Yesterday I arrived back in Bangkok on an overnight bus from Krabi/Ao Nang where I spent the last three weeks. The bus arrived in Bangkok at Khao San Rd at 4:30am. Khao San Rd is the backpacker's ghetto. It's a bit hectic, but convenient for booking travel and being around other travellers.
I ate noodle soup at a street vendor stand within the walls of the Temple and Monastery here. A guard, I think from 7-11 got some soup to go. It was packaged in a plastic bag sealed with a rubber band--common packing for street food around here. He added some condiments to his bag of soup---quite a few spoonfuls of sugar (enough to kill a diabetic), and several tablespoons of crushed dried chilis (enough to burn a house down both coming and going!). He didn't really speak English but if I understood his sign language correctly he was saying the sugar and spice would cure a hangover!
I was sad to leave Krabi... more specifically the beaches of Tonsai and Railay... the climber's paradise. I spent about three weeks there after arriving with some young Frenchmen, climbers I met in Phuket. We travelled from Phuket via Phang Nga together. We enjoyed a local bus ride. The local buses are full of chrome and brightly painted colors. Even large speakers and the driver put on some upbeat music as we started the ride. It was like a dance bus.
The public transportation is so wonderful in Thailand, like much of Asia. You can find a variety of trucks, minivans, buses, motorcycles, trains, and taxi's to get around. Often in towns and cities, covered pickup trucks with benches roam up and down the main throughfares every few minutes. Buses run between towns and cities such that you can practically just show up at a bus station and get anywhere.
Cyril, Ben, and I spent a couple of days in Phang Nga, where we enjoyed the atmosphere of a local, rather than tourist town. We enjoyed local dishes such as rice porrige with meat for breakfast, spicy papaya salad and sticky rice, and corn on the cob (not very sweet here). Everything was priced nearly half of the tourist towns like Phuket, or the island of Ko Phan Ngan, where one is held ransome by the boats and lack of local markets because it is merely a tourist place.
We dodged rain storms to check out local caves and waterfalls. One cave by a Buddhist Temple was called the Heaven and Hell Cave. We entered the cave through a tunnel constructed to look like a dragon. Inside the huge cave were some altars. Outside were amusement park like figures depicting Heaven, Hell, and Judgment. Bizzarre! A monk was collecting donations as we left and activated some of the moving figures: a corpse figure sprang out of a coffin making goulish noises! We were startled and laughed! We determined that most every figure made some noise or action when coins were deposited. Rubber plantations surrouned the town as well as magnificent limestone cliffs.
We took a boat ride to nearby islands: James Bond Island were some scenes were filmed for a Bond movie, and Koh Panyee, a Muslim stilt village adjacent to a rock jutting out of the sea. On the Island we followed the Tsunami evacuation signs (we were looking for some rock climbing crags). The led us through the village on stilts to a path. The signs showed an image of a building/shelter. Yet when we got to the end of the boardwalk through town, we found a muddy narrow path that seemed to mainly lead to the diesel generators that provided the town with electricity. It didn't seem like anything that would be very safe or fun with a horde of people fleeing from a tsunami. I decided I wouldn't want to be there during a tsunami. Perhaps it is just the beginning of government's disaster infrastructure. It makes me wonder how much of our own disaster preparations in the US are as adequate as we might believe. We got to hang out for a few moments with a pet monkey a village women held out to us. It was wearing a diaper. She encouraged us to take photos as she thrust it into each of our arms. Then of course she asked for money to feed the monkey. I'm sure she made a good living from it. And it was quite a bit sweeter than the lady outside a temple in Bangkok who had a caged bird and asked me to pay money to set it free!
From Phang Nga, we took another local bus to Krabi. We got off the bus and were accosted by a couple men asking where we were going. I reared up my defenses... well used to touts and scams at bus stations... and put them off. When Ben and Cyril came along as we discussed how to get to the beaches of Railay, it turned out that the men were actually helpful and honest and directed us to a "sangthew" (pick up truck taxi) that was priced correctly. I felt bad. I hate to mistrust people, but many areas there are such scams. When I arrived on Kho Phan Ngan a few weeks ago, I put off a boatman who quoted me a price of 150 baht because I had read in the guidebook that the price was 50 baht... yet the guidebook was outdated.
