Next stop: Malaysia

Erawan Falls

I'm on a train, traveling from Bangkok to Hat Yai (Thai town near the Malaysian border). The scenery is beautiful, and surprising. In the span of a couple of miles, we'll pass factories, mountains, farms (with teak, cattle, sugar cane, banana trees, etc.), run-down blocks of tiny houses that look like they're about to crumble, areas of obvious wealth, palm trees, forests, marshes, a river, land that's been burned black (slash-and-burn is still a widely used approach to agriculture here)... If you look out the window, close your eyes for ten or fifteen seconds (not exaggerating) and open your eyes again, the picture you see will be dramatically different.

Twenty hours from now, I'll arrive in Hat Yai, find a place to sleep for the night, and take off the next day for somewhere in Malaysia. I decided to get out of Bangkok before the big Supreme Court decision regarding the assets of the former Prime Minister. The political party supporting him has said that they will protest and demonstrate in Bangkok if the ruling is against him. It *should* all remain peaceful, but just in case, it seems like a good time to head south. I'll probably hit a few cities on my way to the southern part of peninsular Malaysia, then hop on a flight to Malaysian Borneo to trek through the jungle and snorkel off the island coasts.

After Ayutthaya, I came down to Bangkok, staying in a guesthouse in the Khao San area, which is the "backpackers' ghetto." The area was certainly worth seeing, but except for the people working, there wasn't a local in sight. It was, however, convenient to the Grand Palace and a few must-see temples, so I stuck around for a few days. The temples were incredible; the detail in every statue, every building, every walkway... I can't begin to imagine how much work went into building them. The only bad thing was that almost everything was outdoors, and the sun was beating down. I have no idea how locals manage to walk around wearing double the amount of clothing I'm wearing yet somehow seem cool and comfortable, while I'm paying double what I need to for my sleeping arrangements just to have some air-conditioning.

The head of the 46-foot-long Reclining Buddha  

The length of Reclining Buddha's body.

After seeing the Grand Palace, Temple of the Emerald Buddha (which is actually jasper... and quite small, but lovely), and Temple of the Reclining Buddha (which is 46 meters long, 15 meters high, and whose feet have mother-of-pearl inlays), I had to go back to my room for a nice cool shower and a nap. On my way, I was approached by a homeless(?) woman who had about eight or ten bags of dried corn kernels in her arms. I said no thank you, but she dumped two bags of corn into my hands, grabbed my arm, pulled me toward an open area just off the sidewalk, and started dumping the corn onto the ground. She said it was for "good luck." I'm not sure how lucky I felt as the 89,000 pigeons flew down and fought over the grub, landing on my feet, arms and hands. She tried to charge me a small fortune for being attacked by dirty pigeons... Not sure I should have given her anything, but I did, since I let myself get suckered. I gave her more than what seemed reasonable, which was still much less than she wanted, and walked away while she yelled at me, presumably about how I had just reversed my good pigeon luck by being stingy.

That night, I headed to the night market on Khao San Road. (I LOVE Thailand's night markets! They're brilliant: great bargains on all sorts of goodies, fascinating people-watching, and delicious - and cheap - food.) The entire street was full of cheap clothing and jewelry, people offering to braid your hair or give you dreadlocks (I was *this* close to getting dreads, just to say I did, until I realized that I'd have to chop my hair off to get rid of them), restaurants and bars full of stoned/drunk tourists, a variety of food vendors, people offering to take you to sex shows, and people selling fake certificates/licenses/degrees/any ID or credential you'd like them to make for you. If anyone would like to magically be a pilot or Ph.D., make an offer and I'll see what I can do. :)

The next day, I hopped on a river taxi to get a different view of the city, and after I got off, I wandered around for awhile before deciding I needed to tackle all modes of Bangkok's public transportation system. I picked a return route that would have me using the sky train and subway, both of which were quite modern and easy to navigate. Not so easy is the very extensive bus system, as I would find out the following day on my way to Kanchanaburi. Not only are the routes nearly impossible to figure out, the process of merely CATCHING the bus is complicated and kind of dangerous: first, the bus may or may not pull up to the curb. Often, it just stops in the middle of the street and people run out into traffic to catch it. Also, it doesn't stop unless someone wants to get off, or someone on the sidewalk flags it down. As it approaches a stop, the driver honks the horn and if it's your bus, you'd better start waving or it won't stop. When it does "stop," it's normally within a block of the official bus stop, and it may just slow down enough to let people board, then will continue driving without ever having come to a complete stop.

