Our Last Week

 

Lotus bud bouquet, Thai street stall.

Well, readers, our last week wasn't all that exciting compared to the rest of the trip. It was pretty hard actually and made us ready to come home. But we had some good times too. After recovering in Flores we were in a blur of planes and hotels - 3 countries in 3 days! It was exhausting. We made it back to Bali for a night, then Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, then Bangkok. Patrick was feeling a bit better each day, but there was no way we could salvage our trip to Borneo, so we pretty much just waited out our time until our plane home from Bangkok.

We made it out of Indonesia just before our 30 day visa expired. If the visas weren't an issue , we would have stayed longer in beautiful Bali rather than heading to crazy Bangkok so early. But, so it goes, so we headed to Malaysia en route back to Thailand.

We had one night in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (a place we had spent enough time in on our last trip) and it happened to be a night a new friend of ours, Zahar, was in town. We met Zahar on Kanawa and then again in Labuan Bajo and he kindly invited us to dinner in his home town of KL. We had a great time and were grateful for a local perspective on the city.

Decorations for the Chinese new year, a big deal in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Zahar at the epic seafood buffet in KL.

We had an awesome time with Zahar and were completely overloaded by the size and scope of this restaurant buffet. We tried a lot of good food, and some that wasn't very good, but we were glad to try it all. Its ok with us that we don't have durian cake or bitter gourd in the states.

Then, we packed up and hopped a plane once more, and landed in the large, loud and crazy concrete monstrosity that is Bangkok. Our original plan was to head up to Khao Yai National Park.  If we couldn't get to Borneo this would have to do, one night in Bangkok then leave in the morning.  More traveling but worth it.  That night Amy god food poisoning.   So again, our plans changed and we laid  low in Bangkok for longer than we wanted to.

We took pictures here of some of the interesting, everyday stuff you see around.  But as with most of the culture we experience, pictures are either impossible or very difficult to get, so we often don't take the camera out.  It's tight, crowded, hot, loud, smelly, and busy day and night.  

The power lines here are no joke, but they kinda are. There are this many, like this, everywhere, sometimes not as well attached as what you see here. As with many things in Asia, we can only stare with wide eyes and wonder how they can possibly make that work, and how often it's fatal to pedestrians.

Traffic. Always. This was our taxi route to the center of town and we drove it day and night, weekday and weekend and the traffic never let up. It's hard to describe how much effort it takes to do anything here, the pollution, traffic, and lack of city planning are enough, throw a language barrier and not feeling good and....well we just went to the mall to escape it all.

We saw Birdman and enjoyed having to stand up for the kings propaganda short that precedes every movie. And Patrick found his donuts. Amy wished we were staying in Bangkok longer so she could go see the upcoming Thai movie that was presumably about dressing up cats.

 

In the US, they sell you tanning products. Here, they sell you cream so you can be more white.  Can't we all just be who we are?!?!?

 

Betcha can't guess what this is?

The Thai language is beautiful, isn't it? Amy tried once to learn it, but it's a lost cause. Besides the fact that it's an entirely different alphabet, it is also tonal. There are 5 different tones (low, mid, high, falling, and rising)  and each one gives the same word a different meaning. So, forget it. Charades it is.

"Better English, Better Future"

The reality.

The sign at our hostel. Only in Bangkok...

And below, some more of the interesting features of Asian bathrooms.

Apparently people squatting on top of the toilet is a problem - because the toilets break and the squatter lands heavily on the shards! There were many signs about this, some with graphic photos.

Hydration Chart in the airport men's room. How very informative.

Our last day in Asia. We revisited one of the worlds largest (and craziest) markets; Chatuchak Weekend Market. We had a great time here on our last trip and once again it did not disappoint. It is hot and crowded and noisy and full of strange and surprising things at every turn. We didn't take a lot of pictures, in places like this you want to take a picture of  everything, so somehow you end up not really taking any. Plus, they charged 20 baht for a picture of the pet sugar gliders.

Talk about one stop shopping though. You can buy dead bugs, rainbow textiles, superhero outfits for your dog, clothing from rural Thai tribesmen, purple crocodile skins, coconut ice cream from a motor bike, fake Calvin Klein underwear, fermenting whole fish, and a new pet squirrel. And so, so much more.

English spelling is basically phonetic and up to interpretation in Asia. It's so funny, all the time.

If only this picture came with sounds and smells.

This place was a cacophony.

