Monday, October 8, 2007

Short version: I rode an elephant, got up close and personal with tigers, and stayed in a hotel on the River Kwae. I got to wear someone else’s clothes throughout the Royal Palace.

Leave me comments, because I like them.

Oct. 2, 2007 A9
“Like Joey on Friends, I don’t share food.”
En route to Thailand

The morning started with my usual ship routine, but after breakfast, I went into the Union to study a little before global studies. I got a lot done for my midterm tomorrow, but I still don’t feel super prepared for it. While I was studying, Doc Nancy came in and asked me if I was interested in helping her with her Global presentation this morning. I was intrigued, as she wouldn’t tell me what I would be doing, but said yes. Her presentation was on HIV/AIDS. She did a demonstration of the immune system using students as cells, and I got to be a cell. Dr. Elliott spoke about the tsunami this morning and he really set the note with the way he started off the presentation. It was interesting, but it was hard to pay attention because I am still trying to recover from the last 5 days of travel.

After Global I studied for a while, still trying to get myself caught up/ready for the midterm-palooza I am going to have after Thailand. The current count for the stretch between Thailand and India: 3 midterms, 4 papers, and 1 presentation. I’m really not looking forward to it. I went to lunch with Lindsey. The menu looked decent, but it was another story once we actually got food. There was meatloaf, and I use that term loosely. There was meat wrapped around a hard boiled egg. It was one of the oddest things I’ve seen from ship food. I ended up sticking to the pasta.

Then I went to Oceanography where it was again interesting, but it was difficult to follow because of how exhausted I was. I went back to my room after that, and studied some more for my midterm. The studying didn‘t last long, as I quickly fell asleep. Lindsey stopped by during the middle of my nap and we ended up talking about our Thailand plans, which are interesting because at the current moment, we have no place to stay and no set plans except for the two days we are taking a Hellfire Pass tour.

I was supposed to have family dinner tonight, but I had to miss it because of a mandatory sea meeting. I get the point of the sea meetings, that we need to form a community and take care of each other, but I really needed to study for my midterm, so I was not too thrilled with being held up because people were behaving stupidly toward each other, in port, and toward the staff and ship. We each had to answer a question about a time someone did something nice for us to help build community or a time when we were not proud to be associated with SAS. The shipboard doctor stopped by to talk about how we were over our limit of infectious diarrhea and that if we didn’t improve within 2 days we might not be able to make port in Thailand and the CDC would board our ship.

I went to Cultural Preport immediately after that because it took an hour and a half, still not able to study for my midterm. We watched a portion of the King and I and listened to the Thai interport student speak. I left after the interport student was done speaking because I had to get some studying done before I went to sleep.

Oct. 3, 2007 B9
“If this wouldn’t fit you, I think we would all have noticed it by now.”
En route to Thailand

I had my art midterm today. It wasn’t what I had hoped for, but I think I did ok, at least up until the essay question. Logistical preport was the same as always. People didn’t pay attention while we were given valuable information about how not to behave, how to avoid injury, and how to properly care for ourselves. The ship doctor and the P.A. (I think she’s a P.A. anyway) gave a very entertaining speech/skit. The ‘voice’ announced that they expected the clearing process to be lengthy.

I was too busy to write a real entry this day.

Oct. 4, 2007
“Captain Jeremy is probably sitting there going, “D’oh! Why’d I give him control?”
Laem Chabang and Bangkok, Thailand

This was the first port where I didn’t get up to watch us pull in. I got up at the usual time that I get up for breakfast where I met Tim, Lindsey, Ashley, and Megan. Laura kind of joined in uninvited. Laura shared the details of her diarrhea she got from being stupid in Vietnam, which was gross because we were all eating breakfast. After breakfast I got packed and met Lindsey to wait to be cleared. We watched Saved and part of Love Actually. We ate lunch in between the two. The ship was finally cleared around 2 pm.

