Category: Thailand

Dearest Friends and Fans,
 
When we last left you, we were winding down our sojourn in Bangkok.  After writing the last installment, we came upon some street performance, while wandering through a city park. On one side of the park there was a small orchestra playing traditional Thai music.  A few hundred meters away, a crew of shirtless Thai B-Boys was doing some of the best breakdancing we’ve seen since Berkeley.  The perfect summation of Thailand: holding fast to their traditional culture, while embracing all the manifestations of Western modernity.
 
Random Thai Fact #1 – “George”
Surprisingly, every Asian we’ve talked politics with (Thais, Burmese, Kashmiri) seems to be really into George Bush. They think his pillaging of Iraq’s oil is a good thing (gas is expensive here), and/or they’re hoping he’ll do something similar to the brutal dictators running their home countries.  We’re not doing a great job of getting across the depths of our hatred for the man, nor have we been able to communicate our disinterest in the Miss Universe pageant (a current Thai preoccupation) – but that’s a whole other story.
 
So, on our way out of BKK we spent an afternoon in Ayuthaya, riding bikes in the sweltering heat around amazing ruins of temples and headless Buddhas.  Riding on the left side of the road took a bit of getting used to!  As we were getting sick of looking at Wats (temples), we came across a bunch of elephants and their costumed mahouts packing up for the end of the day – they loaded the giant animals onto the back of big trucks and drove off. We followed them, riding to the outskirts of town to the King’s elephant encampment.  We watched in awe as dozens of elephants ate, wrestled, and did tricks with their trunks.  After a little while, we were invited in to play with the baby elephants.  So cute!  They were very mischievious, untying Steve’s shoes and trying to hug Phil.
 
Random Thai Fact #2 – “Farangs”
We didn’t realize that being Farangs (foreigners) would be our ticket to instant popularity with the under-6 set.  Not only do parents get to point us out to their children and identify us as Farang, but our very presence is enough to evoke everything from gleeful screams of “Farang” to exhortations such as “Hello-1-2-3-4!” as we pass by.  Seems like everybody’s working on their english.
 
We took a cool overnight sleeper train from Ayuthaya to Chiang Mai.  Very fun – never before had we taken a mode of conveyance where you get to lie down.  There was a bit of confusion at first- everyone seemed to have berths except for Phil, who just had a chair.  But soon the porter came by and with a few deft maneouvers transformed her seat into a bed.
 
Random Thai Fact #3 – “Bags”
Plastic bags play an important role in thai market culture.  Not only are they good for your sticky rice, your curry, and your soup, but also your Coke!  Vendors will actually open a glass soda bottle and pour it into a bag for you to take with you, with a straw of course.  Interestingly, also, any time you buy something in a bag you can be sure the bag will come puffed up to maximum plumpness, no matter how small a quantity of actual products lie therein.
 
After a pretty quick stopover in Chiang Mai, we were off to Pai, a little hippie town in the “toes of the foothills of the Himalayas.”  We stayed in a very cool place on the banks of the river, across a little bamboo bridge.  Our room was a little hut on stilts, next to a garlic and soybean field, sorrounded by wooly green mountains in every direction. 
 
Pai has become quite a destination for euros and israelis on the year-long travel circuit.  If anyone has a fetish for hippies on motorcycles, this is the place for you.  Apparently this otherwise peaceful town has been having an epidemic of motorcyle accidents, however.  In our two days in town, we witnessed two people in arm bandages, our neighbor at the guesthouse drove into a Thai kid within his first hour in town, and we saw a drunken girl simply drop off her bike and struggle to pick it up, all the while insisting she was fine.  In light of this, we opted for travel by elephant, which seemed a safer way to get around.
 
We had a great time swimming with them in the river – they would dunk us over and dump us off their backs, and squirt us with their trunks.  And we were lucky to get to hear our elephant trumpeting – an incredible sound that vibrated the elephant’s whole body (although the sound also seemed to trigger all the other elephants spontaneously peeing).  Afterwards, our bow-legged thighs were ready for our first thai massages.  We were slightly surprised to discover that a thai massage includes your ass-crack!  Josh’s masseuse in particular was giggly and reeked of whisky.
 
Random Thai Fact #4 – “Dogs”
Thai dogs seem to be considerably more lethargic than their american counterparts.  There are lots of them, and we tend to encounter them sacked out, semi-conscious, strewn about the ground in various random places – like in the middle of a busy street.
 
For the past few days we’ve been bumming around Chiang Mai – a pleasant, if heavily touristed, city.  We bought our first custom-tailored clothes, attended a glitzy rock concert promoting dish detergent, spent time at the kitschy – but beautifully air-conditioned – Chiang Mai museum, and shopped at a few too many markets.
 
Random Thai Fact #5 – “Books”
Chiang Mai has many english-language used book stores.  (Some of them also double as excellent vegetarian restaurants.)  We were happily surprised when Steve found a copy of Dracula shelved in the Biography section.
 
Tomorrow is our last day in northern Thailand. Steve has left us for the sunny beaches of the south.  We’ve got a batik class and a dance concert to attend.  Then we’re off to Laos! 
 
