Goodbye Thailand!

Spirit house in Phuket City

Our 30 day visa is about to expire and so it is time for us to leave Thailand.  Everything people told us about this country is true – the people are great, the culture is rich, and the scenery is beautiful.  We also learned a lot that people didn’t tell us – parts of the country are VERY touristy, and in those parts, be on your guard.  We’ve heard from other travelers that Thailand has changed quite a bit in a very short amount of time.  Five years ago there weren’t any travel agencies, and now there are tons.  For any sight you want to see, there is a travel agency with a tour to match, or a tuk tuk driver will take you on a tour of your own (but count on swinging by a tailor or gem shop or two!).  The upside is the tours make it easy to see the sights in a country that speaks a different language.  The downside is it has become a tourist machine, churning out made to order tours that no longer feel like an authentic experience.

 

Things we liked about Thailand:

Funny monk dummy we found upstairs in a wat

The Food!  We had so many great meals here, and most of them were inexpensive.  The Thai folks know how to throw together a good dish, that’s for sure.  Our respective orders never came out together – usually one of us would be halfway done eating their meal before the other one got theirs – but on the plus side, you always knew it was fresh and not waiting under a heat lamp.  Some dishes were too spicy for me (I’m a wimp), although I knew I could always count on Daron to finish my food if I couldn’t handle the heat.  It was a good excuse to get a banana pancake or mango sticky rice for dessert (yum!).  Our guidebook said not to eat any salads that could have been rinsed with tap water or fruit that couldn’t be peeled, although we were rebels and did both.  Most restaurants or other businesses that depend on tourists know to use filtered water in their preparations.  We were cautious with the street vendors and didn’t eat anything questionable, health-wise (skipped meat dishes that had been sitting in the sun).  We never drank tap water, although we did brush our teeth with it.  Thankfully, neither of us had any stomach issues. 

Daron and his new ladyboy friend!

The monks!  We loved seeing the monks all over the place, in their orange robes.  They were on the bus, in coffeeshops, walking down the street, everywhere!  They are part of the modern world, as we saw plenty of them with cell phones.  We learned that every Buddhist male in Thailand enters the monkhood for a brief period before they are married.  Companies will even grant paid leave for their employees who temporarily become monks.  Being a monk earns merit – each Thai tries to achieve spiritual merit in this life to help them in their next one.  Since women can’t be monks in Thailand, monks can earn merit for their mothers and other female relatives.  Donating to a monk also earns that person merit.

Good advice

Costs!  After being in Australia and New Zealand, where our dollar didn’t go very far, it was nice to be in a country that was a bit cheaper.  It still wasn’t as cheap as I thought it would be, but I’m happy that it wasn’t any higher.  Food was the cheapest – we paid between $2 and $10 per person on average for a meal.  Our average for lodging in the various guest houses was $37 during our stay.  Long distance buses were anywhere from $21 to $27.  Beer in Thailand was $2 a bottle for a local brew – mixed drinks were expensive and wine was super expensive. 

Ladyboys!  These are basically transvestite men who dress like women or have sex changes to become women.  They are accepted in Thai society.  There are live shows starring the ladyboys that are quite popular.  We’ve seen quite a few ladyboys out and about and some of them are very beautiful (others, not so much)!  A couple of times when Daron was out and about by himself late at night, they propositioned him (too vulgar to include here) – he was a good sport about it and said no (at least that’s what he told me!).  Anyhow, it would be really hard to tell the difference if you didn’t know.  I like that it that it’s accepted here.   

One of the nicer squat toilets

Laundry!  We never saw a laundromat during our stay – in its place were tons of businesses that would do laundry for you.  If you dropped your clothes off in the morning, they would have them ready for you (and nicely folded) by the late afternoon.  This gives the clothes enough time to dry on the clothesline (nobody uses dryers here).  We usually paid about $1 per kilogram – one load was almost 3 kilograms. We felt spoiled by this.

And the things we didn’t like so much…

River pollution in Bangkok

Scams!  With very little regulation of tourist agencies, we never knew what we would get.   It was hard for us to prepay for a tour, not knowing if we would even get picked up on the day of the tour, or if we would get the tour we signed up for.  We didn’t do very many tours, and thankfully the ones we did worked out.  We heard crazy stories from other tourists about tours gone wrong, which made us wary.  There was little to no information out there, except from other travelers and what we could find on the internet, so we were never sure if the price we paid for a tour was too high (which it probably was nine times out of ten).  Having to always be on our guard was a challenge, and tiring too. 

Sales!  The tuk tuk drivers, the taxi drivers, and the massage people were annoying.  You couldn’t walk anywhere around the southern beaches or in Bangkok (Chiang Mai was different), without hearing constantly, “hey you, where you go?” or “masaaaage?”  The tailors in Bangkok were just as bad, practically chasing Daron down the road anytime he got near one.  Even the restaurants would do it – as soon as we would stop to look at a menu, an employee would come out and try to talk us into eating there.  I imagine it must work some of the time, otherwise why would they keep doing it (unless they get a kick out of being annoying!). 

Thailand's C3PO  ;)

Fish sauce!  This is used in some of the dishes served here.  My nose can smell it the second we walk by a dish that contains it.  To me, it’s a terrible rank smell.  Strangely, Daron never notices it.  In fact, he once ordered a seafood salad and when they brought it out I didn’t think I’d be able to stay at the table.  Daron ate it up like it was the best salad he ever had!  It’s a Thai delicacy that I don’t think I will ever be able to get used to.

The bathrooms!  Thankfully we came across the squat toilet only occasionally.  I learned to carry toilet paper around with me wherever I went because there was no guarantee any bathroom would have it.  Bathrooms in the guesthouses were interesting because the entire room IS the shower.  The showerhead just comes right out of the wall, in the middle of the room.  By the time I was done showering, the entire room would be covered in water, toilet and sink too.  Usually the bathrooms were all tile, floor to ceiling, so it was fine that everything got wet (I guess that’s one way to keep the bathrooms clean!).  The thing we couldn’t get used to was the bathroom floor being wet for so long.  Anytime you had to go into the bathroom after the shower was used, you’d be walking around on a wet floor that you would track into other rooms.  And the butt gun!  Almost all toilets (public included) have a small hose with a nozzle attached nearby.  This is used like a bidet.  I tried it once and thank goodness the bathroom is set up to get all wet!  I guess it takes a special technique. J

And last but not least…

Some of the cages were SO small - we wanted to set them all free!

My hair! (the girls will relate, the guys can skip this one)  My hair has become a curly mess in the humidity.  Most of it I can pull back into a ponytail, which is great, but the front of my hair is a bunch of weird curls.  Even Daron, who hardly notices my hair most days, has said “what is up with your hair?”  I tried growing my bangs out, which resulted in big curls, and then cutting them, so now I have small curls.  It drives me nuts on a daily basis.  I’m at a loss as to what to do.

On a final note, here are a few facts you will hopefully find interesting:

Thailand’s population is 66 million people, with a land mass slightly smaller than Texas.  It has a tropical climate, with June through November being the wet monsoon season.  Unlike its neighbors, Myanmar (Burma) and Laos, Thailand has never been under colonial rule.  Only about 15% of undisturbed forest remains here – logging was outlawed in 1989.  A guiding precept of Thai people is that life should be both sanuk (fun or joy) and sabai (comfortable and contented). 

That last fact was my favorite.  Here’s to life being both sanuk and sabai!