Lindsey and I were both registered for the bus to Bangkok, so we got to get our passports and leave in the first group. Today was the first time that they were actually checking tickets to make sure we were only in the lounge to get our passports if we belonged there. Faculty and LLLs were getting turned away if they didn’t have a bus ticket. The bus ride to Bangkok was about two and a half hours. The tour guide on the bus gave us advice on a cheap place to stay in the area, and then we were dropped off at a gigantic mall in the middle of downtown. Lindsey and I got dinner at a pizza place in the mall. It was super cheap and super amazing. After dinner we sought off to find the hotel, but ended up going the wrong way and found the aquarium, which was useful because we were planning that for the next day. We went back to Central World (the drop point) to reorient ourselves and see about getting a taxi to the hotel. The tour guide from the bus was still there and he gave us directions that actually went through the mall. We got to the hotel this time very easily.

We got a room without any problem. It was really cheap, but it was really, really nice. Dinner and breakfast were both included in the room. Lindsey and I went out to the 7/11 to get some water and snacks, and then returned to the hotel to use the internet. I tried for a while to post pictures, but it was to no avail. I couldn’t even get them attached to an email. When we got back to the hotel I got a shower and the water temperature was very inconsistent from scalding hot to icy. We watched CNN on a loop for a while, and got some information about what’s going on in Burma right now. It made me glad that we weren’t going there anymore. It was nice to finally get some news from the outside world. You would think that we would have knowledge of world events, but it’s very difficult to keep up with global events on a ship where internet is precious and there’s never enough time to get everything done. Lindsey and I mapped out plans for the next day and went to bed.

Oct. 5, 2007
“Basically to sum up America: Marilyn Monroe, Indians, and clowns.”
Bangkok, Thailand

Lindsey and I started off with breakfast at the hotel. I just had dry toast because the butter was in ice without any wrapper and the rest of the food seemed really questionable. They had mashed potatoes, baked beans, and really runny fried eggs. After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and tried to make reservations for the last night we would be in Bangkok because the hotel was in a safe neighborhood and the hostel we had booked was in a very questionable one. The lady at the front desk thought we were trying to reserve a room on the 7th floor rather than for the evening of the 7th, but we eventually worked it all out. We had the lady that worked at the transportation desk write some things out for us in Thai so we could give directions to taxi drivers to get to where we wanted.

When we left the hotel, Lindsey decided she wanted to walk to Siam Square before heading to the Royal Palace so that she would be able to find where we wanted to eat for lunch easily when we got there at lunchtime. We walked there and couldn’t find it, but we didn’t cross the street to Siam Square either. We just stayed on the side where the Siam Paragon was, which is another gigantic mall that houses the aquarium among all of its other offerings. There wasn’t a convenient spot to get a taxi so we walked back to Central World which wasn’t too far away and got a taxi. We showed the drive the directions and he pulled out but didn’t turn on the meter. Lindsey asked simply, “Meter?” in this really meek voice, which you can imagine didn’t get the meter turned on. It made me a little angry that we had to tell the driver to turn on the meter, but it also made me angrily demand he turn on the meter. This got results. He dropped us off outside of the palace, but not at the entrance, so that was a little confusing, but we worked it out in the end.

When we got into the Palace, we found out we were not properly dressed even though we were wearing capris, so we were given wrap skirts to put on. Dr. Pellegrinelli was in the changing room when we went in to put on our skirts, and she was the only SAS person that we ran into while we were there. The Palace was beautiful, much more so than the palace in Cambodia. Lindsey and I stumbled into the Temple of the Emerald Buddha without realizing it until after we left. We got to see what we think was the changing/deploying of the guard throughout the palace grounds and then went into the Thai Jewel and Coin Museum. We caught a taxi back to Siam Square, and again, I had to demand that the meter was turned on.

Lindsey and I found the Hard Rock CafĂ© and went there for lunch. On the way we were stopped by a Thai woman who was interested in helping us find whatever we were looking for. We were basically already there when she stopped us, but she talked to us for a while. I think she really just wanted to practice her english. When we got to the Hard Rock our bags were searched and then we were seated. The restaurant was full of old British and American men. In fact, Lindsey and I were the only 2 people there that weren’t businessmen. We actually had a waitress, but the entire male staff of the restaurant was giving Lindsey and I a lot of attention. From what we could gather, it was mostly because we were very pale and we were the only 2 women customers in the restaurant at the time. There was one waiter (whom Lindsey and I refer to as ‘Leery Waiter’ because he spent so much time leering) who sporadically gave us a song and dance show. He also gave us free stickers and window decals. When we left, pretty much everyone on staff in the restaurant told us goodbye.

