Bangkok: The Mistress

Being in Bangkok was not our plan, not something we sought out, yet it wouldn't let us leave with out a visit. Despite our self-righteous dedication to volunteering, we were forced to be tourists. At first we hated Bangkok, just on principle. It's what any self-respecting person would do when things don't go your way, right? Then despite our efforts to be miserable and displeased, we found our surroundings and experiences quite unobjectionable, even enjoyable, and OK, fine, we like it here.

yummy outdoor food vendors

However, we are just not very good tourists, which makes it difficult when trying to bide our time for an entire 168 hours in a big and new city across the world from where our normal comfort zones lie. The main problem is that we get kind of site weary. Actually, it's more like we are just not interested at all in sightseeing so all we ever do is eat and then wait to eat again, which really isn't such a bad option but it can get a bit boring and tiring on the body. So while spending some of our increasingly diminished-in-value time in the internet cafe, I decided to look up things to do in Bangkok and found a sort of obscure list with an address of a doll museum on it. Sure, OK, a doll museum.

It took us about two hours to get there, despite the short distance of maybe 2 miles. After trying to find and navigate various forms of transportation in a new city, we arrived at our stop and not withstanding our detailed directions from google, we could not find the museum.

Cleanest bus I have ever been on

This normally wouldn't have been a problem, but the street names were not in the alphabet that we are particularly familiar with, English, and the ones that were in English were nowhere to be seen on my 'map', something They (the notorious "They") must give tourists in order to give them enough confidence to try to get places and then get them lost enough to have to pay for transportation, (thus boosting the economy). This, in our desperation, is exactly what we tried to do, but the schemers behind the map ploy were not clever enough to put the street names on the map in Thai, so everyone that we tried to get to take us to our destination, by showing them on the map, couldn't, because they couldn't read the street names in the English alphabet. So to make a long story short, after getting off a bus near the supposed address of the doll museum, we went on a wild goose chase to find someone who could read English well enough to translate the address and write it in Thai so that we could give it to the moto driver to drive us around the correct corner that the museum was supposed to be around.

After all that, we spent only about 25 minutes in the tiny room of a museum filled with old dolls, with a room of a factory attached to it where old women sat building more dolls. Strange place. More strangely though it all seemed worth the effort. Worth it just to not have to see sights, and to be able to say "no" to the entourage of transportation beckoners asking to take us to this Wat and that Wat and Where are we going? and its only 5 Baht Ma' am, and to not have to wait around the neighborhood of our guest house just to eat again. On top of that the museum was cool in its own right and it kind of made me want to do art about dolls someday. So all in all we are calling this day a success.

a collection of some of my favorite weird dolls

We are getting better at being here. We are discovering better and faster transportation that is also in English, which took us to our other epic success yesterday (our purity of 'Epic" might be waning here considering the first one was the doll museum), which was HORSE RACING!!! Upon purchasing tickets and entering the stadium we might as well have been aliens, wearing our cute flowery fabric clothing, with our white skin and our non-male gender. This event is being called an epic success due primarily to the fact that I just fulfilled a childhood dream of mine to see a live horse race, and besides that we didn't get lost and were able to walk all the way there, which is considered FREE!! (even if it was a three hour walk). We got to see two races thunder right by us with a clear and front row view and then we had to leave due to fear of death by heat stroke and went on a dismal search for anything liquid and ingestible.

note the above mentioned flowery fabric

boat taxi

In addition to our two main epic successes, we have been privy to witness some memorably funny things just by being out and about. We are staying pretty close to a beautiful park along the river. Jessi and I found ourselves there at dusk one night looking for a place to settle down and read for a while. We could hear pretty instrumental Thai music being projected from speakers all around the park, so we happily found a bench and started reading away while enjoying the music. Suddenly the music stopped and a new patriotic sounding song started. As Jessi and I looked up we realized that everyone in the park, which was packed with locals, was standing up in respect for the song, which must have been some sort of national anthem. In my imagination everyone had just transformed into toy nutcrackers, marching with batons in thier hands in time to the music, cued by an imaginary conductor. I caught eyes with one of the locals, who I couldn't quite decide was a man or a woman, that was encouragingly waving her/his hand at us to have us stand as well. So Jessi and I stood with confusion and entertainment written on the back of our minds. The song stopped and everyone went about their way, as if someone hit the play button to reality again. I felt as if I was just enlisted into the circus and then told I wouldn't be needed as the circus packed up and disapeared. Jessi and I giggled to each other, jogging us back to reality.

