So yeah, I'm sitting in a café in Lopburi right now, drinking what I hope to all hell is a dairy-free banana smoothie (vegetarianism and lactose-intolerance is a concept Thais do NOT understand in the slightest) ...I mean seriously, when I order something without fish, it has shrimp. When I say "no seafood" ...I get pork. When I say "no meat" ...they give me fish. What? I was sitting by myself, listening to dubstep until a couple of minutes ago - Tim's just joined me. Our seedy hotel doesn't have any wifi, so we searched out a wifi hotspot earlier in the day. I hate Thailand's lack of highspeed, readily available wifi.
We are in the seediest hotel ever. It honestly reminds me a bit of the Cobalt in Vancouver, with its worn white walls, cracks in the paint, and a bathroom that looks like an ideal place for druggies to hang out. That, or dead bodies. Our bedsheets have cigarette burns in them, and there are stains on the walls.
But it was only 250 baht, and that’s the cheapest price we’ve found so far. And we’re in a town infested with monkeys. I say infested, because I believe the sheer number of monkeys is indeed an infestation. So many in fact, that we could hear them on the street last night from the 4th floor of the hotel.
Then again – we are staying in a hotel that is essentially $4 a person.
It occurred to me yesterday on the train from Bangkok to Lopburi that a bunch of cool things have happened to me in the last several days that I've completely left out of the blog, just due to not remembering them in the slightest when I finally have access to wifi in order to write these things. So I was going to do a semi-point form post on all the random little nuances of the past week that have happened and been really phenomenal and I've neglected to mention up until now. After that, I'll continue on about our journey from Koh Chang to our current location, a monkey-infested Lopburi.
- I ate barracuda on the beaches of Koh Chang at a little restaurant right on the beach. Ooooooo BARRACUDA
- I did this twice, actually, but while we were on Koh Chang, I saved what I think is a little sardine from immenient beached death. There was a little sardine washed up on the shore, and he was dying, so I picked him up and walked out into the water and released him again, and then he swam away. The second time I did it was on Koh Mak, and it was a squid of all things, about the size of my forearm, and I didn't want to touch it (I was afraid to get inked) so I found a broken coconut shell and used it to push the little squid back to the waters. It took a little while, and I thought I was too late, because it floated sideways for a bit, but then all of a sudden, the water turned all inky-black, and the squid swam away. I would have felt so bad if they died!
- Another Koh Chang moment, and one we never managed to snag photos of, but we stayed in a bungalow on the beach that stretched up into the jungle on the side of a hill, and the owner had to beat away monkeys from swinging in the trees. All the walls were painted with really cool murals, which is a good point for the place, because it would have been grungy otherwise. The hostel owner was Scottish, and super nice, and she had a little case of handmade silver, so I bought myself a plain silver band that I now wear on my middle finger. It's super heavy - that much silver would have cost a pretty penny in Canada.
- Back in Koh Chang, after we stayed at Koh Mak, we were staying in a little fishing village called Bang Bao, which I believe I mentioned in my previous post. I couldn't sleep, and like most days here, I was up well before sunrise, so Tim and I wandered down the hill to the water, and took photos of the sunrise (that's the rickety pier we took photos off of, mom) - anyhow, there was a Swedish girl named Lisan there with us, and she was taking photos also, and at sunrise, I gave her a photography lesson on anything she asked. She just had a little point-and-shoot, but we talked about her getting a dSLR, and she showed me some of her photos and asked for my opinion. It was a bit of a special moment.
- Also in Bang Bao, we found crépes! ...mine was normal, with PB, banana, honey, and raisins. Tim ate PB, sausage/ham, and cashews. It was a monstrosity of a crépe, and I don't understand how he managed to eat it. Peanut butter and ham, what?
- When we left Bang Bao, we took a ferry and then a song tao (I have no idea how to spell this in roman script) ...but the song tao into Trat was completely full, so Tim and I hung off the back for 20 minutes while we drove from Laem Ngop into Trat. It was pretty stellar.
Alright, I think that covers all the things I thought up yesterday while killing time. So yeah - we left Koh Chang two days ago (goodbye beaches, sigh) - took a ferry across to the mainland (Laem Ngop and then Trat) and from Trat we hopped on a minivan into Bangkok. I was feeling really sick during the minivan ride into Bangkok, and my abdomen was cramping really badly, to the point where I spent a good deal of time curled in a little ball on Tim's lap, because even after 800mg of advil, I was still in an intense amount of pain. I mean, driving 130km/hr on Thai roads in the heat probably wasn't helping, but I was in a ton of pain and not feeling well at all. At this point, I had been taking anti-biotics for three days for a UTI, and my symptoms were clearly getting worse.
This sign was on our bus from Bangkok.
We made it into Bangkok around 20:00, and Tim decided we should head straight to a hospital. So, for the third (and dear god, I hope the last) time in Thailand, we got into a taxi and headed to a hospital. The taxi overcharged us for the taxi, and Tim and I got into an argument about it, because I was willing to haggle, and he just wanted to get me to a hospital and didn't care what the price was to do so.
Thankfully, the taxi driver took us to an English-speaking hospital, coincidentally near where we planned on staying for the night, and two hours and 3000 baht later (I spent 7000 baht that day, between mailing a parcel, random travel expenses, and the hospital visit...I was choked) - I apparently have a really bad bladder infection, I have new medication, as well as some other pill which I'm supposed to take thrice daily for cramping, and in seven days time, I'm supposed to find another clinic and get re-tested to make sure it's gone away. If it hasn't, then I was advised to get an ultrasound because at that point, something is seriously wrong.