The Siam Paragon was across the street from Siam Square so we walked over. We thought about going to see a movie, but we couldn’t agree on anything, so we just went ahead and went to the aquarium. We got free gifts here too. I have the most ridiculous bag ever, but it will come in handy in getting things off the ship. You had to walk through a security check point to actually enter any of the exhibits, and Lindsey and I both set off the alarms, but the security guard refused to check us. When Thai people set it off, they were definitely well searched. There was a really cool exhibit about the best way to survive in the oceans and the aquarium specialized in ‘Monsters of the Deep.’ There was supposedly an octopus in somewhere in one of the tanks and I looked for it for about 10 minutes but I couldn’t find it, which was pretty disappointing. In the middle of the aquarium there was a stand that was selling cotton candy. They had around 16 different flavors, and you picked one of the flavors from the mixes they had set up, and then they made it right there for you. It was pretty cool.

When we left the aquarium we saw a sign that said there was a USA Fair going on at the top floor of the mall, so we went up to check it out. I was amazed to find that I felt very out of place there. It was interesting to see the Thai perspective on the U.S. though. They had someone dressed up as Marilyn Monroe, a Native American, and 2 clowns wearing all red, white, and blue. We were given free maps of the U.S. just for attending. When we left, we were right next to the movie theater, so we tried to pick out a movie, which was really difficult because there wasn’t a lot to choose from: Stardust, Resident Evil, and Underdog. I pretty much refused to see Underdog and suggested that we split up and meet after the movies were over, but Lindsey didn’t want to split up so we both went to Stardust. The theater was probably the nicest I have ever been in and tickets were only $3.00. The seats were assigned, but we got to look at a map of vacant seats and pick out which ones we wanted. The movie was fabulous, and even though Lindsey didn’t want to see it to begin with, she ended up buying it from a street vendor before we left Thailand.

We decided to get ice cream before heading to the hostel, so we went to the Haagen Daz on the first floor of the mall. In Thailand Haagen Daz is a sit down restaurant. The ice cream was amazing, as was the service. We, again, got lots of attention from the male staff. After ice cream we caught the sky train out of the mall and it dropped us off right at the street we needed for our hostel for the night. The street was pretty sketchy and Lindsey and I were having a difficult time finding the hostel. A French woman actually overheard us, and helped us get there, as she was going to the same place. We got our room, which we were sharing with 6 other SASers going on the Tiger Temple tour. We were pleasantly surprised that we were sharing a room with Donna!

Oct 6, 2007
“If we could apparate, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”
Bangkok and Kanchanaburi, Thailand

We got up around 6:00 and got ready and met everyone else in the lobby of the hostel to wait for the bus to get there. I had some toast while we were waiting, and then we boarded the bus and headed off to the Floating Market. I slept basically the whole way. We had to pay 300 baht for a boat once we got there, but we set off through the market. On the way through the canals we noticed a baby crocodile sitting up on the edge of the ground, and as our boat passed, it leapt into the water and swam right toward us. The other girls in the boat freaked out, so our boat ‘driver’ got us out of there pretty quickly. I didn’t have a lot money, so I didn’t buy anything, but it was pretty amazing what you could actually find at there.

When we left the market we headed to Kanchanaburi, which was supposedly a long drive, but I didn’t really experience it, because I slept the whole way there. We went to the War Cemetery when we got there, which was kind of odd, because our tour guide didn’t really give us any history of what happened, so it was one of those cases where we knew we should feel sad, but we didn’t because we didn’t really know what happened. After the cemetery we went to lunch (I had some amazing Thai noodles) and then to the Tiger Temple. There were all kinds of animals free roaming through the area (mostly just pigs and horses). We went to see the tiger cubs first. They were absolutely adorable. One of them was playing/chewing on an empty water bottle while also posing for photos with tourists. After we had gotten our pictures taken, Lindsey, Donna, and I went to the Tiger Canyon section and got our pictures taken with the adult tigers. We were each given to a worker that walked us through the area. Most people were actually drug around by their wrist or their elbow, but the man that took me through held my hand, which was really awkward, just because no one else was doing it.