The silliness of the evening doesn't stop there however. Right after that we start to notice an accumulation of older women dressed in athletic-ish-wear gathering around where the speakers were set up. The he/she that encouragingly waved us to stand up for the song had joined the group and was wearing spandex running pants with a strange looking sports bra/midriff type article, but didn't really have any breasts and definitely no waist. As the pump-it-up music began we realized that we now had front row seats to an outdoor aerobics class in the middle of the park. Jaws dropped, Jessi and I couldn't take our eyes off the spectacle long enough to even at least take a photo, which is what just about every other white person was doing. At one point during the class, just to top off the whole experience, a scantily and dramatically costumed woman in heels, bright red sequins, and something that was supposed to be little wings on her back, randomly walked by, stopped in front of the class, and then in rhythm to the music did a little sexy bend your knees and twist your body down and then back up dance. She then looked around for some approval or opportunities for some more attention, and then walked on. The shoulder to waist ratio, upon further inspection, might have led one to believe that there was more to this "woman" than meets the eye.

So that is how we spent our evening, in the park, reading away while listening to aerobic music until the sun went down over the river. We both urgently wished we had had the nerve to join the class, but were cemented to our bench by our sense of image and all the uncomfortable ways in which that image would have come crashing down, with a million eyes on us, the white girls, had we tried. There are so many times like this that I desperately wish I could be invisible. Maybe next time we will have the nerve, however I think there are just some things white people should not do, and aerobics in the park in Thailand might just be one of them.

End of the Line

Our incredible luck ran out the second we reached Thailand. No more wandering around lost and clueless until we happen upon active lava fields or crazy hikes or amazing vistas. This just got real.

First we barely missed our train to Suritthani. We managed to catch another one but had to pay 600 extra Baht for the privilege of air conditioning, which froze us out all night. Then, instead of immediately finding perfect accommodation, we had to actually wander around looking for it with our giant packs. We finally found a little bungalow on the top of the hill at Tonsai Beach for 170 Baht a night and enjoyed ourselves for a few days, but then Danielle got sick, and the next day I got sick, and we traced it back to papaya salad we'd had on consecutive nights from the same little restaurant. We recovered in time to catch our ride back to Bangkok, but the sleeper trains were sold out so we had to take another air conditioned bus. Then we got back to Bangkok just in time to realize we had been misinformed on the process of applying for an Indian visa and were going to be stuck here for an extra week.

Why are all of our needs and wants not immediately and spontaneously met like they have been for the last few months???

We miss Cambodia :(

On the upside, the Thai coast is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

Bali in Summary

We foolishly believed that starting our trip with the Aoki's on the Big Island (basically heaven on Earth) had doomed us to 8 months of relative disappointment. But apparently there is no shortage of stunning countries in this world. Each new place seems more mind-blowing than the last.

Our latest stop was Bali, where we stayed at my friend Poliman's apartment in Ubud. The bright green rice fields, misty mountain peaks and lush jungles, complete with waterfalls and hot springs, almost made us want to go through the hassle of changing our tickets and staying longer. In the end our budget and curiosity about Thailand made up our mind for us, but Poliman played tour guide and made sure we packed as much into the 6 days we had there as possible. Here's a recap.

Thursday March 3: after a hellishly long bus transit between Phnom Penh and Bangkok, and a 3.5 hour plane trip, we landed in Denpasar and were picked up by my old friend Poliman. We stopped for milkshakes and donuts before stopping for satay rabbit before stopping for fruit (we were very hungry) before heading up a mountain to a cold pool and a hot spring. I'm not exactly sure where Poliman took us, but it was awesome. We went back to Poliman's and had dinner before going to sleep relatively early.

Gorgeous rice terraces

The beauty of Bali

The ice cold swimming pool

The heavenly hot spring, complete with waterfall

Such a happy place

Dinner courtesy of Poliman. Tastes much better than it looks.

Friday, March 4: We woke up early to catch the sunrise over a volcano. It didn't work out - it was too cloudy to see the sun. But we took a bunch of pictures anyway.

Driving to another spectacular overlook. We're obviously super excited.

Danielle had a death-grip on her pillow during the entire ordeal

Walking with the pillow

Posing with the pillow

Why are we out here again?

This is what happens when you make us pose before 8 a.m.

Fine. We'll smile for one.

We had to stock up on groceries because the next day was a day of silence for Nyepi. Everything shut down and no one was allowed outside. So after a random shopping spree in which we attempted to buy a healthy assortment of complimentary foods that a) would not spoil without a refrigerator and b) would not attract ants (we settled on noodles, canned veggies, dried sausages, bread and tea), we went out to see what the masses were up to.

I will never be satisfied by an American holiday again. This party had better pinatas than Cinco de Mayo, better fireworks than the Fourth of July, better costumes than Halloween, and better floats than the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Plus a lot of loud music, dancing, and a lightning storm!

