Thailand

I visited Thailand in two segments, both about a week each. I didn't write about it before because Thailand has sort of been my recuperating zone, where I arrange visas, flight tickets, grad applications, and did blog entries. I also responded to the emails that piled up while I was in Burma and Cambodia, where the internet quality is lacking. We also slowed down our pace, and I think I spent 10 of my 14 days in Thialand just in Bangkok. As a result, not only did it feel like I was not doing much, but I also didn't have the energy to write about it.

Despite this, I have enjoyed Thailand. I think I had the wrong opinion of it going in, and as a result, did not give it a chance. I was worried about scams, annoying hordes of tourists, and survining Bangkok itself. Like anywhere else, there are scams, and there are also large number of, in my opinion, the 'wrong' kind of tourist; the type who think because they are on vacation, and because they are relatively rich compared to the locals, they can act like A-holes to the locals, walk around the business district with no shirt, etc. However, there are lots of great tourists to hang out with in Thailand too. As for Bangkok, I actually found it quite relaxing. It has a great public transit system, including a fun taxi-boat system and modern sky-train. I just ahd to ask for the routes at my hotel, and double check every time I switched lines with at least two locals :-). In the tourist area, you can also get delicious and cheap street food and fruit shakes. Plus, there are message parlours everywhere. In retrospect, I should have planned to spend more time in Thailand. Oh well, I gues I'll just have to go back.

While in Bangkok the first time, we visited the Royal Palace, which is very well-kept and beautiful, and has great murals all over its walls. We also visited Thailand's biggest reclining Buddha, which impressed me immensly at the time, but after seeing two larger ones in Myanmar, its not such a big deal :-). We visited a lovely night-market, which has a beer garden frequented mostly by locals, who go for the free Thai-pop shows.

We left Bangkok for Canchanaburri (probably spelt wrong) eventually. It is a quiet little town where we rented a bungalow that floated on the water. I stayed there two and a half days, and Nika for a week I think. It is know as the sight of the 'death railway', made famous by the movie 'the bridge over the river Quai', which runs through Cabchanaburri. The Death railway, which the Japanese built to bring supplies from Thailand ti Burma during WWII was constructed under extremely harsh conditions by POWs and forced local labour. Its building let to thousands of deaths. There was a great museum there that taught us all about the death railway. We also thought it appropriate to smile for a picture when visiting the famous bridge.

The highlight of Canchanaburri for me was the great waterfall nearby. It had 9 different levels, lots of spots to swim, some rocks you could slide down like a waterslide, and a disturbing number of fish whick nibbled at my toes as soon as they entered the water. It was a great place to relax and swim in the March heat of Thailand.

The next time I was in Thailand, I met up the first day with Eva, the German girl I had met in Burma. We made plans to leave for Suhkothai the next day, but I backed out because it is 7 hours away and I had to return to Bangkok to catch a flight in 4 days, and didn't want to be worried all the time about getting back. Instead, we visited the 'golden mountain' in Bangkok, which offers nice views and a park-like setting with lots of shrines and gravesites, and a nearby temple with very interesting architechture and a name I forget. Even left the next day for Chang Mai, and I returned to the National Museum for a free guided tour the next morning. The English tourguide didn't show up, so I joined the French group, and I think I did alright in understanding.

I am now in Ayuthaya (spelled wrong also), Thailand. A world heritage sight, it was the former capital of Thailand until the Burmese did a great job of sacking it, leaving a few minor ruins. They are nice, but after visiting Angkor and Bagan, I am kind of a ruin snob, and don't find them very impressive. I have been hanging out with 5 English guys and two german girls who are more into the partying than the sight seeing, which is a change for me. Last night, after a bar, we went to a Thai club where our group was the only foreigners. There was no real dance floor; the dance area had tables all through it with groups sitting at them, and then occasionally getting up to dance around the table.

Tommorow I have to figure out how to get back to Bangkok in time for my flight, and then I'm off to the Philippines, where I may see Nika again for a couple of days...

The Golden Rock and back to Yangon

From Bago, I decided on a day trip by motorcycle to visit Kchychtio (which is definitely spelled wrong), a.k.a the Golden rock stupa. I went by day trip to ensure I would reach Yangon in time to celebrate the Passover Seder with the country's minuscule Jewish community of 8 families, all living in the capital. We left Bago at 4:30 AM for the three hour moto ride, and arrived around 8 at the base camp. The Golden Rock is at the top of a mountain, and hangs precariously off the side of a cliff. It looks as though, with a good push, it will tumble down the mountain. Luckily, a hair from the head of the Buddha holds it in place. After taking a pick-up most of the way and then climbing the steep last 45 minutes, I arrived at the top. The rock really is quite something to behold. I don't understand how it has been standing for so long. unfortunately, I only took vertical pictures of it and don't know how to flip them on this blog :-).






