dreamworld: thailand's ripoff disneyland (or that time i turned 23)

(warning: this will be a long post. i broke it up with some subheads for you. but not for this first part. it's just the intro.)

i didn't have plans for my birthday originally. i'm not a huge birthday person (i hate people cooing over me, coddling me and asking me what i wanna do and making sure i have a good time and blah blah blah crap), but i knew i wanted to get out of suphan. a few weeks ago, a brilliant thought hit me: DREAMWORLD. the amusement park's tag line is literally "the world of happiness." their little mascot wears some of the exact same outfits as mickey. i think i saw minnie walking around the park. the amount of copyright infringement was baffling. but hey, it's thailand. as we've been told before, the rules are up to you.

the plan was to leave suphan on the 8 am bus to bangkok. we'd decided to take the public bus over the personal minivan we usually take because, even though the bus would take longer, it would be cheaper and it would take us right to the morchit bus station, where we'd catch the city bus straight to dreamworld. the park opened at 10 am, and we figured we'd get into the park sometime before 11 am. perfect.

here's what actually happened.

getting to dreamworld 

6:15 am -- alarm goes off. i think i hit snooze, but i really hit off. nancy (who teaches up north but came down for some suphan fun times) asked me at 6:30 am what time it was.

7:15 am -- got delicious coffee at this adorable coffe house down the street.

7:45 am -- reached the bus station, where about five different thai bus station guys asked us (me, maddy, nancy, tash, ally, sam) where we wanted to go. "bangkok," we all repeated. one guy claimed us ("oohh, look at the farang i scored!") and lead us toward a bus that said "bangkok suphanburi" on the side. the bus was empty, but i attributed that to the early morning and the fact that it was saturday.

8 am -- the bus leaves right on time. EFF YEAH.

8:10 am -- sam makes a comment about how the bus is going some crazy direction to bangkok, but i give him what i'm pretty sure was a "yeah right, sam" look/comment, and we all resumed conversation.

8:55 am -- we start noticing the sun is on our right. the sun rises in the east. that means we're going north. bangkok is south of suphanburi. then we see the giant buddha--the same one we saw when we were on our way back from lopburi, which is to the north of suphanburi. we pretty much confirm within the group that we are, indeed, going the wrong way.

9:00 am -- we stop in some podunk nowhere town for about 20 minutes, during which time we debate about what we're going to do. sam goes to ask the guy what time we'll get to bangkok, and he hears something like 11:30. that's three and a half hours after we left. it should only take 1-2 hours to get to bangkok from suphan. it says bangkok on the side of our bus, right? still incredulous, i go and ask the bus driver about arrival in bkk myself. he points to the 11 on the clock. indeed.

9:15 am -- we decide we're never taking the bus to bangkok again.

11 am (actually, probably a little after that) -- OH MY GOD, IT'S THE MORCHIT STATION! WE'RE IN BANGKOK!

11:30 ish -- we ask the info desk where we hop on bus 538 to get to dreamworld. she tells us we take bus 77 from the bus terminal to the morchit station (which, it turns out, is not different than the bus terminal. of course). at this point, we did a big "screwwwww that" and hopped in a taxi.

some time just after noon: ARRIVE IN DREAMWORLD! FINALLYYYYY! after only four hours of travel! perfect!


inside the park



really, though, we were in a surprisingly great mood. we played MASH on the bus, then listened to some bumpin' tunes on the van ride to the park, and we were just so damn excited to finally be in the park that we didn't have it in us to lament about the ridiculous travel time. thai time.


our van driver pulled up to the park entrance, we grabbed our stuff, paid him, and walked away toward the ticket buying station when the van driver said something in thai and started leading the way. "you farang clearly don't know what you're doing. let me help you." he took us past the regular entrance to a special VIP area where we could buy tickets. a woman looked at us and told us the ticket price would be 550 baht. sam whipped out his work permit to ask if there was a teacher's discount. "oohhh, you live in thailand? well then, the price is only 440 baht!" SCORE.


goal number one once we were in the park was food (well, first was a toilet, but food was a close second). the food situation was apparently semi-complicated, so as we were staring at the menu options, a friendly dreamworld worker came up, took our order, and told us to sit down (this is at a place where everybody else clearly buses themselves). thai people must look at us and go, "aw...how pathetic. i'll help them."


fed and peed, we were ready to hit the rides. goal number one: sky coaster, a ride where your feet dangle and you spin round and round, much like top gun. HELL YEAH. after a maybe 30-minute wait, we hopped on, strapped in, and went on a ride that felt like maybe it needed a little servicing. but no matter. we were so pumped after our first thai roller coaster that we didn't even notice.


after that, we (sans ally and tash) went on the viking, which is one of those boats that spins around in a circle. once you sat down, a bar came down--and that was it. no seatbelts, and i couldn't fairly easily slipped out of the seat. but heyyyy, it's thailand. safety, up to you. so you know how this ride is sort of scary, but after the first few big swings you kind of get in to it and start enjoying things? not these thai people. about half of the four rows we were facing spent the entire time either with their faces dug into their neighbors' shoulders, or with a permanent scream attached to their face. they were scared shitless. then there was the guy who was taking pictures of us four white people the whole time.


we also went on space mountain (EXCELLENT ripoff), walked through the haunted mansion (thai people are really graphic in their representation of scary things), went on a spinny thing that was kind of like that spinning circle ride at the fair that spins you so hard you stick to the wall (centrifugal force!), ate some waffles/ice cream/BOBA!/other delicious amusement park food, watched a 3d show like "honey, i shrunk the kids" (it only occurred to us thirty seconds before showtime that it'd all be in thai), and walked through the creepiest fairytale land ever (a robot threw up into a trash can and hansel and gretel were trapped in a morbidly real-looking jail cell). i apologize for that long sentence.


oh, then we played in the snow.


snowtown
 

this is a serious sentence. i'm not talking about the "snow" that's actually bubbles at disneyland either. i mean we paid some extra baht to go inside a freezing room with actual snow on the ground, a hill to sled down, a snowman, some snowy creatures, an igloo, santa claus, and a christmas tree. we walked in to the building, traded our flip flops for galoshes, and grabbed some snow jackets. i thought the thais were probably just wimpy about the cold; after all, they wear jackets when it's 75 F in suphan.


but no. we entered the snowy heaven and were instantly thrust into regular mid-winter conditions. we were so giddy and i think that moment was my happiest of the whole day.


we raced down the hill three times and nancy (illegally) climbed on top of a mammoth-sized mammoth. we took a thousand pictures, including an adorable christmas photo in santa's sleigh and everything. we spent probably an hour inside snowtown and only left because we were too cold to possibly stay in any longer.

the end of the day

the parked closed at 7, and even though we all agreed we'd done everything we wanted to do at dreamworld, i think i could've spent a few more hours there just soaking it all in. we hopped in a taxi (all 6 of us in one because we're cheap and don't give a crap about comfort), and after an hour and a half of driving around bangkok (i hate bangkok), we finally made it to khaosan road, where we'd be staying for the night. i decided on the very fancy mcdonalds for my birthday dinner, and holy crap that was a delicious choice (mmmmm big mac). full of american saturated fats, we wandered down to our hostel, set our stuff down, and found a place to get a couple drinks and people watch. exhausted in the way that only amusement parks can make you, we didn't say much, but were perfectly content to stare and make silent judgments on the passersby.

frozen margarita and tequila sunrise in my belly, i was sleepy and ready to hit the hay. as soon as my body hit the fairly uncomfortable hostel bed, i was out. first day as a 23-year-old was a success.

my first hot birthday = everything i wanted. thank you, friends :-D