The next item on our agenda was elephant riding! Lindsey and I shared an elephant and we got to ride through the jungle and a little through the river. Each elephant was equipped with a sort of driver that steered the elephant the way it was supposed to go. When the elephant screwed up it got whacked really hard with a bamboo stick. The first time this happened it made Lindsey start laughing uncontrollably, which made me really uncomfortable. I was pretty disgusted at the way the elephants were controlled by pain, and Lindsey’s inappropriate laugher was just that: inappropriate. She laughed so much that the ‘driver’ stopped the elephant and turned around to make sure that everything was ok. It was really awkward.

The group wanted to go to the hot springs before going to the hotel, but our tour guide said there wasn’t time before it closed. Instead, we stopped at a 7/11 where I got some snacks to take back with us. The hotel was a ‘floating’ hotel on the River Kwae. The buildings were built on stilts in the river. The dinner at the hotel was almost completely American: fried chicken and french fries.

Donna, Lindsey, and I went back to our room to hang out, and other SASers joined us at various points throughout the night. During the midst of the gathering in our room a cricket jumped on my head. Lindsey freaked out and started screaming. I just went with it. Having a cricket on my head really wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, so I just let it hang out there.

Oct. 7, 2007
“I’m not putting my money to a cause like snakes.”
Kanchanaburi and Bangkok, Thailand

At breakfast the next morning I stuck with the dry toast plan I had been going with for all of Thailand. The group of us left on the bus to go to the hot springs, but when we got there so few people wanted to be there in the first place that those people felt like staying there would have held us up too much, so no one got out of the bus at all. We drove further to Hellfire Pass and the Hellfire Pass Museum.

We walked the path down through the pass, but we didn’t go the whole way. We got down to the memorial where there was information for us to read a little bit, but most of the rest of the group decided that they would rather take group pictures of us standing in an SAS formation instead, so of course, that idea won out. After the group picture taking, we went into the museum where I finally got to get some information about the Death Railway and Hellfire Pass. The museum was really small, but it was very informative.

The next stop of the day was this gorgeous waterfall where there were lots of Thai children and families swimming and just having a good time. A lot of SASers decided to take a dip, but they didn’t pay any attention to the attire of everyone swimming. All of the Thais were fully dressed in t-shirts and capris, but this was just too much for the SASers or they didn’t even care enough to notice, so they stripped down to their bikinis and dove in. They got a lot of nasty looks, but that didn’t really do anything. Going on these trips with big groups really helps to see what drives the stereotypes about Americans. It wasn’t a majority of the girls that behaved this way, but these are the people that were noticed.

We drove to the railway station where we got tickets for a ride on the Death Railway. We all got boxed lunches to take with us on the train ride. I had sweet and sour chicken that was good, but not as good as what I had in China. The scenery on the train ride was beautiful. The ride let us off right near a cave with a statue of a Buddha in it. You had to walk along the tracks to get to it, which made me pretty nervous, but there was another whole tourist group going, so I followed them in to take a peak. It was pretty cool. The cave served as a hospital during the war.

After the train ride and the cave, we went bamboo rafting at the same place we went elephant riding. There’s really not much to say about it, as it is pretty self explanatory; we went on a raft made out of bamboo. There was a really cool spider crawling along our raft, but I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t want Lindsey to freak out, yet again, because of some bug. When we were done rafting we drove back into town to view the Bridge on the River Kwae before going back to Bangkok. Again, the drive was supposed to have taken a long time, but I slept through most of it. Lindsey slept through all of it, and during the time that I was awake, Donna and I planned out what we wanted to do with the rest of the night.