I thought I'd done a great job of figuring out how to get to the bus station where I would catch the bus to Kan. Two incorrect bus stops, three helpful locals, one wrong bus, and two transfers later I realized how wrong I was! Even then, I stood at the "bus station," which was an outdoor seating area near where all the buses were parked, only to find out that the stop I wanted was a block away, in what looked like a deserted parking lot, except for the old man sitting on a bench who apparently worked for the bus system in some capacity. Once I finally got on the "right" bus, I bought my ticket to Kan and settled in. Five minutes later, we pulled up to what actually looked like a bus station, and everyone else got off the bus. The woman who had just sold me my ticket told me I needed to show it to her again, and motioned for me to stay seated as we looped the parking lot. At this point, I was told to get off the bus, show her my ticket again, and get on another bus (where I showed my ticket one more time)which FINALLY was the bus that would take me to Kanchanaburi. AAGGHHHHHH!! And I even bought the bus map!

When I arrived in Kan, I checked into an adorable rafthouse which floated on the river and was surrounded by lilypads. Beautiful! Sadly, the bed was horrendous: so many springs stabbing me that I would have been better off giving up and sleeping on the floor (which I might have done except that I was sharing my room with several geckos). The next day, I checked into a place across the street, rented a motorbike and started exploring. Kan is an adorable town, full of rich WWII history, and is the site of the famous Bridge on the River Kwai. Interestingly, the author of the book (yes, there's a book) assumed that since the railroad line ran parallel to the River Kwai for a good distance, that the bridge must have crossed the same river. This wasn't the case - the bridge actually crossed what was formerly called the Mae Khlung River. After the book and movie came out and tourists began traveling to see the now-famous bridge, the river was renamed to make the book accurate. Talk about rewriting history. :)

I spent one day museum-going, learning about the construction of the railway by POWs under Japanese control, and the devastating conditions under which they were forced to work (tens of thousands of POWs died building the "Death Railway", as it's now known). I read about the bridge itself, which was brought over from Java and reconstructed (also by POWs). It was later bombed by Allied forces, destroying a large section of it, and was again rebuilt. In current pictures, you can see rounded and squared sections of the bridge. The rounded segments are the originals, and the squared sections are those that had to be rebuilt after the bombing. Trains still run on the Death Railway, and I took one of those trains when I went back to Bangkok.

The center of the bridge is the part that was rebuilt after the war.  

 The next day, I rode my rented motorbike for an hour and a half up to Erawan Falls - a seven-tier waterfall. It was a lot of fun: great hiking, swimming in refreshing (read: cold) pools, and having fish nibble on your toes as you tried to climb into the water. (Okay, so that last part was a little awkward, especially since some of the fish were big enough to remove a chunk of flesh if they felt like it, but it was still amusing.) I would love to see the falls during the rainy season when the water level is high, but it was still great, as was the hike through the noisy forest.

My last day in Kan, I decided to try this whole elephant thing again, this time at a sanctuary. The project manager of Elephant's World spent over an hour with me, explaining each elephant's story, what care is required, and random pachyderm trivia bits. An elephant has - wait for it - 100,000 muscles in its tongue. That's five times as many muscles as are in the human body... IN JUST ITS TONGUE. The skin is about 3 inches thick, and they tend to live about 75 years or so. Also, when they go to a water source, they will drink before going all the way in to bathe. This is apparently to be able to get a clean drink before kicking up dirt and such from the river.

I went to the camp at a great time, if perhaps two months too early. One of the elephants in this camp is 60 years old and about 22 months pregnant. She's due to give birth sometime in the next two months (they aren't 100% sure because she was already pregnant before this camp opened). You could actually see the calf twisting and kicking around inside this poor mother - he was not small!

The kiddo is the big section of her belly that's jutting out at a weird angle.

Back in Bangkok, I stayed in a hotel - a REAL hotel! After several weeks of traveling backpacker-style, even the simplest things seemed like luxuries. The hot shower, the elevator to my room, the in-room safe, the complimentary water and breakfast, the comfortable bed... felt like heaven! Tonight I'll sleep on the train, and tomorrow I will likely be back to an uncomfortable bed in a tiny room... with geckos on the wall, singing me to sleep.