Winter Vacation: Thailand

Hello!
I've been pretty busy and tired recently, so I haven't been updating the blog much. But now that I've got some free time (random national holiday!) I'll share a little of what I did over winter vacation.

Over Christmas and into the New Year, I was traveling in Thailand with my friend Jessica. Originally two other friends were supposed to be going with us, but there were some problems with passport renewal and it ended up being just the two of us. Jess is a good travel buddy, though, so we had fun. We stayed in Bangkok for the first part of our trip, and Koh Phangan (an island in the south) for the last part.

Bangkok was really interesting, but a bit difficult to navigate at times due to the protests. We stayed well away from areas where there were political rallies going on, so we never had any trouble, but it did mean there were a couple of places we couldn't get to. Still, I think the temples we visited were the best part of this trip. When we first arrived in Bangkok and everything seemed like chaos, I started to wonder why we were there. But I had my first "I'm glad I'm here" moment when we went to Wat Pho and saw the reclining Buddha.

It's a massive statue of Buddha lying on his side, and it basically fills the entire hall that it's in. The soles of his feet are inlaid with designs in mother of pearl, and were really beautiful. 

Another temple I was especially happy to visit was Wat Phra Kaew. It had massive golden spires and a lot of really cool statues. With all the temples, you're supposed to dress fairly modestly out of respect, but at this one they were especially strict with the dress code. I was perhaps a bit absurdly proud that Jess and I were both dressed appropriately and didn't have to borrow a sarong to cover up with.

 A lot of the buildings were covered in extremely bright and shiny mosaic tiles. We saw the hooked gold things on a lot of the roofs, as well. Pretty sure there's an architectural name for what those things are, but I have no idea what they're properly called.

I really liked the statues of people with lion tails or rooster wings. I don't know anything about what they represent, though.

We also saw Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn. We got there close to sunset, which is apparently a good time to be there because of the view over the city. You can climb up the (very steep) stairs on the side of the temple and there's a lot to see from up there. This temple was much less bright and shiny, but featured a lot of mosaic work as well.

We also went to the zoo while we were in Bangkok. It was a pretty good zoo, with a lot of animals and decent enclosures/habitats for them. I was surprised at how many of the animals we could see easily, especially the wild cats. In my experience cats will usually hide if they can, but on this particular day many of them were moving about or napping right out in the open.

After several days in Bangkok, we took a night train down to Surat Thani, and from there, a bus to the pier and a ferry to Koh Phangan. The night train was surprisingly comfortable. After a few stops to pick up all the passengers, the conductors went around and pulled out bunk beds for everyone. Jess and I both had top bunks, which I was more comfortable with anyhow since it made it easier to protect my stuff while I slept. Here's Jess in her bunk, and a view of my feet. The bed wasn't much longer than I was, so I wouldn't recommend it for tall travelers.

The ferry to the island took about two hours. Once we arrived, we discovered that taxis there were rather different from the taxis in the big city. The island taxis were mostly trucks with benches built into the bed of the truck. Some of them had a roof, some of them didn't. It made for a rather rough ride, but it also meant that they could carry several passengers and their luggage at a time. It was a little unsettling at first to ride around loose in the back of a truck, but we got used to it pretty fast.

On Koh Phangan, we signed up for two day-long excursions to try and see most of the island's sights. Our hotel had motorbikes for rent, but neither of us were comfortable trying to drive them, so we stuck to taxis. There wasn't much within walking distance. Anyhow, our first day trip was to the Ang Thong Marine Park, which is a national park out in the ocean. The ride to and from the islands was massively choppy; we couldn't really walk while the boat was moving (thank God for Dramamine!). But the islands we visited were beautiful. We did a little snorkeling, but unfortunately the visibility was really poor. Still, we saw a good number of fish. 

Ang Thong Marine Park

For our second day trip, we did a tour that took us sea kayaking (briefly), hiking to a waterfall, riding elephants, and included some time for messing around on the beach. I have somewhat mixed feelings about the elephant riding. While the elephants didn't seem to be treated with any cruelty, I don't know that an animal that intelligent should be used for carting tourists around in circles. So I don't think I would do that again. The rest of the day trip was pretty good, especially the lunch. The most dramatic moment of the trip came when a pet monkey at the elephant camp attacked Jess for her glasses. She backed up a little too close to its perch while taking a picture of an elephant, and the monkey jumped onto her shoulders and clawed at her head a bit. It didn't bite her, but she did bleed some from a scratch on the side of her head. She was fine, though, and doesn't seem to have picked up any monkey plagues.

Our elephant, after we fed it some bananas.

Koh Phangan was interesting, but most of all it seemed to be a party island. It's mostly famous for the Full Moon Parties, which are massive all-night-long beach parties organized more or less around the full moon. I didn't really want anything to do with that mess, and Jess was fine with sticking mostly to day activities. So our visit was a bit tame. I think if I were to go to Thailand again, I would pick a different island, and also book a tour with an actual dive company so that we could go snorkeling in better locations. 

On New Year's Day, we took the ferry back to the mainland, flew to Bangkok, switched airports, and made our way back to Japan. It ended up being quite a journey. I think it went: ferry-bus-flight-bus-flight-bus-flight-bus-taxi-home. But everything went smoothly enough. 

Over the course of the trip, we probably tried almost every form of transportation available in Thailand: bus, taxi, tuk tuk (scooter/taxi combination), ferry (short and long distance), longtail boat, regular boat, train, subway... I think my least favorite would have to be either tuk tuk or boat. My most favorite might actually be the night train. That felt fairly safe and was relatively comfortable, as well. 

Anyhow, that's how I spent my winter vacation.