Back in Bangkok one last time. What a fantastic journey Burma was! I can’t believe how quickly a month went. I didn’t really miss my computer or the internet, but I did miss listening to my music, especially on the long bus and train rides. I just checked my email and had over 500 messages waiting for me when I returned… It was almost entirely junk emails promising longer, harder erections, stock tips, a lower mortgage on the house I don’t have, and all kinds of other stupid stuff. A total waste of time. No, I didn’t miss email at all. I’ve been frantically busy trying to edit, caption, and burn image dvds and get them shipped of before I leave for Nepal tomorrow AM. I just finished it, so now I can actually use the laptop for updating my blog! But now I have little time left. Burma is amazing. The people are the nicest people I have ever met anywhere. I met a monk in Mandalay who accompanied me though the last few weeks of my trip. It was great fun. I can’t even begin to write about all of it right now. I even managed to take several good photos. I’m finally getting better at this travel photo thing. Practice practice practice. I could spend hours writing about my experiences, but I don’t have the time right now. I have to pack up my gear, get a box to ship some gifts and discs back home, meet Michael McGarrigle, the guy with the greatest job in the world, for dinner, and try to get about 20 other things done here on my last night in Southeast Asia! Yes, I am going to NEPAL tomorrow morning! I can’t believe it! Everywhere I’ve gone seems to get better then the last place. If you asked me what my favorite place was, at any time on my trip, I would normally be able to say it was the last place I was. This trip just keeps getting better and better! Unfortunately, my trip may be cut short. I may be heading back to Seattle July 1st, as my sub-letter wants to move out before October 1st. Coming back July 1st at least allows me to attend my good friend Robert’s wedding in Cyprus, which I have be planning my entire trip around since before I left. Ok….much to to….must go now!
Category Archives: Thailand
Travel in Thailand
PHOTOS!
I want to remind all of you who are reading my blog that I am uploading LOTS of photos to my website.
Also, I will try to keep my blogs shorter and hopefully sweeter so you will actually read them.
I am in Koh Sok, which was tsunami ground zero here in Thailand. Many destroyed lives. Nearly 5 thousand in this area alone. There are a few huge boats still on the far side of the highway. There are many new fancy bungalows being built at break-neck speed. There are only fat German tourists here. The dive shops, which are many, are all owned by Germans. The only reason to come here is to dive or be lazy in a fancy new resort on the beach. I came here on a whim(and an invite from my friend Nicole) to dive the Simlian Islands, which I heard are fantastic. They were. I will write about it later. I didn’t have any underwater housing for my camera, so don’t expect many photos…
Greg
PS. REMINDER: I am going to Burma in a few days, hopefully, and will NOT be able to send/receive emails nor post to this blog for the entire month that I am there. So don’t WORRY about me. Just pretend I’ve gone to a distant planet for a month. I will return to Earth some time in mid February.
Bangkok, Oriental City
12/31 New Year’s Eve
I’m back in Bangkok. I’ve completed a long 3 month loop of SE Asia. I started here on Oct. 5th, and have gone overland, by bus and by boat, counter-clockwise through southern Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and now back here. It’s a perfect time to be back here, full circle, just as the year ends and a new one begins. So many thoughts and impressions filling my mind. After arriving yesterday and finding a new hotel that was recommended to me by the man with the greatest job in the world (more about him later), I walked down Kho San Road. It was same same as ever, but it was interesting to notice how different my mind was after my 3 months of adventure. When I arrived here from Seattle, I found Kho San Road to be overwhelming in it’s commercialism and tourists. I found myself wanting to buy all kinds of trinkets and clothes and eat the cheap street food and drink beers…and I found it impossible to meet anyone. Everyone seems so young and to be traveling with other young people, and they are all having a great time. Last night, as I walked down the middle of the street, filled with, once again, 20-something scantily-clad western women and hippy/party boys all drinking and buying, buying and drinking, I sensed a definite shift in my mind: It was completely calm. This is still the loneliest place to be when you are traveling alone, but I didn’t feel it nearly so much as I did when I first arrived here. I had no desire to shop or drink beer or eat the cheap Thai food from the countless stalls. I simply wanted to sell back my book, which I had finally finished just before arriving back where I bought it. Anna Karenina is over 800 pages long. An 18th century Russian Classic by Tolstoy. It was strange to be immersed in Russian history and characters while bounding across SE Asia, but that’s what I chose to read when I arrived here. I bought it for ten bucks on Kho San Road, and last night, I sold it back for 2.50, which I used to buy myself dinner.