After the market we packed up and made our way to the airport. We really wanted a good meal before our 28 hours of travel, and of course, like everything here, that was a challenge too. We’ll tell this story, just so you get an idea:

We found what looked like a nice restaurant and sat down, watching as the staff threw puzzled looks in our direction. Someone came and asked us if we spoke Thai, which we replied in the negative. That was actually the first time anyone has ever asked us that. No one but Thai's speak Thai. They left, then someone else came and asked us what we wanted. We asked if there was a menu (much of this conversation is in pantomime) and he said/showed that they'd look around for an English one.  After a while, we received an English menu from which we ordered from by pointing. There was a lot of confusion as to which menu item we were pointing to, it took 2 of the staff to figure it out. It was amazing to see their fingers go to a completely different part of the menu and then look at you for approval.  Patrick almost moved a waiters finger to the item he was pointing at, written in English and Thai.  Finally, it seemed we were understood, or at least they were going to go get us some food. We waited for a while longer, then someone came, pointed to Patrick's dish on the menu and said, "no have."  He suggested another dish by pointing, and Patrick just said "yes", even though it wasn't at all what he wanted. At this point we had been there a long time, we were hungry, and we needed to get to the airport. After waiting awhile longer, someone else came again and told us they didn't have what Patrick ordered. How do you say "Well then what DO you have?" in Thai? So Patrick tried again, pointing to yet another dish on the menu and watching while the 2 staff seemed to debate what he wanted and whether they had it or not, finally giving us the ok. Then Amy's dish came. Or rather, they put a dish in front of Amy that had no resemblance to what she ordered. After calling the staff over and a lot more confused pantomiming it was determined they also didn't have what she ordered, but had not told her, just taken the liberty to give her something else. Which, at this point, we weren't up to arguing about. The strange soup they brought wasn't very good and too spicy to eat, but we got some down. Patrick got his dish and it was edible enough, but we were pretty sure the pork was cooked by fermentation alone. But we sure weren't going to try to order more! Oh wait, actually we did try to order mango sticky rice from the menu, but “No have.” So we left, hungry and tired of Asia, happy to be heading home.

Everything here takes so much extra effort and is full of such confusion and wonder.  You always feel as if you never really know what's going on. Most of the time it is really entertaining and interesting to make your way through these situations. Even when it's frustrating we do it with smiles and grace because we recognize our place as guests and appreciate the locals trying to accommodate us. We have often enjoyed the comedy of the way such simplicity can be so baffling here. That's a lot of the fun of traveling in such foreign places. But you have to be up for it. By the end of this trip we were tired and didn't feel well and were ready for things to be comfortable and easy. Good thing we are going to America, where things are clean and ordered and everyone speaks English. (Well, generally.)

After 1 taxi and 3 trains, we got to the Bangkok airport. A 6 hour flight took us to Bejing for a 6 hour layover. We were so tired already and still had a 12 hour flight to go! China is ridiculously overzealous at the airport, too. We had gone through this rigmarole on our way to Thailand so we were ready, but it was still annoying. You wait in line for half an hour to get your passport stamped, then wait in line again to get your passport stamped, again (???), then go through airport security, doing the usual metal detector walk and bag check, and then get frisked with a metal detecting wand. Just to change planes! We’re not even leaving the airport!

Flying over the arctic circle.

American soil, snow over DC 

Ha! We made it. Watch out America, we're home .

I'm kind of surprised they let us in.

So then we were home.

All kinds of new and exciting things have greeted us…cold and snow, jeans and sweaters, drinking out of the tap, constant reliable electricity, plugging into the wall without an adapter, toilet paper, hot showers, driving on the right side of the road, dollah billz, kale and peanut butter and BROWN rice, phone service, Fahrenheit and standard measurements, deciduous trees and wide open spaces. Beautiful. We are really appreciating this little hunk of the world. We are resting and settling into our American skin and reveling in our fresh perspective on the culture and country that we’ve grown up in.

And dreaming of where we might end up in it next.

On this trip, “home” has been more of a verb, than a noun. It’s our next adventure. Other travelers would remark on missing sleeping in their own bed and we’d snicker at ourselves because we kind of missed that too, but yet, we don’t own a bed... We’re pretty excited about getting a bed, and a home of our own. Its been 6 months already without. We look forward to having you all come visit us once we settle down. But, until then, we thank you for coming along on this journey, it has been a real pleasure to share with you.

Well, we’re off to look for jobs now…wish us luck.

Amy and Patrick W.

March 2015

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

-Mark Twain

 

P.S.

Now that we're home we have the ability to see, edit and upload the underwater videos.  Patrick has uploaded two so far, but there are more to come.  

  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXrrRkAIS2aHUuWbxWF8AgA