Thailand: October 2004
Ah, Thailand! This place is like a black hole in the web of reality that could pull you into its center and never allow you to return to your normal life again. Ko Pha-Ngan, where I spent most of my time, is beautiful, serene and devoid of obnoxious highrise hotels that spoil the view and the natural ambiance of a place. Instead, small bungalows blend into the palm trees and other vegetation that reach out over the sand of the beach. In five minutes, I could walk out the front door of my room, past the hammock on my porch, put on a snorkel and swim out to the coral reef about 20-30 yards off the beach.
I also met the coolest westerners in Thailand that I have met so far in Asia. In China, "American" is a bad word, and you just kind of brace yourself for the reaction when someone asks you where you're from. I didn't get any of that in Thailand. Even the French guys that I hung out with were totally cool, although they did say that they don't understand the American obsession with flip flops. I met a ton of awesome, laid back people there who really get it. And the strange thing is that they weren't just beach bumming, pot-smoking losers. There was a young Canadian immigration lawyer working in India and his brother, another female lawyer originally from Kansas, a former U.N. worker who is now busy de-mining Laos, some entrepreneurial Americans and Brits who had set up their own bar on the beach, Irish scuba divers, and future Swedish soldiers on their last vacation before enlistment. It didn't matter who you ran into, if you were on the beach, you were a friend. It was a nice break that felt almost like friendly old Oklahoma.
I also spent a day in Bangkok before my flight left. I didn't want to be in another big, polluted city like Beijing, so I only went to a few wats (Thai Buddhist temples), the "big" wat: Wat Phrao Keow and the Grand Palace. Wat Phrao Keow is connected to the Grand Palace, and both places are opulent in the truest sense of the word. First of all, they are covered in gold. We're not talking a few gold trinkets here and there, we're talking four-storey walls covered in designs made from small pieces of gold, crystal and jade. We're talking whole statues that are covered in the stuff. There are three famous shrines there, one of them stretching high into the sky and covered completely in gold squares. This is also the home of the Jade Buddha, a sacred relic for Buddhists. The room where the statue is held is covered in gold, too: statues, pictures, paintings, you name it. According to Thai culture, the feet are considered dirty, so I couldn't even stand facing the Buddha since my feet would have been pointing at it. This temple and palace exhibit the kind of excess you expect to find in a palace, but it was pretty cool to see.
Since I was traveling alone, I only have two pictures of myself in Thailand, and one's a "Where's Waldo" kind of thing...see if you can find me! Check them out by clicking on the photo album at the top.