Trip Update #9

It just feels like a few short days ago that I wrote you last... oh wait, it was just a few short days ago. Or at least it was when I started writing this damn thing... I've come to the realization that there is no way that I'll be able to stick to a schedule of sending out updates. There's so many places that I'll be heading to over the next few weeks that have no Internet access at all. So, you'll just have to make do with whatever and whenever I dish it out. Monday, July 8th Today, Brian and I went out in search of a dive shop, with whom to flex our scuba muscles and plunge into the depths of the murky waters below. Except that the water wasn't murky. It just sounds better calling it murky. Apparently, all the dive shops on the beach have done us a "favor" by standardizing their prices. So, shopping around will get you nothing cheaper. While this will save us time, I'm sure that in the end, the consumer is getting screwed. We ended up selecting this place called Stingray Divers, solely because they were extremely laid-back and willing to make trips whenever and wherever we wanted to. Luckily, this was not at the expense of professionalism. So, I did two dives today - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Both were pretty good dives - lots of fishees. Crystal clear blue water. Kinda like you'd expect a dive to be like off of a tropical isle. Tuesday, July 9th Did three dives today with Stingray. The first one was to a place called Temple in the Sea, where the visibility was just awesome at about 20m. We saw 6-7 nurse sharks hanging out underneath some coral (nurse sharks are the only sharks that can breath without swimming along), a few larger black tipped sharks scurrying along the ocean floor, a number of blue spotted rays, and a whole school of barracuda - every time I say or write "barracuda", that 80's song sung by some woman (Pat Benatar perhaps?) keeps popping in my head. I wish it wouldn't. Make the voices stop. For the love of God, just make the voices stop. Whoops! Sorry about that. Anyway, we saw some barra... umm.. you know. Our Canadian divemaster guy even wrote on his underwater slate "It just doesn't get any better than this". Wasn't that the slogan of Old Milwaukee beer or something? I faintly remember a commercial way back when with a bunch of cowboys sitting around a campfire drinking beer, and one of them uttering that phrase. Obviously, that cowboy guy was wrong - just ask our Canadian divemaster guy. He'll tell you. The afternoon dive was a little less spectacular. Just as we were heading off, a huge storm came overhead and the visibility in the water became very poor with strong currents. But, we did see a huge sea turtle - at least four feet in length. That's almost bigger than my sister! The third dive of the day was a night dive. I think this is the sort of thing that I want to do much much more of. Not being able to see a damn thing just increases the adrenaline rush tenfold. Not that I'm into adrenaline rushes or anything... Ironically enough, this was the absolute worst dive I've ever had. Everything that could go wrong went wrong, except that I didn't die (sorry Marcus, can't have my Alfa). As soon as I got into the water, my legs started to cramp. Had to stretch them a few times to get okay again. Later, my toes started to cramp - but there's nothing you can do about that. Then, I was having an equalization problem with my ears and had to mess with that for a while. My scuba partner Brian seemed to not know where he was or where I was, so I had to keep tabs on him to make sure that we were close to each other. Through all of these problems, I was consuming air faster than normal, so my air pressure started getting low quickly. And, as the last straw, the battery in my flashlight started fading until it was no longer working at the end, so getting someone else's attention under water was close to impossible. But I still did get to see a few crabs, a ray or two, several cuttlefish, and an eel. After the dive, it was apparent that I didn't get my equalization right, since my right ear was absolutely killing me. Sleep was difficult to come by. Wednesday, July 10th Took a speedboat back to Kuala Besut on the mainland and bid adieu to the islands. From Kuala Besut, we took a taxi to Thailand. Doesn't that sound neat? I mean, how many times in your lifetime will you be able to hop in a taxi and say "To Thailand!". Guess I can check that one off the "list of things to do before I die". The border crossing was pretty simple. Walk partway across a bridge and check out of Malaysia, like a hotel checkout ending with an additional stamp in the passport (my favorite part). Walk a little further and check into Thailand. