Thailand
March 8 through April 12, 1997
Thailand is the only country in southeast Asia that we'd been to before. We'd traveled here in November of 1992 and it was the best place we'd ever been. It was also there that we talked to a couple who had quit their jobs and sold their house and were traveling for a year. That conversation was one of the things that led to this trip.
Chaotic Bangkok
We found Bangkok to be much like it was when we were here four years ago – a huge sprawling chaotic city. We’d once heard it described as being like the 21st century depiction of a disintegrating LA in the movie "Blade Runner." It's an apt description.
If possible, the traffic has gotten even worse, which ironically seems to be part of a continuing cycle of increasing prosperity. When we were here the last time, almost everyone had finished trading their bicycles for motorcycles. Now they have traded their motorcycles for cars, but there isn’t room for them. To try to deal with this, they are building highways and rapid transit lines all over the city, all up in the air. They're not going to be beautiful, but they will cheaper than Boston's Central Artery project, and something had to be done.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the air, which is still incredibly bad. Mexico City's is supposed to be the worst in the world, but Bangkok's seems worse. After you're there a while, you just want to take a deep breath, but you can't because it hurts. Still, it’s a fascinating place. Amid the never-ending sprawl, there are sights like the Royal Palace, Wat Po, and other wats (Buddhist temples) that leave you in awe. When you’re there, you’re thrilled to be there. But then when you leave, you’re glad to be out. It was also striking that despite all the increased prosperity and construction it’s really hard for a city to develop its way beyond the Third World.
Royal Palace in Bangkok
The best way to travel in Bangkok is by boat
Ghosts of the Dead in Kanchanaburi
From Bangkok, we headed to Kanchanaburi, which is where the Bridge over the River Kwai is. The bridge was sobering. The movie that made us all familiar with it was only loosely based on fact, but the depiction of Japanese cruelty was real. The engineers who designed the railway estimated that it would take five years to build it, but the Japanese High Command ordered that it be done in a year. To do this, the Japanese forced POWs and Thai, Burmese, and Malaysian conscripts to work 16 hours a day on a starvation diet and without medical treatment when they got sick. If you didn't work, you weren't fed, even if you didn't work because you were sick. Using these methods, the Japanese got the "Death Railway" built in 16 months and killed 66,000 POWs and Asian forced laborers in the process.
The Bridge over the River Kwai
Next to the bridge was the World War II Museum, which was a strange combination of a lot of different things, some of which actually had to do with WW II. There were rooms full of ancient Thai weapons, paintings of all the Thai kings, and a room dedicated to Thai beauty queens. The WW II exhibits were the most interesting (probably because they were the most appropriate). Some of the oversimplification and English translations made for amusing reading. On Albert Einstein: "Because he was so smart, the United States hired him to invent the atom bomb." On the bombing of Japan: "The atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed 80,000 people in a jiffy." The latter made me think that being killed by an atom bomb "in a jiffy" was preferable to being worked to death on the Death Railway.
Stick Season in Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai, which is the largest city in the north of Thailand, was similar as on our trip four years earlier, but more modern and more international. Now, there's even a Mexican restaurant and the bar at our guest house had margaritas on the menu. Probably because so much of Chiang Mai's growth has been recent, it seems much less burdened with the problems of growing out of the Third World than Bangkok. But it still has too much traffic, too much growth, and steadily worsening air quality.
This trip to Chiang Mai wasn't nearly as enchanting as last time. Four years ago, we took an overnight bus. The bus ride was rough, but in the morning when the sun came up, it was burning its way through fog hovering over green fields in valleys surrounded by green mountains. This time, we took an overnight train, which was a much better way to travel. But when we woke up, instead of green, we looked out the windows at brown. It was five months into the dry season and all the leaves were turning brown and falling off the trees. We hadn't expected this, but it made sense Still, it was disappointing to see what we had remembered as green and beautiful was brown and parched.
