Worst Experiences

OMG! Thais Are Crazy To Drive You All Over Thailand!

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Tina at her home In Chom Thong

Bottom of Waterfall

Doug, my son, and I have been here nearly a month and to get out of busy Chiang Mai for a day we were supposed to be driven to Tina’s home in Chom Thong about 3 hours in the countryside. Tina is the gf of a friend of Doug’s. But oh no, as if this wasn’t enough driving, she had to take us to a waterfall up a winding road on the way! Doug got sick and with my back and leg I couldn’t even walk up to the waterfall. There were hordes of people because tomorrow is Father’s Day and this was a long weekend. Then she wanted to take us all the way to the top of the mountain! Noooooo Doug and I yelled!

Then further on the way to her home she wanted to take us clear to the top of another mountain where we could see a temple at the top! Noooooo! We yelled again!

We felt bad. Tina was just trying to pleasure us! What made it worse was that she, a Thai, only paid 30 baht for her entry fee and Doug and I, foreigners, had to pay 300 baht each for our misery! That is about $8.50! Dual pricing for foreign visitors all over Thailand! I’m surprised they didn’t make us pay for taking photos. But without cameras, thank goodness for superphones! 😉

We were so relieved to get to Tina’s home town outside of which we walked among the houses of all her family members. She pointed out all the different interesting fruit trees and herbal plants they use in cooking and healing. Took a photo of her holding a huge Jackfruit hanging from a tree.

I remembered a friend of mine in Salem who was in the Peace Corps in Thailand in the 70’s and who visited good friends on a subsequent trip to Chiang Mai. She said she spent almost the entire time being driven around in a car!!! What is it??? I shall remember this when people come visit me! 😉 An hour is the max!

OMG…70 Hours From BKK To PDX

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The flight back to the States from Thailand included a transit through Tokyo, Japan. But it snowed in Tokyo and the Narita airport closed. Waited in Bangkok airport 12 hours for an alternate flight to Hanada airport. With her Thai accent, I kept hearing the agent say “Canada Airport.” What??? Well finally got that straightened out. Unknown to me, Hanada Airport is also in Tokyo. But if it was snowing in Tokyo and one airport was closed wouldn’t the other airport be risky? Oh well. She must know what she is doing…I thought…

The minute we landed and I looked out the window of the plane, I knew we weren’t getting out anytime soon. Inside at the ticket counter a Canadian woman was yelling that she refused to spend 9 hours in the SF airport waiting to get to Vancouver. The husband shrinks. This goes on for an hour…the agent with very little English staring at her computer terminal. With no place for us to sit. Finally they left. I have no idea what the outcome was.

We tried to be nice…Doug is better at it than I am. They could see he could hardly stand with his psoriatic arthritis so they brought a wheelchair and wheeled us up to a Delta lounge, thank god. Personnel kept giving us updates…one agent comes up to us and says “we have an update for you…the airport will open soon.” A different agent soon after…”we have an update for you…the airport will open soon.” Then 3 agents at once. “We have an update for you…the airport is closed indefinitely.” So Doug and I joined a few hundred others on the airport floor where they at least they gave us blankets.

The next morning an agent said..“Narita has opened. You must take a bus to a different terminal and then another bus to Narita.” Doug could hardly walk with the arthritis much less help with 4 big pieces of luggage. Can I get a taxi? “No taxi today. And you must enter “Japan” and go through immigration and security again because the airport is not in “Japan.” Huh?

Upon questioning I began to realize this was one of their many ways of saying “no” without saying “no.” The part of it I could understand anyway with the heavy Japanese accent. I said “We cannot! “See…I learned this from the Thais! ha!  They got on the phone with someone…the supervisor I suspect. Three times they came back and three times this happened. When they returned again they finally got up the gumption to say “No. The plane to Los Angeles is at the Narita Airport right now…you must go!”

I began to realize they were frantically trying to empty the Haneda airport lest we start living there. After all…all the snacks and drinks you could eat! So the three tiny women went with us to the bus helping carry the bags…bless their little hearts. “You are strong!” I said. Then we tumbled off that bus and onto another bus to Narita. Thankfully, other bus riders helped us off that one.

In contrast to little Haneda, these Delta agents at Narita were incredibly efficient, didn’t charge for overweight luggage, and the line went quickly. Whew! Even though we were originally booked for a flight direct to PDX…we got onto a plane for LA.

In LA we had missed the flight which was transiting San Francisco to Portland of course. Planes from hell to breakfast had been backed up for days. We stood in line (first a wrong one misdirected by a worker) over 3 hours to get rebooked and drop our bags. Only three Delta agents for a few hundred people! I was losing it! Then suddenly two more agents appeared. One woman wasted no time handling us and two other customers at once…and at the same time noticing Doug’s physical situation. Another airport worker suddenly appeared with a wheelchair and she bulldozed us through security and immigration. I will write Delta. These women need some kudos!

