Wandering Jon

I was a bit worried about arriving in Surin at 4:30 in the morning… however since my train was nearly two hours late we got in at 6:30, a much better hour to arrive. Sure enough stepping out of the train station I was greeted by dozens of Tuk-Tuk drivers all eager to take me anywhere I wanted to go. I was headed for New Hotel though, which at least from the map I had looked to be close to the train station. Close enough I thought I could probably walk…. Turns out it was all of about 30 meters from the train station, maybe less.

New Hotel was recommended to me by a woman I met online on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree website. Thorn Tree is a online forum for travelers, unfortunately it’s a poorly organized one. I far prefer Bootsnall.com’s forums, but Thorn Tree still has a larger following. I digress. Turns out New Hotel was an excellent suggestion. The room was very inexpensive, 160 Baht/night regularly (US$4.50) and for Friday and Saturday of the Elephant Round-up they doubled their prices. This was a room without aircon an without TV. They offered aircon and TV in some rooms. IMHO, TV’s are worthless, and aircon is rarely worth it at least not in these season. You really do get used to the heat, for the most part. By Thai budget hotel standards the room was nice. It was clean, big (too big) and had with a large firm bed and a desk. The bathroom was reasonably large with flushing squat toilet. The shower was cold water only, or more appropriately outdoor temperature only. You see, in the morning the water was cold, but in the afternoon the water tank on the roof got super heated and the water would be super hot. It’s a minor annoyance, you get use to cold showers in the morning, but in the afternoon when a cold shower would be really nice you get hot water. I should explain at night the temperature drops to around 80-85F and during the day it’s in the 90’s. I can’t give exact numbers because it’s all Celsius and I haven’t quite got the conversion down in my head/body yet. Anyway, they cleaned the room and changed the sheets daily, as well as bringing a fresh towel every day. I was a bit bothered by the few cockroaches that would occasionally make there way up the plumbing and into the toilet. Only once or twice would they try to make it out of the toilet and onto the outside of the toilet at which point they’d get squished by a shoe. The first night I made the mistake of leaving my lights on while I was out. I came back to find the bright white sheet on my bed covered with small insects. Flys, little crawling things that looked like bed begs but were not, all vet small little bugs that thought this giant shiny white sheet was a great place to hang out. I brushed off the bugs, sprayed some DEET on the sheet, slept in my sleep sack and put DEET on my neck and shoulders. I was very happy when I woke up in the morning and didn’t see a bug anywhere to be found. I’ll also jump ahead and say that in the morning I discovered on of my screen shutters open a crack, duct tape closed it, and that when I left the light off when I went out I came home to no bugs on the bed. Enough on the room, back to my first morning in Surin.

The room in photos:

 

 

 

 

 

After dropping my bags in the room, showering and reading up on Surin, I decided on a whim to see if I could get WiFi access in the hotel room. With much amazement it turns out I could, although just barely. I was grabbing a signal from some neighbor, but only if I held my laptop at just the right angle and very close to the window. It was enough I could get to email and browse a couple web pages slowly… but that’s about it.

At this point I wasn’t so sure about my room, not so much because of the “state” of the room, but because it felt like a quiet hotel and I wouldn’t be meeting people to hang out with here. So I thought I’d head out to check out the only Hostel/Guest House in town, Phirom Guesthouse. conveniently the morning market was on the way towards the guest house. Unfortunately after quite a bit of walking, but some yummy food, I discovered a note a the destination saying Phirom’s had moved. So I set about walking to it’s new location as indicated by map on the note. Turns out it has moved well outside the main activities in the center of town… a long way out it was a long hot dusty walk. If I’d realized how long it would be I would have taken a Saam-Loew (bicycle-rickshaw) or Tuk-Tuk. The guest house was nice but too far out of the action for my taste today. If I’d been looking for somewhere to relax away from it all it would be great. Fortunately just as I was leaving so was an older British woman whom had just called a Tuk-Tuk to come pick her up for a ride back to the train station, which I shared. Back at New Hotel, I showered again, something I’d do at least three times a day every day I was in Surin.

With so much done already it felt like afternoon, but in it was actually about 11am, so after a brief rest I headed out again by Tuk-Tuk to the Elephant Stadium to check out the festivities there.

Today was the rehearsal day for the Elephant show and thousands of school kids from the area were all over the place to see the show for free. As I walked into the festival grounds 4-5 young teenage Thai girls came up to ask if they could practice there English with me. I was honored to be able to help, but the brief few questions they asked that I fill out their questioner on the elephant festival. It was just a couple questions, did I enjoy it, could it be better, what did I like most/least. I’m sure they were probably suppose to ask me all the questions, but was still impressed they’d gotten as far as the did before handing me the form. As I walked around the fair grounds adjacent to the stadium I was approached by a half dozen other groups of school girls all wanting to practice English. Surprising each had a different questioner to fill out. Some where more “where are you from” type stuff, some about Surin and more about the elephant festival. Several hours and a couple of stops to eat at the fair I thought I’d move on to the location of the Elephant Feast. As I was leaving the fair ground I was approached by one last group of school girls, after filling out their questioner… I was getting good at this, I thought I’d ask them a question. How do I get to Sri Paket Square (sp?). Their understanding of English wasn’t as good as I expected based on their speaking, but after a few giggles and requests on their part to speak slowly and repeat they helped me figure out on my map where I was headed. I walked away in the direction of the square figuring I’d find a Saam-loew to take me over there. I got about a block away when one of the girls from the last group ran up behind me and began speaking an pantomiming. It took a minute to understand but she was offering to give me a ride to the square on her motor bike. Flattered I couldn’t say no. The entire group of girls lead me down the road to where one of them, not the girl speaking to me, had a motor bike. They helped me cross the street and get on the back of the motor bike and I was off on a fun ride through Surin. It was amazingly fun 🙂

At Sri Paket (sp?) I got to watch them set-up for the next days elephant fest. They set up 2km worth of banquet tables along the road and then pile them full of sugar cane, water melon, turnips (?) and pineapples. I do love seeing festivals get set up. It reminds me of being at Octoberfest so many years ago at 5am and seeing the truck after truck unload dozens of kegs of beer in the morning.

I spent the late afternoon back at the hotel where I finally met up with Joy who was the one that had recommended New Hotel. Along with Joy I met Inga, Richard, Faye and Faye’s Father… and suddenly I knew a half dozen people in Surin. This is what I love about traveling. New friends. New Stories. I also have to admit I love having new friends without commitments. If any person sudden decided they don’t want to hang out with the other, you just part ways… no hard feelings… no bad thoughts…. because everybody understands and appreciates each others situation. Everybody is just doing their own thing and it’s totally normal to spend a day or two enjoying time with someone and they say “I feel like wandering alone today”. Then a few days later you might bump into each other in a market and sit down for lunch or just say hi and keep going… it’s wonderful.

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.