From the mean streets of Bangkok…(where no one is mean)

I am now in Bangkok, and the place is bangin!

I anticipated staying in Bangkok about 3 days total. I have been here 9 days now. However I am hitting the road to Cambodia in the morning. I still have some more photos to upload, so stay tuned-more Bangkok is on its way!

Heres the Bangkok re-cap.

Upon arrival I quickly purchased that antibiotic medicine that I needed. I took it and I am finally back to my old self after about a month of tummy pains.

Bangkok is the metro center of Thailand, it is where everything passes through before going to the far off reaches of the Kingdom. There is soooo much to see and do here! I’m pretty sure if I came to Bangkok right from the US, I may have hated it here, but after coming from southern Thailand where we didn’t even have electricity and survived on generators, toilets were simply holes in the ground that we poured water into after using them, we slept in bamboo shacks where all kinds of creatures came to live with you, and not to mention being dirty all the time no matter how often you showered-you may understand why I really like Bangkok at this point!! The city itself is likeable for about a week, I mean it IS just a giant polluted city the same as anywhere, but what is within the city, is what is amazing! The culture, the monks, the wats/temples, the Buddha’s, and Grand Palace, the transportation system, the architecture, the markets, the parks-that is what is amazing about this place. It has been fully enriching being here.

The following are photos from Bangkok…Enjoy.

Karate-choppin China Town!

This is Wat Arun Ratcha Wararam also known as The Temple of the Dawn.

This is Wat Tri Mit which is famous for the giant Buddha located there.

I traveled around the Choa Phraya River by water taxi; it was much faster than taking a street taxi due to traffic congestion on many of the narrow roads and the loads of foot and motorbike traffic.

Snake farm where venomous snakes are milked and it is used to make anti-venom for hospitals to use on bite victims. Also in this science complex is the Collaborating Center for Research on Rabies Pathogenesis and Prevention. I spent an afternoon talking to the director about current research and it was fascinating.

Lumphini Park is a huge man made park similar to Central Park. At one area of the park they have an outdoor weight room. For 20 Baht (about $0.75) you can weight train there.

These are some local Thai men that were more than willing to let me take their photo.

The famous Khao San Road-tourist hub of Bangkok. Seriously...if you want to go to Bangkok and hardly ever see Thai people and only see annoying tourists...this is the place for you. Unfortunately, it’s super easy to arrange travel to other areas from here because there are so many travel agents and therefore access to transportation at descent prices. There are a lot of guest houses in this area, and mostly everyone speaks English, it’s also close to the city’s major sight-seeing attractions. So this is the area I stayed.

The ChatchuchakWeekend Market in Bangkok is the epicenter for trade throughout the Kingdom of Thailand. Almost all goods that will be later scattered throughout the country come through this market first. Handy-crafts from hill tribe villages, silks, clothing, decorative furniture, food, animals, odds and ends, trinkets, everything…you name it, its there.

When I went to the market, I was the only non-Asian person there. I didn’t see another westerner at all, and no one spoke much English. That aspect of things I really enjoyed.

However, as for my experience with the actual market…I didn’t have the best time.
In fact, I cried for hours... I walked around and some how got mixed up and lost in there...it’s the largest open air market in the world. I ended up getting so turned around and wound up in the live animal market. Out of all the places to wind up...it figures.

The majority of animals being sold were squirrels and rabbits. All babies and all drugged in order to keep them calm. The people placed strings around the squirrel’s necks to keep them leashed, and the f-ing Thai people buying them as novelty items were walking around with them on their fore-arms while the poor babies are bound by their necks. When they fall in their confused drugged-up state, the people would just grab the string and the squirrel would dangle there until they calmed down (by being strangled!). My entire experience was completely disheartening. I cried and cried and tried to get out of there as fast as I could, but it seemed that every corner I turned there were more squirrels. The babies would cry making that baby squirrel sound when calling to its mama then get quiet when the drugs kick in. I hated it so much. I kept trying to get away but the foot traffic was so slow because people were packed shoulder to shoulder and you couldn't walk quickly....only very very slowly. So slowly, that I cried even more. I hated it....and couldn’t wait to leave.

A canal within the city. Some canals have taxi services between popular points. In this photo a boy is doing laundry in the canal.

This Wat Phra Kaeo which houses the famous Emerald Buddha. It is the most highly cherished Buddha figure.

This is near the entrance of Wat Phra Kaeo and the Grand Palace.

The Grand Palace...

This is WatPho home to the massive reclining Buddha.

Also at Wat Pho.

Around wats, monks are responsible for renovations, up-keep and repairs. This is a photo of a monk carrying material where they are repairing a closed section of the wat.

