Hi! It is the eve of my return home. Well, actually, for those of you back home I think it's actually the eve of the eve of my return - the time changes make it weird. In fact, this Saturday December 18th will 39 hours long for me.
As many of you know, I am FAR behind in my blogging. I've been in Thailand for 4 weeks now and have only gotten two posts up. I have, in fact, done more than eat, shop and get massaged in that time. I do plan to continue blogging when I get home to tell the tales of the rest of my trip. I'm hoping to have it done before Christmas and maybe even retroactively add some photos to my last posts when I get my memory card sorted out.
I hope everyone is well and ready for a Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/Jolly Holiday or whatever else may apply to you.
Only 15 hours until I'm boarding a plane back to Vancouver!!
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Shopping and Massages
I suppose my book title could also be something like Eat, Shop, Get Massaged. Along with eating, we did A LOT of shopping. Whether it be at various night markets, morning markets, all day markets, shopping malls, there was always something to buy. I quickly gave up on the idea of returning home with just my pack. There are just too many great things and wonderful deals here! I have to admit, sometimes I'm not entirely sure whether I like something because I actually like it or because it's so cheap. I guess I'll find out when I unpack all my treasures at home.
The hotel we were staying at (I'll get more into that in a later post) was right next to Patpong, a street notorious for its shows of all sorts. It also has a large night market with the a very high concentration of knockoffs. Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo and Tiffany seem to be favourites along with ripped off DVDs, which are surprisingly current. This is a very touristed market and so good bartering skills are a must. Even the best won't necessarily get the cheapest price you can get at other places in Bangkok. Joe's aunt was certainly one of the best though. She took us around Patpong one night to make a few purchases and we nabbed some amazing steals: sunglasses for 100 baht (around $3) and a couple of silk screened prints for me for 120 baht (down from 200). As I suspected, I am a pretty bad barterer. Sometimes I know I'm getting ripped off, sometimes not, but what it really comes down to is that I feel like a royal jackass fighting over two or three dollars with someone for whom that means more than a cup of coffee in their everyday life when I have voluntarily left a solid job to drop thousands of dollars on, essentially, a very long vacation.
Over the ten days, we hit up a few other nights markets along with the Platinum Fashion Mall and Chatuchak Market (an outdoor weekend market). Both were overwhelmingly huge and busy. You could easily spend DAYS wandering through either of them.
The other semi-regular event of my time with Joe's family was getting massages. Joe's mum, Toy, has a regular person that she sees when she goes back to Bangkok, so this woman would bring along a few extra masseuses so that Joe, Joy and I could have massages as well. Thai massage is nothing like the Swedish relaxation massages that are the norm back home. Much more involved with deeper tissue massage and limb manipulation. During my first massage, I took a quick peek to see just what was going on to find that I had a tiny little Thai woman standing on the backs of my legs. It does feel quite good in the end even if there is a little pain along the way!
I had three massages in that week and a half, such a hard life I've been living, I know. And a couple of them were two hours to boot. It had never even occurred to me to have more than a one hour massage before I came here. I didn't feel too guilty about it either since Joe's mum and sister were usually having three hours! (Really, how can you resist at $7 an hour?!)
Okay, enough with that, on to the interesting Thai stuff I got to do!!
The hotel we were staying at (I'll get more into that in a later post) was right next to Patpong, a street notorious for its shows of all sorts. It also has a large night market with the a very high concentration of knockoffs. Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo and Tiffany seem to be favourites along with ripped off DVDs, which are surprisingly current. This is a very touristed market and so good bartering skills are a must. Even the best won't necessarily get the cheapest price you can get at other places in Bangkok. Joe's aunt was certainly one of the best though. She took us around Patpong one night to make a few purchases and we nabbed some amazing steals: sunglasses for 100 baht (around $3) and a couple of silk screened prints for me for 120 baht (down from 200). As I suspected, I am a pretty bad barterer. Sometimes I know I'm getting ripped off, sometimes not, but what it really comes down to is that I feel like a royal jackass fighting over two or three dollars with someone for whom that means more than a cup of coffee in their everyday life when I have voluntarily left a solid job to drop thousands of dollars on, essentially, a very long vacation.
Over the ten days, we hit up a few other nights markets along with the Platinum Fashion Mall and Chatuchak Market (an outdoor weekend market). Both were overwhelmingly huge and busy. You could easily spend DAYS wandering through either of them.
