Day 2 - Part Two

[sorry to break up my thailand trip blogging so erratically. someone bet that i wont finish it -_- so i will, just to prove him wrong. and also cos i really want to, time and memory permitting.]

So. After we alighted from the river taxi (what an unromantic name for such a delightful n scenic mode of trnasport), we went looking for the bus station, which, being bangkok, was a parking lot with a few solitary buses. we wanted a loo break so we wandered around the place a little; it was a small town in the middle of the nowhere part of bangkok, but it was more authentically foreign, really. i mean, it was thailand as it is for the people who live there; not a glitzy show put up for the people who come snooping on sporadic visits and judge from the little they see(or are shown). wait, that sounds familiar..

basically there was only a market, some small shops, the aforementioned bus station, another market looking row of buildings opposite the highway which we didn't go to, shops n stalls along the road selling everything from phonecards to dried fish. and the ubiquitious 7-11, of course. there was nothing to see and nowhere to go; much like your typical street in oh, say, joo chiat / geylang area. i still liked it though. damn, does this mean i'm a true blue boring singaporean at heart? i dunno. maybe small towns just attract me with their laid back aura of restfulness.

soon we got on the bus, slept or talked the hour plus journey back, and got to the Southern Bus Terminal before dinnertime. this time i made a beeline for Dunkin Donuts, which i'd seen before we left but didn't manage to visit owing to the goose hunt for J's missing colleague & her friends. i bought a couple of doughnut balls; yummy but almost sickeningly sweet (did i mention i saw a bee buzzing in the glass case of donuts? i went and bought it anyway cos it wasn't a fly; bees are clean, right? hmm.)

off to the train station to buy tickets. the station was s'posed to be interesting, being art-deco, but it wasn't very amazing to me. but i liked trains so by association i liked the train station. a sign caught my eye - there's a praying hall.. i'd missed quite a few prayers so i made a mental note to try visit the hall n catch up.

tickets were expensive, about S$20-30 for a six hour sleepeer train to sukothai, depending on the class and whether you sleep on top or below. they didn't have a lot of choices left, so we took it. next was our regular bout of almost getting conned by tourist savvy thais; some agency tried to persuade us to pre-book hotel n car in sukothai.. we got away, luckily. maybe it wasn't a con but i dunno, i just don't like it when people try too hard to sell me something, u noe? if it's something i want i'd buy it without u shoving it down my throat.

soon we made our way by train to the central area. now i have to say, the subway or train lines at bangkok were very modern, better than ours in fact. u bought tokens like little black coins, not very expensive but there weren't too many stations - the line is not extensive. the changing of stations was also quite confusing, sometimes u had to backtrack to switch trains to get to where u want. to get to centre world(it used to be called world trade centre), i think we went to mo chit station.

my first glimpse of modern bangkok in the thick of the city was bewildering. it didn't gel at all with the picture of exotic bangkok that i'd painted for myself before coming. basically it was orchard road and chinatown and oh, bugis and city hall combined, with all the crowd and clutter and vehicles it entails. it was a mass.. mess. then again it lent a busy vibe to the air, busy with what i duno, shopping, probably, for tourists, and busy earning money off us tourists, for the locals. we saw a few malls including centre world and gaysorn, a high class mall filled with boutique luxury brands and very little people (their washrooms are a dream, very clean and pretty). We also spent quite a long time at the famous Erawan shrine, like a huge spirit house built to appease angry spirits that held up construction of the Erawan Hotel until the shrine was built (so the story goes). i took lots of pictures of the dancers for hire, who performed short bouts of traditional dance accompanied by traditional musicians, whenever someone paid them a sum, in order to get merit. i gathered that a lot of the buddhism practise in thailand was based on accruing merit; a useful concept if it entailed doing good deeds.

but not so useful when it combined less than desirable practices... as we were leaving the shrine, which is just right smack in the middle of all the buildings, almost into the road intersection; i saw a lady sitting in front of the shrine's gate, with a few small red wooden cages stacked beside her. in the cages were a blur of movement and strange sounds, so i went closer to investigate. i was appalled to see the cages filled to bursting with tiny, tiny brown birds - about half the size fo your normal sparrow. they were piled in masses three and five deep, just clinging to the sides of the cage or stepping on each other's heads for lack of space. remember the ad in india with richard gear paying to let all the birds loose for the little indian girl? as i wasn't richard gere, nor with a credit card like his, i couldn't do anything; but as i stole the tip of a finger in to stroke the soft heads of the birds, i wished i had money to pay to set them all free.