It was also brutally hot. There are three seasons here – the rainy season from June to October, the hot season from November to February, and the really hot season from March to May. The really hot season, which is what we're experiencing, really is really hot, and made Vermont’s cold January’s seem appealing.
Tha Ton & Whatneyland
After Chiang Mai, we took a bus to Tha Ton, where we would take a Longtail boat down the Kok River to Chiang Rai. We weren't really sure what to expect in Tha Ton – our Lonely Planet guidebook described it more as a jumping-off point for the boat than anything else, and talks about Fang, the town before Tha Ton, as a better place to spend the night. We saw Fang as we passed through and weren’t impressed. This made us wonder even more about Tha Ton.
As it turned out, Tha Ton was small and beautiful. It was also a place where people were having big dreams that would probably never be realized. The town is on a bend in the Kok River, only a few kilometers from the Burmese border, and it's surrounded on three sides by hills – all of which were hard to see because the farmers were burning their fields and filling the sky with smoke and ash. We checked into the "Garden Home" guest house, which was along the river in a big lychee orchard. This was beautiful even in the dry season and must be even better the rest of the year. There are only five bungalows, which were spotless and hot showers and lawn chairs). It was the nicest place we had stayed so far.
Garden Home Guest House in The Ton
Across the river on a ridge was Wat Tha Ton, which might be Thailand’s most bizarre wat. It’s run by an order that appears to have an "edifice complex." There were statues of Buddha and other creatures, most of which are done in a Chinese style, all over the hillside. Looming on the first ridge above the entrance was a set of statues that looks like a thirty foot high Chinese Snow White and two of her dwarves. The statuary is all painted in bright, cartoonish colors. Two hillsides have been turned into manmade concrete caves, with pretty impressive stalactites and stalagmites. As we wandered around the wat, we were given brochures about bigger and better things to come! Days later, we met a guy who used to live and work in Tha Ton who told us that the wat is referred to locally as "Watneyland."
White Bhudda at Watneyland
View from Watneyland
"Surviving" the Kok River to Chiang Rai
Our Lonely Planet guidebook said that the Kok River trip is the most popular in Thailand. It also said that there had been problems in the past with bandits, and once from stray shells from fighting in Burma. The Thai police had set up checkpoints along the river, but still, the guidebook said, "don't take anything you can't afford to lose." However, that wasn't an option for us since we were only going one way.
Heading down the Kok River
Kids swimming
Once on the river, it was exotic, but there was no sense of danger. Three police checkpoints had dwindled to one, and on the river, there was activity everywhere. Kids were swimming, people were fishing with poles and nets, men were collecting gravel from the river bed, pumps were pumping water, water buffalo were cooling off, and there were many other boats. It was hard to imagine it had been dangerous only a few years ago.
Brown hillsides and smoke along the river
Elephants along the river
Along the river, like elsewhere in the north, farmers were burning the fields. At every bend in the river, there were more plumes of smoke slowly rising to the sky. Up close, you could see the flames, hear the crackle of the fires, and watch the ashes slowly float down into the river.
Disappointing Chiang Rai
Most people don't think much of Chiang Rai, which is the largest city in the far north. But there is enough that do so that you get mixed reports. We arrived late in the afternoon and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer at our so-so guest house. Finally, it was time to get something to eat, and we headed out to see the great metropolis of Chiang Rai.
We couldn't find much there there. We walked up and down streets with stores (two AM/PM minimarts), but no restaurants. Two Dutch guys on motorbikes stopped and asked us if we knew of anyplace to eat. If they had wheels and couldn't find anything, what chance did we have? We finally settled for soup at a soup stand and then headed back to our guesthouse and watched "Batman Forever" on HBO.
Chiang Saen and a Quick Trip to Laos
Walking along the Esplanade in Boston, you can look across the Charles River to Cambridge, only a few hundred feet away. With Cambridge being Cambridge, you can even think, "that's a whole different world over there."