The other semi-regular event of my time with Joe's family was getting massages. Joe's mum, Toy, has a regular person that she sees when she goes back to Bangkok, so this woman would bring along a few extra masseuses so that Joe, Joy and I could have massages as well. Thai massage is nothing like the Swedish relaxation massages that are the norm back home. Much more involved with deeper tissue massage and limb manipulation. During my first massage, I took a quick peek to see just what was going on to find that I had a tiny little Thai woman standing on the backs of my legs. It does feel quite good in the end even if there is a little pain along the way!
I had three massages in that week and a half, such a hard life I've been living, I know. And a couple of them were two hours to boot. It had never even occurred to me to have more than a one hour massage before I came here. I didn't feel too guilty about it either since Joe's mum and sister were usually having three hours! (Really, how can you resist at $7 an hour?!)
Okay, enough with that, on to the interesting Thai stuff I got to do!!
Friday, December 10, 2010
Eat, Eat, Eat
(Sorry to disappoint, but you won't be seeing any photos from now on. A bunch of my photos seem to have been corrupted somehow and a lot of them correspond to photos I've uploaded to my blog - a.k.a. my favourites! Not sure if there really is a connection, but I don't really want to take the chance. I'll try not to be too wordy.)
After the Philippines, I moved onto Thailand, and more specifically Bangkok. My friend Joe (who you heard about very early on in this blog from my Arizona visit) is Thai and has a lot of family in Bangkok, some of whom own a hotel. I was meant to be heading straight through Bangkok to explore Laos for a couple of weeks, but I was feeling a bit tired of traveling alone and just a bit burnt out on traveling altogether. As luck would have it, Joe and his mum and sister were arriving in Bangkok at the same time as me for a family visit and they invited me along! It was a wonderful experience. Joe's family was very welcoming and I got the chance to do some things that I wouldn't have on my own.
I've had a few jokes about me being on some sort of Eat, Pray, Love trip which isn't really true since I haven't fallen in love or done any praying. Joy (Joe's sister) and I joked though that if I were to write a book about my time in Bangkok with their family it would have to be called Eat, Eat, Eat. It is unbelievable how much food these tiny little Thai people can pack away. Lunch and dinner were often big group outings and I learned quickly to have a very light breakfast as it was the only time I could control my food intake. If I didn't eat enough with the family they would worry that I didn't like the food. Very sweet, but my waistband definitely got a little uncomfortable at times! That said, I can't blame it entirely on Joe's family. The food was amazing (for the most part anyway - cow's tongue made me gag a little) and I wasn't necessarily that great at holding myself back. :) Some of my favourites: panang chicken, tom yum soup and some sort of leaf wrap thing that I don't know the name of.
A tip for future travellers - Dukoral is a very good thing! Definitely take it. I ate (almost) anything that came my way and didn't have any issues. Hooray for drugs!
After the Philippines, I moved onto Thailand, and more specifically Bangkok. My friend Joe (who you heard about very early on in this blog from my Arizona visit) is Thai and has a lot of family in Bangkok, some of whom own a hotel. I was meant to be heading straight through Bangkok to explore Laos for a couple of weeks, but I was feeling a bit tired of traveling alone and just a bit burnt out on traveling altogether. As luck would have it, Joe and his mum and sister were arriving in Bangkok at the same time as me for a family visit and they invited me along! It was a wonderful experience. Joe's family was very welcoming and I got the chance to do some things that I wouldn't have on my own.
I've had a few jokes about me being on some sort of Eat, Pray, Love trip which isn't really true since I haven't fallen in love or done any praying. Joy (Joe's sister) and I joked though that if I were to write a book about my time in Bangkok with their family it would have to be called Eat, Eat, Eat. It is unbelievable how much food these tiny little Thai people can pack away. Lunch and dinner were often big group outings and I learned quickly to have a very light breakfast as it was the only time I could control my food intake. If I didn't eat enough with the family they would worry that I didn't like the food. Very sweet, but my waistband definitely got a little uncomfortable at times! That said, I can't blame it entirely on Joe's family. The food was amazing (for the most part anyway - cow's tongue made me gag a little) and I wasn't necessarily that great at holding myself back. :) Some of my favourites: panang chicken, tom yum soup and some sort of leaf wrap thing that I don't know the name of.
A tip for future travellers - Dukoral is a very good thing! Definitely take it. I ate (almost) anything that came my way and didn't have any issues. Hooray for drugs!
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