Summer Vacation-Paul

Sweat, Sunburns and German Tourists

This is Paul; I just got back from two weeks in Thailand, Cambodia and Hawaii so it’s time to talk about it.

Thailand

Since we were going to be moving from place to place on our travels, we decided that large travel backpacks were the best way to go. So we packed our backpacks, keeping in mind all the things we are not allowed to carry on-board a plane, and headed out the door of our apartment. From there we walked to the train station to catch a train to the bus station and from there to Narita airport. After meeting with our friends, Wade, Austin, Zane and Carla, we were on a plane to a place where, as of one year ago, I never thought I would visit. And after some rude customs officials, we stepped out into Bangkok.

As Devan said, we were greeted with a wall of sweaty air…and she’s right…it smells like sweat in that country. But we found a couple of cabs and were taken to the Christian center to sleep in wonderful air-conditioning and on soft beds. We awoke the next morning and headed down to the American Embassy, also known as McDonalds, to eat some breakfast. It was here we found that Thailand is quite cheap, how cheap? It was around 32 Baht to one US Dollar. So meals cost between one and two dollars…for both Devan and I! That was probably one of the coolest parts about Bangkok was how cheap everything was. We could go anywhere in the city in a cab for about six dollars, and don’t forget to split that price four ways!

That day we visited some old temples, only bringing shorts with me on my excursion I had to rent a pair of pants. Not only did they keep my legs cool, they looked a lot like MC Hammer pants. We looked at some cool old stuff…not knowing the history, I will describe a lot of temples as stuff. Just look at the pictures if you’d like to see some cool old stuff. From here we just made our way around Bangkok with our trusty guides, Ning and Joe…two locals who go to church at the Christian center. After the walk around the temple/palace complex, it was time for some lunch.

Thai food has two spice levels: 1.Burns on the way in 2.Burns on the way in and out. I mostly went with choice 1 and enjoyed everything I ate. But for our first meal in Bangkok, Devan got this ground beef and peppers that was honestly the spiciest dish I have ever had. Her eyes watered up three bites into the meal. I was kind enough to trade my rice and chicken and eat her dish of evil spicy beef. But when I could taste it, I thought it tasted really good. Thai food is one of my favorites now and I wish they had more restaurants in Mito. My favorite dishes are the rainbow selection of curry dishes they have. Green, red or yellow curry…they’re all wonderful over a ball of rice. One last thing about food, liquid actually, is you shouldn’t drink the water…they have nasty little things in their water so just say no.

Before we headed back to the center we had some dinner and went to see The Dark Knight, for about three dollars. For those of us who were awake, the movie was great and we’ll probably go see it again tonight. After the movie we headed back for a short rest before the trip to Cambodia.

Cambodia

We woke up and headed to the train station, we were being lead by about 10 pages of instructions Austin printed off the internet on how to get there without being ripped off. And the locals tried to rip you off. After a four hour bus trip to the border we got off to take a small taxi all the way to the border. It was here the small taxi tried to take us to a smaller area that was not the border to get us to buy a fake visa…as I said…ripping us off. As the instructions said, we were polite but firm and adamantly requested to be taken to the border. We paid for our visas and found a taxi to take us to our hotel outside of Angkor Wat and relaxed in our taxis for a three hour trip on a dirt road that should have been a Jeep Wrangler course. When people say that Cambodia is a third-world country, they mean it. You share the road with motorcycles, Russian trucks loaded till they break and block traffic, barefoot children, dogs and farm animals.

We make our way to the wonderful little place called “Mom’s Hotel” and are greeted with marble floors, air-conditioning and a shower that could peel your skin if you turned it on high. We were very happy once we arrived. Siem Reap was nothing like what we expected after our ride. We even had satellite television! After a good night’s rest we headed to my favorite part of the vacation, Angkor Wat.

I am not too sure about the entire history, all I know is that the complex is huge and couldn’t be explored in one day if you spent only 20 minutes at each location. It was massive. We took plenty of pictures, and truthfully, I couldn’t tell you the names of the places we went. Just head to Wikipedia and do some research. It’s pretty cool.

After a day of sweating we decided it was time for another shower, a good meal and a nice rest. We knew the next morning would be filled with that lousy bumpy ride to the border of Thailand.