In Chiang Saen, the river is the Mekong, and on the other side is Laos, which almost literally is a whole different world. Laos is isolated and poor, and since the Pathet Lao took over 20 years ago has been mostly closed off to the world, even to the Thais. Twenty years ago, they used to go back and forth freely but now they can't.
This far north, the Mekong isn't that big – not much wider than the Charles River in Boston. There also doesn't appear to be much to keep you from crossing. There are a couple of Thai Immigration offices and a small Thai Navy post, but it’s all very sleepy. All in all, the border doesn't seem any more fortified than the US-Canada border.
In Chiang Saen, we stayed at Gin’s guesthouse which was run by a family – mom, dad, and a young son and daughter. One night, the kids were in a school play that was also a benefit for the school. We were invited, mostly for our contributions but they were really nice people and we couldn’t say no.
The family’s transportation was two motorbikes, and we went to the school three to a motorbike. It was just like a school play anywhere – the kids who weren’t very good actors but there were very cute.
School play in Chiang Saen
Broken Dreams in the Golden Triangle
In places all over the US, unimaginative Chamber of Commerce types name unremarkable collections of "executive office parks" as "The Golden Triangle." Here, in southeast Asia in the area where Burma, Laos, and Thailand come together, is the real Golden Triangle. (Do all those C of C types know that they're using the name of the worlds premiere opium and heroin producing region?)
Today, most of the opium is grown in Laos and Burma. With the exception of hilltribes that are allowed to grow it for their own use, Thailand has eradicated most cultivation. In its place, Thailand has designated the single town of Sop Ruek as the "Golden Triangle," with the new bonanza to be all the tourism dollars that this designation would bring. Well, it worked on us, and we went.
In spite of the area's exotic past, today's Golden Triangle seems to represent mostly broken dreams. To serve the hoards of the tourists that the Golden Triangle was supposed to bring, the area along the river has been improved with walkways, palm trees, and fountains. Hotels and apartments have been constructed, and new businesses opened.
To date, the tourists haven't come. The walkway along the river hasn't been finished, the fountain doesn't work, and many of the new buildings stand unfinished or abandoned. The businesses that are there are barely hanging on as vendors sleep the days away in their stalls vainly waiting for customers. It's like a ghost town that has just been built
But who knows? Maybe someday it will all work out. A rich Thai has leased an island in the middle of the river from the Burmese government and is now building a casino, which will be the only one in this part of the world. And even though it's in Burma, you won't need a visa to go there. When it's finished, maybe people will come.
So maybe we'll come back someday to this Golden Triangle and people will be walking on walkways that will have been finished and the fountain will be spraying water. The five big new riverboats that have been built to whisk people in from China will no longer sit there idle, the buildings will be full, the streets choked with tour buses, and the vendors will be wide awake in amazement at what the Golden Triangle has become.
Mai Sai and a Quick Trip to Burma
Our next stop was Mae Sai, which is the northernmost point in Thailand, still in the Golden Triangle, and right across the river from Burma. Mae Sai is one of only two official land crossings with Burma, and we'd come here mostly to go into Burma for the day to Thakhilek, which Burma calls its "City of the Golden Triangle."
Mae Sai was a good place to observe border life. We stayed at the Mae Sai Riverside, which as the name implies, is right of the Sai River, which serves as the border. The river is small, and in most places you can wade across. In front our guesthouse, it had been dammed to provide enough water for a steel ferry, which was poled back and forth. There were kids swimming in the river, and a constant stream of traffic on the ferry – mostly agricultural goods from Burma and manufactured from Thailand. All of this went back in forth in small quantities on hand trucks and motorcycles, and it never stopped. From our guesthouse, we could hear the traffic continue through the night, a small but never-ending flow of goods and people between the two countries. This crossing was unofficial, but obviously condoned, as there was nothing secretive about it.
Thailand - Laos unofficial border crossings
Take a side trip with us to Burma...