More news, and hopefully photos, to follow.  Keep us posted on your happenings too.
 
Love,
 
Josh (in the composing chair) and Phil (suggesting apt turns of phrase and arguing for grammatical correctness)

Hi Team,
 
I’m happily sitting in a nice air conditioned room while some dude chats away in French…kinda hard to write in English but we’ll see how it goes. 
 
Today has been a super long day.  We ventured forth on the public buses of Bangkok today to get ourselves to the crocodile farm a little ways out of town.  The air conditioning was wonderful and it was amazing to see how Bangkok goes on and on and on and on.  The crocodile farm was at once cute, disgusting, sad, and hilarious.  Best of all was the fact that it was a farm, zoo, and shooting range all in one!!!  Seriously, there were these teams of guys, racing through this little range, shooting at targets, while all these adorable families with tiny little kids were looking at the caged up and shadeless monkeys and tigers and hippos and, of course, crocodiles.  There were soooo many crocodiles.  Little ones, big ones, and a whole mess of mutant ones– ones without tails, with six legs, etc.  We got to watch a lot of them race over each other to get at some chicken carcasses.  Crocodiles are some blind mother fuckers– they couldn’t ever see the meat, just smell it, and they kept biting each other.  Oh yeah, we also saw a show where a couple of dudes stuck their hands and heads into trained crocodile mouths.  It was quite an experience.
 
Yesterday, things were a tad more normal.  We went to see the Teak Mansion (Rama the V’s palace), got lost in the bowels of the Chinatown (lots of Hello Kitty pens) and Indian neighborhood markets (lots of polyester), and ended up at this cute tourist trap mall where hipster Thai artists plied their wares and we forked up the dough to see an amazing puppet show.  A version of the Ramakini (sp) where the evil demon becomes evil and the great god becomes human.  It was fabulous.  Hard to explain in words but imagine three folks manipulating one puppet– one on the feet, one on the head and arm, and one on one arm– and then imagine that the three folks and the puppet are all moving in very stylized synchronized movements so when one person (or puppet) raises his/her leg, everyone raises his/her leg in exactly the same way.  Unbelievable.
 
Also unbelievable is the food, and it’s so much fun to procure.  We spend a lot of our days wandering by vendors selling stuff on the street, making weird pointing gestures, and (for me) asking ridiculously “jay?”  (vegetable)  to which I often get a “meat” or, more often, an actual sentence that I don’t understand.  Fortunately for me, I have Josh and Steve to taste the first bites of everything and check for meat.  It’s pretty fun and quite adventurous, although now we’ve got quite a repetoire of things we like– little sweet/sour things in green leaves, corn, fried scallion pancakes, and, of course, the ubiquitous and delicious sticky rice with mango!!!
 
What else can I tell you?  We went to see the green buddah and the grand palace.  It was quite grand and the king has a phenomenal collection of “guns and knives and killing things.”  Those of you who know about my secret penchant for People Magazine will understand just how into the royal family I am now.  I love looking at the pictures of them being given gifts by hill tribes, being presented with the new subway system, and playing the saxophone.  They’re so fascinating.  The queen has even invented six outfits that every Thai woman should wear.  I saw pictures of them in the Queen’s collection of ancient Thai silk– a pretty neat collection in and of itself.   
 
We rode the subway too.  It just opened.  Pretty cool system.  You get this little plastic token and touch it to a screen to get in.  It doesn’t quite measure up to the “T”, which as you may know, I love.  But it’s right up there. 
 
We also went to a sex show.  (Conservative cousins, don’t freak out at this one.  Skip to the next paragraph if you want to avoid it:)))  Like the crocodile farm it was depressing but also a little human.  For some reason the Lonely Planet steered us to a place called Supergirls, which didn’t seem any different from the others being touted by the little dudes pushing menus in our faces while saying “ping pong show.”  But that’s where the Lonely Planet sent us and that’s where we went.  Inside, were several very real looking women, giggling on stage, looking bored, and then moving coke from bottle to bottle with their vaginas, giving birth to ping pong balls (of course), and (amazingly) blowing out birthday candles and popping balloons with darts they’d popped out of themselves.  Hmm.  I’m not really doing this adventure justice. Let’s just say we only lasted through three of the ten or so acts,  there was no sex on a flying motorcycle like the Lonely Planet promised, but we did enjoy when the birthday candle blower-outer couldn’t do her thing and had to get a replacement up on stage to do the deed– very professionally I might add.
 
Tomorrow we’re off to Ayuttaya and then onto Chiang Mai.  Probably we’ll write you again there.  Liza, Stephen, and Arielle, big ups for recommending Shanti Lodge.  We love the atmosphere, that it’s away from the crowds, and, of course, the pineapple lassis.  Thanks.
 
To all of you I have to write back to individually (especially you Dad), I promise I will ASAP.  Let me know if you want off this list.  I won’t be offended.  Promise.
 
xoxoxoxo -Phil (with Josh muttering over my shoulder and correcting my spelling/grammar)