But my plane woes were not to end there. After a week in Salem Oregon, and a night waiting in the PDX airport for an early morning flight out to Houston through San Francisco, my transit through SF was cancelled. So I have a choice of going through LA or Las Vegas. Las Vegas! I quickly texted my son there and asked if I could spend a few days there. Yes, was the answer!

On March 3, from Las Vegas I was to fly to Oaxaca through Houston. Yes, the flight out of Houston was delayed two hours! Poor Andrea and Jose were waiting at the Oaxaca airport for me! I am taking them out to dinner Saturday at the Casa Oaxaca rooftop restaurant.

Almost Didn’t Make The Plane To Kunming

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Hard to believe I was in Beijing for two weeks. But you know what they say about stinking guests if they stay too long. So today I flew to Kunming in Yunnan Province in the south of China. Stewardess announced that the flight would take 3.5 hours to go 200 kilometers. I figured there was something wrong there…think she meant 2000 kilometers. Warmer than Beijing but still damn cold…39 degrees F. Had hoped for it to be warmer this far south. Might have to keep on going.

But before I could get to the plane, I had an adventure! Got out of the taxi at the airport and walked around to the back of the car to get my backpack out of the trunk. Then I’ll be damned if the driver took off like a shot with me flapping my arms, running and yelling after him in the middle of the road…to no avail. A nice taxi was coming up behind me…told me to get in…he ran the first taxi down to get him to stop. Boy…woke me up! The driver was just stupid! Didn’t even know why we were pulling him over until we got him stopped and pointed to the trunk! My rescuer kindly refused money. Travel tip: don’t get out of a taxi, if you have baggage in the trunk, until you see the driver getting out too!

I’m in the Camellia Hotel where I stayed both in 2003 and 2004. Great buffet breakfast comes with the room…$28 a night. Couple bars, internet cafe…mostly lauwai (same as gringo only it’s what the Chinese call anyone not from China). There’s a hostel here too…but mostly with twenty-somethings and I want my peace and quiet so I have my own room in the main building. Channel TV Asia is the only English language station but I get most of the world news….as if I needed it. Announcers have a British accent…think it’s operated by Reuters.

Same cafe down the street but with a different name…Chinese and western comfort food…but now with free WiFi. Around the corner is MaMa Fu’s Cafe…hot and sour noodle soups. And next door is a big noodle shop with Over The Bridge Noodle Soup…platter of meat and vegetables comes to the table and you drop the food in and it cooks in the still hot broth…indigenous Yunnan style soup.

No colorful minority peoples selling things in the street now. Guess it’s either too cold or the government has banished them.

I really like the neighborhood here…with a market nearby. A group of crazy Europeans are biking China in this cold…bicycles all parked in the street in the front of a sports clothing shop while they make repairs…older Chinese men stopping by to peer at the loony western barbarians.

WARNING

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Never come to Northern Thailand or Lao during the dry season which is now. Slash and burn fires send smoke against the mountains and beyond. You won’t see anything and the Mekong River will be down to a trickle.

Post Christmas in Bangkok & Escaping The Tsunami 2004

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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A month in Bangkok

On the morning of December 26, 2004, after a bowl of spicy Thai soup on the street outside my Bangkok hotel, I returned to my room and flipped on the satellite TV to find both CNN and BBC running astounding commentary and amateur video of the tsunami wave that had hit the Krabi coast earlier that morning. Son Doug and his wife Luk had been living on Khlong Muang beach 15 feet from the water in Krabi Province just SE of Phuket. The telephone circuits were all busy but after four tries and 30 minutes trying to reach them with my heart in my throat, Luk finally answered. What sweet voices that day!

About 10:30 that morning Doug and Luk had been in bed when they heard what they thought was a bomb. When he opened the curtains to the sliding glass doors, he instead found that it was the first wave of the tsunami that hit their glass doors facing the beach leaving the bungalow under water. They were lucky the doors were closed. Many lives were lost when water entered open doors and windows leaving people with no way to escape.

Doug said he immediately threw a bottle against the door of a sleeping couple behind their bungalow to wake them while Luk climbed screaming to the roof. Then when the first wave went back out, he and Luk scrambled to safety up the hill behind them.

When the 2nd wave washed detritus and some of their belongings back up on the beach, they made a little pile of stuff on the country road above the house. Doug had just sunk a lot of money into a cozy cafe/bar in front of his beachfront rental unit only to lose the whole investment…but not his life. He also luckily didn’t lose his new motorbike, that he retrieved as it was out swirling crazily in the 2nd wave.

They were able to quickly arrange for a friend with a pickup to take them and what was left of their belongings to a rental house farther inland on the road between Krabi Town and Ao Nang Beach and later to the island of Koh Samui.

