Pay No Attention

Night in Bangkok airport

The last night in Thailand was in Bangkok, where our tour group leader had chosen a hotel halfway between the airport and the city and just a stone's throw from hell.  Her reasoning in selecting this particular place was that it would save us a bit of time getting to the airport the next morning.  In practice,  given that we got there fairly late in the evening, it meant that we were more or less trapped at the hotel for dinner and any evening activities (unless we wanted to hire cars to take us into town and back, and none of us did).  Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad, except that the hotel the tour leader chose was, without exception, absolutely the worst hotel I've ever stayed (or didn't stay, as it turned out).   

As soon as we walked in, it became apparent that the air-conditioning was either not working or else was turned off, and in Bangkok, that means that the indoor temperature hovers between 90 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  The windows were open, and the problem with that became apparent as we stood waiting for an elevator.  A woman stepped out whose face was absolutely covered with red bumps -- it looked like a disease.  She explained to us (we didn't ask -- she volunteered it) that all of those bumps were mosquito bites that she had acquired sleeping in the hotel the previous night.  We were appalled, but not as appalled as we were when we saw our rooms.  Melanie and I set down our suitcases, and looked around.  The bathroom was enslimed with mold.  The pale blue cloth headboards behind the beds were completely filthy.  The one on "my" bed (I tended to take the bed closest to the door, while Melanie generally took the one near the window) looked as though someone had been massacred on it -- brown splotches were all over the headboard, and on the wall behind it.  I peeled back the sheets, and the mattress was the same.  Brown splotches aside, the bads were saggy and you could see the springs straining at the cloth, the bedding was threadbare, and the place smelled as though it hadn't been aired out since 1972 (and maybe it hadn't).  There was a peculiar 1960's style full-size fridge in the room -- I don't know why -- and a sprightly 1960's style telephone.  We were silent for a moment, and then Melanie announced, "I don't want to sleep here".  I said "Neither do I."

We were hungry, so we decided we'd go down to the restaurant and get a bite to eat before we made any rash moves. We changed our minds when we got there.  Many people from our tour group were already down there, and none of them looked happy.  It was one of those places where every surface was sticky, and a foul smell assaulted our nostrils as soon as we walked in.  I commented on it, and one of the women in our group said glumly "I think that's my soup (I took a sniff -- and it was her soup).  Melanie and I conferred briefly and decided that we'd rather spend the night in the airport than in that hotel -- at least we'd reduce our chances of being eaten alive by bedbugs.  We briefly announced our decision to the tour leader, grabbed our bags and a cab and set off for the airport. 

It was definitely the right choice.  We pretty much assumed that we might be sitting in plastic chairs all night (which gives you an idea of just how bad the hotel was), but we were very happy to discover that, if you're going to spend the night in an airport, the Bangkok airport is a pretty damn good place to do it.  There's a comfortable restaurant with tasty food and big long leather couches and restful lighting -- and it is open all night.  We had a good meal, and sacked out on the couches to sleep for a bit.  In the morning, we had some tea and a bite of breakfast before checking in for our flight back home.

Oh yeah -- when our plane landed in New York, our luggage took hours to arrive.  Apparently the luggage compartment door was frozen.  And yes, I blame the tour group for that too.   

Phuket -- it could have been worse

After a heinous 24-hour train ride and a short flight, we were in Phuket (pronounced Poo - ket, by the way, not "F*ck it", which I think is most unfortunate). 

Thailand is supposedly filled with quiet beaches of stunning natural beauty, with authentic food and kindly natives.  We didn't stay on one of those beaches.  Our beach, while it had gleaming white sand, blazing blue water and all the fixings, was packed to bursting with tourists of every persuasion, and just off the beach, the streets were lined with hundreds of shops selling acres of useless tourist tat.  The proprieters and sales people plucked at your sleeves as you went by and tried forcibly to drag you in to buy their wares.  Everything was about five times the price you'd pay for identical merchandise in the Chiang Mai market, and it gave you a headache just to be there.  Our hotel was fine; it had a decent spa and a nice pool. (The Barbies, by the way, decided to bag the group hotel, and we learned that we were staying at some five star resort nearby.  Frankly, much as I obviously love to complain, I thought our hotel was perfectly fine, and more importantly, it was included in our package price.)