So, fuck you Thailand, you give me infections.
We got out of the hospital around 22:00, and just walked over to the hostel I stayed in the first time I was in Bangkok, because it was late, we didn't have a place to stay, and I just happened to know the area we found ourselves in. We checked in, and ran over to the grocery store, and picked up some apples, some edam cheese (oh my god, cheese - totally worth the cost) and some croissants, and had a picnic on the roof of the building until 1AM.
The next day (yesterday), we left Bangkok via the northern bus terminal (Mo Chit), and headed to Ayutthaya, on route to Lopburi. We had to pass through a ton of flooded areas - and the damage was awe-inspiring. The water line on some of the buildings was over a metre high.
This spawns another really cool thing that happened to us. We got into Ayutthaya in the afternoon, and were going to take a bus into Lopburi, but one of the taxi drivers told us that the waters were still high in between Ayutthaya and Lopburi, and advised us to take a train instead, but the next available train wasn't until the evening, and so he offered to drive us to the train station to check the schedules.
Now, normally I would never do this, but I had a funny feeling like it was just something I should do, and so when he offered to show us around Ayutthaya for 200 baht/hr ...we agreed. We went to a temple, the name of which I forget, and we left our baggage in the back of his taxi (it was another crazy song tao-like taxi, except it had three wheels instead of four) ...and I was nervous about leaving our gear behind, but I did it anyways, because Tim didn't seem too perturbed about it. The temple we saw was really neat, and in ruins, and after that, the taxi driver offered to take us to more temples, but we told him to take us someplace good to eat. On the way to the place we ate, he stopped off at a school and disappeared for a bit, and then came back out, and after he dropped us off to eat, he told us he had to go to the school to pick up his children, and that he would come back for us.
This is for you, Damon.
The place we ate was amazing. It looked like it was somebody's house on the edge of the river, and we sat at a little table right beside the shore, in the sunset (it was just that time of day, okay?) ...I took a million shots of the sun setting over this weird boat thing, and we ate some tasty Thai food. I had fried rice and fried morning glory shoots (which is delicious, by the way - I've had it a few times in Thailand now) ...and Tim ate fried chicken in lemongrass, which looked delicious, though I didn't try it.
When we were done, the taxi was waiting for us with his two little kids, and the little girl bowed to me in the Thai way and said 'saw wat dee' - hello.
We were both so enamoured by the whole experience that we gladly paid the 400 baht for the two hours, and I took his picture with the taxi.
The train was uneventful, with the sole exception that I ended up covered in weird bugs from the open windows (it was third class, after all - aka no aircon). We got into Lopburi last night and took pedalcabs to our hotel, which is the seediest thing on the planet. It looks even worse now in the daylight, and this morning we opted to stay another night because we've been traveling a lot lately and it's nice to have a place to come back to for a night.
Now, Lopburi. MONKEYS, OH MY GOD, MONKEYS EVERYWHERE.
We woke up early this morning and headed out right away. Tim this morning was adorable - I was in the washroom this morning, and all I could hear from outside was Tim exclaiming "oh my god, monkeys - look at the monkeys, the monkeys are fighting, oh my god the monkeys are on the windowsill, monkeys" and I came out to him with his camera trying to take photos of the monkeys. When he gets around to reading this post, I'm probably going to hear about it for writing about that, but it was seriously adorable. Is that what I'm like when I see cool new things?
The monkeys are everywhere. On people's cars, on buildings, on powerlines, on the street. We walked around the town for a bit, and through a local market where I ate those delicious sticky rice things in coconut leaves, but the majority of the market turned my stomach - I just can't do chicken feet and pigs heads, and fresh fish bleeding out at my feet.
We went to Phra Prang Sam Yot, an old ruins of a temple absolutely infested with monkeys. Within two minutes of being on the grounds, I had two monkeys try and climb me. Naturally, I screamed like a little girl and hid behind Tim. Inside the temple itself there weren't any monkeys, just bats (oh bats, I hate you when you're that close to me) ...and it was a bit of a surreal experience to be the one caged in while the monkeys were on the outside. It's usually the opposite.
The monkeys were adorable. Baby monkeys, and old monkeys, and they're just so curious! Climbing the bars of the windows of the temple, and grabbing at things, and coming to see what we're up to. Both Tim and I high-fived a baby monkey today. It was pretty spectacular (I use that word a lot.)
After we tired of being harrassed by monkeys, we found a place to eat lunch, and I played a game of 'stick tongue out' with a little girl that was in the restaurant. Every time I looked at her, she'd scrunch her face and stick her tongue out at me, so I would do the same and she'd laugh. I glanced up at her mother to make sure it was okay, and then it became a game. We would watch each other out of the corner of our eyes, and when we made eye contact, we'd stick our tongues out. Once we paid and were about to leave, I went up to her and bowed in the Thai fashion (hands held together with a head bow) and said goodbye to her, and then I stuck my tongue out, winked, and walked away. She was seriously freakin' adorable.
And now we're just chillin' with our respective electronics in a café, the closest to a western experience I've had in some days, and I'm quite content to be here for a while. Hell, I've already been here for two hours almost writing this blog.
In case I'm MIA for another couple of days, we're heading back to Bangkok tomorrow by train, spending another night (I feel bad that Tim was denied his night in Bangkok experience because I had to go to the hospital again) ...and then on the 10th, we catch a sleeper train to Chiang Mai. Tim changed his flight, so I've got a travel partner until Dec 22nd now, and I'm out of Thailand on the 27th.
I'mma try and steal some wifi in Bangkok, though.
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