Koh Chang

The ride was just as bad as we remembered and even longer. But once we got to the border, the roads were paved and we thought nothing could stop us from getting to the island of Koh Chang quickly…we were wrong. Even when you have paved roads, good drivers and a Toyota fast travel is not guaranteed. Our van, 3 hours out, started having mechanical problems…it sounded like the engine was about to come loose and explode…but they kept driving reassuring us that someone else was on the way to pick us up. Around 5 PM that someone showed up and picked up us for the last 30 minutes of the journey to the island. We got onto the ferry around 5:30 and waited another 30 minutes for it to start moving. Then one more hour and we were on the island and at our hotel. It was here we were greeted with gentle waves and a nice sunset over our bungalows.

Koh Chang was great. We slept as long as we want and ate all the cheap Thai food we could eat. The days were filled with naps and swimming in the very warm ocean. My only worries involved snakes, I was told that Thailand has about 10 species of venomous snakes…luckily we didn’t see any of them. One of the days we were there we did a tree-top adventure that involved hooking oneself to a harness and zooming through the trees on cables. It was the most fun we had on the island. Days were becoming shorter as I realized that I would soon be leaving Devan for five days to go to Hawaii…however the thought of being in Hawaii helped.

So the time came for me to head to Bangkok for a night, it takes a whole day to travel back to Bangkok so I had to leave a day before my flight. This is when my travel became interesting. I found a travel agency that advertised transport to Bangkok for 500 Baht, about 16 dollars. Not bad, I thought, so I got a ticket and met them in the morning. I kissed Devan goodbye and said a little prayer in hopes that I would get there safely. My ride consisted of going 70mph on a road that was meant for 45mph to a ferry dock that was clearly the oldest on the island. And the ferry that came to the dock was possibly just as old. This trip across the channel took around 30 minutes more than the other ferry I took. While waiting for the ferry I was greet by five friendly German tourists that looked just as confused as I was. They were wondering where that bus was that was supposed to take us to Bangkok. We get off the ferry and are lead to the back of a truck. They told us to put our luggage in here and then…ourselves. So driving around Thailand in some old Nissan pickup…at least it had “air.” We finally get to the bus that would take us there and get out of the pickup; my knuckles were a bit white from gripping the underside to stay in. We get on the bus and wait another 40 minutes for it to leave only to be let down as it stops three more places until the bus is full of smelly tourists…this did not include me…I showered. We then, head to Bangkok and only stopped once, at a place that tried to charge me 200 Baht for a package of cashews. Tourist trap or not, I finally got to Bangkok for 500 Baht safely. Now it was time to shop for a hotel. The bus dropped us off at the most touristy place there was and it smelled bad…really bad. This section of town had to have had an open sewer because it made me gag a couple of times. After getting fed up with the area, and kindly refusing the offer to stay with the Germans, did I mention it was five middle aged women? I hailed a taxi and gave him the address for the international youth hostel and found a nice shower, bed and internet all for less than 6 dollars. I skipped the shower and internet and went to bed. I woke up the next morning, found a cab and went to the airport. It was here I had my first food since yesterday morning and could finally relax on a plane. Next stop Hawaii.

Hawaii

The last leg of my journey was the first reason of the vacation. My friend James O’Brien called me and told me he was getting married in Hawaii…sweet, I thought. Well, when it came time to buy tickets only one of us could go because of fuel prices. I felt really bad since only I was going until our friend Zane told us about how it only cost a fraction of that to go to Thailand…which explains why we had such a big vacation.

So I arrived in Hawaii, after a ridiculous flight from Taipei to Seoul to Honolulu and greeted my friend and his bride to be, Mayumi. We headed to the beach and had a burger then tried some surfing. Then it was off to the big house we’d all be staying in by the ocean. It was awesome to be able to have a washer and dryer, mostly for the dryer…haven’t seen one of those outside a laundry mat in four months. We visited the local congregation that Sunday and also did some snorkeling. But for the most part we all relaxed and talked about how we really didn’t want to go back to our jobs. Me, I missed Devan. The wedding went over Wednesday morning without a hitch and the next morning I was off to Japan. After a good night’s rest and lovely dinner with the missus I am here, at school, typing the journal entry. Thanks for reading.