Goodbye Alan...Hello Chiang Mai

Sunday, October 12th written by Priscilla

Today was a sad day. Alan departed us today to go back to New York to work. Before he left we had a farewell breakfast and I walked him out to get a cab. It was really great having Alan around, and I will miss him.

So dear readers, I will be your sole blogger from now on telling you our adventures everyday. I hope you will still enjoy reading it. If not, tough luck because it's my blog and this is for me to keep a record of my journey :-)

This morning I also chatted for a bit with my New York friends. It was Yi-Law's 30th birthday celebration and Erik's farewell gathering that night at my nyc apartment. Phan made delicious mussels with a spicy sausage tomato sauce, which I'm craving, and tons of other food. I'm sad that I missed out, but glad they made good use of the apartment.

After Alan departed us, Steph and I got ready while watching animal planet (yes, we are crazy for animals. This episode was about a baby elephant making it across the river with his parents). We also packed our bags in preparation for our overnight train ride to Chiang Mai. We figured for $23 we get to be there by the morning and save on a hotel stay. We are true budget backpackers. My wall-e has lost some weight now that I have given tons of stuff to Alan to bring home. It went from 17kgs to 14kgs. I hope I'm going to shed that much too, but I did weigh myself and I'm roughly the same weight still.

Steph and I decided to go check out the Jim Thompson house & museum. Alan remembers going there as a kid to buy silk ties, but we were more interested to check out the architecture. Something so simple like hailing a cab there was a pain. Drivers try their best to rip you off. Tuk tuks wanted 100 bhat, and taxis 300 bhat and refused to use the meter. Eventually we got a cab that would use the meter and it was only 75 bhat for the ride.

Jim Thompson was an American architect who decided to live in Thailand permanently to revive the hand weaving silk and cottage industry. He contributed significantly to the worldwide recognition of Thai silk.

Jim's house is well known. He constructed it by combining six teak houses of the best traditional thai architecture. It was very nice and open style. I really liked it. He built everything for ~500,000 baht (~$14,160 USD).

Some interesting facts about Jim Thompson's house:

- the house was elevated a full story above the ground to avoid flooding

- there is a spirit house for the gods. Daily offerings, such as food, water, and flowers are put in front of it. In addition the big house cannot shadow the spirit house because then it will symbolize the house is stronger than the spirits, then the spirits will not protect the house.

- Thais also believe in bad spirits. So to enter each room there is a raised piece of wood, so you need to walk over it. Thais believe bad spirits can't jump over it, so they would be trapped outside the room. Apparently it's useless against Chinese spirits since they can jump.

- the house was well decorated with Thai artifacts, buddhas, and paintings. He had really good taste. I wished I lived there.

Jim Thompson disappeared on March 26, 1967 while he visited the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. Not a single valid clue has turned up to what happened. If he is still alive today, he would be 102 years old. It was nice that we were able to enjoy the viewing of his house.

After our cultural tour, we decided to go do some street market shopping and grab some lunch. We decided to not add too much weight to our bags, but we needed a halloween costume for Oct 31st...so we decided to get t-shirts. We bargain shopped for a bit, but then decided to grab lunch before we purchased the t-shirts.

We stopped by a pizza place and shared a pizza topped with artichokes, black olives, ham and onions. Delicious. We also had strawberry ice tea that was so refreshing. It was the perfect slight sweetness. We heart it. Our lunch took a while since we didn't have much to do, so we chatted about life in general.

After lunch we found our t-shirts. Steph is little miss sunshine, bernice is little miss trouble, and I am little miss wise. Although I'm not really sure I qualify as wise, halloween is all about pretending ;-). We will all be wearing them on october 31st. See how creative we are! I also bought myself and louis (my best buddy) a t-shirt with an old fashion nikon film camera on it. On the bottom is says "All happened in a moment - take a photograph" . Yep, louis' shirt will also be travelling around the world with me.

By the time we were done, it was around 3:30pm, almost time for us to catch the train. We stopped by a fruit stand by our hotel to get a guava. We craved the delicious guava we had the first day we explored the temples. It was so sweet and crunchy, so heavenly. Unfortunately this one wasn't as good. In fact it was sour. We were very disappointed. We ended up getting pineapples and papaya instead to satisfy our fruit cravings. By the stand we bumped into a LA boy who quit his job to travel. It kind of amazes us that we bumped into several other travelers that quit their jobs to travel.

Steph and I agree this trip has been an eye opener for us. It's definitely made us more globally aware of the situation outside of the US and how people live outside a democratic society. Also, in time US may not be the only center in the world. It seems like China is quickly and efficiently catching on.

We got our bags, checked the internet quickly, then went off to the hail a taxi to the train station. We envisioned the same trouble we had this morning, but we were somehow lucky. The first cab we hailed immediately agreed on using meter. There was also very little traffic, so we got to the train station an hour early. We just camped out in a restaurant, and 10mins before we were about to leave the waitress came to us asking if we wanted any food or drinks. We were so close to getting away with not paying anything. We felt bad so we purchased water. She wasn't so happy about that, but hey we bought something.

The train looked a bit sketchy at first. There were only seats in it, and we bought sleepers seats. Man it would suck to be on the train upright for 12 hours. We later realized these seats transform into bunk beds! How cool! The beds were fairly clean, and we were pretty happy with it..until we were sleeping or used the toilet.

The beds were pretty jerky and the cabin was loud (not noise proof from the train chugging away), so steph and I didn't really sleep that much. On top of that the bathrooms were pretty gross. It had two options, drop and western toilets, both were small and had piss all over it. Thus, you really need to strategically plan each move and use your core and thighs to maintain your stance and not fall over. It was a bit of a challenge and made me think twice before sipping my water. Also, in the morning I noticed there was a bug crawling around my side of the cabin. Thank goodness we had our cocoons and pillow cases. Yes, we are not fully ghetto-ing it.

If you can overlook the bathrooms and minor cleanliness issues, I think sleeper bus and trains are the way to go. It's cheap, helps you save a night's accommodation, and gets you to your next destination by early morning. Maybe I prefer it because we're on a budget - it does the trick so why not.

While we were on the train, I wondered how Alan was getting along on his flight. He emailed me earlier to let me know his flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong was delayed due to "technical difficulties" and he missed his connecting flight to New York. Poor Alan. We had a whole day in Bangkok while he was stuck in the airport. I hope he still finds it funny when he returns home on a red eye at 6:30am, the day he goes to work, and finds his dear NY friends wrapped his apartment in plastic...including the toilet. I hope he doesn't need to pee right when he steps foot into his apartment!