SARAH'S HEREEEEEEEEEE! it's awesome and simultaneously bizarre. here we are, hanging out in thailand, just like it's nbd. the first night she got here we went to the mall to get her a camera, then came back and watched tv. having people from home here has been great, not just cuz i get to show off thailand, but (more importantly and selfishly) i get a little taste of home that i've been craving so much.
we started in bangkok, but we were only there one night cuz of those damn protests. we hightailed out of there to koh samet, which is easily one of my favorite islands. tons of white sandy beach, warm water with just enough waves to give you that feeling of still being in the ocean when you're lying in bed at night, good food, fire dancers...*sigh*
also, it's HOT AS *$&% here. when all of the teachers/thai people i know were like, "get out of thailand in april," i was like "yeah, right, you guys. it's been pretty hot this whole time and i've been handling it. i bet it's not so bad." up in chiang mai, it wasn't bad at all--hell, i even got cold (granted, i was soaking wet, but still). now that we're down south, HOLY CRAP it's hot. we just spend the days sweating. sarah and i walked around victory monument in bangkok shopping with our backpacks on and just sweat on every vendor. in koh samet, every minute spent away from the beach breeze was a sweaty moment. this hot season in thailand is real serious, apparently.
we're in koh chang now until the 26th. five glorious nights on this huge island. tomorrow we're headed on a hike to a waterfall, and we've got plans to ride elephants. life's really hard.
22.4.10
18.4.10
i want chiang mai to be my home
i've been up here for about a week now. i love this city.
songkran was amazing and it's hard for me to put it into words, but i didn't take any pictures so i won't really have a way to remember except with my words so here i go, trying anyway.
songkran is the thai new year's multi-day celebration. they have a whole bunch of activities--the thais go to temple one morning, parades happen, praying to buddha happens, people make merit, etc. etc. but the main part--the super awesome part that makes songkran the best thai holiday yet--is the water fight. this is no child's play. everyone's equipped with intense water guns (mine was hooked up to a backpack filled with water so i was SUPER PREPARED) and buckets. from monday afternoon to thursday evening, any time i went outside, i got wet. people stood outside their guesthouses pointing hoses at passersby; kids stood near trashcans full of water and doused anyone who dared pass; white people everywhere carried loaded guns constantly aimed in front of them. all of this happens throughout every street of the city (chiang mai had the biggest celebration this year, and apparently it originated up north).
"but nicki, if you're in the street, where do you get the water?"
astute question, curious reader. there's a canal that runs around the "old city" part of chiang mai. it's filled with water, which is great, but it's also got some trash and mystery diseases and nasty unidentifiable stuff. at first i was real grossed out by it but then i learned to cope by keeping my mouth closed and just resigning myself to the fact that i was picking up gross germs. also, everyone else was doing it.
oh man, so we hung out on this main street pretty much all day. part of the street is blocked off, but on the part that's not, trucks drive down with a handful (slash maybe 20) people in the bed of the truck, along with a trash bucket full of water. any time these people passed us, we got drenched.
OH then there was this douchebag move people did where they bought ice and stuck it in said trash buckets of water so when they dumped water on our heads it was FREEZING COLD. for the first time ever in thailand i was cold outside. oh, btw, april's supposedly the hottest month of the year here (it's the last of the dry season), but honestly, it's been way hotter than this and i think thai people are lying to me about the weather.
anyway, i have so many little specific songkran stories (foam parties, dancing kids, masks, a guy on acid, doing the ymca but being the only people who knew the lyrics/dance), but i think they're the type that'll have to come out in conversation throughout the years.
now it's about 3 in the afternoon on my last day in chiang mai (sadface). i'm hopping on an overnight train to bangkok in a few hours and tomorrow i'm picking up sarah from the airport for our two weeks of beachy adventures. we're headed to koh samet, koh chang in thailand, then i'm making sarah do a crazy thing and come in to cambodia with us. it's gonna be beautiful and i can't wait to get into the country, but everything i've read says it's just tougher to travel there than in thailand. but by that point she'll have been in thailand for a week so i figure she'll be a regular.
btw, the protests in bangkok are still big and slightly dangerous, but in all honesty, us white folk are pretty safe. we're clearly not part of the political demonstrations and because of that, we're usually left out of the bad stuff. but even so, i'm keeping a close eye on everything and plan on avoiding the city center as much as possible tomorrow/the next day, and we'll get to koh samet asap. like we need an excuse to get to an island faster.
songkran was amazing and it's hard for me to put it into words, but i didn't take any pictures so i won't really have a way to remember except with my words so here i go, trying anyway.
songkran is the thai new year's multi-day celebration. they have a whole bunch of activities--the thais go to temple one morning, parades happen, praying to buddha happens, people make merit, etc. etc. but the main part--the super awesome part that makes songkran the best thai holiday yet--is the water fight. this is no child's play. everyone's equipped with intense water guns (mine was hooked up to a backpack filled with water so i was SUPER PREPARED) and buckets. from monday afternoon to thursday evening, any time i went outside, i got wet. people stood outside their guesthouses pointing hoses at passersby; kids stood near trashcans full of water and doused anyone who dared pass; white people everywhere carried loaded guns constantly aimed in front of them. all of this happens throughout every street of the city (chiang mai had the biggest celebration this year, and apparently it originated up north).
"but nicki, if you're in the street, where do you get the water?"
astute question, curious reader. there's a canal that runs around the "old city" part of chiang mai. it's filled with water, which is great, but it's also got some trash and mystery diseases and nasty unidentifiable stuff. at first i was real grossed out by it but then i learned to cope by keeping my mouth closed and just resigning myself to the fact that i was picking up gross germs. also, everyone else was doing it.
oh man, so we hung out on this main street pretty much all day. part of the street is blocked off, but on the part that's not, trucks drive down with a handful (slash maybe 20) people in the bed of the truck, along with a trash bucket full of water. any time these people passed us, we got drenched.
OH then there was this douchebag move people did where they bought ice and stuck it in said trash buckets of water so when they dumped water on our heads it was FREEZING COLD. for the first time ever in thailand i was cold outside. oh, btw, april's supposedly the hottest month of the year here (it's the last of the dry season), but honestly, it's been way hotter than this and i think thai people are lying to me about the weather.
anyway, i have so many little specific songkran stories (foam parties, dancing kids, masks, a guy on acid, doing the ymca but being the only people who knew the lyrics/dance), but i think they're the type that'll have to come out in conversation throughout the years.
now it's about 3 in the afternoon on my last day in chiang mai (sadface). i'm hopping on an overnight train to bangkok in a few hours and tomorrow i'm picking up sarah from the airport for our two weeks of beachy adventures. we're headed to koh samet, koh chang in thailand, then i'm making sarah do a crazy thing and come in to cambodia with us. it's gonna be beautiful and i can't wait to get into the country, but everything i've read says it's just tougher to travel there than in thailand. but by that point she'll have been in thailand for a week so i figure she'll be a regular.
btw, the protests in bangkok are still big and slightly dangerous, but in all honesty, us white folk are pretty safe. we're clearly not part of the political demonstrations and because of that, we're usually left out of the bad stuff. but even so, i'm keeping a close eye on everything and plan on avoiding the city center as much as possible tomorrow/the next day, and we'll get to koh samet asap. like we need an excuse to get to an island faster.
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