Thailand is filled with temples! Every corner we turned there was another temple or statue of Buddha. Some of their temples are hundreds of years old and some are still being built today. The architecture is amazing and soooo much detail goes into the making. All of the gold color you can see are small pieces of gold leaf.
Thailand felt like an extremely safe place. In fact, it's much more likely you'll be talked into spending your money than it is to have someone grab your wallet out of your pocket. The first person to see us hunched over a map suggested that we take this tuk tuk (taxi) to a place with free tourist information, a place called T.A.T. The drive was about two minutes down the road, and five minutes later we had someone planning our very expensive week in Thailand. We spent almost half a day in their TAT office before we could escape that tourist trap. Jake and I aren't too fond of a scheduled vacation, and I'm so glad we took charge of our own destination this one week in Thailand.
And.... we saw more temples. We only stayed in Bangkok one day. It's a big city with tons of temples and tons of shopping, but that's about all there is to see in the big city.
Once again, you've gotta spend about 5 minutes watching the locals before you decide on anything. We wanted to take a river tour, but we didn't feel like spending $40. Instead of chartering a "long-tailed" traditional boat with tour guide, we took the bus boat. It costs about 30 cents and it was fun to ride it with a bunch of Thai people. There was a young kid that would jump onto the dock at every stop, tie up the boat, then whistle to the driver up front when everybody was on.
We didn't pull out our camera fast enough. All of the buildings along the water were so different from each other and had such amazing architecture. We did, however, catch this person fishing off of a boat bus stop.
We just chose any old boat stop to get some lunch. We saw people feeding the fish and it was CRAZY! There were so many fish that they would push and roll each other up and out of the water in order to get something to eat.
We ate at an awesome restaurant on the river. The bridge behind Jake is just another witness of the detail that goes into their architecture. In these buckets you have a choice of snake, toad, or snails to take home and fry up for dinner. Don't believe me? Just check out the menu.... fried snake head!When we left Bangkok we took an Air Conditioned train down to a city called Hua Hin where Jake and I karaoke'd at our hotel restaurant with a bunch of local drunks, scooter'd around and got Thai massages every day. I mention the A/C on the train because we froze the entire time! We paid extra for the luxury of A/C (about $10). They passed out blankets after a while but we still froze for a good 4 hours.
Jake was the scooter driver the entire time. I still can't drive a scooter because I'm too afraid to lean for a turn. We got pulled over by the Thai police our first day driving around because I was the only one wearing a helmet. The next place we rented a scooter we made sure to get two helmets. I'm sure glad Jake never got a picture of me wearing the nerd helmet.
On our next train ride down the coast to the city of Hat Ban Krut we took the 3rd class Fan Only train. It was wonderful! We got a better view of everything outside and the temperature was perfect. And this time we paid a tenth of what we did before (about $1).
At different stops women with concessions would get on the train and try to sell us food. We had some fried chicken and sweet rice cooked in bamboo.
In Ban Krut we stayed in a cute little bungalow on the beach. The people who ran it lived right next door, and they pretty much took us in like family. This was way out in the middle of nowhere and It was wonderful!
There was a small canal on the other side of our bungalow where a lot of fisherman parked their boats. They could only enter and exit this canal a couple times a day when the tide was high enough. The traditional fishing boats are always painted with bright colors-- just another awesome sight to see! We also found buckets of nets that were tied together and weighed down on the edges with seashells.
Our beach was solely BEACH for 40 kilometers in each direction from our bungalow. It was completely deserted, no buildings or anything, and probably the best place one could ever go to take a vacation from the crazy of life! Those footprints are ours, and only OURS!
We saw some HUGE jellyfish. I was okay with it until I saw one in the water next to me. These were the biggest jellies I've ever seen in my life. Apparently they don't really sting, just make you itch.
We saw a lot of cool stuff from the back of a scooter. More temples, buddhas, cemeteries, and piles upon piles of coconuts. Ban Krut had just had the monkeys for a visit. They train them to climb the palm trees and throw down the nuts!
They really make their loved ones headstones just as elaborate, if not more so, than their temples. They are very beautiful.