anyway, we went on to centre world shopping centre after that, but the main areas of interest were actually outside the centre - the rows of makeshift stalls, more like a flea market than stalls, just wares spread out on low tables or even the floor on some covering; the long area of food stalls stretching several feet along the pavement next to the road, where people ate at crowded tables inches from road dust but with every apparent enjoyment, just like we would throughout the whole trip; and the enormous beer gardens, beer tents really, filled with merrrymakers and with blasting shows on stages up front to entertain the drinkers. rather like a wedding party, with no brides and no food - just beer.

starving, we decided to eat first, and the one thing that we kept seeing was this utterly grotesque fish, all white and crusted with salt, with a bunch of sticks? herbs, stuffing its mouth. it looked like pieces of brick coated with cement, to give an idea of how unappetising it felt. it didn't help that it was called serpent's head. i couldn't look at it without shuddering, but the guys decided to be adventurous and ordered it anyway. along with tomyum soup and vege and some other stuff, i forgot. surprisingly the fish was quite alright; a little bit oily and strong smelling, but it was firm and sweetish and we picked it clean.

shopping time. as the shopping centre was almost closed, we only visited the washroom in it before heading out again. WC & I were on a roll as we stopped at every other stall to browse and buy, and for the next hour we felt bad cos the guys were basically just standing around waiting. but when we told them to go ahead, they said they were OK chatting, so we left them alone and continued to shop.

after finishing the stretch, we went ahead to the famous patpong area in a cab.

to be continued..

tiredness is a state of mind

when i was working ten plus hour days and the occasional weekend at BG, my old company, i frequently felt sick and tired and sometimes dreaded going to work and sometimes faked sick to avoid going to work (or more likely, really feLL sick from overwork). the job scope was physically tiring but mentally unchallenging and i suffered as much from mental fatigue as a strain on the physique. as such, i was frequently bored, and worse, i was bored, and tired.

last week, thursday, i switched to my current job. for two days there was nothing to do; i read magazines and practised hiphop dancing for xmas idol competition this week. yeah, lame, i know. we lost miserably; the stage was a quarter size of the room we practised in and the song was wrongly remixed to be shorter. we made an impressive entrance but that was about it. lols. it was an experience nonetheless. i was terrified up to a second before we went on; then the (last minute) training took over and though steps were missed and feet stepped on (mine; ouch), it ended unbelievingly fast and i almost wished it'd been longer. almost.

i digress. as i was saying. no work on thursday. no work on friday. i was bored out of my mind. 4 pm friday i resorted to asking my mgr for work. little did i know. about 15 minutes after that (idiotic) sms to the mgr, i got my schedule for trailers for xmas. airing this sunday and monday. to be out last sunday and monday. and it was 5 pm last friday when i knew this.

basically, i worked last saturday. and sunday. and came early this monday. and went back at two am last night. all rushing the two trailers. and i'm still not done. they are airing tomorrow and i am packaging it and sending to transmission TOMORROW.

in the midst of stretches of drawn out editing, trying to rush it done before the next editor's slotted turn in the room and i'm booted out, i was alternately crazily rushing and next, woefully at loose ends as i waited my next turn in the edit suite, with nothing to do but read blogs, magazines, msn.

this is throwing me way off balance. hour&a half long lunches and hour long tea breaks in between 14 hour long days. way too busy and slack at the same time.

i'm tired. but i think i'm alright. better, i'm quite happy. because in this job, i have to write my own script, find my own beautiful shots even if the show looks like crap, select my own nice music and cut my own interesting trailers.

ah, what self-importance. my brain is stimulated and i am happy. whip me like a draft horse if u like but if u give me something to think about, a semblance of independant thinking in my job, i will be happy.

and they said we've abolished slavery a long time ago. nonsense; they just call it work now. with incrementally better wages to make up for sucking your life up.

hahaha. i've just wasted an hour tryping a meaningless entry. yup, i'm in my slack period. i shall go home in ten minutes. and be in by 830 tomorrow. hurray.

