Thailand: Culture shock, ruins, and bacon on a stick.

Dear... well anyone who is reading this. Blogger has become a pain in my rear and has been adding HTML tabs that we haven't written and finding other ways to screw up our formatting, so if this doesn't look right please forgive us. Its meant to have its own little page and as much as I mumble against blogger and pray to God about it... it still looks screwy. So... please forgive any weird spacings or that the whole texts appears when only the first paragraph should. Maybe you should just click on the "read the rest" just for the experience of reading the post the way it was meant to be... maybe you could offer a sacrifice to appease the blogger god that we have somehow offended...
Thailand, THE destination of south east Asia and place that (to be honest) neither of us were that interested in. It has its appeal (and we certainly have enjoyed it so far) but it wasn't a place that we were looking at as a highlight for this trip. We went from the back roads and slow boats of Laos to the expressway that is Thailand and most of the time I kept thinking, "What are all these other people doing here?"


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We started our time in Thailand with the city of Chiang Mai, which was quite a culture shock after coming from Laos. In Laos life was slow, things felt local, and we got to know some people in our brief stay there, however once we arrived in Chiang Mai we weren't really sure what to do with being in such a large and comparatively western city. We saw several McDonalds and Starbucks on the streets and never once had to speak a word of Thai, because everyone approached us and spoke only in English. The whole experience was rather strange because it simply was such a sharp contrast to everything else we've experienced.

It wasn't that we didn't necessarily like it but just that it was an entirely different. We went from forging our own way and learning to speak the local language (how else do you pass time on a 15 hour train?) to being where we could take private mini-bus from guest house to guest house. It was just such a drastic change from what we had... and what we will have again. I think it was most weird because it felt like a different trip, people come to Thailand often in organized tours or to drink their brains out... neither of which were on our agenda and so the whole time I felt mild out of place.

From Chiang Mai we wanted to go out and see the Elephant Conservation Park (see post with the same name). But the actual fun of the whole thing was finally being able to do it ourselves and getting away from the well run backpacker circuit. We simply went to the bus station found a bus company and then showed them the words "Elephant Conservation" written in Thai and two hours later we were there... or more properly we were on the side of the road in front of the place. We knew that we could get dropped off outside of the center but the question we had is how to get picked back up. Everyone told us, "take bus, take bus. It just stop for you." I would normally respond with something witty like, "The buses just stop for you?" To which I was told, "Oh yes bus stop there all the time." Well, we ended up seeing the show and then just going back to the side of the road to wait, for an appropriate bus when it decided to rain. No big deal as there was a shelter not far away but while we were waiting in the shelter we realized that no one ever informed us which bus would stop. This meant that I got to go and wave at every bus that rambled past in hopes of stopping it, eventually succeeding... it took nearly an hour with many trips into the thunderstorm. Adding to this was that this particular bus is an "ordinary" bus, which means hard seats and no air conditioning... and no English! The woman told us our fair in Thai, we responded in Thai and oddly enough were quite happy with the experience, this is why we learn numbers after all...


I know its a little hard to see here but the bus on the left is the local bus and the bus on the right is the glorious long haul bus with AC. Hard to tell the difference in the picture but picture a greyhound and a school bus (with fans mounted on the ceiling)side by side.
After that our trip was easy enough as we headed to the ancient city of Sukhothai, one of the former Thai capitals. It was... well ruins. Pretty ruins of old buildings but still ruins all the same. Ruins are actually the most prominent thing that central Thailand is known for, I could go and give you a history lesson on Sukhothai but others can do it better... The park that contains most of the ruins is actually quite pretty one of the prettiest we've seen thus far and overall it was quite the fun day, we rented bicycles, saw a lot of old stones, and some quite large Buddhas. The town itself was lacking (nothing but a series of large concrete buildings) but they had some of the best street meat thus far. I've now found that I REALLY like things that look like big pieces of bacon, covered in satay, and roasted over a fire. I'd just call the stuff some form of pork, but it just has too much fat in it to be labeled anything that could even be perceived as healthy... still its good stuff.

My glorious rented bicycle, bell was included in the price even!

A big Buddha. Interesting way to frame the Buddha, as you see his face from a couple hundred yards off.

Me next to the hand of above-mentioned big Buddha.
Meg sitting in front of a Buddha... we've been working on our best Buddha statue imitations.

Meg's favorite temple in Sukhotai, it had carved elephants all over it. Personally, I think she's just become infatuated with elephants since we saw them.

My new favorite food (and best street meat). I'm still not sure what this is but man it is a good form of pork.

The next stop from Sukhothai was to head to another ransacked and abandoned capital, Ayuthaya. Ayuthaya is quite different from Sukhothai in that its located in the middle of a modern city, so there is the continual contrast between these ruins (many of which have been rebuilt) and the present urban sprawl. Whereas before we simply rented a bicycle and road around these green spaces, here we didn't dare for fear of getting run over by cars, motos, tuk-tuks, and anything else Thai's will attempt to drive (they aren't very good drivers). But the ruins themselves were quite cool, we saw the largest seated Buddha in Thailand, as well as some other ancient ruins.

Because everyone needs more big Buddhas... not the best picture but a pretty (and large) Buddha.


Why not have another big Buddha? There were actually several large reclining Buddhas in Ayuthaya but this was my favorite.

A line of Buddhas (or maybe disciples?) inside another temple.

Self Taken at another (beautifully restored) ruin at Ayuthaya. Isn't my wife cute?

From Ayuthaya we boarded the local train (more bench seats and open windows to keep you cool) for Bangkok to take a not-so-glorious tourist night bus all the way to Koh Tao. All in all Thailand has been good, though it has felt weird to back in the midst of things after working our way through more exotic parts of SE Asia. It feels good and I like that I can go find the Pizza Hut in Bangkok if I want and in the end we were able to do it ourselves and our own way (we were the only westerns we saw on any buses). I guess I was able to find some roads not as heavily run where we were able to find the experience we wanted, just like back home you just have to look for those roads that aren't always the most direct. easiest, or cheapest points between A and B. Thailand still feels like a highway to me but at least we were able to find our own way through the Thailand tourist through way.

p.s. thoughts on Koh Tao and diving to come, we want to wait till we are done to say what we think about the weird idea of breathing underwater.