The first night we were in Phuket, I went to my very last group dinner.  The group leader had chosen a Mexican restaurant because "Aren't you all really sick of Thai food?  And there are 100 different kinds of margaritas!"  Needless to say, it was execrable, and that was it for me.  Melanie and I broke rank and went off on our own -- no more group dinners, no more group activities.  You couldn't sit on the beaches for long -- the sand and the air were way too hot.  One poor girl (the same one who took the nasty tumble on the hike at the jungle lodge) got horrifically sunburned and didn't leave her hotel room for the  next couple of days.  Poor thing, she looked like someone had stuck her in a deep fryer and forgot to fish her out.

The best thing Melanie and I did, along with another woman from our group, was go on a boat trip that stopped at a really cool fishing village for lunch.  Then we went sea-kayaking through all these cool caves and grottoes, and then took a boat to what is known as "James Bond Island" because one of the James Bond films (Goldfinger maybe?) was filmed there.  It was just gorgeous.

Assault and battery

To get to Phuket, we took an overnight train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, and then caught a flight from Bangkok to Phuket.   The train derailed and took 24 hours instead of 14.  I don't want to talk about it except to say that I was forced to assault a Thai man somewhere in the wee hours of the morning. 

What else could I do?  The &%$@ was bellowing into his cell phone at the top of his lungs at 2 am.  I hadn't slept much in the frigid jungle lodge, and I was dead on my feet.  I fell into an exhausted stupor only to be awakened by this asshole bellowing into his cell phone, making phone call after phone call.  (Please note:  I was wearing foam earplugs AND noise canceling headphones, and he STILL woke me up.)  I laid there for about 10 minutes, figuring that sooner or later he'd get off the phone -- who could he be talking to at that hour?  But he didn't.  He just kept making phone calls  So I pulled aside the curtain on my bunk (I was on a lower bunk), and there he was, sitting on the upper bunk across the way, with his legs swinging.  I asked him two or three times politely to get off the phone, move, or at least tone it down (he spoke English), and he ignored me.  I pointed out that the empty dining car, where no one was trying to sleep, was right next door, and he said "You shut up!  I talk where I want!  You stupid!"  I said "Well at least I can prevent you from enjoying your conversation. LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!"  He said, "YOU STUPID! YOU UGLY! I DO WHAT I WANT!"  So I whacked him across the leg as hard as I could.  He said "WHY YOU HIT ME?!"  (One of the women in our tour group, who had the bunk next to mine and heard the whole thing, kept trying to tell this story the next morning, but she never got past "WHY YOU HIT ME?" because she kept convulsing into helpless laughter.)

Anyway, at this point our tour leader came hustling down the train car (I was standing at the foot of the bunk facing the Thai man, fists clenched and trembling, and ready to jam his cell phone through his nostrils into his tiny brain; he was sitting on the bunk yelling "WHY YOU HIT ME?").  She said (to me) "There's another bunk at the other end of the car.  Why don't you take it? It will be quieter." I stood there indecisively for a moment while the group leader started gathering my things from my bunk (I mean, I really wanted to hurt him), but then decided that it might be better to take the bunk rather than potentially ending up in a Thai prison for assault.  In retrospect, I'm not sure I made the right decision.  I mean, I really, really wanted to hit him.

It's a jungle out there

The jungle lodge was one of many things that would have been absolutely fantastic if it weren't for the tour group. 

