Since the internet still hates livejournal and me at the same time, I'm going to be posting after each port. It just takes too long, sorry.
So here's Thailand! Enjoy ^_^

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Thursday, January 24^th, 2008, 12:30 am

 

            I can’t sleep just yet so I’ll start writing my Discoveries in Thailand!

 

Traveling from Where to Where:

I think our port is actually called Laem Chabang*...Bangkok is almost two hours away, inland.

            Today (technically yesterday) we traveled from Laem Chabang to Pattaya.

 

Itinerary for (technically) Yesterday:

--Pattaya

            --To ride elephants

            --Take in the city sites

            --Perhaps go to the beach

            --Eat Thai food

            --Eat Thai food without burning into a crisp

 

Discoveries:

--People are really curious. I was drawing some of the Thai kickboxing matches (there’s a name for it but I forgot what it was), and people were looking over my shoulder, blatantly, not even trying to be discreet.

--Apparently** the Thai people don’t like violence, but there are all of these open bars where they hold Thai kickboxing matches.

 

 

Personal Commentary:

            I would never have thought to eat at McDonald’s in the states, but in foreign countries, they’re actually quite nice. It’s actually a big francise abroad, and in Hong Kong, I think it was, some of the other students said that they actually seated customers with a host/ess.

 

            I had spicy Thai food. This is an accomplishment for me because I have an Irish palette and the plate was incredibly hot.

 

            Pattaya is a place for tourists, so it was expensive than in other parts of the country. They’re very aggressive with selling things to tourists, similar to China, but worse. It has a long beach with things like parasailing, but it wasn’t the experience I was looking for. I was hoping to see things like traditional Thai dances or more antiques/antiquities that were Thai, not western things. Like China, it was westernized too; at shops where they sold knives and the like, their entire stock was comprised of American-made items.

            In Noon Nooch*** which is about a half-hour south of Pattaya, there was actually a cultural show and an elephant show. It was interesting mostly because of the costumes and the dances, and they also had a showing of the martial arts, but there wasn’t any depth. I wonder how it would be possible to see deeper into Thai culture? It’s just like asking how could we see more deeply into American culture; would that even be possible, considering the relativity of the culture?

 

            There are lots of places where they have the Thai Boxing matches. It was so interesting to see, and I had to do sketches of them. One of the losing fighters looked over my shoulder at the picture and gave the “thumbs-up” sign, so I gave him the picture, but he tried to pay me for it. I said no it was a gift, in English, but he sorts of understood what I was talking about. After that more people started looking over my shoulder and doing the same thing. It was interesting to communicate without the use of words. I need to do that a lot more around here since all I know is Chinese.

            It’s a bit more disconcerting, but we have something called a “Ship-To-Shore-Sheet” with some Thai phrases on the back. It’s been easy to memorize since it’s so cool to say. Hello (feminine) is: “Sawadii ka”^ or “Sat-wa-dii-ka” something like that.

 

            It was a nice adventure though, and I’m beat. Night guys ^_^

 

V.Rogers

 

*Don’t trust my spelling when it comes to Thai

**I admit it, it’s my word…

***Again, don’t trust my spelling

^As I hear it

Friday, January 25, 2008, 12:00 am

 

            Hey guys! Just some short catch-up stuff. The internet doesn’t like livejournal, as I said, so I’m going to post multiple entries once we’re at sea again.

 

Traveling from Where to Where:

            Still in Laem Chabang ^_^

 

Itinerary for Yesterday:

--Winging it

            --We went to Sri Racha (I’ll have more on spelling later), which is about a half-hour north of here, and decided to do whatever when we got there.

 

Discoveries:

--There are Daoist shrines everywhere, Chinese Daoist shrines. Two of the students I’m traveling with are from China (Hong Kong and Macau), and they pointed out the dragons that were circling the pillars were a Chinese design. Who knew?

--I think there’s a boyscout club in Thailand…there were brown-uniformed teenage boys with yellow handkerchiefs tied around their necks…but it’s only a speculation.

--There are lots of feral-appearing dogs. They’re all kind of tiny though, but they don’t pose a real threat.

            --my friends are afraid of dogs

--You can bargain here, but it’s not as easy to do as Shanghai was easy.

--There’s a really big open-air market with a lot of interesting things

            --we had Pad Thai (I think) and it was delicious.

 

--The Koi Loi Park has a lot of Buddhist shrines*

            --and turtles in a pond/stream. They’re huge—one of them was the size of my torso, and that’s on average.

            --they also had a cemented area with halfpipes and other miscellaneous items that were…skateboard-able**.

 

Personal Commentary:

            I’m tired at the moment and I really want to go to bed now. I’ll say more tomorrow after I regain my sanity.

 

Two Days Later:

            Okay, I’m better now ^^ Er, okay I’ll go down the list. The shrines: were scattered about in a lot of places. They were ornate and excruciatingly detailed with designs. I think they were mostly to Buddhist gods, although we did see a few Hindu gods depicted in the shrines.

 

            The open-air market was enormous. Walking down one “street” (nearly a quarter of a mile) took about an hour. Again, the things they sold there were remotely Thai, in terms of something traditional (but then again, how would I know, considering I’m not Thai or never studied the culture)

 

            Oh the boxing is called Mai Thai

 

*There are a lot of gods in Buddhism—I know there shouldn’t be but there are.