There are also dogs EVERYWHERE. We couldn't believe how many dogs are just laying around in the sun, minding their own business.
We also saw some interesting things from the back of an elephant. Yes, we rode an elephant and it was so fun! Our elephant's name was BuMin, which means 25 years old.
You steer the elephant by kicking behind it's ears.
Our elephant was hungry so she kept stopping and eating plants along the way. It was kinda scary to sit on her head and have her lean down to get something to eat, it meant the person riding on top was leaning way over too. We had to keep kicking her ears so that we could finish the ride. She got tired of the tour and us kicking so she picked up an old pineapple top and started swinging it at us. She was an elephant with attitude and it was great!
Our guide's name was Chai. During the middle of the ride he stopped and tried to sell us some "good luck charms" made from the teeth bone and tail hair of the elephant.... only about 100x overpriced. But he was a nice guy.
While riding through the village we saw a wild bore, more buddhas, and a sweet-faced lady doing her laundry outside. The simplicity this culture embraces seems to make life much more enjoyable.
Elephants make for a really bumpy ride but towards the end of the tour our guide jumped back up on BuMin and swam us through a smooth little river. We fed a baby elephant afterwards. I was giving him bananas one at a time when this Thai guy walked up and told me to give him the whole bunch of bananas at once. I didn't realize I had been teasing this elephant the entire time, but he took the whole bunch and just started popping the bananas right out of the peel! It was so funny!
Then Chai sent us away with a complimentary pineapple boat! YUMMY!
And of course.... more temples. The pictures simply cannot capture it. The wonder and majesty of these buildings were breathtaking. I can understand why people outside of the church want to see the inside of LDS temples. Our temples are beautiful from the inside out too. Even though we take a lot of time and energy to make our temples beautiful, that isn't our focus. I felt the same way about Thailand and all of the Buddhist temples there. They really make their places of worship beautiful, but the decor is not their focus.
We thought this doorway was a mirror. I don't know how they managed to do this, but the whole time walking through this temple we just couldn't understand where one wall would stop and where the next wall started.
Maybe these pictures aren't doing it for you, but just looking back at them I'm almost in that same trance I was in while wandering these halls.
Stained glass is another difficult thing to capture on film. Someday I want to learn and make a hobby of creating my own stained glass masterpieces.
Just outside of the temple we noticed somebody drying bananas for snacks on these big, round baskets. There were flies all over them and I just thought, "yum, we'll probably buy some of those later."
Jake and I both bought a pair of these fisherman pant things at the beginning of our trip and wore them almost every day. They were super comfortable and breezy.
We walked by this cute little restaurant earlier in the day and decided it would be fun to come back when it was open. We stopped by for dinner and didn't realize what we were in for until we met our waitress. She offered us 5 different kinds of alcohol and when we expressed that just water would be fine she laughed. Obviously this was the only bar in town and the big American tourists just wanted water. Needless to say, it was the greasiest meal we choked down during the entire trip. The food we ate the rest of our time there was outstanding! Thai food has always been Jake's favorite (our first date was thai food @ Haleiwa Eats). The flavors are all so strong, different and independent. We ate authentic Thai food for every meal our entire vacation and never got tired of it!
We visited this awesome old temple built inside of a cave. There were another 50 buddha statues and lots of incense burning. Outside were a string of big bells you could bong that were supposed to grant you the honest desires of your heart. The monks like to hear the bells ring throughout the hills.
We also saw where the monks hang their laundry to dry! They mostly wear bright orange, but any old color will do.
When it was finally time to fill up the scooter again, we couldn't find the gas station. We asked for directions 3 times and everyone kept pointing in the same direction but we simply could not see it! Finally, we noticed something that caught our attention: A couple of people hanging out on scooters next to these two big 50 gallon drums with tubes sticking out the top. Here was the gas station! Joe, a nice Thai man who had lived in Los Angeles for 20 years, filled up our tank and sent us on our way with a couple of jokes and a big smile :)
We advise anyone who is planning a vacation to seriously consider Thailand. It's a country full of religion, culture, space and time. The days seem long, but almost not long enough.
Note the mate'. Yep, this was the best vacation ever.
