April 11, 2005

Thailand Part One: NYC to Bangkok

So I decided to go to Thailand for a little over a month. No reason in particular besides I'd heard from a few people that it was gorgeous, that you could spend a lot of time there and not spend too much money and I was looking to do some freelance photography stuff. So I bought a ticket and hopped on a plane.

Monday, April 11th

I packed light figuring that anything I'd need while there, I could purchase cheaply. Here's me at Meredith's with my one leeetle backpack getting ready to head to the airport.

En route to JFK.

International Terminal.

This photo seemed appropos as I was about to embark on my west-meets-east journey. Hahaha.

Goodbye, NYC!

Holy shit, I'm on my way to Thailand!

I bought my ticket from Korean Airlines. I was to fly from NYC to Seoul, Korea (Incheon) and then after a 4 hour layover, fly from Seoul to Thailand. The whole enchilada round trip only cost like $800! But the best part of the (14 first leg of the flight, ugh)? Was the motherfucking Bi bim bab they served for lunch! (Which is one of my favorite foods of all time).

It even came with a little guide on how you're supposed to prepare your bi bim bab (for any of whities on board who are not down with Koreatown). Step 1. Put the steamed rice into the BIBIMBAP bowl. Step 2. Add the oil and hot pepper paste to the rice and vegetables. Step 3. Mix the ingredients well. After I finished eating, I tried to watch the in-flight movie....

...but there was a giant Korean man in front of me blocking pretty much the entire screen with his giant Korean head.

Because NYC and Seoul are so far away, they fly the plane up north in parabolic arc (because the earth is less wide up there, no joke). So that meant that we go to fly over Alaska!

Incheon Airport (about 30 minutes outside of Seoul).

Brand new and almost totally empty. I walked around and found they had a place where I could take a shower for like $10. Which after 14 hours on a plane, I felt like I desparately needed. Then after showering...

...I got some more tasty Korean food.

Then hopped on my flight to Bangkok (which I think was another 5 hours).

Bangkok! I landed a little after midnight.

I headed outside, hailed a taxi and asked to be taken to Khao San Road (which is the one super-over developed street in Bangkok that's filled with 30 or 40 cheap hostels and serves as the sort of jumping off point for anyone that goes to Thailand to backpack around). It's sorta the n00b equililent of landing at JFK, getting in a cab and being like "Take me to Times Square, kind sir!"

What I had neglected to discover in the, oh, 10 minutes of research I'd done before buying my ticket was that the very day I was arriving was the first day of the three day celebration of Songkran, the Thai New Year. So remember my Khao San = Times Square analogy? Well, the analogy holds up as far as New Years are concerned as well. So I had pretty much just told my cabbie to take me to Times Square on New Year's Eve. After my driver finished explaining this to me on the drive over, he added "It's going to be so crowded over there, I'm probably only going to be able to get you within 10 blocks of Khao San, and then you'll have to walk it from there." I was like "No problem."

He then asked, "Do you have a lot of expensive electronics in your bags?" Caught offguard, I answered honestly "Not really, but I do have a few cameras, why?" It turns out the Thai people celebrate Songkran by throwing buckets of water at each other. Doh.

The cabbie was correct - the Khao San area was so mobbed that he was only about to get me with 10 blocks of where all the hostels were. So explained the route I'd have to take and wished me luck keeping my electronics dry as navigated the bucket-of-water-throwing throng. Haha. It took me almost 40 minutes to make it to Khao San through the crowd. I made it through and managed to stay relatively dry. I hit up the D&D Inn, which I'd read good things about and went up to my room to drop off my bag. Here's me in the elevator. See that white stuff on my face? Well, the other part of Songkran is that eveyone has a little cup full of this greyish mud (made from ashes and water?) and everyone walks around and rubs it on each other's faces for good luck.

The first room I was given reeked of mildew, so I went downstairs and they hooked me up with a new room that was pretty nice. Sparse, but I had a private bathroom and A/C and it only cost 450 Baht (which at 38 Baht per USD, meant I was paying less than $12 a night!). Insanity! I unpacked my bag and tried to decide if I wanted to sleep or wanted to go out for a bit (after almost 24 hours of continuous travel, my body was sure what it wanted). It was almost 2am local time, and I decided to head out to the street and grab a beer and then try to sleep.

By the time I got back outside, the huge mob of people had pretty much cleared out...

...but there were still quite a few people running around putting mud on peoples' faces. And now that I didn't have a crowd to hide me, my blonde hair and blue eyes made me an attractive "I want to wish you a Happy New Year" target. In the span of 60 seconds, my face had been rubbed with mud no less than 20 times. Here's me with two new friends celebrating my "good luck."

