This is my favorite place in the world.
from the roof of our school
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
final post
hey there everybody!
this is the last one, in case there were any of you out there that are just sitting around to see if i lived. i did. i'm back in the US now but I thought I'd just finish it up with a little overview of how my last few days went.
my final days in thailand were actually not spent in thailand. I went to Laos for five days after the program ended (with many many tears).
We (myself and two friends) went to Luang Prabang, Laos because it looked gorgeous, it's an UNESCO world heritage site, so basically it is paid to look pretty. We spent a few days getting up early, being tourists, and going to bed early too. The first day we spent in Vientiene (the capital) which was really not so very pretty or impressive but gave us a nice little bridge between the Kingdom of Thailand and the Communist nation of Laos. we then took a nine hour VIP (that becomes important later) bus to Luang Prabang. We got a hotel for four american dollars/person/night, which was a little bit on the pricey side there. We pretty much spent the last few hours of the day after we got there just walking around the city, eating crepes, and passing out early while pretending to get some reading done.
The next day we went to the Pak Oh Caves (by the way I am going to be making these names up by memory, so they are probably almost completely wrong). These caves are right on the Mekong, we got to them via the most GORGEOUS 2 hour slowboat ride, where all of these Buddhas that are too old and broken are stored. There are over 4,00 of them, and they range from a couple inches tall to a couple feet. The caves were pretty cool but it was definitely the ride there and back that impressed me the most, we were just surrounded by mountains covered in the densest jungle. I know it's sacrilege but the country of the ol' 40 shades of green should be careful not to wander too far east because that is not too many shades. We spent the afternoon walking to one of many wats, but one particular one stands out in my memory because it was covered in these awesome glass mosaics. covered. inside and out.
The next morning we found my favorite place in the entire world. It was basically a series of waterfalls and ponds high in the mountains, deep in the jungle, that managed to feel magical (seriously, i hate people who describe things as "magical" in that weird voice, but I mean it literally) and untouched even though it was one of the major tourist stops in the region. We swam in the waterfalls, found a little cove where no one else was and just floated around in this beautiful sky blue water. I found a waterfall that I decided I needed to get to and spent about 15 minutes hiking through a whole series of other falls and pools, cutting up my hands and feet all the way on the rocks that were covered in some kind of coral-type growth. I got to my waterfall, claimed it, sat on the edge, and I'm pretty sure that it will be mine forever. At the top of this series of hundreds of 3-6 foot waterfalls was a huge one. I suck at estimating things so I'm just going to stick with really huge, hundreds of feet I think. Basically that place was perfect and I almost cried when we had to leave.
On our last day we visited another wat where the view of the city and the mountains all around it was amazing. We got up really early because we didn't want to have to make the hike in the heat and so we got to watch the mist subside off the city. We spent the rest of the day just bumming around and that night we took the bus back to the capital. This is where everything went to hell. We bought a ticket for the same VIP bus we took to get there with a travel agent, but when we got to the bus station they said the bus was overbooked and sent it off without us. This was the last bus (there are only two a day) and one of my friends had a flight the next morning so we had to be on a bus out of there that night. So we fought, literally we had to shove people, yell and in the end just plant, to get on the "local" bus. This meant that we sat on the floor in the isles for the entire 9 hour bus ride. No not just that because that wouldn't have been bad. On the isles under us was everything the "locals" had to transport: bags of rice, oranges, knifes, who knows what. This was not comfortable. There was also a man who was very smelly and very weird man who was sitting next to, strike that ABOVE, me who kept stroking my foot with his and trying to get our legs to intertwine in some way. Not fun. You know how you get a little cranky when you are cooped up in a vehicle for many hours and can't quite get comfortable in your seat? Try that without a seat. (Well at least I get cranky when I can't get comfortable, sorry to put that on you.) Basically it was kind of a bad end to the trip, but we got over it and crossed the border back to lovely thailand successfully.
In the end we had decided that people are so much nicer to you if you just don't act like a jerk tourist. We knew we were at a huge advantage knowing the language, but I am begging all of you out there to remember that it is not the duty of the people who live in the country you are visiting to learn English, it is your duty to figure out how to communicate with them in their own language, or in English that is not yelled or spat. We saw so many people getting so angry that the women from the village who was selling them mandrin oranges (my new favorite fruit, sans icky sugar liquid) did not speak English and then end up having to pay twice the price (asshole tax I guess), and then we would walk by, say hello and ask how they were doing in their own language and get thrown a few for free. Just be nice to other people, no matter what language the speak, huh?
