Madeleine’s Travel Blog

May 22nd, 2008 - Khorat, Thailand

We haven’t been up to much in Khorat. I haven’t been feeling well, and I’m also contemplating putting together a film piece in time to apply for the Vancouver film festival. For the most part I’ve been laying around in the room, checking out footage, while Evy’s been meandering around town on her own.
We’re trying to see if we can meet up with some people Evy knew back when she was volunteering near here, but so far it’s been a little more difficult than planned. We did meet up with a former fellow teacher of hers, which was fun - he took us to a night market and out for Thai food. It was her host family that we were really interested in meeting up with though, but they’ve moved in the meantime so we’ll see if it works out.

May 18th, 2008 - Train ride to Khorat

The whole concept of bbq chicken thighs takes on a whole new meaning when they are no longer discreetly separated from their respective feet. Somehow the clawed appendages – fried and neatly skewered on shish kabob sticks – were particularly unappealing to us on the train ride from Bangkok to Khorat today. Though now that I think about it, I’m not sure which was worse, those or the equally neatly skewered squid carcasses (at least, we think that’s what they were). Those came at 5 per stick, a real steal I’m sure, and stunk up the entire train cart immediately upon entrance – even though all the windows were wide open. They and the chicken legs were only a couple of the options proffered by the never-ending stream of on-board food sales agents, each loudly proclaiming their product as they walked by. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. I of course had an aisle seat, permitting an up close and personal viewing area of goods – like it or not.
Unfortunately for my lust of photographic documentation, the one ultra hip dude who happened to catch my eye (out of the many selling the skewered squid), either didn’t understand the concept of the camera and my question of whether or not I could take his photo, or simply didn’t want his photo taken. I was sorry to miss out. Somehow his hip tapered-leg jeans, (fake) designer shirt, cap & coiffed hair added a certain panache to his ultra casual stroll up and down the aisles, bucket of squidsticks in hand. Too bad.

May 16th, 2008 - Bangkok, Thailand

I had to spend a day at the Panasonic headquarters in Bangkok today, located in the equivalent of Langley or maybe White Rock. My videocamera’s playback function collapsed on Tarutao island, and after buying a mini-screwdriver set and attempting to take it apart, I realized (perhaps fortunately early on!) that there was no way I was going to be able to fix it. Luckily for me, it seems Panasonic’s main headquarters in this part of the world is in Bangkok, and with a little persuading I was able to get them to fix it the day I brought it in. {I was a little more adamant about it than I might have been, due to the fact that it turned out there was an upcoming long weekend, and my original given option was to have the camera returned to me the following week – a good 4 days after we’d been planning on leaving town.} $100 later, so far so good with the camera – all seems to be working well. Knock on wood…

May 15th, 2008 - Bangkok, Thailand

I’ve kind of enjoyed Bangkok, for all people complain about its dirtiness. We’re staying in an ultra-touristy backpacker section of town, but it’s conveniently located near a local Muay Thai boxing school. We went to 3 classes at the centre there, and it was awesome. I may not have been doing much exercise in a while, but I think one of those classes would give a typical Hapkido workout a pretty good run for it’s money. I was super sore afterward, but it was fun to be active again. I particularly enjoyed one of the instructors, a cute little older guy, who was a good head shorter than me. Whenever he was holding the pads he would call out ‘knockout’ if I did a particularly good punch or kick – it’s always nice to have unequivocal supporters!

May 11th, 2008 - Ko Tarutao, Tarutao National Park

The island of Tarutao is the island upon which they shot Survivor Thailand, and it would have been the embodiment of paradise if it hadn’t been for the weather. Monsoon season arrived early here this year. It rained and it stormed and it generally lacked utterly in sunshine except for one half-hour on our proposed last day, which once we reached the beach (excitedly sunscreened up and in our bathing suits), immediately turned back into a thunderstorm. We rushed back through the rain and packed our stuff, giving up on the potential of good weather after 6 days of bad. Then however, even though they’d claimed we could catch the ferry out, it turned out it was too windy and wavy. No boat would be arriving today. We, along with several other people, had an enforced last night’s stay (fortunately free).

A Belgian couple we’d met earlier were given the other half of our duplex-style bungalow for the enforced evening. They were much more hardcore than us – they’d continued to sleep through the storms sans mattresses in their tent, and even hiked over to other areas of the island – surviving only off the dried instant noodle packages they’d brought and the odd coconut they found. If we’d ever had it, Nepal took that kind of stamina out of us – we had no interest in living off cold instant noodle packets, exciting though other areas of the island might be.