When we got back to the drop off point in Bangkok, we caught the Sky Train to the Sukhumvit Night Market. We decided before we did any shopping that we wanted to get something to eat, so we found a place called Gulliver’s Traveler’s Tavern and got dinner. After we got some food, we headed back out into the market and attempted some shopping. Most of the vendors were not willing to haggle at all, and when I tried with a movie vendor who was definitely ripping me off, he laughed hysterically at me. It made me really mad, so I went somewhere else, which was his loss, because we all know how I get with movies. I was able to haggle one of the movie vendors down quite a bit and he even threw in a few free ones for me. The prices were so steep at the market and it was so difficult to haggle that we decided just to go to the hotel. It was a bit away, so we took the Sky Train that dropped us off right next to it. Donna had decided to stay with us, so we got a room with 3 beds, which was $25 a person for the night. I thought that was a pretty good deal for such a nice hotel.

Oct. 8, 2007
“If you can’t catch a taxi by now, you have some serious issues.”
Bangkok and Laem Chabang, Thailand

We got breakfast at the little bakery attached to the hotel. I had a cream cheese type roll thing that was fabulous as well as a slice of chocolate cake, which was actually not all that good. We had decided that we wanted to try a different market today, so we found one on the map not far from our hotel, but when we got to the area that was supposed to be a market, there definitely was not one there. We chanced it, and looked at the map again for a new market in the area. We found on fairly easily, and we were pleasantly surprised when it actually existed. The whole market was basically for clothes and purses, which wasn’t really what we were looking for, but when we left the market we went on a side street that was full of handicrafts and that sort of thing. The listed prices here were much better than at Sukhumvit, and I was able to haggle a lot on top of that. I spent most of the rest of my baht on a few things that I had been wanting to get.

By the time we got out of the market we really just wanted to sit down because we were carrying our bags that were now full from everything we had bought over the previous 5 days, so we crossed the street into a mall and sat down to figure out what we wanted to do. We decided to go to Central World to get some food and then stay in the area until it was time to catch the bus. Lindsay and I had really wanted to go back to the pizza place from before, but when we got there the whole place was roped off because they were filming something in it. It was disappointing, but we found another place to eat where they served the weirdest combinations of food for meals. I had a meal consisting of spaghetti, corn dogs, broccoli, and potato chips. Donna went for the same thing.

We decided to go to the grocery store to get some food/toiletries to take back to the ship, and we couldn’t have decided at a better time because it just so happened that there was a grocery store on the level of the mall we were on. I got a bunch of stuff because a cashier told me that they took Mastercard, but when I actually checked out, it turned out that they didn’t. That was disappointing because it just so happens that my ATM card doesn’t work in Thailand, just like it doesn’t work anywhere else. Donna lent me some baht, and I got everything I needed.

We still had a few hours to kill after we left the grocery store, so we browsed around a lot. I found a bookstore, and I got a few books, but I did exercise some self restraint. We decided to get some Baskin Robbins and I had a brownie ice cream sundae. We were really out of things to do at this point, but it was still about 45 minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave. We went to the bus area anyway, and there was actually one leaving back to the ship soon, so we got on it. By the time we got back to the ship it was nearly onship time anyway, so we just boarded.



The plan for the next several days: studying for and taking midterms, writing papers, and all that stuff that schoolwork requires. I also really wish that my sea had a laundry day today, but I have to wait ~4-5 days. That means I'll be handwashing everything because it all smells like sweat and elephants and like it's spent months in SE Asia, rather than just a few days.

6 comments:

Megan said...

I'm SO EXCITED for you to meet Madu in India! I hope you get the chance! Please be sure to send him my love, as well as my friend Susies if you see him. Also, he can offer some GREAT suggestions of places to get food, and delicious chai tea. Have a great time in your next port!!!!

Anonymous said...

That's pretty cool that you got to ride an elephant! How did you get up there?

-liitle

Anonymous said...

My world traveler!! It all sounds so exciting that sometimes I wish I was there trying to keep up with you. Have a lot of fun.

I miss you bunches
Mom

Anonymous said...

I believe that the hard-boiled eggs wrapped in meat are called 'Scotch' eggs; they sell them at the medieval faire where I work. The idea never really appealed to me, so now I've told you everything I know about them.

~ JBert

Megan said...

I'm anxiously awaiting your next entry! Hope you're having a blast.

Anonymous said...

Little- please update soon. Midterms are coming up and I need good ways to not study.

Hope you're having a blast.

-Big