Day 2 - Part 1

Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

The first morning in Bangkok, we had a wake up call of 630 am to catch the early morning buses to the floating market, about an hour's ride from the bus station. GQ came knocking our door at 645 to make sure we're up; for the next few days his morning knock would be a regular fixture, probably put up to it by J. I got up first and bathed; the water was icy so i bathed really quickly (slipping on the murderously slithery bathroom tiles). By the time I was halfway dressed WC got up and started to wash up. At 7.10 we were kind of ready for a day out but then WC decided to change because she didn't want to wear her jeans to the market. THe whole bunch of J's colleague and friends waited half an hour for us and i think they weren't very happy.. Anyway we finally got down and met them. I was enchanted at the sight of Khao San lying all quiet and pretty in the morning light; i thought it looked so much better than the noisy crowded chaos of the night before (pictures in Day 1's post). It was like seeing the street mellowed out and laid back after a night of debauchery, quiet in its hangover sleep.

Next, we split up into cabs and headed to the Southern Bus Terminal. We'd asked the guesthouse lady earlier how much we should bargain for a cab to the terminal and she said 80 baht. When we found a cab, the guy refused to use metre fare (i'll tell u why later) and he asked for 150baht. I wasn't happy but the negotiations weren't going anywhere and he made like he was gonna leave so we all got into his cab.

En route, there was a small jam right away and we were stuck waiting. I still thought we should have gotten a price closer to what the lady quoted. When the cab started moving again, I tried my luck again (yes, being a bit*h i know). I asked for 100baht and the temperamental driver suddenly pulled over to the road shoulder and said, we go find other car. J gave me a look, and told him it's ok we'll pay 150, then he continued driving.. if it can be called that. If i recall right it was short spurts of travellling followed by equal or longer amounts of waiting, then another short spurt and more waiting. Luckily i was listening to (nice!) thai songs on the thai station and didn't mind that much.

When i wasn't listening i was gawking at the many, sometimes bigger-than-life posters of King Bumiphol and other members of the royal family, scattered willynilly all over the place. Usually they're by the road, sometimes right smack in the middle of huge intersections. By the end of my Bangkok trip i'd grown quite fond of seeing that benevolent face everywhere and i wished we'd stayed long enough for the King's birthday party. He turned 78 on 5 dec to nationwide celebrations. funny, the posters didn't <em>look</em> 78..

We reached the bus station soon, and there were no sight of J's colleague & friends. They got a cab the same time we did so they should have been there. But after waiting, and waiting, and trying to call and failing, we walked all over the whole station (which was just like a bus parking place, and a small central building to buy tickets and food - Dunkin' Donuts!). Finally, after half an hour during which we had toilet breaks at the (empty) KFC, WC eyeing the corn sundae ice-cream, we gave up and boarded a bus heading to Damnoen Saduak. Not ten minutes later they called - just when we were pulling out of station. Giving it up as a lost cause amidst grumblings about waiting and miscommunication, we settled down for the hour plus trip to the floating market. We slept, mostly. Waking up half or quarter way to chat and see the scenery and sleeping again.

Awake and bored, i decided to refer to my ever present guidebook on Damnoen Saduak. Coming across a passage that alarmed me, I passed the book to WC n J to look (GQ never wakes up for all the bus rides - lucky guy). Apparently the book warned that buses will drop tourists at a different place than the locals, and then try to sell them ferry rides to the market. Even after we read about it.. we were still caught. After the rest of the bus got off somewhere, the bus went on to this empty waiting area (we asked but the lady conductor kept saying no not yet we haven't reached yet).

So there we were.. missing half the group and being coerced to buy a boat ride to, and around the floating market. With much difficulty we made them understand that we're waiting for four more friends. One skinny guy even said he could help us get to a phone to call them, but when he ran away and came back on his scooter, i gave J a disbelieving look and we told him no thank you we'll just wait. With sign language and broken english and much pointing and gesturing we finally got the point across, and collapsed in exhaustion onto the stone table and chairs to wait. And wait. And wait and wait and wait. And wait some more.

In boredom we played silly games..



"Superman, Spiderman, Wonderwoman"



"Whacking Hands"

I think the thais thought we were mad but who cared. And so we carried on for one and a half hours. By this time we were out of games and getting impatient; no buses had come on and the floating market was almost over (they have morning and afternoon sessions). So much for waking at dawn! Finally we couldn't take it and we told the thais we'll take their ferry, on condition that we don't stop at all of the other 'attractions' besides the floating market. They jumped at the chance and shortly we were off.



View from the front of the boat



Floating along.. The nearer in front, the funkier the hair..