A Much Better Chiang Rai/Dreams Can Come True
After about two weeks in the north, the heat and smoke had started to get to us, and we decided to head south to the cool breezes of the Gulf of Thailand. To get there, we had to go through Chiang Rai again.
This time, our impressions were the opposite of the first time. We stayed in a different guesthouse, which was a lot better, and they sent us to eat at the best restaurant we'd been to in Thailand. Then we went to pick up film we'd dropped off earlier in the day and stumbled across the night market. It was a much smaller version of Chiang Mai's, but with much of the same stuff. They had bands playing Thai music on a stage, and that night, we saw Chiang Rai in a whole new light. We understood the mixed reviews better. We also learned that what you think of a place can be more your own personal experiences than with what it is really like (although there is usually a correlation).
And then as we were leaving, it got even better. I think for all of us, there is something that we all really miss about home. For me, that thing was Cheez-Its, which are baked cheese crackers. Paul brought a box for me when he came to New Zealand, but that was two months ago. In our travels, we'd seen lots of American junk food: Pringles, Lays potato chips, Ritz crackers, and even Chips Ahoy. But never anything by Sunshine, the maker of Cheez-Its (and I'd been looking).
Then, as we walked into the Chiang Rai airport, there was a store with its walls lined with Cheez-Its. Not just a couple of boxes on a bottom shelf somewhere, but a huge wall display with hundreds and hundreds of boxes. I saw it from across the airport and was drawn into the store by an irresistible force. Once again, I had Cheez-Its.
Looking back on it, I was left with the question: how did they get there? We never saw them again anywhere on the trip. And it was like I didn't find them, they found me. It was like out of a movie fantasy – those rows and rows of Cheez-Its, almost to the exclusion of everything else. I doubt if I'll ever find the answer, but it was proof that dreams can come true.
Ko Samui/Paradise Lost
Our first stop in the south was Ko Samui, an island in the Gulf of Thailand that is probably Thailand's second largest beach resort area (after Phuket). On our last trip to Thailand, we'd heard people say that the island had become very developed, but that it was still a great place. Others were harsher, saying that it has been ruined. But you hear that a lot from people who've been coming here for a long time, or from farangs (westerners) who've lived here for a while, both of whom have seen the changes and remember "the good old days." Usually when you get there you can imagine how it seems from their perspective, but it's still really a great place.
Ko Samui may be the exception to this, thus the "Paradise Lost." Things have changed fast here – probably too fast. The island wasn't "discovered" by tourists until 1971 when two arrived to visit a friend in the Peace Corps. Word got out, and backpackers started coming to this paradise. Bungalows were built on the beaches and more people came. The bungalows started going more upscale (private bath, concrete) and the word about Ko Samui kept spreading further and further. Now, luxury resorts are here, too, and an airport just opened with several flights a day to and from Bangkok. All of this has occurred over a span of 25 years with little planning and no controls.
Today, the beaches are crammed with bungalows and resorts, with $6 bungalows sharing the beach with $300 hotel rooms. The big beaches on Ko Samui, Chaweng and Lamai, are overcrowded and strewn with trash. It was another reminder of how hard it is to move out of the third world. Even with increased prosperity, many of the habits are the same. People here have always thrown their trash everywhere. More money creates more trash, but not a realization that you shouldn't throw it out the window.) Lamai Beach was by far the worst that had seen, and after a quick visit to check out the beach, we left.
We also went to a part of Chewang Beach that has gone more upscale. Here parts of the beach where resort owners were picking up the trash in front of their own properties. Two Canadians we met who had gone to another part of Chewang and said it was so bad that they didn't want to walk barefoot on the beach.
