Monday - We crossed the bridge to Thailand and eventually made our way to the Thai Immigration Area. That was annoying. It was hot. The lines were long. Everything is outside. We got to Nong Khai and decided to stay for a night. Nong Khai is part of Isaan, the northeastern part of Thailand. It’s hotter, flatter, drier, slower, poorer and the food is spicier. This is where there really into eating bugs too. Most people just jump right on a train or a bus. We watched as these two British girls tried to sort out their money. Even though we were technically in Thailand the tuk tuk driver agreed to accept Lao Kip. They ended up giving up and gave the tuk tuk driver the rest of their Lao money. “Here, a tip, I don’t know. Is this enough? I can’t count this money.” The tuk tuk driver was more than happy to take it all.
We made our way to this hippie guesthouse place. The way down to the guesthouse has turned into a litle hippie village. The tuk tuk dropped us off at the driveway and we walked down past a bookshop, a tea shop, some yoga and meditation places and there was even an older woman with white hair sweeping her porch. Pretty much, you check in and get a book and then whenever you use any of their services you write it in your book. To order food at their restaurant, you write your order in the book. When you want to rent a bike, you take a key and write it in your book. Kinda weird. Kinda hippie. I’d love to know how many people cheat the system. Monday night we didn’t do much. I think we walked to a 7-11 and had dinner of microwave pizza, yogurt drinks and potato chips. It felt to be good to be back in Thailand! Alki went to some floating bar thing at the guesthouse, but I went to sleep.
Tuesday we rented bicycles and rode to Nong Khai’s one tourist attraction. It’s a sculpture park by some kind of crazy guy. I’ll see if I can find an article to help explain it better. It had Buddhist and Hindu statues but they were all kind of strange and more interesting than the normal ones you see all over the place. It was fun. The weather was nice and we took lots of pictures.
On the way back I saw a sign for duck lap, which is a super Isaan food. We parked our bikes and ordered duck lap and sticky rice. It also came with this really gross looking soup. The soup itself wasn’t gross, but the organs and things in the soup were pretty gross.
All in all, I’d say Alki and I did a pretty damn good job of eating all this crazy food. Sticky rice does make everything better. And lap happens to be one of those dishes that comes with a plate of cucumbers and string beans which always makes everything better. We, of course, provided endless entertainment for the group of family and friends who ran the shop with my “A-for-effort” Thai. Luckily, I’ve gotten pretty good at talking about food and Chiang Mai. The shop was really just someone’s house with a food stall in front. They were sitting in front of their house, so they sat us at a table in front of their neighbors’ house. I think after the lap we decided we deserved an ice coffee break. We found a café with a pool table playing “Rockstar” so we hung out there for a while. The walls were evenly divided between posters of the king and cars.
That afternoon we got a bus to Khon Kaen. It’s yet another “Gateway to Isaan” city of Thailand. This is the first time when a city had two bus stations and we thought we were in the close one but we were in the far away one. Damn!
And I had to pee.
We started walking towards town and eventually gave in to the bladder, ran into a khao tom shop, used the bathroom and then decided to eat there. I could read the menu but still didn’t really know what to order.
The entire staff circled around our table. We got Tom Yam Kung as per suggestion from the one staff guy. When it arrived it was this whole big deal with different sized spoons and bowls. Everyone was still staring. There’s a lot of stuff in Tom Yam Kung and I think a lot of it you aren’t supposed to eat so I wasn’t sure if you’re supposed to the stuff you don’t want in the bowl or if you’re supposed to feed yourself from the bowl. It was really confusing. We did our best, paid out bill and left as soon as possible.
Eventually, we checked into a not-very-interesting hotel and tried to walk around at night but got sucked into a fantastic internet café and hung out there until it closed. It was air conditioned, had really comfortable seats, really fast internet, no weird smell and was only15 baht an hour! Amazing!
We didn’t even bother to see if Khon Kaen had any tourist attractions.
The next day we were back on a bus heading toward Phitsanuloke!