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. In Thailand, we walked a kilometer in the blazing heat to the nearest town, and then made preparations to head up north. Our first stop was initially planned to be Ko Tau - an island off the east coast of Southern Thailand that is supposed to have great diving. But seeing that my ears were still hurting, I wasn't really up for going diving again so soon. And Rayman had come to the conclusion that he needed to cut his trip short lest he lose his sweet downtown NYC apartment (and the girlfriend that came with it). So Rayman and I booked a 21-hour train to Bangkok, and Brian hopped off the train after 9 hours to take a ferry over to Ko Tao. Along the way on the train, I inadvertently befriended some local Thais in a very interesting manner. So here's the story... You see... these older fellas started drinking some whiskey and generally having a good old time. Soon, one of them had a little too much and decided to go to sleep at the oh so early hour of 7:30 p.m.. Since we were in a sleeper car and I had the upper berth, this meant that I would be confined to a very cramped space up top way earlier than necessary. So, I retaliated by giving the guys "evil eye" and commenting loudly to Rayman that they could have been polite and had the beds made on the other side instead of bothering me, a total stranger. After a while they genuinely felt bad, and talked to me every five seconds thereafter, trying to get me to consume some whiskey with them. Finally they went away and I was in peace again. Thursday, July 11th Arrived in Bangkok at 9am or so. We took a tuk-tuk (a small open air three wheeler scooter like taxi) to Khao San Road, where all the backpackers stay. After some shopping around, we settled at this place called Green House Inn. Turns out that this place is pretty much jam-packed with Israelis. So it was me, Rayman, and a bunch of Jews. Hmm... A Hindu, a Muslim, and a bunch of Jews - sounds like a good movie title to me! Starring Gilbert Gottfried, Whoopi Goldberg, and Barbara Streisand as the Jews, Omar Sharif as the Muslim, and Jason Scott Lee as a very Chinese-looking Hindu (hey, it worked for The Jungle Book). As expected, we spent all evening singing Hava Nagila and having a grand old time. Would you believe that I learned 3-4 Jewish songs while attending Hindu summer camps when I was a kid? I remember the shocked look on my Jewish friends' faces at college when I started singing "Shalom Chaverim" one drunken evening. We went and caught some Thai boxing this evening – ringside seats. The fights weren't as bloody as they seemed they should be, but I'm not much of a fan of this stuff anyway. It was still good to see something different though. The fifth fight we saw pitted two boys who seemed to be roughly 9 years of age each. This was different enough for us, so we took off. I have no desire to see something like that, let alone watch other people egg them on and even gamble on it. Just doesn't seem right. It gets difficult at times like this to remember that things are not always as they seem to the Western eye, and the important thing is to not rush to a judgment just because this is not acceptable in our society. After the Thai boxing match, we went to the Sukhamvit area of Bangkok. As many of you may know, Bangkok is very famous for just what it's name sounds like in English - the flesh trade. Sukhamvit is one of those areas specializing in this. In all honesty (and I know you won't believe me), neither Rayman nor I really had any interest in seeing this stuff, but it's just one of those things that must be seen here. So we walked around the area, watching tons of Western guys with Thai girls on their arms, got solicited numerous times to go into this establishment or that establishment, and so forth. In the end, we just went back to the hotel (really Mom - we did). Friday, July 12th Today, we did the tourist thing. We first went to a temple with a very large reclining Buddha, where we met a Puerto Rican guy who worked for P&G in Australia in marketing for animal medicine. Go figure. Next, we went to the Great Palace. This place was just superb - no words can describe how stunningly beautiful it was. I was having a hard time figuring out what to take pictures of; there were simply too many things to photograph. I almost felt like I was doing a disservice to some buildings by not photographing them also. One of the temples in this complex contains the "Emerald Buddha". I'll let you in on a secret: it's not made of emerald; it's made of jade. Don't tell the Thais though - it's a secret. This Emerald (hee!) Buddha sits atop a very large infinitely ornate gold mounting of some sort. But we weren't allowed to photograph it. We also spent some time at a