It was cool! i sat in front so i got full favour of the view and strong wind giving me a groovy hairstyle. We saw everything by the sides of the canals we passed; houses, villages, shops, people, drains, trees & shrubs.. at some points the canal was really narrow/ shallow and the amazing guy did bouts of about-turn and skilful manouvering below poles and round tight corners. I told J their boat skills amaze me and he said this is like driving to them; figures. The guy kept stopping us at every shop by the water-road; we would say no and after a while of not looking he restarts the engine and goes our way. it didn't happen often enough to become irritating but it could have. we also stopped at a coconut house where they had handicrafts and gifts and foodstuff, all made from coconut ostensibly. i bought some snacks and the guy was sweet - he gave me a red square of colour paper, for luck and good wishes during your stay in thailand he says. it's just ordinary coloured paper, the kind we used to make small boats and planes with, nothing special, but it was a nice gesture all the same.

on we go. we encounter some boats on the way; not many cos the floating market was ending. finally we reached the main area. it was like a hawker on one side, next to the boats in the water that sold food and fruits and plasticware, and a stretch of shops on the opposite side of the klong? waterway? that sold scarfs and cloth and normal tourist gifts. we pleaded with the driver to give us 15 mins to eat so he agreed to wait for us and we hopped out.

the food was simple and delicious. we had small crispy griddle pancakes with cream and coloured sweet coconut shreds, and the rest had various noodles. i ate a plain noodle with triangular yellow pieces of fried flour (like something in yong tau fu without meat)- there was nothing but noodle and clear soup and the fried flour but it was great, flavourful and nice. the only complain, which WC made all the time, is that the thais eat very little - all the servings are like half of what you'd find here! most of the time we were just lightly full after meals and got hungry really quick, so we had half empty tums most of the time really. but it didn't interfere with the pleasures of discovering places so that was fine. and when we got a good meal it was all the more enjoyable for being good as well as filling, for a change.

While we were there, two school kids came up and asked if they could ask us questions. Soon there were a merry Q&A session going on, albeit not very smoothly. Their form teacher also came and talked to us, smiling. In the end we wrote down our names and nationalities and favourite food. i wrote fried chicken; i was dying to eat chicken for that one week in Thailand but i promised k i won't so i religiously kept to it. we took photos witht he kids and left; i felt rather like a minor celebrity, to the kids at least, down to the autograph session..

We hopped back onto the patiently waiting boat, and he brought us a short way to a place where he said we can take buses back to bangkok. so ended my visit to damnoen saduak.. it wasn't as spectacular as i'd hope it'd be - i didn't get any nice pictures, not enough boats - but it was unique and still an experience nonetheless. Next time, i'd like to try floating markets that are not too touristy, even if it means going a futher distance.

Ok i'll stop here. Next up will be our visit to city and the shopping district..

thoughts are things..

..and like all things.. are sometimes best left unseen..

sticks and stones.

feelings.

no bones.

words.

shouts.

pain.

why are the hurtful things in life, things i can neither touch, nor see, nor hold, much less control?

why do i want
to undo things i shouldn've done
to turn back all the actions
for which i have no reasons?

what is the value of self control when it lies in wishing a mistake undone rather than employing it quick enough to not have made the mistake in the first place?

i write better than i talk. i talk better than i think.

in that case, i think not at all.

First stop.. Bangkok

Day 1

Destination: Bangkok. Flight: Thai Air Asia. Departing: 8.40pm.

This is it. I'm actually going to fly for the first time in 23 years. And on my own! I woke up with this thought racing through my brain, plus the fact that I'd barely packed enough for my week's stay in thailand. i wanted to buy stuff there, so basically i only packed a toothbrush, small hotel shampoo and clothes. yes, i was going for a week.. well better underpack than overpack right? (err.. wrong.. i wasted money buying soap..tissue..shower foam.. when i could have spent all of it on more clothes! darn.)

so where was i. yeah i had to work that day cos i couldn't take so many days leave. and it was a thursday, my traditional day to be in a bad mood and boy was it one helluva day. i won't go into it now but i was kept behind until 6 plus and i still had to go back to shower eat and get my luggage dammit. so 2 hours before my departure time i was seething in a cab on the road, willing the driver to speed up lest i miss my flight. At 5 to 7, i rushed in, lightning quick, to shower and eat and gather my stuff and i rushed out again half an hour later. My dad sent me to the airport and it took 20 mins by expressway! and he was speeding a third of the way.. The carpark was really far and i was rushing so i grabbed my stuff, said bye and left.