The lodge itself was primitive but charming, and it was in a beautiful location.  The food was delicious and plentiful.  We were expecting the squat toilets, and that we'd be roughing it a bit, so that was no problem.  (Although I must say -- I'd far rather just sh*t in the woods than use the squat toilets.)  BUT-- the group leader told us that we didn't need either a camp towel or a sleeping bag or soap, so none of us brought that stuff.  She said we'd have cots with mosquito nets, and bedding. What we got were ratty, moldy blankets on the floor, and not enough of them.  While most of Thailand was sickeningly hot, in the jungle hills, it got very cold at night.  I shivered and my teeth chattered as I huddled under my ratty blanket on the floor, even though I was wearing my fleece shirt, hat, mittens and a couple pairs of socks (all the warm clothing I had, in fact).  There were no towels.  There was no soap.  The showers were for all intents and purposes outside (because the shacks were fairly flimsy, uninsulated, and unheated) -- and it was very cold in the mornings to go hopping out of the shower with no way to dry off.  This would all be fine with me if I'd been expecting it and was prepared, but thanks to the group leader, I wasn't.  None of us were.  The Barbies, who each had toiletry kits the size of my suitcase, had a giant full-size container of shower gel, but they wouldn't let anyone else use it.  No one had a towel.  Now, we were only there for two days, but we were extremely active, including an extremely muddy hike (discussed below), so we didn't want to hold off on showering for the entire time.  And of course, after the jungle lodge, we were facing another overnight train and a plane before we saw another hotel.  That meant that we were all going to be pretty damn disgusting by the time all this was over if we didn't get a shower in there somewhere.  We hosed ourselves down as best we could without soap, dried ourselves with old t-shirts, and weren't much cleaner than before (though the t-shirts got a lot dirtier from drying off our still grungy bodies).  Again, I don't think I would have minded this -- I've gone days without a shower before -- but it sucked to be told one thing and get another.

On the first day at the jungle lodge, we went on a day long hike up into the hills.  The scenery was lovely, the hill tribes were interesting and they served us a great lunch.  BUT --we were told we wouldn't need hiking boots because this would be a very easy hike -- sandals or sneakers would be fine.  It ended up being one of those hikes where you use your hands as much as your feet and hug boulders as you hang 15 feet over a stream.  I would have liked my boots and maybe a stick.  At least two people (including, alas, me) took tumbles coming down and were injured.  I did something nasty to my knee, and another poor girl gouged the hell out of herself, especially one of her eyes.  After my tumble, we still had a good hour and a half still to hike before we got to the lodge, and it was rough going on that knee.

Alas, the knee injury prevented me from going white water rafting the next day.  The knee was swollen and I could not bend it or move it without a great deal of pain.  I just couldn't see pivoting back and forth on it as I shifted my butt around on the raft -- it would hurt like hell, and I would risk capsizing the boat because I couldn't pivot quickly.  That same day, we rode elephants, and while that was pretty cool in a lot of ways, let me say here and now that I wouldn't care for it as a regular mode of transportation.  You're perched in this basket thing on the elephant's back, which lurches and careen around with every step he takes.  When he goes downhill, you feel like you're going to be pitched over his head.  To be honest, I got sea sick.  But I can add it to the list of things I can say I've done.  (Yet another thing that's better in retrospect than it actually was in reality.)

The last night at the lodge was great.  As I said, the food at the lodge was delicious.  Some of the locals came and brought some of their local booze, and one had a guitar.  They didn't speak English for the most part (the guy who owned the lodge, an American, I believe, had married a local Thai woman, and these were their friends), but it was pretty sociable all the same.  They played music and sang, and an adorable little Thai toddler was dancing (and tumbling on his behind every couple of seconds). 

On our way back to Chiang Mai to take the overnight train back to Bangkok, we had a cooking lesson at an organic Thai farm.  This was one part of the trip that was absolutely without flaw.  We first had a tour of the farm, and then settled in to cook. There were a dozen or so little cooking stations, all under a roof but in the open air. I liked that we each made everything, rather than (as was the case in a previous cooking class I took) one person chopping onions, one rolling stuff out, etc.  We each made spring rolls, Tom Yan Kung soup, green curry chicken, stir fried basil chicken, and bananas in coconut milk, and it was all wonderful.  The Barbies were gone, so we didn't have to listen to them complain.  It doesn't get any  better.  We sat in the afternoon sunshine and ate all but the spring rolls and the dessert, which we took on the train for a snack -- good thing, because the train derailed and took 24 hours, 10 hours longer than it was supposed to.  And yes, I don't care what you say, I'm blaming the tour group company for that. 