We got to Railay and found the cheapest bungalows. Railay is quite a resort place with expensive hotels and concrete in which you might as well be in Hawaii or Florida as you will likely pay similar prices and merely get Western culture. Ironic because one of the expensive hotels viewed over trash heaps in the next lot. And another caught wind of sewage. Most of them would catch wind of burning plastic as garbage was burned daily. Obviously development is poorly managed and very much an ecological disaster.
Our bungalow was pretty, though away from the beach were the mosquitos swarmed. We took turns between the two beds and my hammock with mosquito net hung on the porch. The first night was the owner's little girls birthday and so there was a party with family and bungalow guests at the bar. The little girl was cute. I think she was five or six. And she was ready to celebrate! She danced and loved to pop the numerous balloons that were tied around. An early teenage nephew was obviously gay and it was fun to see him accepted into the family. Everyone laughed at his dancing which was better than the others. He was quite feminine. I asked if he was the birthday girls brother, and I was told he was the mother's sister's daughter. At first I thought her English was simply poor, but the next day I realized that perhaps they honor the boy's tendicies and refer to him as a girl. Thais are very open and accepting on some levels. One of my friends from San Francisco has a Thai boyfriend who was aghast when he learned that in the US some families disown gay children, or that some are beat up.
We bought some beer at the bar and soon were hungry. The family shared some birthday food with us. I soon found myself eating chicken salad, so they said. It was crunchy and also soft. I feared it was raw chicken. But I figured if they all were eating it that it wouldn't kill me. I was hungry and a bit tipsy after a beer on an empty stomach and so I ate on. It was terribly spicy too. Soon plates were brought for my accomplices and we began to talk and try to figure out what it was. Finally we talked with the mother and she pointed to her elbows and we figured out we were eating chicken cartilage and maybe feet. In Laos last year some locals shared chicken feet roasted on a stick with me... not much meat and chewy!
A few days in Railay, then we moved to Tonsai, the nearby beach where it's the center of the climber's heaven. One of the bars is next to climbing routes. Ben and Cyril were much more experienced than me and were nice enough to set up a couple easier routes for me. They left after a few days, and a German women, Julia adopted me into her climbing "family". She and her Aussie climbing partner Dave, were quite experienced and enjoyed lead climbing and setting up ropes for me and other less advanced climbers to climb. Our family changed as members came and went along the travel circuit. A German guy, Flo and me became the last of it when Julia left. I spent most of my time working through my fear of heights, clinging to the earth as if I might fall off! Towards the last days I got some strength and confidence. The trick to climbing is trusting the ropes... it's all about knowing how to use the gear. Done properly, you have little to worry about.
Weather was a bit rainy. I moved in which Julia to a little bamboo bungalow. I put my hammock on the porch. It was quite cozy. The first day it started to rain just as we had cleaned up for dinner. We sat on the porch. The wind blew harder. We felt a few drops of rain coming in on the porch and we stashed clothing and gear farther inwards. The gale picked up as we sat like Ma and Pa Kettle on the porch. Soon we found ourselves under shawls from the coolness, and my poncho draped like a tarp over us with just our heads poking out. The rain drove in harder and at last we relented to taking shelter inside the dark small bungalow. Torrents of water washed around the bungalows which all sat on stilts. It was the monsoon. Most days we were dampened by showers, a couple days were total washouts. The last days were quite sunny.
Much of the climbing routes were on overhangs and were fairly dry if you could get to them.
Days usually started meeting for breakfast and picking some routes to climb. A few climbs. Lunch. Then maybe some more climbs or the beach. The community of travelling climbers was sweet with many options to climb with different people, chat, and play cards.
I have many stories, but it is time to prepare for my flight to Calcutta, India at 6 am. Not the best time as I will likely have to take a bus at 11pm unless I want to pay twice as much for a taxi.
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