Apparently the whole island produces hundreds of grotesque paper mache statues and burns them all to represent ridding the island of evil. We'll put up video as soon as possible.

Kids putting on their game faces

Giant paper mache monster with glowing red eyes

They're coming to eat your children!

Saturday, March 5: We watched movies for as long as we could, but our little, independent, American brains could not fathom a holiday in which neighborhood guards force you to remain indoors ALL DAY LONG. So we briefly snuck out and hid behind some trees off the street to see what we could see. It was predictably boring - no one was out except a few rebellious teens and a very angry dog that refused to let us pass.

Rice fields near Poliman's apartment in Ubud

Sunday, March 6: Rode Poliman's little honda to church more than an hour away. Riding motorcycles in Asia is terrifying, even in Bali where people tend to stay on one side of the road. In the end I got so nervous that he let me drive. When we got home we rented a scooter and went to the Monkey Forrest. The monkeys were all adorable, with their human-like expressions and rebellious faux-hawks.

Vendors sold bananas to tourists, and Poliman showed me how to hold one above my head to get them to climb up my body onto my shoulders. I found an adorable little baby monkey, let him see the banana, raised it above my head and......I was attacked from behind by a greedy fatso who wouldn't get off of me once he'd stolen the banana.

He just sat there using my head as his own personal table.

Trying to get the rabies-infested giant monkey off of my head without panicking

The gorgeous park where the monkeys live

After we ran out of bananas, we wandered around the park and looked at the sculptures and gorgeous trees. We found some vines and decided that it would be only appropriate to swing on them. Assisted by a Canadian Irishman with a death wish and very strong hands, we learned how to grab the vines and swing out over a small staircase and fish pond set 5 or 6 feet below the platform. One of the security guards saw what we were doing and ran towards us screaming, "Hey! Hey!" We all froze like kindergartners caught jumping off the swings at recess, but the security guard stopped about 20 feet away and simply shouted, "Be careful!" before turning away and leaving us to our swinging. We proceeded to swing more carefully.

Making friends

Monday, March 5: Poliman had work to do, and Danielle and I decided we needed a beach day, so we took the scooter and began an island-wide game of hot-and-cold. At each stoplight we would get the attention of another motorist, point in a direction and say, "Uluatu?" It took us a few hours, but eventually we found a STUNNING beach. Of course we had forgotten my camera, so here's a picture I stole from the Interweb.

Unfortunately, all exposed skin (most notably my arms and Danielle's legs and shoulders) had been burnt to a crisp during our extended ride to the beach, so we weren't in the mood for sunbathing. But we sat in the sand sewing (yes, we like to sew in the sand), listening to music, and relaxing. We tried to leave before dark so we could backtrack as much as possible before the streets became indistinguishable, but as the sun set we were still an hour and a half from Ubud and we could hear thunder in the distance.

Soon it was pouring. I put on my jacket, but Danielle had left hers in Ubud and was drenched in less than a minute. Our method of asking for directions at stoplights was more difficult with fewer scooters on the road, but we gimped along for another forty minutes or so until we met a cheerful Indonesian girl on a cute scooter, who said she was going to Ubud and we could follow her. My relief lasted until the light changed and she zipped off at 80 km an hour in standing water, weaving in and out of traffic like a lunatic on crack, occasionally feigning interest in her own well-being by slamming on her breaks before potholes, and in the process forcing me to swerve around her to avoid colliding. She would look back to see if we were still with her every few minutes, but after a while we became convinced that she was just checking to see if she'd finished us off yet, and we began to imagine that (assuming we survived her death-trap obstacle course on the road) she was leading us to some dark uninhabited valley to be murdered in a cult ritual. We saw a sign for Ubud and took it at the last second, hoping she wouldn't notice.

Things started to look familiar, and once again we thought the worst was over until we discovered a little-known fact: Ubud floods backwards. We headed up a hill on one of the main roads and turned left towards Poliman's apartment, and were almost knocked off the road by a flash flood. The higher we climbed, the deeper the water got, until the wheels of our poor little scooter were nearly submerged. We managed to ride the wake of a truck in front of us until we saw the sign for the alley leading to the apartment and got stuck in the gutter. Luckily Poliman was outside and helped us get the scooter into the alley to park. We got off the bike and started giggling. Then we changed into dry clothes, had warm tea, and fell asleep.

Us after the craziest ride of our lives

Tuesday, March 6: After the excitement of Monday, we decided to have a relaxing last day in Bali. After brunch we walked through town looking at shops. In the afternoon we went to the most beautiful spa I've ever seen to get Lomi Lomi massages (another recommendation from Poliman). Afterward we had dinner, played go-fish, and watched kittens run around on the roof until it was time to pack for our flight the next morning.

Our room was like this but more awesome

A statue in Ubud