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is fantastic, but unfortunately my $%#&* tour group spent only a day and a night there (and a good part of the day was spent on the overnight train, which was six hours late).  I could have easily spent a few days there, and had I not been shackled by being on a tour group, I definitely would have.  There's a fantastic market selling just about everything imaginable.  I bought a wooden elephant marionette for my almost-four-year-old niece, who had requested that I bring her back an elephant from Thailand), a shawl and some other odds and ends.  Speaking of elephants, I saw a baby elephant in the streets of Chiang Mai.  I got to feed her, too.    And speaking of elephants yet again, there was this fabulous old temple that was surrounded by carved elephants.  Even though it was crumbling, I think it was my favorite temple of the trip. In Chiang Mai, The Barbies had a meltdown and spent the entire time there arranging for a charter flight directly to Phuket in order to avoid taking the overnight train again (the misguided plan of the tour leader was to take the train to Bangkok, and then get on a flight to Phuket).  One of them had a hugely embarrassing screeching fit in the breakfast room of the hotel.  Ok, I don't blame The Barbies for wanting to get out of that train (I wanted to do so myself, and would probably have done what they did if it didn't mean missing the cooking class and a day at the jungle lodge, both of which I was really looking forward to doing).  I do blame The Barbies, however, for being really, really bitchy about it, and poisoning the atmosphere for the rest of us.   

Nightmare on the rails: overnight train to Chiang Mai

If you can avoid it, don't take the overnight train between Bangkok and Chiang Mai.  There are cheap, quick flights between the two cities.  Take one of them and save yourself some agony. 

The first overnight train was on the night of February 5.  The tour group company had advertised that we'd be going by first class train (the tickets were included in the package price), which would entail staying in little cabins that each hold two people, who can control the lights and the temperature in their cabin, and can lock it.  Alas, our group leader had apparently not read "The Rough Guide", which tells you that you need to book such cabins way in advance (especially, I would think, if you're trailing along a tour group of 19 people).  She didn't book in advance, and failed to secure the first class cabins.  However, although she had clearly known this for at least a day, she didn't bother to tell us about it until we were standing next to the train and she handed out the tickets.  (Side note here:  the group leader treated us like kindergartners, assigning rooms and roommates, secretively hanging on to tickets and informations until she absolutely had to dispense them.  It was very annoying.)  Actually, she didn't tell us even then, but I saw immediately that the tickets were second-class tickets, and exclaimed that the ticket office had given us the wrong tickets.  She curtly said that they weren't the wrong tickets, but that large groups like us couldn't travel first class (which of course, is total crap).  She herded us on board.

In second class, you don't have cabins -- your seats fold down into bunk beds open to the aisle except for some flimsy curtains which let in the light from the aisle (and the lights stay on all night, by the way).  Periodically, a uniformed man with a bullhorn bellowed his way down the aisle -- why, I don't know.  Thank God for my earplugs, eyeshade and noise-canceling headphones, but they honestly weren't enough.  It might have been one thing if we'd been expecting this (when I'd traveled as a student, for example), but it really sucked to think you were going first class and ending up in a cattle car.  Oh, and by the way -- we were never refunded the difference in price.  It wasn't much -- not worth suing over -- but damn it, we were due a refund and an apology.

As soon as we got on board, one of the Barbies burst into tears and snarled at everyone who tried to comfort her ("You don't understand!  I have lupus!  This could KILL me!" -- but we noticed that the alleged lupus didn't prevent her from going on rigorous day-long hikes).  None of us were very happy, but OK, it wasn't going to kill us, and most of us decided to make the best of it.  However, we were pretty freaking annoyed at the group leader, who, instead of apologizing, walked down the aisle to each glum little group of us, saying "OK, go ahead.  Yell at me.", which frankly didn't help. 

