I spent the morning figuring out my schedule for the next couple days and when/how I was going to ge to Surin for the Elephant Round-up. I determined I’d be best going on a night train (about 8 hrs). Then headed out to see Wat Phrea Kaew (Temple with the Emerald Buddha) and stop by the train station to buy my ticket.
The Emerald Buddha was beautiful, but a bit disappointing… it’ no where near as large as I expected. Being the most venerated Buddha image in all of Thailand I just expected it to be bigger. It’s most special because it is carved from jade. It is just about life size, which is small in comparison to many of the seated buddha images are several meters tall or more. The Emerald Buddha on an very high alter about 10 meters up in the air… The alter is spectacular, but somewhat overwhelms the Emerald Buddha. Regardless it was wonderful to see and sit and mediate, briefly, before it.
I walked around the temple grounds seeing all the amazing Chedi and Stupas around the grounds. There are also magnificent murals on the walls. As I left the Wat and Grand Palace I decided it’d be fun to make my way down to the train station by river boat.

I walked along river until I found a boat dock. I’m not sure why the river was so high, but much was flooded along the edges, water coming up into the streets. To get to the boat dock you walked through a little set of stores, quite like walking into Kimo’s on Maui. The floor of the stores all had a tiny bit of water on them and they’d built a temporary runway down the middle so that you could walk through to the boat docks without getting your feet wet. The runway however made the ceiling about 5 feet high. The boat dock actually had several docks for boats going to different places. It was all a bit confusing but I wasn’t too worried about getting on the wrong one since it just meant seeing more of the river. It’s not obvious since there are ordinary boats and express boats both going up and down river, as well as a third boat the simply goes across the river to another Wat. Fortutantly I made it on the correct boat, and no it’s not the boat in the picture, that’s a river cruise boat not a taxi boat. It was great to see the city from the water, so many houses and building sitting right on the edge of the water.

The ride down the river was wonderful and I started to see the real city of Bangkok. I saw dilapidated shacks falling into the river, next to new-ish high rise condos. It was great to see it all, to take it all in. From where the boat dropped me off I made my way through several non-touristy alleys toward the train station. Apparently I was in the automotive district or something, because every other shop had huge piles of car parts out front and were busily rebuilding engines, transmissions, differentials or whatever… Every few shops there would be a food place, sometimes tiny, sometimes larger. How great to be able to walk five feet to lunch… how horrible to eat the food soaked in diesel fumes all day. The highlight of the walk though was something unexpected as I walked along the channel. Just as I was walking past a local guy pulled a huge catfish out of the water. I gave him a big smile and thumbs up on his catch, he was clearly very proud. I ended up walking a long way down the street behind him as he walked and all the other locals would do the same thing (big smile/thumbs up) and comment on his good catch. So cool… this is the stuff I love about “getting lost on a walk in a new city”.
I finally made it to the train station and found the 8:30pm train was the only one with sleeper cars and it got in at 4:30am. I think it’s strange that neither the 10:00pm, 10:30pm nor the 11:15pm trains had sleeper cars, maybe they were just already booked… oh well.

With that taken care of I made my way back towards the hostel for a foot massage, a shower and dinner before turning around and heading back to the train station. The foot massage was fantastic the one hour massage which was 80% feet, 15% lower legs and 5% neck and back, cost me all of 250 Baht… US$7. It did wonders for getting my body back in balance after the plane flight, walking with an overly heavy pack, and the general lack of sleep.
The train ride started out louder and rougher than I expected but I got use to it and got a little bit a sleep as we went along eventually getting a few hours of sleep, but mostly doing some reading.

Getting out of the airport in Bangkok was simple enough. Immigration had dozens of stations open each with a line of one or two people, so that only took a minute or so to get through. No questions, no hassles just a quick looks at my visa and another stamp in my passport. It does make me wonder how soon I’m going to fill up my passport… but I’ll worry about that if/when it happens.

Next was picking up my baggage, which came out onto the carousel rather quickly. I’d already spied several other backpackers and was a bit jealous how much smaller their baggage was than mine. I’d really tried to pack light, but it’s clear I’m carrying a heavy load compared to many arriving here. I’m going to have to work on that and whittle down what I’m carrying.

Between the baggage carousels was an ATM and a money exchange counter. I don’t know that I’ve ever changed hard US dollars into foreign currency; it’s also just always been easier and often at a better exchange rate to just take money directly out of an ATM. For major purchases I just use a credit card which again is usually a better rate than exchange desks.  Recently though Amex changed their policy on my card and are now charging a few percent fee on foreign currency purchases, which is stupid and means I’ve hidden my my Amex away as my “just in case of emergencies card” (ie. if I lose my Visa credit card). Anyway, while I waited for my bag to come out onto the carousel I got Thai money out of the ATM.

It’s pretty money, rather like Canadian money, color coded and size coded. Thankfully unlike Canadian money, there are only three coins 1/5/10 baht. The current exchange rate is about 35 baht to 1 US dollar, although I’ve seen as bad as 30:1 being charged some places. With money in hand my bag popped out from the depth of the airport and it was time to leave the secure international area.

