Believe it.

Yes indeed, I’m in Thailand! Can you believe it? I hardly can. Signing up to teach in China, I never imagined I’d end up in Thailand. It’s a surreal experience. But still amazing.

Here's Thailand, and China's the two orange blobs at the top. Note: I may or may not have said that Thailand was next to China in a previous post...this is incorrect. Sorry about that, just in case.

Before we left Xiangyang, I knew I needed to get somewhere where the conditions were not as harsh as they were in Xiangyang. Kunming was exactly that. But I knew it would still be quite cold, as I said before, the week we spent in Kunming was a kind of freak occurrence, it had been a cold winter and would return to that after we left. I knew I needed warmer…and I thought maybe Hong Kong would be a good place to go. When first planning my Spring Festival vacation, I never thought I would be leaving the country. But another teacher had mentioned her plans for going to Thailand, a thought that had never crossed my mind, and for a moment her original plans had fallen through and she invited me to go with her. That didn’t work out, but it still got me thinking that going to Thailand could still be a possibility. It wasn’t expensive (not for a foreigner anyway, with Chinese people’s general incomes the vast majority of them can’t get out of the country…many can hardly travel within China, I’ve asked my students and many have seen no more than two other cities, IF ANY). To go from America to Thailand would have been vastly more unfeasible, and so I thought that this would be a chance to jump on.

But I couldn’t go alone…I mean, I could do that. But I have found that the best experiences are often shared. Not to mention you can do much more with a group of people. Unless you’re backpacking and you have a strict schedule of constant moving, I don’t recommend travelling alone if you have an option. Even if you did find a bunch of things to do while you’re there alone, it’s never as enjoyable as when you’re sharing the experience with friends. If I had gone to Kunming alone, I would have been glad to be back and I would have enjoyed it a lot, but not nearly as much as I did when I was with my three other friends. So share your experiences with someone, you won’t regret it. Neither will they.

It really seemed like fate, because Malcolm and Melissa were not only going to Kunming, but to Thailand after! And I was dying to go…I wanted to see beautiful green scenery and feel the hot air of eternal summer. I wanted to wear TANK TOPS and SANDALS. But I didn’t want to impose, and that’s why I never asked them originally. But after talking about our vacation plans, they invited me to tag along and said it would be absolutely no trouble and that they would be hanging with friends anyway…which freed me of any previous concerns. Then Kyle’s plans fell through as well, what with the chaos of the biggest mass migration of people in the world occurring around that time, and so he came with us too. So we would all go together to Kunming, but Kyle had an uncle who LIVED in Thailand, married to a Thai lady of a small town a few hours north of Bangkok, and Kyle wanted to visit him. He invited us all to go, but Malcolm and Melissa had plans. But I said, “Yeah, let’s do it!”

And so while all four of us were in Thailand, Malcolm and Melissa stayed in the big cities, and we got off the plane to be picked up by Kyle’s uncle and his wife, O (that’s her name, spelling it phonetically on purpose)… and off we went on a three hour ride deeper and deeper into Thailand.

In Thailand, like in England, they drive on the left side of the road and not the right. That was an interesting experience for me, and it took a while to get used to. I’m still not fully used to it. I’m also noticing a whole lot more pick-up trucks here than in China. I can hardly remember seeing any in China. But the deeper you go into Thailand, like China, you’ll find more of a farming community and they require large pick-ups to transport things. It’s like that in Jamaica too, my grandfather had a pickup and he was a farmer. I’m not really certain of what they use as an alternative in China, but all I know is I don’t see as many pick-ups…I guess they just use those small motorized wagon things and big trucks instead, you see a lot of those in Xiangyang.

When driving down the road, the pickups are often carrying people in the back of them…which is something I remember doing and seeing a lot in Jamaica. In fact, the whole place reminded me very much of Jamaica, in terms of the climate and the plant life I was seeing all around…and Peru was somewhat similar too, though the Amazon offered an incomparable amount of diversity of animals and plant life. But while there were similarities in these tropical places, there were so many differences too. And the biggest differences lay in what people have made in these lands.

There were glimpses of Thai culture all around as we drove down the highway. As we drove, Kyle’s uncle gave us an introduction of Thailand. Much of this I didn’t know a lot about. Thailand has a monarchy, which I knew, but I didn’t know how much of an influence the monarchy had on governing the land. It turns out the Thai monarchy is not too different from the British monarchy, in certain respects. Like the Queen of England, the King of Thailand is more of a figure-head. With that said, also like the Queen, Thai people all have a mutual love for the royal family and that is one big thing that ties the people together: their pride in their king and his family. However, the monarchy may be weakening with swift changes the world is experiencing. Anyway, driving down the road, there are many large pictures of the king or both the king and queen, on bridges or on the side of the road…but basically, you can’t NOT know what the king looks like if you are here in Thailand.