On the way down, I had a seat right in the middle of the back of the pick-up, which was painful, but super fun. There are about 8 rows of six people sitting on wood boards crammed like sardines in the truck on the way down. It is probably goos we were so tightly packed, otherwise, with nothing to hold onto, I might have gone flying out. It was like going down a tame roller coaster, but with your hands in the air and nor restraints whatsoever.

The next morning, I booked a ticket for the 2 hour long 11:30 train to Yangon. They wouldn't let me on the train because I was a tourist, and instead made me take the very late 1 PM train which got to Yangon at 6:30. I rushed immediately to the synagogue to see if I could find out about the Seder, but no one was around, which was very disappointing. I went back to the Shul for services the next morning, and found out that there hadn't been a Seder anyway (and there weren't any services).

I spent the last couple of days going to the markets and back to the Shwedagon pagoda, and talking to locals who kept stopping me on the street. I will soon leave for a couple days to visit the nearby ruins of Ayathaya, and then on to the Philippines, my last foreign stop. My South East Asia adventure is almost finished!

The Tingyan Water Festival in Mandalay

We arrived in Mandalay on the second day of the five day Burmese water festival called Tingyan. It was so fun!! Basically, there are people standing everywhere with buckets of water to drench you, especially if you are a tourist (or a women, but I don't want to get into that right now). On the main roads surrounding the Mandalay palace there are stages set up with dancers and Burmese pop govers of Western music playing. From the stages, people with hoses splash all the men dancing beneath and the motos and pick-ups cruising tghe strip. By this point, Myanmar was brutally hot, with average temperatures of 40 celcius in the afternoon. As a result, being drench all day was quite a relief for me.

Unfortunately, me and my other tourist friends all got stoack problems from something on the boat. For Michael and Eva, this meant they didn't leave their rooms for a few days, and I got off the easiest. The afternoon we arrived, me and Daniel went to check out the partying, and some local guys our age insisted we join them on their motos. We then spent the next couple hours driving 5 minutes, getting of at a stage, dancing for five minutes, and then driving to the next stage. In the evening, we met them again to watch a soccer game, but I was feeling too sick so had to leave early.




The next day, we had made plans to visit the Ancient capital cities surrounding Mandaly by taxi. Unfortunately, I was the only one in any condition to go, though I shouldn't have gone anyway and felt pretty sick the whole time. The highlight for me was the first stop, the Paliek Snake temple. It became famous when the three original snakes that lived there died, and shortly after three huge, and friendly new ones slithered out of the woods to replace them. The interesting part was not so much the snakes themselves, but the hordes of local tourists and their excitement at getting to bathe and feed the snakes. One of the other highlights was the longest teak wood bridge in the world, at Amarapura, which was swarming with local tourists celebrating Tingyan. Many were doing so in cafes located in the water.



The third day, I met a local women my age named Chan Mye Thu, who I had originally met in Yangon and wanted to show me around. I told her I was too sick to go, but she looked so dissapointed I went anyway, which worked out well because I was fine once we left. We rode around with her cousins and visited some of the sites of Mandalay as well as the Tingyan celebrations. Tingyan was damppened, unfortunately, because after dancing a bit some jerk tried to grab Chan and kiss her, so we left.




I left Mandalay ny overnight bus, which was the only non-plane transportation I took between cities that did not break down or arrive late. Instead, it arrived really early, which was worse because I got to Bago at 4 in the morning. After sleeping awhile, a did a day tour of the Myriad of Buddha images and religious sites in the town, including the highest stupa and largest reclining Buddha in the country, and maybe the world?

Bagan and Katha, Myanmar

From Kalaw, I tooke the ten hour bus to Bagan. The only hitch was 45 minutes in the bus broke down, and we had to wait 4 hours by the side of the road for them to fix it, so got into Bagan a bit late :-). Bagan is famous for the thousands of ancient temples built there. They are not as impressive, large, or intricate as Angkor in Cambodia, but the sheer number of them in such a small area is staggering. Furthermore, the area is very flat with few tall trees, so if you climb up on a higher temple, the views of the plain are great. I spent two and a half days temple hopping, and one morning making a trip to Mount Poppa, a nearby sacred spot with a temple on the top. It is a shrine to a female Nat (spirit) who wished herself to appear like an Ogre so as not to be observed while praying to the Buddha.



There are also many local tourists who come to Bagan, including this group of monks, who asked ME, (no tht eother way around) to take a picture with them. I fit in well with my red shirt :-).



I wanted to catch a train on a certain day in order to catch a certain ferry, so to save some time, I flew from Bagan to Mandalay. The problem is the taxi ride from the airport into town costs $18. Luckily, a asked a young looking guy if he wanted to split a cab. He said no, he had a driver waiting for me, but they could drop me off at the train station no charge :-). Unfortunately, the train was sold out at the station, so I had to spend the night in Mandalay and take the train the next day. That afternoon, I met another guy from Toronto who also just finished an economics in Ottawa (creepy, no?), and a German brother and sister who were also thinking of going upriver, and I told them my plan and they decided to join me. The plan was to take the train tp Taba, the short busride to Katha, and then the ferry back. We bought our train tickets seperately, however, so I had sitting class, while they had sleeper, and shared their car with a Burmese man who spoke very little English.

