| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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' So for an hour
the driver parked the car and the guide went shopping. When we had
shopped we found our van and then came the difficult task of getting our
van out of the parking lot. It is like a block puzzle. All the regular
spaces are filled and the aisles are also filled with cars that are
locked but left in neutral. If you need to get out, you push cars out
of your way ... often as not right into another car. Getting out was a
real mess.
From there it was back to the hotel to freshen up and then out
walking. Binayak chose a place from the guide book and we walked for
about ninety minutes. The place was closed and a less promising
restaurant had taken its place. We took a seelor to get back toward
things and picked a restaurant we passed. I think the waiter was
illiterate. He would take one person's order, go and get that dish,
then move on to the next person. I was hot and in the heat not very
hungry so I just had a pineapple fruit snake and a banana split. Nice
cool energy.
Evelyn had the Spicy Thai Salad. She found it was too spicy for
her. I took some and it seemed okay. After eating for a while I
realized my mouth was really burning. It was too spicy for me, which is
rare in a dish I don't make for myself. Binayak tried some, had no
trouble. Five minutes later Binayak too found his mouth on fire. We
established the culprit was a tiny green pepper about a quarter of an
inch long and fairly narrow. It was a killer. Over dinner we discussed
how bad things were going. I still don't know what they were talking
about. Other saw serious personality conflicts and bad organization. I
actually had thought things were going well. I think we were all tired
of long pointless walks. I suggested that rather than picking a place
to eat out of the guide book, we keep track of where we see a choice of
restaurants. Binayak said he was tired of leading. My contention was
that he kept choosing to lead and we acquiesced. We often also ran
things by democracy, easy to do in a group this size, and things work
out fine that way.
We also decided to do less city-hopping. That cuts down on the
organization necessary. We'd planned to stay in some hotels just one
night. That was going to be a lot of arranging. Instead we will stay
in two or three base cities per country. Then we will take day trips.
We were eating at a hotel's restaurant. We thought we'd see what
trekking tours they had. They had one we liked. The problem was, could
we book our train to Bangkok if we were out trekking the next day? I
suggested we use the next day for booking and both trek and travel to
Bangkok on the same day. Sure enough that was the best plan. Ah,
democracy in action. We returned to our hotel.
October 11, 1990: The morning was spent taking a seelor tour of
local industries. (We first took the seelor to the train station to
book a sleeper to Bangkok.) Silk, celadon, umbrellas. Lots of shops
but we did little buying. American spending very welcome.
For lunch we decided to go back to the same place as the day
before. It was, after all, the only restaurant recommended in the guide
book that hadn't been closed. Today it was closed. We ate at the hotel
coffee shop. It actually was not bad as a restaurant. Lots of Thai
dishes. We'd been having breakfast there each day and I'd had boiled
rice with cuttlefish. Very nice. This time I had what turned out to be
a mediocre shrimp croquette ('shrimp patty in plum sauce,' they were
called, I think). We took a seelor to the previous night's restaurant
and booked our trek for the next day. On the way back Evelyn and I took
a side trip to try and find a wat I had seen from our hotel window. We
had to do a little wandering but it turned out to be two blocks away and
one of the most beautiful of the wats I'd seen. Looking at the map I
think it was the Wat Pan Tao. If you look at the illustrations on the
walls they are all demons fighting each other and monsters. Yet the
feel of being on the grounds is one of incredible peace and serenity.
The main building had a Thai triple roof: a long roof, then a shorter
roof above it, then a shorter roof above that. The walls below the roof
are white and look like stucco. Inlaid are carved wood panels covering
the windows. Somewhere there is a bell rhythmically tinkling. Here we
are trespassing within temple grounds and the monks just look as if we
were clouds.
From there it was back to the hotel for a rest, then about 5:30 PM
we took a seelor to the night market. Barbara got all tied up in a
negotiation over a bedspread that was claimed to be king-sized but
wasn't. We found a restaurant by the side of the river and I ate light.
I had egg and meat with fried noodles. It turned out to be like Beef-
a-roni made with chow fun noodles with a fried egg on top. It was a
good place to eat. We weren't the only ones who thought so. A bunch of
mosquitoes thought so too.
Through and after dinner I was not feeling well. I had sweat,
chills, and a stomach ache. After dinner we walked back to the night
market. We stuck with Steve, who bought sandals, then Evelyn, Steve,
and I bought water and returned to the hotel. I went straight to the
bathroom where I was entertained by a gray lizard (a gecko?) who'd
stopped in our bathroom on its insect-eating rounds.
October 12, 1990: Up early to pack and check our luggage.
Breakfast at the coffee shop. Then we were picked up by Noy, our guide
for the day's trek. We packed into the back of his seelor and headed
out for the hill tribe area. Our progress was soon stopped. The street
was blocked by a police parade. This was Annual Police Day. I later
asked Noy if this would have been a good day to stay in town and rob a
store.
I think it was Barbara who commented how very easy-going and laid-
back the dogs seemed to be in Thailand. It may be the climate is too
hot and humid for them to get into much mischief. But they don't seem
to bark or fight. They just seem to take it all in their stride. We
saw some from the seelor. The seelor had a speaker system and Noy
played dull American music. When we stopped at one point I asked if he
had Thai music and he did play us some.