Now to check in. Err, did i mention it's my first flight, like ever? That's right. i didn't know what to do. After some frantic looking i found my gate and just did everything that the people in front of me were doing. I checked in a scant 5 mins before the gate closed. Then i went ahead to the departure hall (first time i stepped into the transit area on the other side of the glass!) and checked in. By the way, the airport official took unduly long to scan my passport. she looked at my picture, then at me, then back at the picture. (ya, like that face whitening commercial where the official couldn't place the fair lady in front of him with the pithy face in the picture). Finally she closed my pasport and handed it back to me.

Official: When you get back to Singapore. Please change your picture.
Me: (meekly) Oh. Ok. Why, now i prettier ah?

Of course i didn't say the last part. If you're curious, my passport photo is me in a purple tudung and black scowling face.. ticked cos my mum made me wear it when i went to change my passport. Sigh, now i have to change it again before my next trip (soon, i hope).

wow i've written a page and i'm not even onboard the plane yet. Ok so i made a few free calls, bought a bleeding 2bucks small bottle of water, locks and a moneybelt(hey i did say im unprepared) and strolled to find my gate. Ten mins later i was still strolling, albeit in a more hurried manner, trying to locate the darn gate. got there just on time, or not, looking at the growing queue. i was joined by j's colleague, who was travelling to laos via bangkok and would be staying at the same guesthouse for the night. i'd rather enjoyed finding my own way til then but it was good to have some company. she was nice and friendly to start, and although something else happened the next day that changed my impression of her, i had to thank her and her friends for getting me to bangkok and khao san, safely.

ok so we got on the plane. it was a blast.. the part i loved best was liftoff! but i hated the going round and round in circles around the planepark, as i thought of it; the giant carpark for planes to land and take off. yeah ok, if there's a proper word for it, tell me.

i duno how to describe being on a plane for the first time.. magical, in a mundane way. it was dark but i delighted to see the buildings and roads shrinking away as we climbed; the lights fell further and futher and then we were at cloud level. i peered through the too small window to marvel at the wisps of white clouds next to me, wishing i could just pinch a piece to put in my mouth and see what it tasted like. what do clouds taste like? not cotton candy i bet, unless we're above a sugarcane plantation somewhere.. ok nvm. one of my favourite aerial manouvers was when the plane would tilt down to the left or right, and the land can be seen slanting up or down at an impossible angle.. cool. lols. but i think the exciting parts of taking a plane are only the take off and landing, and seing the lights vanish behind u as u reach sea, or seing them twinkling and then appear right below u when u get back to land. otherwise, unless there was turbulence, it was rather like being in a large bus. in the air. yeah, i could get used to this.. haha.

so touchdown. 1040pm bangkok time. didn't get much of a sense of don muang airport; checked out in a jiffy and went to join the queue. was crowded and noisy and dusty and too bright or too dim in turns. taxi queue was three deep, and i liked the stickers in some of them that said "I love farang! Welcome to Thailand" or something like that.. lols. farang is foreigner, as some of u very well know.

smooth half hour ride to khao san and we were there. shops were closing but the bustling street felt alive and loud. actually, ever since i touched down, i couldn't shake the feeling that i was just somewhere like malaysia.. the roads.. tolls.. buildings en route.. even the billboards, minus the fact that they were in twisty thai script. i kept waiting for it to sink that i was in bangkok but i didn't really get a sense of 'foreign'ness, u noe? for that, i had to wait for chiangmai.

after a quick bite we settled in to sleep in our guesthouse, a basic but clean and reasonably cheap one at 350baht, quieter for being set back one lane away from the crowds thronging main khao san road. there wasn't much mroe to it than that, and we had to shower ice cold water and the bathroom floor was lethally slippery. but anyway we weren't in our rooms much cept to sleep so it was sufficient.

end of day 1, more like night 1.

coming up next: day 2, floating market of damnoen saduak, hualampong train station to buy tickets to sukhothai, and shopping in town, centre world area.

pix..

Bustling Khao San by night

The same street in the early morning glow.. much better, don't u think

i'm back!

from thailand.. and i loved it! at work now so can't blog much.. i have to update this cos i keep thinking i'll forget all the fantastic things i saw n did! meanwhile here's some pictures to amuse u while i gather my notes.. ;)

Biking around to explore the ruins in Sukhothai, south of Thailand

Stranger in your eyes.. A hot sunny day browsing in the local day market, Chiangmai