We stayed on Mae Nam Beach, which wasn't as powdery and white as the others, didn't have the trash or the crowds. We checked into the Mae Nam Resort, a mid-range place (600 baht per night, which is $24 US.) that is very first-world in many respects. We'd been staying in some pretty basic places, so it was a nice short vacation from our travels. Mae Nam Resort provides luxuries such as free toilet paper, bath towels, huge beach towels, and beautifully landscaped grounds. It was a good place to relax on the beach for a few days, and Barbara and Chris, some Canadians we had met, kept us amused at night by teaching us new card games. Despite all of Ko Samui's faults, we had a great time at Mae Nam Beach.
Our bungalow at Mae Nam Beach
Finding Paradise in
Ang Thong National Marine Park
Ang Thong National Park is an archipelago of 42 islands covering 100 square kilometers about 30 km east of Ko Samui. The islands are rugged and steep, sometimes fringed with gorgeous beaches and have caves, limestone cliffs, and even some lakes. Except for a two small villages they are uninhabited. We did a day trip there from Ko Samui, cruising among the islands and climbing to the top of Ko Phaluai to see the famous view. This was paradise.
Boat to Ang Thong National Park
One of two villages in the park
Beach between the rocks
A very blue lake
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Climbing to the top of Ko Phaluai
The famous view
Ko Pha Ngan/Even More Paradise
After four nights of Ko Samui, we left for, Ko Pha Ngan, which is the next island north. Ko Pha Ngan started its tourist development as a place for people who thought Ko Samui was too developed, and there are still relatively deserted places there. We took the morning ferry to Thong Sala, the only town on the island, and had to wait for two hours for a ride to Thong Nai Pan on the opposite side of the island. It turned out that the long wait was because the road so rough enough that the taxi drivers don't want to make the trip twice. Instead, they just wait for the later ferry to arrive to cover both ferries with a single trip. So much for catching the earlier ferry.
The “taxi” was a pickup truck with bench seats in the back. When we finally left, our driver decided it was time to do his other work, which was to buy and deliver groceries to restaurants. Six of us rode in the back with our luggage and piles and pile of groceries.
On the journey, we could see why the drivers wanted to minimize their trips. The road was mostly a washed-out rutted dirt track. Some of the ruts were two feet deep that the driver inched around, and there were steep drop-offs along the side. We jokingly dubbed it "wild taxi ride #1" after all of our wild boat rides in Fiji. We learned later that the government usually grades the road after the rainy season, but that they hadn't done it yet this year. If they don't do it soon, the June rains will completely wash it out. However, the bad road helps keep development to a minimum at Thong Nai Pan.
Thong Nai Pan is a pair of bays, each with a beach and a few sets of bungalows. We stayed at Thong Nai Pan Yai, the southern beach, mostly because that's where our taxi dropped us off. This beach was everything we'd hoped Ko Samui would be, and a reminder that Thailand still has the best beaches in the world. Here, the half-mile-long beach has talcum-powder sand and is framed by rocky points. It’s very flat, with water that starts out shallow and clear, changes to turquoise, then finally to a deeper blue as it approaches the razor-sharp horizon. It truly look like something in a travel poster. Unlike the beaches on Ko Samui, it was also very empty – one day we were floating in the water and counted only nineteen people on the whole beach.
Thong Nai Pan Beach
Our bungalow at Thong Nam Pan
For eight days, we mostly hung out in our hammocks and read books. The few small stores in town rent books for 10 baht per day, which was good because we finished the books that we had brought within two days. We spent the mornings drifting from the hammocks to the beach, from the beach to the water, back to the hammocks again, and figuring out where to eat lunch (out of six or seven choices). We then spent the afternoon doing the same but figuring out where to eat dinner instead of lunch. Our next-door neighbors were Steve and Suzie, an Australian couple on their honeymoon and we'd usually go to dinner together and then check out the three local bars. Like the beach, the restaurants and bars aren't crowded, and the four of us would usually make up most of the crowd. One day just blended into the next, and it was amazing to us that we could spend so many days doing so little.
