Thailand - November 1997
When I arrived in Thailand, the first thing that happened was an offical-looking guy told me that all of Bangkok was flooded but he could find me a reasonable hotel close to the airport for only $25. I happened to read this in a Lonely Book guidebook, ignored him, joined up with a group of Europeans and went down to the budget guide location of Ko Sahn Road. Hotel rooms down there were only $3-5 a night for a single bed without any furniture. In short, it was ideal.
OOne of the most common things you'll notice here is many Thai people want to take you everywhere you could possibly imagine. After a few days you realize its because they make a commission off of you. Every store, every hotel, every business commission gives a kickback back to the person who brought you there - that is if you buy anything. So therefore you just get this constant stream of people trying to get you to go places you have no interest or intention in going.
One of the other first things I noticed is how friendly Thai people were. They could engage you in just about any and every kind of conversation imagineable. However, I also learned that every one of them had a pitch to sell. Generally, they knew or had some gem dealership that was really cheap, and you could buy gems there for next to nothing. Later I read about these guys and found they ripped alot of people off. However, I was pretty poor myself, so had no money to listen to them.
Also, all of the traveler cafes had tons of videos, western foods, music cds, video cds, everything you could imagine. All kinds of clothing, generally tie-die kinds of shirts and hippy-like clothing. None of the locals wore the stuff, but it made alot of money off the tourists, and they were buying it up like you wouldn't believe. All in the name of non-consumerism which was the most ironic part.
Bangkok itself was quite chaotic, dirty, and HOT. There were dying diseased dogs everywhere. I lived close to the river, and had to walk through some pagodas and buddhist temples to get through to the tourist area. In this area, the monks would feed all kinds of animals. There were cats and dogs everywhere, all diseased and dying, but had enough to food to live another day everyday. There was even a horse wandering around in this area which shocked me one night as I was passing through.
The other cool thing about Bangkok I liked was that there was a river taxi. You would just hop onto passing by boat taxis and they'd drop you off at set stops along the river. This is how I got to the post office to check my mail and mail postcards. It also gave a great view of how alot of peole live their lives next to the river or from the river.
After Bangkok, I went up to Chiang Mai. This was also very similar to Bangkok in every way, except it was alot smaller. It still had alot of the same similarities - hot, chaotic, dirty, etc. However I was able to find a great place with Thai kickboxing. Under this tent there were numerous bars everywhere, all with different owners, and quite a mix of locals and foreigners. The Thai kickboxing was quite bloody and very rare. I was surprised they didn't use much equipment. Before their fight, there was a fire juggler who was equally impressive. Eventually I decided to do a 3-day trek into the mountains, riding an elephant, taking a river raft, and seeing locals. However I found the mountains not that interesting, the river raft basic, and the tromping around local villages quite etrusive and weird. All these locals just going about their lives, and crew after crew of foreigners tromping all around them looking at them and not knowing what to do once there. The elephants were kind of cool though. I learned later they were old work elephants, and now retired, they just take on tourists as a tourist thing.
After Chiang Mai, I eventually ended up in the southern coastal beach town of Ko Samui. It was a fairly famous island. It was ideal in many ways, but filled with backpackers and tourists everywhere. Actually I was quite disappointed in that everything in Thailand was filled with foreigners. Every bus I took was a forigner bus. Everywhere the bus stopped I saw more foreigners. Every destination even more foreigners. I can hardly even remember meeting a Thai person the entire time. Ko Samui was nice though. I was able to rent a small bungalow right on the beach fairly cheaply. However it was crawling with so many foreigners that I felt I might as well be in Europe or something. Incidently, I never met an American, almost all of them were Europeans, Israelis, or Australians. Anyhow, I didn't come to Thailand to see all white people everywhere. But thats pretty much what I saw. Ko Samui was no exception. Not much going on there but alot of white people from all over Europe drinking and partying and having Full Moon parties. I should have taken what I found and enjoyed it. But instead I found myself slightly disappointed being there.
From Ko Samui, I went down to Penang in Malaysia. It was also filled with backpackers. I found a decent reggae bar and some okay nightlife, although its not what I was looking for. In fact, I didn't know what I was looking for. There were less Europeans and white people, but still quite alot. Incicently, Penang is also where I saw the largest rat I'd ever seen in my life. I at first thought it was a cat until closer inspection.
After Penang, I went down to Singapore. From there I was going to go into Indonesia, and I did take a ferry across to a small island, but I was so overwhelmed with Indonesians yelling and screaming and grabbing my stuff. Everybody wanted to take me all over the island, take me everywhere, take me here and there. In short, it was too overwhelming, so I decided to turn around and jump on the next boat back to Singapore. Upon attempting to do this, one Indonesia grabbed my passport, brought it to the front of the window in front of everybody else, shoved it in the immigration officers face until he stamped it, and then gave it back to me expecting a tip. I was kind of freaking at this point, so once I had my passport in hand, I relatively quickly just jumped back on the next boat to Singapore.
Singapore itself was a nice city. It was quite boring though. Filled with shopping malls. It was also late November, and Christmas was in the air. I saw some recent movied I'd heard about here. I also walked around alot throughout the Indian district and the Chinese district. I also found a fairly large English-only bookstore. I found some books to browse through, but once I sat down, they threatened to kick me out. Apparently you can't read books in the bookstore. It was nice to see such a huge selection of English books again though. The other thing I recalled the most about Singapore was even construction workers spoke to each other in English. It felt alot like I was at home. I wasn't really homesick though, so this wasn't really that good of news. After a few days in Singapore, I worked my way back up to Bangkok, and then bought a ticket to my most desired place on earth at this time - Kathamandu, Nepal.
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