The police began arriving to urge everyone to clear the streets, but I figured I still had time to grab a frosty beer. (Oh, by the way, did I mention that Thailand is FUCKING HOT? Like, steamy tropical jungle hot.)

I popped into this huge, open air bar a stone's throw away from the D&D Inn where I was staying.

Place was starting to wind down.

I ordered a big beer and then sat out front people watching.

The po-po.

So I'm sitting outside, chatting with all sorts of drunk, random strangers (mostly all Europeans) when this girl walks up to, dips her fingers in her bucket of "good luck" mud, and then gently wiped some on each of my cheeks while giggling. Afterwards, she wordlessly leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. The kiss was chaste except for right at the end when she slipped me a little tongue. I was shocked and blushed as she pulled away and started girlishly giggling. I was like "Uh, Happy New Year?" She took a step back and then in a super-deep baritone, bellowed out "HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU TOO!" And started laughing a deep, mannish laugh.

She, was a he! I'd heard all sorts of stories about Thailands famous ladyboys and how most Western men weren't able to tell them apart from women. I'd been skeptical, but I hadn't even been in the country for two hours yet and I'd already been duped! After wishing me a happy new year, she started to run away, but I called her back so we could take a photo together. (I got the photo because I knew that without it no one would ever believe me about the "I swear you really couldn't tell she used to be a guy" part).

I've since learned that the ladyboys, or "kathoey" as they're known in Thai, are almost like a third sex. Boys decide at a young age, like 10 or 11, that they are kathoey and begin taking female hormones before they even through puberty which is why it's so hard to tell they're not female!

With the streets almost empty, I decided to head back to the D & D Inn, take an Ambien, and try to get a full night of sleep and wake up on local time.

Elevator shot again. Partially to show off my muddy face again (and partially to offer up as evidence that I didn't take the Ladyboy back to my room! Hahaha).

Wednesday, April 13th

On Wednesday morning, I slept late and after a lunch at the restaurant inside D&D's courtyard...

...I ventured outside to do some exlporing of the area. This is what I was greeted by as soon as I set foot out onto Khao San Road. Total madness!

A monk going by on a float dousing the crowd with water.

This cute lil' girl rubbed good luck ALL OVER my face.

After walking around Bangkok for a few more hours, I went up the D&D's roofdeck to read and have a swim.

So the day before I left for Thailand, I was running last minute errands in New York City when I ran into my friend Tara's friend Nazita on the street. When I told her that I was leaving for Thailand the next day, she was like "One of my best friends lives there! I'll give you her email - tell her you're coming and she'll take you out!" So by pure luck, I went from not having anyone to call on in Thailand to having someone! Marie emailed me right back and on my first night in town, we met up! I took a cab to her apartment (which despite being almost 40 minutes away by car only cost me 140 Baht with tip - about $3.60!!!).

After we met up, we headed over to her friend's house (this guy!) for a little pre-game before going, to guess where...Khao San Road! to meet up with some more of her friends.

It was nice and mellow. Everyone was just hanging out and relaxing.

I don't remember anyone's name!

After getting suffiently...

...warmed up...

...we headed back to Khao San and partied in a bunch of sketchy alley bars (because the main drag was still totally mobbed with people celebrating the New Year and pouring water and/or mud on everyone.

Case in point? Claire's muddy face and my soaked shirt.

Later that night, one of Claire's (English) friends was talking to one of the Thai bartenders and things seemed totally normal and friendly. He ordered a beer, and the bartender gave him one out of cooler. Claire's friend picked it up and was like "Um, this beer's not very cold. Do you have a colder one back there?" The bartender was like "Oh, you want a colder one? Here try this one." And then as he was about to hand it off, he suddenly stood up and smashed the bottle at Claire's friend's bare feet. He then started screaming in Thai and repeating smashing bottles at the ground. As he started to run away, the guy came around from behind the bar and started whipping full bottles of beer down the street after him. Total. Fucking. Insanity. (And I'm still not sure what set the guy off. Totally random.)

I waited until the bartender settled down, and then set out after the dude and everyone else that had run away. I caught up with them around the corner and we decided to head into a place called Immortal Bar.

I think this was the guy that had the bottles thrown at him but I can't remember.

marie elias — Claire talking on her cell phone in a ziplock baggie! Hahaha.

On the way home, I decided to score this pair of sweet, sweet aqua flip flops for $.25! Wooo! The end!

Thursday, April 14th

The next morning I met this guy Phillipe during breakfast at D&D. We got to chatting and then met some other travelers and all decided to head out together and check out the Grand Palace.

And this is Sarah, Michelle and Nicole. Three girls from BC traveling together that Phillipe and I met at breakfast. Here we are on our way over to the Grand Palace.