Off the soapbox, that's the end of the blog. It was really a great trip, no matter how many bad moments there may have been, I loved it. I will miss Thailand too much to even talk about, and hope that I can continue to see new places and meet new people for the rest of my life.
this is the last one, in case there were any of you out there that are just sitting around to see if i lived. i did. i'm back in the US now but I thought I'd just finish it up with a little overview of how my last few days went.
my final days in thailand were actually not spent in thailand. I went to Laos for five days after the program ended (with many many tears).
We (myself and two friends) went to Luang Prabang, Laos because it looked gorgeous, it's an UNESCO world heritage site, so basically it is paid to look pretty. We spent a few days getting up early, being tourists, and going to bed early too. The first day we spent in Vientiene (the capital) which was really not so very pretty or impressive but gave us a nice little bridge between the Kingdom of Thailand and the Communist nation of Laos. we then took a nine hour VIP (that becomes important later) bus to Luang Prabang. We got a hotel for four american dollars/person/night, which was a little bit on the pricey side there. We pretty much spent the last few hours of the day after we got there just walking around the city, eating crepes, and passing out early while pretending to get some reading done.
The next day we went to the Pak Oh Caves (by the way I am going to be making these names up by memory, so they are probably almost completely wrong). These caves are right on the Mekong, we got to them via the most GORGEOUS 2 hour slowboat ride, where all of these Buddhas that are too old and broken are stored. There are over 4,00 of them, and they range from a couple inches tall to a couple feet. The caves were pretty cool but it was definitely the ride there and back that impressed me the most, we were just surrounded by mountains covered in the densest jungle. I know it's sacrilege but the country of the ol' 40 shades of green should be careful not to wander too far east because that is not too many shades. We spent the afternoon walking to one of many wats, but one particular one stands out in my memory because it was covered in these awesome glass mosaics. covered. inside and out.
The next morning we found my favorite place in the entire world. It was basically a series of waterfalls and ponds high in the mountains, deep in the jungle, that managed to feel magical (seriously, i hate people who describe things as "magical" in that weird voice, but I mean it literally) and untouched even though it was one of the major tourist stops in the region. We swam in the waterfalls, found a little cove where no one else was and just floated around in this beautiful sky blue water. I found a waterfall that I decided I needed to get to and spent about 15 minutes hiking through a whole series of other falls and pools, cutting up my hands and feet all the way on the rocks that were covered in some kind of coral-type growth. I got to my waterfall, claimed it, sat on the edge, and I'm pretty sure that it will be mine forever. At the top of this series of hundreds of 3-6 foot waterfalls was a huge one. I suck at estimating things so I'm just going to stick with really huge, hundreds of feet I think. Basically that place was perfect and I almost cried when we had to leave.
On our last day we visited another wat where the view of the city and the mountains all around it was amazing. We got up really early because we didn't want to have to make the hike in the heat and so we got to watch the mist subside off the city. We spent the rest of the day just bumming around and that night we took the bus back to the capital. This is where everything went to hell. We bought a ticket for the same VIP bus we took to get there with a travel agent, but when we got to the bus station they said the bus was overbooked and sent it off without us. This was the last bus (there are only two a day) and one of my friends had a flight the next morning so we had to be on a bus out of there that night. So we fought, literally we had to shove people, yell and in the end just plant, to get on the "local" bus. This meant that we sat on the floor in the isles for the entire 9 hour bus ride. No not just that because that wouldn't have been bad. On the isles under us was everything the "locals" had to transport: bags of rice, oranges, knifes, who knows what. This was not comfortable. There was also a man who was very smelly and very weird man who was sitting next to, strike that ABOVE, me who kept stroking my foot with his and trying to get our legs to intertwine in some way. Not fun. You know how you get a little cranky when you are cooped up in a vehicle for many hours and can't quite get comfortable in your seat? Try that without a seat. (Well at least I get cranky when I can't get comfortable, sorry to put that on you.) Basically it was kind of a bad end to the trip, but we got over it and crossed the border back to lovely thailand successfully.
In the end we had decided that people are so much nicer to you if you just don't act like a jerk tourist. We knew we were at a huge advantage knowing the language, but I am begging all of you out there to remember that it is not the duty of the people who live in the country you are visiting to learn English, it is your duty to figure out how to communicate with them in their own language, or in English that is not yelled or spat. We saw so many people getting so angry that the women from the village who was selling them mandrin oranges (my new favorite fruit, sans icky sugar liquid) did not speak English and then end up having to pay twice the price (asshole tax I guess), and then we would walk by, say hello and ask how they were doing in their own language and get thrown a few for free. Just be nice to other people, no matter what language the speak, huh?
Off the soapbox, that's the end of the blog. It was really a great trip, no matter how many bad moments there may have been, I loved it. I will miss Thailand too much to even talk about, and hope that I can continue to see new places and meet new people for the rest of my life.
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