Northward bound

"Well, if no one wants to play, I'll just lay here on the table and keep the eggs company." Happy cat in Chiang Mai. We're happy too to be in laid-back Chiang Mai, which seems like it's a sleepy outpost compared to Bangkok.

Me...

...and Mamie on the overnight "express" train, second-class sleeper, from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Mamie had lots of admirers on the train. :) Okay, so one of them was a semi-crazy stewardess... :D

Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha temple.

The Chao Praya River runs through Bangkok. My favorite way of getting around the city is by ferry, one trip for 13 baht (40 cents). Sunset around 6:30pm.

front seat, next to el capitan, on the Chao Praya.

First night in Bangkok we splurged for a really "flash" place next to the river, New Siam Riverside. Mamie's having breakfast. A beautiful start to the day!

(look at the pictures from bottom up to get the chronological order)

We spent two full days in Bangkok. Our bus from Kuraburi rolled into the big city at 4:15 in the morning, pitch black, but the southern bus terminal was hopping, with some vendors and shops already open, and people getting off buses in pulses. Our bus was "VIP", which meant everybody got a packaged bun for a snack and a blanket. I didn't find it a very comfortable ride because my feet couldn't touch the floor. Because I couldn't let my feet hang there all night, the way I deal with it is I take my Chaco sandals off and stack them on top of one another. Then when I rest my feet on the two-tiered sandals, it's almost right. Exciting, ey? Two more exciting things happened on the bus ride: 1. I watched "Waterworld" in Thai, and 2. I got to see Thai soldiers up close and in action as our bus got stopped repeatedly for soldiers and drug dogs to check us and our things out. We saw a bus just like ours next to the road with all its passengers ejected...they must have found something. What a way for those folks to spend the night!

Bangkok was the big shadowy city when we arrived. After a long while, we eventually figured out that we had to take th 511 bus. The funny thing is that Information Desks in Thailand (that I've encountered so far) are not staffed by people who know English. But eventually some piece of vital information gets passed, or at least they physically point to you the right direction to get started. Thailand is proving difficult to get around without knowing any Thai. I am glad I started my travels in English-speaking countries! Travel here is difficult even compared to Malaysia, where many people speak English, because their language is written in Roman alphabet. The Thai script is impossible for me to understand. We have taken to carrying little scraps of paper with the destination written on by a nice Thai so that we may present it to other nice Thais to help us.

Perhaps my favorite part of Bangkok is the river that runs through it: the Chao Praya. The silently flowing river is a calm ribbon of blue to rest the eyes when the exhaust fumes and noises of the city get to be too much. Many places we wanted to go to were along or close to the river anyway (Chinatown, Grand Palace, Wat Pho, connection to Skytrain...), and there's no bottleneck traffic on the river, although the ferries get very crowded during rush hour. Still orders of magnitude better than the buses. And, it's beautiful.

I also enjoyed walking the streets of Bangkok when school lets out, when all the uniformed kids wander about, buying snacks from the street vendors, getting picked up by parents...I even saw a group of girls negotiating with a taxi driver for a ride home at a reasonable fare! Taxi drivers don't like to use the meter, so they can rip you off. We used the taxi one time, when we needed to get to the train station after waiting and waiting for the bus to show. Another backpacker shared the taxi with us, so split three ways, it's not bad, but if I had been by myself, it would have been an expensive ride. Mamie and I also used a tuk-tuk in Bangkok, one of the three-legged "vehicles" that are basically a motorcycle with a covered bench in the back. Our driver was crazy and we were both happy to have survived. He would sing in a way to suggest he wasn't totally there...and his pinky fingernail was long and painted pink. Maybe it's the fashion for Thai men, who knows?

We are now in Chiang Mai, having arrived by a sleeper train this morning after a fifteen hour journey north. It's really nice to be able to sleep most of the night through on a real (albeit very narrow) bed. Mamie and I got seats that faced each other. The seats fold out to make the bottom bunk, and the top bunk folds down from the top. Really nifty. The Thai staff kept laughing and giggling about something around us, and we figured eventually that two of them were teasing one of them about Mamie because he couldn't take his eyes off her whenever he walked by. :D Then there was the crazy woman stewardess who was drinking Chang beer on the job and acting a little drunk.