After the train, which left two hours late, got moving, I went to join them in their car, where the Burman and his friends had already ordered them all beers, and proceeded to try to get us drink for 8 hours while getting drunk themselves. Due to the heat and fear of dehydration, however, I more or less refrained. The Burmese man loved me, however, because I said hello and no thank you in Bamar. For about twenty minutes, he stated that I spoke Burman, to which I replied only a little, accompanied by showing 'a little' with my fingers. He would then laugh, tell me I was his son, and repeat the staement. When I left to go to sleep in my chair, he told me he would think about me every day and told me his phone number. Back at my seat, I was surprised to find a monk already sleeping in it. What do you do when a monk takes your seat? While I was standing there pondering my dilemma, however, some other people on the car woke up the monk for me and got him to move. I aso learned that, even though trains move, it doesn't mean mice don't live on them. As soon as it got dark, tens of mice ran back and forth along the floor.

We arrrived at Taba around 2:30, hopped on the bus, which broke down for an hour, and arrived in Katha at 4 Am. The only guesthouse with beds was the worst place I have stayed so far. It did not have walls that reached the ceiling or a mattress, never mind a bathroom, AC, or breakfast. What was worse, knowing that he was the only game in town, the owner charged us 7 dollars each, which normally gets you all of the above in Burma. I was furious and walked out to find a place on the beach, but then returned because I didn't want to get any locals in trouble for illegally letting a foreigner stay on their property.

Because I had missed the train the day before, I only spent 12 hours in Katha, but there wasn't much to do, so it wasn't so bad. What was cool was that while in Katha I wa reading 'Burmese Days' by George Orwell, which he wrote while stationed in Katha, and which takes place in the town. I did a short sightseeing tour of the places mentioned in the book.

At four, we got on the two night ferry back to Mandalay, which was one of the highlights of the trip. We bought deck class tickets and plastic mats, so slept on the deck under the stars at night and strung up hammocks to block the son in the afternoon. We basically just read, played carsds, and hung out with the locals. My German friend Daniel said "Its like an all inclusive cruise!! All we're missing is a pool and an actual room."






The locals loved our cameras, juggling shows, card games, music, and post cards, and we had a great time with them. Michael, the Torontonian (to add to the creepiness, my middle name is Michael) had UNO, and some of our new friends figured it out by watching and joined us, which was very entertaining. We were all pretty sad to say goodbye when we got to Mandalay.

Yangon and Inle Lake, Burma

I am back in Bangkok today after 4 weeks in Burma, and will break up the posts so I don't go crazy trying to write about my amazing four weeks. I just got back from watching Rambo IV, which I purposely didn't watch before leaving so I wouldn't scare myself. I don't recommend it, its not a very good movie, even if you consider it just for the action.

To get to Burma, you must fly; tourists cannot enter overland. I arrived in Yangon and spent the first day walking around the city. They people in Burma are so friendly!! I had to keep stopping because people would ask "excuse my brother, where you from?", and it would begin a conversation. It was also eerie seeing so few tourists around. I would literally walk for hours and not see anyone. At some of the 'sights', and at the hotel you would see the tourists, but in between there was no one. Their tourist industry has really taken a hit since the demonstrations last September. I met up with a local woman my mother had met when she visited named Phyothaya, and her daughter Chan Chan. They are lovely people, and took me to the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred religious site in Burma. It was incredible. It is so beautiful and is surrounded by other pagodas, shrines, and temples. After dark, you can see the diamonds at the top glittering and changing colour depending on the light. I ended up going back there again on my last day.



I left Yangon pretty quickly, and flew to Heho airstrip, which is kinda in the middle of nowhere. From their, I took a pickup with locals followed by a moto to reach Inle Lake, and stayed at the best guesthouse of my trip so far, Queen Inn. For seven bucks I had a huge room, hot water, and all you can eat breakfast and dinner. Inle lake itself is beautiful. It is famous for its floating villages and gardens. The gardens are staked to the bottom of the lake with bamboo poles and fertilized with lake bottom dredged up by the farmers. The inhabitants are also famous because they often row with one hand and one foot so as not to tire as easily and to get a better view of rocks in the shallow lake. It also has a very colourful market where I saw many diffrerent ethnicities trading their wares.





From Inle, I did a four day trek to a town called Kalaw. It was another great opportunity to see georgeous views and meet villagers, though it got a bit lonely with no other westerner to talk to in the evenings. The highlight for me was spending one night sleeping in a monastery. Waking up to the sound of novice monks chanting beats any alarm clock I've heard.