tailor getting three suits and five silk shirts for Rayman and his new Wall Street job – all custom made and for relatively cheap. It almost made me sad that I didn't need any suits for work. Okay, I take that back. All day, we were continually getting solicited for some "boom boom", which meant a massage plus a little something extra. I took this as a compliment, since you know - how worthless would you feel if even the pimps turned you down? Saturday, July 13th Early this morning, Rayman took off for the airport in hopes of securing a standby ticket to get home a week early. So, we split up, and cried a last goodbye. Parting is such sweet sorrow... I began a 3 day / 2 night trip this morning to Kanchanaburi, where the infamous Bridge over River Kwai is situated. This is an old WWII bridge that was part of a railway commissioned by the Japanese to connect Bangkok and Burma to have a way to ship supplies and ammunitions to troops trying to advance into Burma and India. This railway was built mainly by POWs from the war and by many locals under very excruciatingly oppressive conditions. About 30% of all those who worked on it died during the construction. Very very sad indeed. We saw a cemetery, rode a bamboo raft under the famous "Bridge", had an hour-long elephant-ride (baby elephants are so unbelievably cute, by the way), an area of the railway called "Hellfire Pass", rode on the famous train for a little bit, petted a tiger at an animal sanctuary, and... oh yeah, gotta tell this story. One of the girls in our group was absolutely convinced that all tigers have attacked humans at some point or another and kept on giving crap to the monk who was taking care of the animals. Truth is that tigers are more scared of us than we are of them. The monk kept on saying, "No, no, tiger is friend. See?" and put his entire hand in the tiger's mouth. She didn't buy it. Clearly she must be right since her entire experience with tigers is what she's seen on TV, and as we all know the TV never lies. Back to the story... umm… that's really about it for today.All transport around the area was by songtaew - picture a pickup with a high canopy over the truck bed. Along each side of the pickup, there is a bench seat. That's about it. For one of the short journeys, I only had one cheek on the bench, and had to brace myself with my foot against the open tailgate to make sure I didn't fall out. Good times. Our accommodations were out in the middle of nowhere – a floating little guesthouse on a lake. No electricity at all - had to use oil lamps. Rooms were very basic with just a mattress on a floor. And we had authentic Thai food for dinner, served family style. Awesome. Sunday, July 14th After breakfast this morning, we all hopped on a small bamboo raft pulled by a longtail boat. What's a longtail boat? It looks to me as though they took out the engine and driveshaft from a perfectly good automobile, secured the engine down to the back of a fishing boat, and tacked on a propeller at the end of the drive shaft (making it a long tail). I don't quite understand why they didn't use an outboard motor like most other boats in existence. Then, we entered the Erawan National Park, where we spent about 3 hours hiking and swimming around a cascade of seven beautiful waterfalls. Simply gorgeous. Unfortunately, it was too gorgeous and so everyone and their mother-in-law's pet cat were there. Still well worth it. After a fried rice boxed lunch, we saw some hot springs - which appeared to me like two little pools of water that were man-made. I didn't see any spring. Of course, our guide couldn't speak a lick of English, so we just smiled so that we could get on with the rest of our lives. Okay. Gotta run. Have lots of figuring out to do for the next few days' adventure. -Paraag Tidbits 1. It's neat to see how the American fast food restaurant franchises have adapted to the cultures in Asian countries. For example, KFC in Bangkok had silverware and served beverages in actual glasses. And, they served rice with some of the meals. They also serve ice cream here. McDonald's has a McCyber Cafe. 2. Mental note to read up on WWII a little more when I get home. There's so much that I don't remember from my high school history class. 3. If you ever read a British novel, keep in mind that lighting up a fag doesn't mean that to set fire to a homosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that, oh wait... yes, there is), rather it refers to lighting up a cigarette. Also, getting pissed means getting drunk. And you thought you wouldn't learn anything from this message... 4. Why do they call him "the Buddha" rather than just "Buddha"? I should probably know this, since Buddhism sprouted from Hinduism, so I guess I'm a bad Hindu.