Kho San Road. It’s horrible and lonely yet so lively and full of beautiful people. It’s not Bangkok, it’s not anywhere. It’s a bubble, a caricature of itself. I felt completely outside of it even as I was in the middle of it. I realized then just what my trip has done to me after 3 months. I am now a calm traveler. I am now “in the groove” as it were. I am centered within myself, no matter what’s going on around me. Being here on new year’s eve is also ironic because this is where I was exactly 3 years ago with Robin, whom I was with for 5 years until last February. We had just come back from the bus trip that everyone talks about: the road from hell from Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) in Cambodia to Bangkok. We were both needing to stay near our guesthouse since we both needed close access to our toilet for reasons I need not explain. Comparing that trip to this one is impossible. This is a long solo wander, while that was a short, tightly-scheduled “couples” trip. Simply being in Bangkok alone already magnifies one’s aloneness, but adding to it the memories of a previous trip with someone you love makes it even more so. Fortunately, I am now much more comfortable with being alone. I’ve been alone a lot during this trip and I think it’s finally feeling ok not only to be alone, which always felt ok to me, but to feel lonely. Feeling lonely feels ok now because I know I won’t be alone for long. There is always someone new and unexpected just around the corner. For example….
Two nights ago, my last night in Laos, I met the man with the greatest job in the world. His name is Michael McGarrigle. He’s from Ireland, in case the name didn’t give that away. A few years back he quit his job as an engineer, sold all he had, and decided to take a 3 year trip around the world. Sounds great, right? Except that when you do that, you come back home with nothing. No savings, no job, no home. Scary. Too scary for me. When I go back home, I will have a little money left (I hope), a home to return to, and since I work for my own business, I will hopefully be able to ask myself for my job back. Michael’s also a musician, and before he left, he was looking for a certain type of travel guitar to take with him on his journey, but he was having a difficult time locating one. So, he managed to get on the local public radio station to talk about his forthcoming trip and ask over the airwaves if anyone had this guitar that he could purchase for his adventure. Well, as luck would have it, some producer from the BBC was listening to his plans and called in to ask him if he would be interested in documenting his trip with a video camera for a BBC series. After meeting with the producers, Michael got a 3 year, all-expenses paid contract with them! This was the first time the BBC has ever given anyone a 3 year contract for any show. He’s got a great little Sony broadcast-quality camera, and some nice microphones. That’s all he really needs. His gear probably weighs less than mine! Not only are all his expenses for the entire trip covered, but he also gets a fairly large salary (40k a year!) on top! In contrast, my travel budget for the entire year is 12,000 dollars. A thousand dollars a month, including flights. Michael is getting paid for traveling around the world and talking about it along the way. The show is called “Around the World in 1,080 Days”. He is the writer, director, camera man and star of the show. He ships the tapes home and the folks back at the BBC edit them into 30 minute shows. What could be better???? I am green with envy. I spent my last morning hanging with him in Vientiane. He asked me to shoot some video of him riding up to the camera on his rented motorbike and talking about arriving in Laos. He had just arrived the day I met him and he only had two weeks there, so he was on a tight schedule there. In return for the “favor” of shooting video for him, he bought me breakfast and I will get a camera credit on the show! Then we went to the holiest of Lao temples on his motorbike and I took photos while he shot video. It was great! He’s a super nice guy and I really enjoyed talking to him and hanging out with him that day. I left that evening on a bus bound for Bangkok. Had my visa not expired that day, I would have happily traveled with him for a while! But we were going opposite directions. This often happens. I meet very cool people but we find that we are going different directions and so we only get to spend a short while together, sometimes only a day, sometimes a few days. If I am lucky I meet some people who are going in my same direction (Nada, Marc, Nicole, Chieko), but more often, they are not (Irene, Paul, Tim, Jeremy, just to name a few).
This is what travel is really about. Yes the temples and the culture and the food and the scenery are all very beautiful and great. But it’s the experiences I have with the people I meet that really leave the strongest impressions on me. OK, I must figure out what I’m going to do here on New Year’s Eve!
Happy New Year to all my friends and family everywhere!