Saturday, January 26, 2008, 1:53 am

 

            Hey everyone! Our days in Bangkok:

 

Traveling from Where to Where:

            Still in Laem Chabang ^_^

 

Itinerary for Yesterday:

--Bangkok

            --visit Royal Palace*

            --see a temple*

            --ride the subway

            --ride a ferry

            --attempt to eat even more Thai food without getting sick

            --visit Chinatown**

 

 

Discoveries:

--All the taxis here are either bright orange or fuchsia, I kid you not.

--There’s a university for monks to study Buddhism; I have the name on my map I just can’t find it…it’s in Bangkok ^_^

            --they all wear some sort of orange

            --they like taking the ferry

            --Women can’t sit next to or talk to them…both of which I would like to do, one following the other in that order. L

--There are lots of feral dogs and cats…and they’re all sleeping. I don’t know why, but they’re always sleeping.

 

 

Personal Commentary:

            Thailand is really westernized. I’m actually having trouble finding authentic Thai stuff for sale, such as puppets, those special shoes, or even

 

*None of which we accomplished

**I took this not without a sense of irony

Thursday, January 31^st, 2008, 1:08 pm

 

            I know, I know: lost of catching-up to do.

 

Traveling from Where to Where:

            Laem Chabang, Thailand to Chennai, India

 

Itinerary for the Remainder of Thailand:

--Bangkok

            --visit Royal Palace

            --see a temple

            --go to the weekend market

            --see the Jim Thompson museum

            --go to the cultural show “Siam Niramit”

            --get picked up by an elephant

--Pattaya

            --find a post office

                        --mail Shanghai postcards**

            --find internet

 

 

Discoveries:

--Tuk Tuks are…interesting. You have to bargain for the price before you get into the vehicle and you have to make sure that they’re going to take you to the right place.

--The Grand Palace is so pretty!

            --Something interesting occurred at the palace on they day we went there. Gates started to close early, people (all dressed in black*) sat down on mats beneath a canopy, children in school uniforms lined up along the street, and they all appeared to be waiting for something. Soon after an entourage passed through the street that led to the Grand Palace; we guessed that it must have been royalty.

            --Later I learned from some of my friends that all traffic stopped and people watched the entourage pass by.

--Jim Thompson actually made the silk trade big in Thailand

            --he really appreciated Thai culture and modeled his house after a traditional Thai house.

            --He also disappeared on his 61^st birthday^; he went out walking one day and was never seen again^^.

--The cultural show I signed up for was so awesome! They actually had a running stream on stage that people would swim in.

            --Little factoid: the theatre that held the cultural show is actually the tallest theatre in the world. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records, so they say.

 

 

Personal Commentary:

            Getting picked up by an elephant is so cool. The top part of its trunk is really hard and thick, but at the end it’s really fluid and flexible, so when it picked me up I couldn’t believe it had that much strength!

            It’s also fun playing with their noses ^_^ I’m just glad I didn’t get sneezed on.

 

            People have had many different experiences with the people in Thailand. More often than not I heard that people generally felt that the Thai people went out of their way more than the people in China to assist us; I don’t necessarily agree. However, I did go to more touristy places, I don’t like haggling at all, I had a few awful Tuk Tuk drivers, but I did have a wonderful time in Sri Racha where everyone was very nice and the area wasn’t really for tourists.

            The other students also had more of an issue in China because of the language: in Thailand they were understood more and better than they were in Shanghai. For me this wasn’t the case, since I can speak the language, but it’s interesting to gage the countries based on the intercultural communication. It must’ve made that much more of a difference for me, as a speaker of Chinese, to connect with the people in China than the people in Thailand.

            I don’t remember mentioning this before, but in China, when I was attempting to speak in Chinese to the owner of a music shop, this owner went out of his way to help me and my friend. He took us to a bank when we couldn’t find it, the post office, and gave us a discount on the ukulele my friend was attempting to buy. In Thailand, no one really did that, even when I got a little pamphlet of Thai phrases and did my best to speak to them, except perhaps in Sri Racha.

 

            The Grand Palace is one of the most beautiful structures I’ve ever seen in my life***. The detail of that place was phenomenal. There was a temple inside and that was an experience in of itself. We had to take off our shoes, hats, cover our arms, and things like that in order to go in. It was so beautiful.

            On a less enlightening note, we almost had the pleasure of being scammed by a man on the street. He kept telling us that the Palace was closed because it was a Buddha day. I’ve never heard of that in my life, besides, I could’ve sworn that I saw a sign that said “Open Every Day”. Period. I’m generally incredulous when it comes to strangers so I said “Sawadii Ka” to be polite and kept walking. The two people whom I was with, however, kept talking to him despite my warnings of “his English is way too good to be a concerned citizen,” and “why don’t we find out for ourselves whether or not the temple is open?”

            After a while they followed me and lo and behold at the ticket office was a sign that said “Open Every Day”. We told the ticket master our story and he said:

            “That man lied, he tried to scam you.” You live and you learn.

 

            When we were walking around and trying to find a museum I had a map out with me and was looking for another temple to see when a monk actually approached me. He asked if I was all right, if I were lost. I smiled and said that I was fine and that my friends and I were just looking for another museum or a temple. He nodded and walked away. That’s going to stick with me for a long time, and I’m not quite sure why.

 

Well that’s all for now ^_^

Best Wishes,

V. Rogers

 

 

*their princess just died and the colors black and white represent mourning.

**also not without a sense of irony

^Which is a dangerous (birth/)day for people born in the year of the horse…so said the tour guide.

^^Personally I think he just left in a very honorable, sensible way.

***Don’t worry I took lots of pictures.