! Why the exclamation point? Converted to American currency, 10 Baht is about 30 cents. You're buying drinks with alcohol in them for 1/3 of a dollar! How ridiculous is that?!



That night, we met a former Thai marine with some entertaining pick-up lines for the ladies...



And drank Thai moonshine with a guy named Dan, who'd spent the previous 3 years in Sudan while working for an American NGO (sidenote: Thai moonshine is NOT what's up, stay away).



We started the next day (with a hangover) by going to a nearby wildlife reserve. I fed a baby tiger. Then we went on a safari.













My favorite was the zebras. Giraffes are jerks, not to be trusted. But this safari was by far the coolest thing I've ever done in my 23 years on this earth.



Then there were the waterfalls. We basically took a 2-mile nature hike (while still hungover) to see these incredible falls. We didn't make it through the whole trek, but we made it to the 5th stop, and that was enough for us.











So we survived the journey, and at one point a monkey stole Amanda's stuff.



But we got it back after some clever negotiating (the monkey got bored and just dropped it).

The next day we went back to Bangkok to enjoy the city before I left for Shanghai. We went back to that same Irish pub for Happy Hour again, but first I had to get some pad thai!



If I haven't mentioned it before, I absolutely love street food. It's probably slowly killing me, but it's one of my favorite things about the places I've been to in Asia.



And the last place we visited before my flight to Shanghai was Soi Cowboy (the road where all of the strip clubs are). Honestly, I'm not even interested in strip clubs and lap dances. I gotta pay money to watch women take off their clothes and sit in my lap? No, thank you. But I still wanted to check it out.



And that's all I'm gonna say about that.