To top it off, the train, which was supposed to take 14 hours, for some never-explained reason took 20 hours. I suppose I can't really blame the tour group company for that one, but I do just the same.

Not much between despair and ecstasy

(Note: this is a backdated post taken from my handwritten travel diary.)

Thailand is absolutely gorgeous and fascinating, the food is wonderful, and my Thailand trip was a nightmare. 

OK, OK, OK, it wasn't all bad, but that is absolutely, positively the last time I ever go on a trip with a tour group.  I hate being told where to stand.  I hate waiting around for people.  I hate being rushed through places I'd like to linger, and forced to linger in places I want to leave.  I hate being herded into group photos, I hate being told when I may or may not go to the bathroom, and I really hate being at the mercy of someone else's disorganization.

I chose the tour group company because it was reasonably cheap and had a fairly action-packed and varied itinerary -- hiking, white water rafting, a cooking class -- and ranged from Bangkok to Chiang Mai to a jungle lodge to Phuket, so I figured I'd get a good taste of Thailand.  What I didn't realize was that the group leader had never been to Asia, much less Thailand.

There were several very nice people in the group, and I especially liked one woman, Melanie, who ended up being my roommate for most of the trip.  However, there were also some horrors, including a gaggle of four women with mammoth suitcases, full makeup kits, and dozens of shoes, whom the rest of us dubbed "The Barbies" and who somehow managed to make every situation, however dreadful, just that much worse.

Bangkok

We started off with two nights (February 3 and 4) in Bangkok.  Bangkok is a bizarre juxtaposition of breathtaking golden temples and palaces against a teeming hodgepodge of mostly hideous modern buildings, with great masses of snarled wires running above the streets -- far more than I've seen in any American or European city. (I wonder why?) Traffic is chaotic -- cars and buses and tuktuks (little open taxis with three wheels), and families of four on little mopeds zipping and zagging through it all.  Countless beggars with twisted bodies and missing limbs panhandle their way among the thousands of stalls selling food and trinkets and cheap t-shirts huddled cheek by jowl on the streets.  I learned quickly that my usual restaurant rule of thumb -- avoid restaurants with badly translated plastic menus out front and photos of the food -- did not necessarily apply in Bangkok.  Some of the best food I ate was in places like that, while some of the most mediocre (and most expensive) was in lovely establishments with inviting outdoor patios.  Unfortunately, our group leader didn't learn that, so our group dinners tended to feature underwhelming and overpriced food.  After a while, I started bagging the group dinners, and following the tried-and-true follow-the-natives rule for choosing restaurants, which served me well.

On our first full day in Bangkok, we were rushed through Bangkok's stunning temples and palaces by our maniacally chirpy local guide (whose English was about as comprehensible to us as her Thai) at a pace that left beauty and history quite behind.  At the end of the tour, we were dumped at the end at a huge jewelry factory where we watched a ludicrous film about jewelry-making (a theme song remarkably like a muzak version of Madonna's "Lucky Star" played in the background) and then were strongly encouraged to purchase as much jewelry as we could carry.  I didn't want any jewelry; I escaped from the factory with some difficulty and went looking for a bus out back to the hotel.  The next day was much the same agenda, but instead of the jewelry factory, we went to a jade factory ,where we watched a ludicrous film about jade and were strongly encouraged to purchase some. And every 20 minutes or so, the group leader and our maniacally chirpy local guide herded us together for yet another group picture. Ye gods and little fishes, save me from this hell. 

OK, it wasn't all bad.  I loved the temples, and I particularly loved the huge reclining golden Buddha -- absolutely could not believe the size of it.  If I could have explored that stuff at a leisurely pace, I would have been thrilled. I cannot tell you how many times I wished that I was on my own instead of with the tour group.