There's the palace in the distance. In order to get there, we had to cross this huge field that was filled with people celebrating...

...yep, you guessed it! Thai New Year!

Phillipe got chased around by like 10 kinds trying to put clay on his face. After an impressive 4 minutes of evasion, he gave up and got slimed.

There were these barricades set up with sprinkers in between them and people were taking turns running down the line soaking themselves.

Neato!

Out site the gates of the Grand Palace.

Rama the Great (the King of Thailand) with his wife.

Besides the roaming mobs of kids with hi-powered water guns, you also had to be on the lookout for the drive-by squirtings! Seven people in the back of a truck all with super-soakers equals you drenched.

Ok, the next pics are all palace shots that don't really need much captioning.

But feel free to ooh and ahh.

These are the pant I had to put on over my shorts (because you're not allowed to wear shorts insdide the Palace and I hadn't brought any pants to Thailand).

Around the entire perimeter of one of the huge, open courtyards inside is a building that has a continuous mural painted on it. The thing must be several thousand yards in length and it's INCREDIBLY detailed.

Here's a close up of some epic, supernatural battle.

My man Tolkien's got nothing on this.

Me with one of the Palace guards.

After a few more hours of sightseeing, we headed back to D&D for some dinner....

...and a swim up on the roof.

From the roof of D&D, you could see the huge courtyard that had the barricades with all the sprinklers and the palace in the background.

Later that night, me, Phillipe and the girls all decided to the Asia Hotel and check out the world famous "Ladyboy Caberet." The girls got dressed up all nice and on our walk over from the hostel to the street to try to find a tuk-tuk to take us to the hotel...

...Nicole (er, I think this is Nicole) got absolutely drenched by a truck that went by and like 10 people in it dumped an entire, huge, Rubbermaid garbage can of water on her.

Hahaha. Totally soaked.

After roaming the (totally mobbed) streets for 20 minutes (dodging bucketfuls of water everywhere!) we finally found a tuk-tuk willing to let all six of us pile in together. (A tuk tuk is basically a motorized rickshaw. It's usually a scooter that has a sort of wagon attached to it. It's also pretty much the least-safe vehicle I've ever ridden in). Here's the six of us crammed in.

And here's the view of our driver going down the highway and like 60 mph (literally). Here's how we almost died: So we're screaming down the highway, doing at least 50mph when suddenly a pickup truck at the side of the road throws entire garbage can of water at our tuk tuk and scores a direct hit. (A Rubbermaid garbage can holds 32 gallons of water. Water weighs 8.34 pounds per gallon. 32 x 8.42 = 266 LBS!) Do you have any idea what over 250 pounds of water does to a tuk tuk filled with seven people (six passengers, one driver) on the highway?

Our driver swerved all over the road so violently, I'm still amazed to this day that it didn't flip over and kill us all.

After we finished marveling over the fact that we'd not been killed - we arrived at the Asia Hotel and began the process of wringing out all of our clothes. (Apparently 32 gallons is a enough water to soak and entire party of six to the bone).

Happy to be alive.

Wooooo!

The crowd inside the Asia Hotel awaiting the start of the Labyboy Cabaret show.

Wait a minute! Who's this clown?

But things got underway soon enough.

The show was actually pretty amazing. It was a vignette of different Broadway-esque songs and dance routine (done really, really well) except everyone in the show (including all the totally hot ladies) are all Labyboys.

Wah-wah wee wah!

The show was totally over the top.

And even had a bunch of weird skits with totally over-complicated James Bond-esque plots.

Then my homegirl, Tina Turner showed up.

marilyn monroe — Thai tranny Marilyns!

The comic relief skit.

And the big, Thai-themed finale.

After the show we got to go backstage and meet all the gals and take pics.

Yay!

Best. Photo. Ever.

This girl was the breakaway star. She did all the comedy skits and played the foil throughout the show. (She was a like a Thai John Leguizamo)

Oooo la la! You love my flip flops!

Philippe was sorta scared (intimidated? creeped out?) by all of the Labyboys, but in the end we finally managed to convice to go say hi and have his pic taken.

After the show, we grabbed a huge dinner and then decided to all head into Patpong (which is Bangkok's famous sketchy-ass sex club district) to check out a strip club. We only ended up staying for one drink, becuase the club was pretty depressing. People doing marathon fucking on stage and girls juggling ping pong balls and smoking cigarettes with their ladyparts (eeek!!!).

This is a souvenir I was given on the way out. You don't even want to know where it was before it was put into my hand. (Needless to say, I've never wanted one of those travel bottles of Purell so badly).

After we got back to Khao San we hit a few bars and then called it might. Here's me back in my room showing off how badly I got slimed by a pack of kids blocking the entrance to the hostel. Happy New Year's!