The Nepal cards came in handy on that last day, what with the Belgians back from the lands of dried noodles and joining us for our additional night of enforcement. As it poured with rain we gathered at Ev’s & my side of the communal porch, chatting and in their case smoking like chimneys (they’d run out of cigarettes while on the other end of the island and were trying to make up for it!). The cards were eventually brought out, still inexplicably missing the 7 of clubs, and we played Govinda’s simplified pair game, Rummy (until I kicked ass!), and of course the odd game of Go Fish… Amazing what a pack of cards can do in terms of whiling away an afternoon!

May 5th, 2008 - Tarutao Island, Thailand

Evy and I were agreed that post the Nepal trek we would want at least a couple of days, preferably a week, in which to simply relax. I didn’t really care where we went, so long as I could sleep in, lie on the beach, and hopefully have some electricity so as to be able to use my electronic gear (yeah, it seems I’ve become one of those people). I left it up to Evy to decide, as I figured I’d be spending a fair amount of my time on my computer going through India footage.
Evy was keen on going to a national park she’d heard of, the only potential issue being that we’d have to bring some of our own food and would potentially need to camp… hmmmm…. I wasn’t completely sold on the whole relaxing side of this, seeing as backpacking on the cheap tends to resemble camping in numerous ways. When we arrived in Phuket though, to a beyond Varadero-like frenzy (resort after resort after resort, double lines of chaises longues down the immense beaches, European speedo-wearing lobsters abounding), I agreed to wherever she wanted to go – just get me out of Phuket!
We took an afternoon bus toward the boat pier, but it ended up taking us to a smaller village (and much later) than we’d realized – it had pretty much closed down by the time we got there at 9:30pm. Fortunately for us, a kind couple on a motorcycle yielded to Evy’s charm and, by attracting the attention of a local boy, were able to help us find accommodation.
Our accommodation ended up being a little bungalow on stilts. It was pretty cool. All the more so because 15 minutes before we hadn’t been sure if there’d be anywhere besides the roadside for us to sleep - though the motorcycle couple very kindly invited us to share their one communal room (which they shared with a young daughter and cat), if we couldn’t find anywhere else. Love Thai hospitality! Our bungalow may have been a little dingy with a sketchy mattress, but though I’d been there less than 24 hours, anywhere outside of Phuket was already heaven for me.

We arrived at the island of Tarutao mid-afternoon the next day. The waves were too rough for the boat to dock, so the locals sent out a longtail boat to meet us. Clambering from a large speedboat to a tiny little longtail boat with 2 large backpacks, 2 daypacks, 2 handbags and several plastic bags of groceries – all amidst wildly rollicking waves – is quite the procedure. The unexepected mid-way boat change also ended up costing extra. This, given it wasn’t mentioned in the beginning and by this point was the only available alternative to swimming, seemed a bit much, but whatever.
Our accommodation options on the island were limited. We could rent a tent for the price we usually pay for a hotel/guest house, we could rent two beds out of a four bed dorm for double the price we typically pay for a hotel/guest house, or we could rent a bungalow with attached bathroom for triple the price we typically pay for a hotel/guesthouse. Evy was leaning toward the tent, not wanting to spend extra, and as I didn’t want to be responsible for a serious dip in finances (nor claiming the position of wimp by refusing to camp), we rented the tent.
We went to the beach to pick our spot, which was kind of fun. It was rather windy, so setting up was kind of a debacle, but we managed in the end. Our stuff inside, we realized that we had no mattresses of any sort. Oh well. I guess sand will have to do. We went for a walk, lazed around, and read, mainly in and around the tent due to the fact that it was rather stormy out and periodically beginning to rain. Even with the grey weather it felt a little like we’re in some sort of Visa commercial or something though – ‘for everything else – from hiking in the Himalayas one week, to walking along a deserted beach in Thailand the next – there’s Visa…’. Not too shabby a mode of life!
Dinner at the restaurant was decent, then we made our way back to the tent to crash. Sleeping on sand is a whole lot easier when suntanning for a couple hours in the daytime than at night when you actually want to sleep. At night is when you realize what sand is actually made of – miniscule rocks. That’s what it feels like. Rock hard and completely uncomfortable. Neither of us slept well, and we were both up at the crack of dawn the next day. What with the appearance of imminent storms and a desire for a real break, I was thinking ‘never again’ in terms of mattress-less tent life on the beach. Evy however (even though excessively grumpy from lack of sleep), was still up for roughing it another night and seeing how it went. So I said nothing.
I suppose fortunately for me, the weather added a little reinforcement to my unspoken desires. That afternoon, as we tried to read in our tent during a particularly windy session, our tent basically turned itself inside out on top of Evy. Admitting defeat, she booked us into the bungalow (my residence of choice that I’d been silently rooting for all along!). We packed the tent and were moved in within minutes, a hopefully much more relaxing 5 days rest ahead of us. In my opinion (on this particular trip), for an extra $3 each/night, the whole mattress/bungalow/attached bathroom was worth it.