Wat Pho also has is the national school for the art of Thai Massage. Oh man...it's so great!

Remnants of Ton Sai

Living with Chai, Nee (his sister) and Mook (his nephew), I really gained an appreciation for their lifestyle. Talk about living in paradise! The food was amazing; I don’t know how I ever even thought Thai food was good at restaurants that simply cater to the ‘farang’ (foreigner) tastes. The food in restaurants is garbage compared to Nee’s cooking, she’s just so phenomenal!!!! I wish I had time before leaving to learn all her kitchen secrets…oh man, what a treasure trove that would be.

This is a photo from an afternoon market in Krabi town where Chai and I went to buy produce, and where I was finally able to buy strawberries! For some insane reason, strawberries in southern Thailand are very expensive, and hard to come by, in the north its rather easy. But I was living in the south, so my strawberry cravings continued. Chai thought it was so funny that I wanted them so bad that he bought me 4 packages one time as a surprise so I could have them in the morning with my granola, fruit, and yogurt. So sweet!

Chai and I were already good friends before I moved in with them, but being there, we became even better friends. During the days the three of them would get up super early-we’re talking like 4:30am (!!!), and I would sleep in until about 8am, at that time I would get up and get ready to climb. While waiting to meet up with friends to climb with, I would help out at the café because that is their busy time. Then usually around 9 or 10am I would leave to go climbing, and return after dark. Upon returning Chai, Nee, Mook and I would eat the dinner which Nee and Mook made, and sometimes other Thai’s would come for dinner too-an old man, or an 8 year old boy who lived down the path (he loved to sneak my cookies when I wasn’t looking). I learned that Ton Sai is more than a place for travelers to come where the climbing is unbelievable, but it is a community that exists among the locals even when there are no tourists-sometimes we forget that part, and it’s nice to be reminded.

I would accompany Chai to Krabi town for supplies, and sometimes just for us to get away. He enjoyed the company when I came along while he ran errands, and I enjoyed getting away and driving around the countryside, and we always had a blast. This photo is of the Ao Nang International Off Road 2009 event. Pretty entertaining.

This photo is of Chai walking along a pier in the small fishing village.

Chai’s brother and wife live on an island and run a bar there, they ordered some shirts to be made with their logo, and so one day while Chai and I were in town getting supplies for Pyramid, we picked up the shirts for him.

We drove out to a small fishing village and paid a boatman that was going to the island to deliver the shirts to the bar.

The pier is not very far from the island and yet there are no westerners or tourists. The boat area/beaches for tourism is quite a ways away around the cove, and so this pier we used was unspoiled. It’s a small community is built among mangroves, at the end of a long and winding, poorly maintained dirt road in the middle of no-where.

It was breathtaking.

The following are some random photos of critters I have encountered in Ton Sai.

This is the Black Giant Squirrel!!! It is one of the largest squirrels in the world, and I was so SO excited to see it in the wild. Most people go 'birding' aka bird watching to try to 'tick' birds off their list from around the world. Well...I go 'squirrel-ing'. This was one I have always wanted to see.

On a funny side note, while being here in Ton Sai with so many climbers from all over the world, I have learned how to say 'squirrel' in 15 languages now!!!!

This is a non-venomous tree snake that happened to end up on the beach one afternoon while I was climbing. On-lookers gathered around and watched it uncertain of what kind of snake it was and curious if it was poisonous or not. The dog even was barking at it and a little hesitant to go near it. There are quite a few other snakes that look very VERY similar to this tree snake, and with out being experienced in your snakes-it would be easy to mistake venomous ones for this one. The snake that most resembles this one is a Pit Viper, same coloration and from a few feet away looks almost exactly the same. A bit from a Pit Viper can quickly lead to death, so most people wouldn’t risk getting close enough to a snake to determine which one it is. Both this tree snake and the Pit Viper live in this area, and both like similar habitats. Since this snake was on the beach, everyone was not sure which snake species it was…perhaps its not the tree snake? It is best to air on the side of caution and just considers all snakes in Thailand to be deadly, so as not to get in a bad situation.
This snake however, I was certain was not a Pit Viper, I knew it was a tree snake because while my ribs were healing, I spent a lot of time at Pyramid reading up on books about animals and reptiles of Thailand. Granted-I WAS mostly interested in the squirrel section of the book, but none the less, I learned my snakes as well.
So I waked up to it, picked it up and carried it to a tree along the cliffs edge where I let it go. Word traveled fast around Ton Sai and for the next few days I was told I was nuts, but I tried to explain that I know my snakes, and people still couldn’t believe it. The thing about this tree snake is, although not venomous, they still have teeth in the back of their jaw, and when bitten the wound can become infected rather quickly from the exposure to an array of bacteria from the snakes mouth-it does eat a lot of things I wouldn’t normally rub into open wounds you know. So you can imagine why people think its best to treat all snakes as harmful-because they are.