The way life should be, Thong Nam Pan
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Suzie, Geoff, and Steve at Thong Nai Pan
Lazy days on Thong Nam Pan
Suzie, Geoff, and Steve at Thong Nai Pan
Snapshots of Thailand
Bangkok's Kao San Road
Kao San Road is ground central of the but traveler scene in Thailand. Everything is available here and it’s all cheap. Places to stay are basic, usually tiny room or dorm with thin walls. Food vendors sell excellent skewered chicken and beef, soup, fresh pineapples, the banana pancakes, and more. Restaurants and serve beer and booze. On the street, any drug you want is easy to find. Stores and vendors sell counterfeit versions of most things that travelers need or want. It’s a good place to book transportation and get advice from other travelers. During the day and night, it’s crowded, hectic, hot, and full of energy. In the morning it’s quiet and calm as most of the people staying there sleep in late to recover from the previous night.
Kao San Road is also full of people who someone we had met had dubbed “Euro-Trash Hippie-Wannabies.” They wear baggy tie-died pants, have dreadlocks, and multiple body piercing, but don’t seem authentic and most probably ditch the look as soon as they get home. We’d first been here in 1992 and they were here then. They’re still here – different people but the same look.
The Scorched Earth
In March, the air in the north is terrible--worse than in Bangkok. The growing season is over, and the Thai farmers clear their fields by burning them. The north is almost all agricultural, so this means that almost everything is being burned. Looking across the horizon, the sky is gray with plumes of smoke rising all around. Nearby Mountains are invisible through the smoke, and only by looking straight above you can you see any blue. At night, all but the brightest stars are obscured. It's as if the earth is being killed and the sky is being choked.
Burning Hillsides
Thong Nai Pan Bars
As we mentioned above, Thong Nai Pan’s bars aren't crowded. They try to liven up business with the universal magnet of Happy Hour, but the Happy Hours are only once per week and at strange times (Monday night from 9:30 to 10:30). We tried the Hard Rock Cafe (no relation, but they have t-shirts) during their advertised happy hour and were told that it was on a different night now, they just hadn't changed the sign.
Even worse for business, all of the bars sell joints (of marijuana) for less than the price of a beer. So instead of spending money on beer, people go in, buy two or three joints for their group, smoke them, and then sit around and drink hardly any beer. The bars would probably make a lot more money if they stuck to selling beer.
In all of Thailand, marijuana is readily available. But it is illegal and so typically not sold openly. Thong Nai Pan’s bars (and restaurants) sell it openly either via a sign hung on the wall and/or a jar full of joints on the bar and tables. One even had their sign painted on the wall. I asked how they got away with it and they it was a combination of the police and their location. The police really didn’t care but did need to go through the motions about once a year. The bar owners and restaurants would know in advance and would take down their signs and put away the jars, and the one bar with the sign painted on the wall would put a picture on it. The police would come and the locals would point their fingers at a tourist who had pissed them off, the police would arrest him or her and that was it for another year.
Quotable Quotes
In Thailand, English gets fractured more than in other places. A small sample:
"To be careful."
--A sign at Chat Guest House in Chiang Rai on a shelf where some people have bumped their heads.
"To be careful of the fan."?
--In our room at Chat Guest House.? The fan is at least eight feet off of the floor, and the only way we could possibly hit
it would be to jump on the bed with our arms overhead!
"Killing Pass Bacteria By Ultraviolade"
--The label on a bottle of drinking water.
"Pinut Carada," "PENACOLADA," "Pina Coraba"
--Different renditions of the famous tropical drink around Ko Samui.
And some of the language amusement came from pronunciation struggles:
“I when through the desert on a whore with no name”
-- A band singing the chorus line to America’s song “A Horse with No Name”
“Come on baby, light my fryer”
--The same band singing the famous Doors song
Thailand Map
Thailand Links
For more information on traveling to Thailand, the following are particularly good links:
Lonely Planet The best online source about Thailand for general information for independent travelers.
Bangkok Post Daily news from the Bangkok Post