The bus rides in Thailand are something else. There are 1st, 2nd and 3rd class buses. We usually ended up in 2nd class, which means the bus technically has air conditioning, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll work. You are assigned a seat but it’s not always available. And you may or may not pick up 50 random people who will squeeze into the aisles. For entertainment, you’re provided with Thai country music videos. Over and over. Every song is about a girl from the country who moves to the big city and has some terrible job with a terrible boss, but it’s all worth it when she can return home with yellow t-shirts for her grandparents. Or it’s a video with one singer surrounded by a stage of 12-year-old boy looking Thai girls wearing itsy bitsy shorts and halter-tops, doing “sexy” dancing. But in all honesty, it looks more awkward than sexy in my opinion. That’s what I don’t get. If Thailand is this country of “conservative” people, who wear shorts and t-shirts to go swimming and are too embarrassed to buy condoms, and ashamed of their sex industry worldwide image, why would they dress up these girls in no clothing and tell them to dance with themselves on stage? I understand if it’s a Thai hip hop group that’s trying to imitate America or something, but this is Thai country music. Not badass at all. And it’s one thing if it’s in a music video, but at the Sunday Market there are usually dance groups from local schools and there are like 6-year-old dance troupes in the same tiny shorts and halter-tops doing moves from Ludacris rap videos. I just don’t get it. Thailand is a conservative country. I’ve decided that’s bullshit.
Anyway, the bus ride from Khon Kaen to Phitsanuloke was 6 hours of terrible, terrible music videos.
Phitsanuloke was the second time we thought we were in the close bus station but we were in the far away one. This one it was way further away than in Khon Kaen. We walked around lost for a while and eventually an ice cream man offered to bring us into town. So we said thanks, cool and hopped on the ice cream cart sidecar. Not the safest transportation I’ve ever been on, but it was fun. He drove us to one of the big tourist attractions. We were so happy, we planned on buying 2 ice creams (50 baht) and then leaving a 50 baht tip, which is about the same price as a tuk tuk would have been. We said thanks. And then this guy, we’ll call “fucker” came over and told ice cream dude to charge us 300 baht for the ride. WHAT???? I pretended I didn’t understand. This was too ridiculous. Then fucker broke out his calculator and typed in 300 and gave it to the ice cream man to show us. I said, “No! This was free. You didn’t say we had to pay!” Mind you, the 6-hour bus trip from Khon Kaen was 150 baht. A 10-minute ride into town is not worth 300. Thinking back, we should have just taken the ice cream, left the 100 baht bill and walked away. Fucker then said “Ok, ok, 200 baht.” I said “No! Who are you? Where did you come from? I don’t know you. I know him. He didn’t say I had to pay. I thought he was a nice person.” Eventually I left 150 on the ice cream cart and we stormed away. Things like this don’t usually happen! I was so upset. Fucker followed us and said, “Tuk tuk? Tuk tuk? Where you go?” I think I actually “Go away! I don’t like you! Go away!”
I don’t yell often. Before that guy, I can’t think of the last time I yelled at someone. But this guy really really really really really pissed me off. We decided to hate all the tuk tuk drivers and walked the rest of the way into the guesthouse area town. We found a nice place to stay.
Since Poom was coming down to meet us, he and I got our own room and Alki was left to fend for herself. So she did whatever any normal person would do. While we were choosing which rooms we wanted, she turned around to the complete stranger waiting in line behind us and said, “Um, hi. Would you want to share a room with me?” They have fan rooms with 2 beds and shared bathrooms in the hallway for 220 baht. It’d be 110 baht for each of us.”
“Uh, sure.”
“Ok, cool! What’s your name?”
“Saleem.”
“Nice to meet you, roomie!”
The three of us headed up to the 4th floor where the cool (read: cheap) kids stay. Saleem ended up being really cool! (And gay, which made the whole room sharing thing a little less awkward seeing as Alki likes to wear as little clothing as possible at all times.) First night in Phitsanuloke was made up of food, internet and meeting up with Poom!
The next day was our “being productive in Phitsanuloke” day. We woke up and went back to the place of the ice cream man/fucker incident. It turned out to be this huge golden Buddha thing, which was a pretty big deal in Phitsanuloke. It was fun going with Poom because he actually knew what to do with all this Buddhism stuff. We copied him and did the praying thing. Then we did this thing where you hold a cup with about 20 or 30 different wooden sticks. You hold the cup at an angle and shake it until one falls out. Then you check the number and go to a board and pick up the piece of paper with your number on it and it has your fortune. How much fun is that? I don’t think churches or synagogues have anything that fun.