Right at the exit of the international area there were several shops including a mobile phone provider which was what I needed for my last task I wanted to get done at the airport. I purchased a Thai pre-paid phone card for my GSM cell phone. I’d discovered that T-mobile, the global phone company (yeah right), only charges US$2.99/ minute for international roaming calls from Thailand back to the US… Conversely with a pre-paid phone card purchased her in Thailand I can call the US for 9 baht/minute or about $0.25/minute, and calls inside Thailand are just a few baht per minute. Especially nice was that a initial card purchase was just 1000 baht and came with 800 baht in credit, meaning the start up fee was just US$6. I can top that up anytime with more credit which then goes 100% towards phone calls. Compare that with Canada, where I didn’t buy a card. The cheapest card their was CAN$75 and came with CAN$50 in credit. CAN$25 wasted just on the card.
I was finally time to leave the airport. I think I’d been off the plane less than an hour by the time I’d gotten all of this done… not so bad.

Outside the secure area there were several people offering to “get me a taxi”. Fortunately, from the advice I’d been given and read frequently I ignored them and went straight to the metered Taxi stand. I think it might have been possible and slightly cheaper to get to the hostel by subway/sky train, but carrying my ridiculously big backpack it’s was worth it to take the taxi and get dropped at the front door. The taxi ride was under 250 baht, including the 50 baht airport fee. I wasn’t really clear if the 50 baht was already shown on the meter or not, but I paid the extra 50 when the taxi driver asked me too. I think the meter showed 187…

The hostel was is wonderfully located on a large alley just behind Sukhumvit. Sukhumvit is a major street with a big night market on it and lots going on. I arrived at night so the shops were all set up and people were bustlingly around all over the place. I was a bit worried the hostel was was going too close to all the action, but it was just the right distance off Sukhumvit. SUk11 is maybe 50 meters from Sukhumvit and the alley itself is not a seedy dark alley, it’s a rather nice large pedestrian alley. Settled in I was excited to find WiFi in my room which I made use of for a few minutes before my first dorm mate came in. Surprisingly he was American (there aren’t that many here lots of Aussie’s and Euro’s). Paul, a student at CU Boulder had differed his last credit to travel while still a student and was half way through a year in Thailand. He’d actually been to Thailand many times and had lots of great advice. With that I headed out the check out the night market, get a bit to eat and try to find a padlock to lock up my computer in the drawer I had next to my bed. Dinner was from a street vendor selling meat on a stick, I opted for fishballs and shrimp. Yummy.

I expected it, but was still shocked by the prostitutes everywhere. It’s disturbing who prevalent and on the surface it is. The old guys walking down the street with 16 year olds don’t have a hint of shame on their faces, and frankly the 16 year old (or less) girls propositioning me didn’t seem the slightest bit shy about it either. I’m sure since I was walking around alone I got propositioned even more than normal. It was nearly constant until I started to recognize and avoid them and then it was just less frequent. I was happy when I got back to the hostel to see a sign above the front desk reading “Sex tourists are not welcome here”. It’s important to keep it in perspective. It’s certainly not most tourists and it’s not just tourists. Somewhere I read 95% of the sex industry here caters to locals… not that that justifies it but it does put a slightly different perspective on it.
I called it an early night, sort of, which meant I sat in bed on my computer working on photos and wishing I felt sleepy. I finally got to sleep around 3am and was up again at 6am. I’ve never felt the slightest jetlag going cross country, not even to Europe, but here the time difference is exactly 12 hours… it really couldn’t be worse.

The drive to JFK was smooth. I’m glad Matt suggested the one way car rental idea, much better and cheaper than the other options I’d researched for getting me from their house to the airport. I left the house exactly at 6am like planned and got the the airport exactly at 9am as planned, 3hrs before my international flight. Which was good because the computers were down and they were checking everyone in by hand.

Eventually the computers got back up and check-in sped up, but in the end the flight was still delayed in taking off by about an hour. I thought I’d make a dozen phone calls in the hour or two waiting to board the plane, but there was no service in the airport terminal. I like a dozen others walked around the terminal with cell phone in hand looking like was tracking a radio collared animal.

When we’d finally boarded and reached the runway we turned around. This was the second time in two week I had a flight make it to the runway then turn around. The first was flying back from Long Beach when someone “didn’t feel well”. This time is was something wrong with a “panel” in the cockpit. Anyway, that added about another hour and a half delay but I had better cell phone reeception sitting on the plane than in the terminal so I made couple calls. Then finally… I left US soil.

So here I sit on the plane, next to a really nice guy, also named Jon, whose been to Asia many many times. He’s gone both in his youth as a back packer as well as his years have started to add up. It’s great to her his stories about India, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. I can’t help but think that I hope many years from now I have similar stories to share some day.. perhaps ones that don’t involve broken legs in a bus accident though.

Finally I’m done updating my blog, at least with the typing, not the uploading. It seem appropriate that at this very instant I’m almost directly over the north pole and crossing to the “other” side of the world. The non-stop flight from JFK to BKK flys almost due north, over Quebec, over the pole, then south over China and into Thailand. Flight time is 16 hours 35 minutes and roughly 8600 miles. We were originally scheduled to land at 5pm local time, but now it looks like it’ll be closer to 7:30pm. Which is why I’m glad I already booked a room at a hostel for the night. I’m also assuming I’ll get some daytime views of the Himalayas out the window of the plane as we fly over (yeah!!!).