As we drove along, there were many bumps along the road…so many potholes. We learned that the people who supply the asphalt and other materials for the road have a deal with the city governments. The quality of the roads is thus very cheap and will quickly break down, especially with the MANY large trucks that drive down these roads. There are constantly potholes and dents that need to be fixed, and the company then supplies more materials which will once again break down quickly. It’s a vicious cycle and the company makes lots of money from it.

Along the way, I also noticed some beautifully intricate carved gateways and buildings. They were very traditional. It turns out they are called "wats". (pronounced like a lightbulb "watt"). They are basically like monasteries for Buddhist monks. Thai culture is a very polytheistic culture and like Hinduism, they worship many gods, including ancestors, and other already dead people. We passed a few buildings that had these small houses that looked like bird houses. O told me that these were for people that used to live in that area who were already dead as a sign of respect, as well as for family members who had passed. Other Thai people are animists, believing that everything has a soul, even what we would call "inanimate objects."

I think that's supposed to be Buddha, but I'm not sure.

These are the little temples I mentioned before. Pretty much everyone owns a pair.

This a wat, right outside the main part of town.

More of those little shrines. Some places have a whole stock of them, like this one does.

So halfway through our three hour journey (which felt like 15 minutes because I was just taking in all of Thailand), we stopped at a restaurant to have dinner. I ordered a fish fillet…I was just happy to be able to take a big bite of fish and not worry about choking or getting stabbed in the esophagus by some sharp, menacing bones.

Fish and chips...mmmm.

Kyle ordered ostrich steak, which strangely turned out to be RED meat. Who’d have thought? Upon asking about the lack of beef steak, we found out that in fact beef isn’t really served in Thailand. I mean, it’s here and some restaurants have the option…mainly foreign restaurants and restaurants catered to foreigners, but beef isn’t really a common thing that Thai people eat. Instead, there's a lot of fish and chicken and LOTS of pork. I don't think I've ever eaten this much pork before...my diet has mainly been chicken and beef as a meat option, with the occasional pork. And in fact, when you abstain from eating meat or certain types of meat, like vegans and vegetarians do, your body eventually adjusts and you can’t eat it anymore…or at least, your stomach will have a tough time digesting it. It actually is the same with milk too…that’s why so many people in China are lactose intolerant. They don’t really drink a lot of milk or dairy products…they hadn’t done so in their history and they’re only starting to do so a little more now.

Anyway, the cows that they have here are very different from the cows they have in America, or many other places. These cows are called “kwai,” and you can tell them VERY easily apart from cows seen in the West. Even in China I haven’t seen kwai. Take a look.

This is from a website.

This is one I took from the van.

So after our meal, we continued our drive and Kyle’s uncle told us about climate and conditions here in Thailand. You have your wet season, which brings constant rain for a couple of months. There’s flooding from the rain, and though the temperature is cooler, there are lots of bugs. Then there’s the dry season, which conveniently is the season we have arrived in Thailand in. No rain at all. And as we arrived they were just ending their “winter” season…and by winter I mean 70 in the day, 50 at night. I don’t know how they survive in such cold conditions; it makes Xiangyang seem like a tropical paradise.

Finally we arrived late at night at the little town of Chok Chai, where O, Kyle’s aunt, grew up. We drove through it and got to our motels, which conveniently were right next door to Kyle’s uncle’s house. Man, those motels were BEAUTIFUL…cleaner than I could ever have expected them to be. I could KISS THE FLOOR if I wanted to. I walked in there, and I was suddenly hit with a sweet tropical smell of orchids. It was everywhere, it was like I was in heaven. There was CLEAN EVERYWHERE!! Everything about the room was immaculate, even the bathroom! And I had my own room, and Kyle had his own room too…and guess what? The price was only 100 kuai more each week than the hostel in Kunming! And the conditions were infinitely better! (And that’s saying A LOT, because the hostel in Kunming was beautiful.) It was just perfection, and after taking a hot shower in an immaculately clean bathroom, I went under the covers and fell asleep.

End of my first day in yet another wonderfully wonderful foreign country.

(I apologize for this line...I don't know why it's here.)