We stopped and got some candy to hand out at the village. I got a
bag of candy bars and a bag of Bi-Po Jelly Cones. These are plastic
cones about two inches long, one inch wide at the top, filled with
Jell-o. Technically Jell-o is candy, I suppose. Barbara saw Steve
getting two bags of candy bars and told Steve that it was going to run
into big bucks. The bags of candy bars turned out to be about 15B (or
US$0.60) each. In the rural areas of Thailand there are no big bucks.
As the seelor got to more rural roads we saw more rice paddies and
brahma bulls and even a water buffalo or two in the field. When we got
to unpaved road the seelor slowed down and we took turns hanging off the
back. The scenery changed from farm to jungle.
It is easy to hear 'jungle' and let your imagination run riot with
images of lush tropical plants, snakes slithering in the trees, humidity
dripping off of things. That was sort of what I expected in South
America. Those jungles probably exist someplace, but I haven't seen
them. I guess they are called rain forests. Aside from some broadleaf
plants, the jungles we saw in Thailand look not a whole lot different
from the jungles of Massachusetts, only thicker. A jungle is just a
thick forest.
As we were slowed down on a bumpy road a man jumped onto the back
of the seelor. He was an old man missing most of his teeth. We smiled
at each other. He made signs with his hands that he had been to a
doctor (at least he showed us a hypo and some drugs) and that he had a
bad knee. At least he kept holding it. I have read enough science
fiction in which people try to talk to aliens and Neanderthals that I
had the procedure down pretty well. You start with 'My name is ...' in
sign language and build up to 'Help me repair my space ship/time
machine.' First things first. I put my hand on my chest and said,
'Mark.' I pointed to Binayak and said, 'Binayak.' I pointed and said,
'Evelyn.' Then I pointed to the old man. He grinned in
incomprehension. I started over naming people. Same grin.
Communicating in sign language is harder than it looks. We tried Thai,
but the hill tribes don't speak it. We ended up smiling a lot at each
other. Eventually he jumped off.
We stopped to see a waterfall. This turned out to be a few hundred
yards down a slope on which a path had been cleared. Places there were
actual steps that had been dug, but others there was just a mud slope.
Since I have a small foot size for my weight and not much tread on the
shoes I brought, steep mud embankments were a real problem. Going down
it was mostly just keeping my balance and at one spot I just slid down
on the seat of my pants. Better my pants get a little muddy than my
face. At the bottom there was about a forty-foot waterfall. There also
was some trash strewn around so this place had been discovered. Going
back up sliding became a serious problem and I needed a hand once or
twice. By the time I got to the top I was really sweaty. The trip log
was pretty wet on the outside from sweat. The most valuable thing I
take on a trip is my passport. It is always with me. The second most
valuable thing I take is my trip log. It often goes through a lot but
it is nearly always with me. B y the time I have finished one notebook
(I go through one a week or so) the cardboard of the cover is pilling
and a layer or so has been rubbed away. I could even feel the first
page was wet from sweat. Of course it isn't just the jungle that makes
us sweat. Just about everywhere we go is over 90o and very, very humid.
I have been turning up the air conditioning in the hotel just to get
away from the heat. Poor Evelyn practically freezes at night.
We took the seelor a little way down the road and stopped at a Red
Karen village. The Karen are a hill tribe. These were called Red Karen
because red is a color that married women tend to wear. Unmarried women
wear white. Karen are a peaceful agricultural people. All the hill
tribes were heavily into opium production. When the government told
them to stop growing opium they had a real fight on their hands, with
pretty much all the hill tribes but the Karen, who were peaceful enough
not to want trouble and who were good enough at farming that they could
afford to give up the lucrative crop. There are six major tribes
representing about a half million people but more than half are Karen.
When I say the Karen are good farmers, that strictly speaking is not
true. All the hill tribes are semi-nomadic slash-and-burn farmers and
the government tries to teach them better styles of agriculture. We
visited a village of about seventy Karen. We walked down a side of a
hill from the road and the path led past a stream in which some children
were playing, some clothed, some naked. We crossed the stream at a
bridge that was little more than long bamboo stalks, cut in half
lengthwise and tied together by cable. There is very little support,
the whole bridge bounces when you walk on it, and the bamboo shifts.
Very tough to cross for one so unsurely-footed as myself. The village
itself looks extremely poor and ramshackle, with wooden shacks loosely
built on stilts. One of the bigger buildings did, however, have a
television antenna. They had some home-built machines, including a big
lever-like device for pounding the rice and separating it from the husk.
Most of the adults were out working. There were only about ten or
fifteen people in the village when we visited. One old man saw us
passing from the side but when he saw my face he gave a big grin. It
was our nameless friend from the seelor. He had us sit down and we
smiled at each other while the guide talked to him. His lips were
bright red, having come back from the doctor and sitting down to chew
betel nuts. We saw a very young calf and Barbara was able to call it
over to us but a grunt from mother called it back. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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