On the way out we saw this weird looking flower that looked like a bouquet. Poom bought it. Turns out it was lotus seeds! (He knew that. We didn’t.) They tasted like boring almonds, but they were really fun to peel and eat.
After our morning of being good, we went to the mall of Phitsanuloke. Alki looked at cameras, I bought a new case for my phone, Poom got his shoes fixed and then we all drank coffee.
Phitsanuloke is one of the only places where you’re allowed to have houseboats in the city, so we thought it would be a good idea to eat lunch on a houseboat. Turns out the houseboats are really far away. And not popular for lunch. The three staff members stared at us the whole time and then it took us 30 minutes to get a tuk tuk back to the guesthouse area.
That night we went out on the town. Phitsanuloke night market, dinner on the river, then moved to another riverfront establishment for some whiskey and Halvzies! So much fun. There were some guys playing Thai songs and after recognizing a few, I tried to request one of my favorite Thai songs by one of the artists they were playing, but… the guy didn’t know my song. So sad.
The next day Alki and Saleem decided to be supertourists. They headed out to Sukkhothai, which is one of the ancient capitals of Thailand about an hour from Phitsanuloke. It’s not that I wasn’t interested; it’s just that it was soooooooooooooooooooooooooo hot. And they were going to rent bicycles and I thought I would die. Literally. So Poom and I stayed in Phitsanuloke. Our mission for the day was to plan our return to Chiang Mai. We went to the train station but all the trains were full. While we were at the train station I went to the bathroom and Poom had a cigarette. One of the soldiers there called him and told him he wasn’t allowed to smoke. But when he called him, he addressed him as “nenh’ which is the name for novice monk. How funny! This tattooed, pieced guy, well past his teenage years, in normal clothes, still looks like a novice because he had just gone to the barber and had really short hair.
After the train station we went to the bus station. It was confusing and frustrating. A lot of times when things are confusing and frustrating I think it’s because I’m a foreigner and I don’t speak Thai. Like, surely they’re saying something that makes sense; it’s just that I don’t understand. But after going with Poom and watching him get just as confused and frustrated I realize it’s not me, it’s Thailand bus stations. At one point he said, “I don’t understand. I want to go to Chiang Mai. They have buses that go to Chiang Mai. I have money. I want to give them my money to go on their bus, and they won’t take it. I don’t understand. That’s bad business.”
And it’s not like there’s one bus company that was confusing and frustrating. There are like 4 different companies and all were equally unhelpful. Pretty much the answer we got was “come back later”.
We headed back to town and walked around some more and stopped when we saw a cute coffee shop with a closed front door. Exciting! (Closed front door = air conditioning.) We hung out there for a while. Then asked the lady where the best massage in Phitsanuloke was. She said Big C and that she was heading that way and would give us a ride. For free. Nice! An actual nice person, not a mean nice person like the ice cream man.
Big C is another huge mega-mart place that surrounds itself with a mini mall. The massages there really were fantastic. At one point Alki called and said that it was so hot she was sure she had melted and was now only a liquid. I told her I was getting a Thai massage in air conditioning.
After the massages we went back to the bus station to try again. After running around a lot, again, we found some people willing to take our money. We told Alki and Saleem the plan, went back to the guesthouse, got all of our bags and got back to the bus station to meet them and get the hell out of Phitsanuloke.
The bus ride was again long, strangely air-conditioned and had a terrible soundtrack. And I think someone peed on the bus.
After a nauseating bus ride, around 1am Saturday morning, we got back to Chiang Mai. Alki threw up. We were home! We dropped Saleem off at Spicy Backpackers, a super cool hostel in my neighborhood, ate noodle soup, then went to sleep.
That wasn’t a full week, only Monday – Saturday morning, but it was the third chapter I’d say.
Last chapter – Chiang Mai, the malls, cooking classes, movies, Warm Up, Pai, back to work….