A butterfly (or moth?) on a tree near Pyramid Bar.

Jellyfish washed up on shore on Railay beach.

A beautiful yet very strange insect that was on a friends dinner plate one evening. We didn't know what it was and we weren't sure if it had wings, but we took photos because it was so pretty.

It was about the size of an ant, and very delicate looking. It looked like it had a snow flake attached to its butt. The way it moved around was a dance like prance, and very slowly. Stunning really.

My tummy since being sick a few weeks back had slowly started to hurt again. I think while sick and vomiting so much before, I must have gotten rid of a lot of the bad bacteria that was the issue, and with time it slowly came back. I knew of some Thai antibiotics you can buy at the store that work magic according to other climbers, but they were out in Ton Sai. So I took some antibiotics from the doctor but it didn’t seem to help much. I really needed the Thai ones because I knew they were a broad spectrum antibiotic, and they would fix this. I was planning on leaving Ton Sai and heading to Bangkok around the 12th anyway, and I wasn’t feeling so well I didn’t even want to climb because I was tired all the time, and my tummy hurt when wearing my harness. While most people would cruze though as many climbs as they had time for when nearing the end of a climbing area, I barely climbed…I think I did 8 pitches in 4 days. Woo. Not good…and my stomach wasn’t getting better with time, so I decided it was best to just move and I booked my flight to Bangkok for the 12th of Feb, and enjoyed my the last of my time in Ton Sai with the friends I had made. I was hard to leave, but it was time.

Thus I continue on my joureny through SE Asia.

Climbing…and then some…

Seems Thailand has decided that January would be a challenging month for me! I got what is called the ‘Ton Sai-Tummy’ the other day. Basically it’s food poisoning, but not really poisoning, more like poor hygiene quality at restaurants or cross contamination of foods. You know the drill. Everyone gets it here eventually. Some people have worse luck than others and get it continually. As for me, I have been sooo lucky! This is the first occurrence for me. I ate fish for dinner, then I vomited all night long waking up about every hour to hurl again. I slep A LOT! And by a lot, I mean I slept for 33 out of 36 hours. I don’t even know what happened to that next day as I was hallucinating and had a high fever for most of it. I remember holding my blanket thinking I was hugging Lucky-my squirrel back home, and talking to him. Yeeeeaaah…it was pretty bad. The third day I was doing better, and of course was a bit stir crazy, so I went out to climb, but only did one warm up climb, then went home to bed and slept another 14 hours. After that I was stellar, and climbed a bunch the next day.

I’m planning on being in Ton Sai until mid February, and then I will begin to head north. I went to pay my bungalow until then, but they decided to RAISE my price even though high season is about over here. The lady said I haven’t been eating in their restaurant enough so she is deciding to charge me MORE!!!! I told her I had been sick, and injured and have been resting a lot. She said if I pay that much for awhile, she can give me a better price in March. I told her I wouldn’t be here. I’ve decided she is nuts, and so I will be moving out of that bungalow today.

My option you may wonder???

WEEEELLLL….

I have become friends with a Thai guy that runs a Café/bar that serves such good breakfast and coffee. I go there a lot to relax and read my books. He owns the place and runs it with his nephew and sister. It’s called Pyramid Bar (see the photo of the map in an early blog entry).
Chai is 26, Mook his nephew is 18, and we all banter back and forth all the time, it’s like having brothers. Since many of my friends left recently, I have spent a lot more time there enjoying all of their company.

I was talking to Chai the other day about my situation, and he made a joke that I could rent floor space in their bungalow. We joked about it…but it actually made sense. Today they bought me a mattress pad in town, mosquito net, sheets, and towels. I will be paying 1/3 of what I paid at Andaman. Also, because it is a restaurant/café, I can help out on my rest days, and store food there so I can save money on eating out all the time. Animals will get into everything at my old place, and I am not staying long enough to invest in storage containers for my food at my bungalow, but at Pyramid, they have all that stuff, and I can use the kitchen to cook. They are great people, and I feel lucky I have made friends with them. Today while in town, we went to the grocery store to stock up on supplies for the week….a lot of work. It is really interesting to see how these places function in order to cater to tourism. It is pretty crazy! I’m excited to see how the next couple weeks go living with them.

That is all that is new here in my world. The next couple weeks will just contain a lot more climbing, hanging out at my new casa, and some work in the coffee shop I am sure. Go figure.