Love,
Greg
Koh Chang
I am on the island of Koh Chang off the Eastern coast of Thailand. This island is the second largest in Thailand and holds some of the last untouched jungle in all of SE Asia. The beaches on the Western side of the island are slowly being built up. The old hippy bungalows are being razed and are being replaced by enormous 50+ room hotels. This backpacker’s getaway is slowly disappearing. So if you want to see it, see it soon. I am staying at a lovely little set of bungalows here on the beach and have met a nice couple from Chiang Mai who have befriended me and taken me out on the “town” for the last two nights. The “town” consists of a single packed bar and several dozen completely empty ones. Let me just say that every single western man who arrived here without a girlfriend and perhaps several who did, has a Thai girlfriend here on Koh Chang. Everyone except me that is. Let me give the example of my bungalow neighbors: To my right is the 50-something man with his 40-something Thai woman, her 4 kids are staying across from me in a separate bungalow. Next to them is the short balding fat racist white guy, a real charmer, with the entourage of at least 4 Thai women he has brought along with him. Then there is Ross, the 38 year old Scottish man and has his lovely girlfriend Jum. They are staying just to the left of my place. They are the nice couple I have befriended. Ross lives and works as English school teacher in Chiang Mai, up in Northern Thailand, and so his having a Thai girlfriend is completely understandable. They are on a short holiday before heading back. He’s a great guy and I’ve had a good time getting to know him. Ross has explained the situation happening here on Koh Chang. Middle-aged male Farangs (westerners) come to Thailand looking for a good time. The good times last as long as the money does. It’s a sort of rent-a-girlfriend deal.
Thai women out-number Thai men by nearly two to one. The women do all the work while their husbands are usually at a bar getting loaded. However, the Thai women are certainly the ones in charge here. They make all of the decisions and run most of the businesses behind closed doors. There are apparently many lazy, good-for-nothing husbands who are either off having affairs or they just simply disappear one day after a few kids have come along (perhaps to the relief of the wives). So, many children in Thailand end up being raised by their grandparents while mom works all day trying to support them. Just about any farang on holiday here is clearly much richer than the average Thai. Given the kind of somewhat seedy culture that we farangs are building here, simply by coming here and spending most of our money on booze and women, it’s hard for me to not believe that most Thais either dislike us or, at best, simply tolerate our rude and tasteless ways because of our tourist dollars. But somehow Thai people remain always kinds, warm, welcoming and good-hearted.
Not to make you jealous, but I’m going to go sailing/snorkling on a catamaran all day tomorrow for 20 bucks. Then my new plan is to go to Shanikville Cambodia (another beach town) and then to Phnom Penh, which I’ve been told I CAN’T MISS if only to be astounded by the sheer insanity of it. Then I’m off to Saigon (Ho Chi Min City), Viet Nam, and then mosey on up to Hanoi before heading over to Laos… I’m seem to be doing a lovely tour of shameful US military bombing campaigns! I’ll try not to step on any landmines. That remindes me:
Please write to your senators and tell them to STOP BUSH from lifting the INTERNATIONAL BAN on landmines. Yes that’s right. Every other country in the world considers landmines barbaric and there has been an international ban to stop production of them for some time now. They kill and maim absolutely indiscriminately and there are far too many accounts of when a child or farmer gets completely blown up from a 20 year old land mine, or (on the front page of Bangkok’s paper yesterday), a young elephant and his brother get their legs maimed while helping to move timber for a logging operation near the Burmese-Thai border; landmines from WWII! Somehow, however, our lovely government sees nothing wrong with starting development on new landmines (called Spiders), even though the rest of the world has has banned them. That’s our tax money being used to make internationally banned landmines. Is it any wonder the rest of the world hates us? Thanks for giving me one more reason to apologize for my country Mr. Bush.
Sorry for the rant there.
As always, my plans are subject to changes due to whims of fancy, weather patterns, and flips of the coin.
Greg
One Night In Bangkok
I started my big year-long trip around the world by missing my flight. Yep. I thought I was to leave at 2 in the afternoon, when actually I was supposed to leave 12 hours earlier, at 2 AM. I was put on a wait list for Wednesday. So there I was, all ready and no where to go. I had already said goobye to everyone, and so I just wanted to hide until I got on the next flight. Catherine and I had a nice “free day” of walking around downtown while she shopped for clothes for her own excursion. It was nice…. I really miss her. I am slowly adjusting to the hot humid stickiness that is Bangkok. The food is cheap and so damn good. So many great things to eat and buy and do…. So much that my brain has broken. Every thing I try to decide to do becomes this huge deal. By chosing, we deny the other choices…so it’s best not to choose. This logic allows you to do nothing…until you are forced to choose. Then the choice is usually not the best, but the only. Not a good way to live really. So, when my brain starts working again, I’ll probably choose to leave Bangkok and head down to Ko Chang…hopefully before my 38th birthday in a few days. I’m just not going to rush myself. I need time to adjust to my new life.