About a week later, Bob appeared in Bangkok from wherever he was and he and I flew from Bangkok to Krabi Town…all of 6 people flying with us…not a good sign for the tourist industry here, I thought, as I stepped off into the humid tropical air. It felt very strange to be flying into the tsunami ravaged area on a colorful holiday plane. Son Doug and Luk, met us in the terminal…Luk, smiling, handed me a nicely wrapped gift. A friend that was in the Peace Corps in Thailand says the name “Luk” is an endearing name in Thai. She is a dear.

Krabi Province has about 500 people known to be lost so far to the tsunami. After spending a night in Krabi Town, a busy dusty town of about 18,000, Bob rented a motorbike and we moved about 30 kilometers up the coast to the beach town of Ao Nang.

On the way out of town we passed the Buddhist Wat that is providing space for a Krabi assistance and communication center under wide green awnings by the side of the road. Volunteers assist families looking for the missing on computer terminals. Color photos of the dead, disfigured and unrecognizable, and pictures of the missing cover rows of standing sheets of plywood. I was shocked and revolted by the appearance of drowned bodies. I had no idea they would swell like they do. Most of the photos of the dead attempt to show anything that may be identifiable by an intimate family member…a ring, a bracelet, a tatoo, a logo on a t-shirt…flowered undergarments…

Workers are still building several hundred wooden boxes that will be lowered with their contents into a mass grave in the cemetery beside the Wat. Driving along the roads in Krabi, here and there can be seen covered memorial areas with casket and flowers for funerals by some family members who have been able to identify their dead. We had been told that Krabi Province’s worst hit area is Khao Lak, farther north up the coast where the wave penetrated three kilomaters into the Mangrove forests and where people are still being found as debris is cleared. There are no plans to rebuild the area we are told.

The immediate crisis is over here in Krabi province. Smiling Thai people are some of the most positive people in the world and they are trying to make the best of a bad situation. They are not waiting for the wheels of international aid. Here in Ao Nang beaches are quickly being cleaned up…an attempt to salvage the devastated tourist high season. The local boat school is donating student workers and materials to repair about 50 damaged long-tail boats. A local company is donating time to desalinate long-tail motors. Boatmen are again taking what few tourists are left here out on diving expeditions and trips to outlying islands. Window glass is being replaced.

Patang Beach on Phuket Island had the most deaths and got the most publicity, but many beaches have been cleaned up already. It is indeed strange how one area could be hit hard and how the next area 10 feet away would not be damaged at all. Destroyed businesses and homeless families will get help.

But unfortunately, international coverage by CNN and BBC filmed the devastation to the exclusion of all the other areas which frightened away prospective tourists. On top of that, both Sweden and Denmark issued travel warnings so the tour companies have rescinded their travel insurance for those people…prompting travelers on two and three week holidays to return home. Restaurants and guesthouses here are empty. One restaurant owner told me that they have heard that some business owners will get some money to pay their rent but that still leaves them with little source of livlihood.

Koh Samui on the other side of the Thai peninsula, not hit by the wave, is packed at 100% capacity…only families getting hotel rooms and tents being set up on the beaches for backpackers. But here on the west side of Thailand, local expats and long term tourists are writing home and telling people if they really want to help now, to buy a plane ticket and come visit. If taking a vacation in SE Asia right now seems repugnant to you…as it did for us…think of the living here instead. The opposite side of the coin is the economic struggle of the survivors as they lose their source of income…60% of which comes from tourism. We are going to Phuket in a few days. Maybe the hospital there could use some help.

Queuing In Russia

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Back in Irkutsk we watch women walking swiftly always carrying a plastic shopping sack or two (ovoiska from the Russian ‘ovois’ meaning ‘just in case’) of varying brands that have to be purchased)…a hold-over from Soviet-era shopping methods that, according to the British journalist Fiona Fleck who described in the ‘Guardian’ how Soviet era panic buying of bread, rice, cereal and flour affected the ordinary Russian even in late 1990’s: “whenever they go out they are constantly dropping into shops when passing by just in case something had arrived, sometimes joining queues in the hope that something will eventually arrive that day.

Queuing has always been a life-principle for the Soviet shopper and is enshrined in what must be the most roundabout way of buying in the world.” Even now at one consignment shop Bob had to stand in line to choose an item at which time the clerk wrote out a voucher that he was supposed to take this way and that way and then this way and that and then to stand in line to pay a cashier stamped the voucher indicating the item had been paid for and then stand in the first line again to show the stamped voucher to the original clerk and obtain the item. In Soviet times people would buy in bulk and shop in teams, often paying someone a little to stand in line for them.

Today, the queuing of cars is a machiavellian event . We are amazed at the ability of cars to “crowd” their way into a queuing line for example lanes merging into each other. When our driver to Olkhon Island arrived at the Ferry we were second “in line.” In the course of an hour there were about five lines across all waiting to crowd, inch by inch, into the two lanes that would lead onto the ferry. Apparently this is the accepted modus operandi…however we did see one car full of women get out of their car and take on the driver of another…yelling and gesturing and taking down the license number. The scene made me vow to never get into an argument with a Russian woman!

People have no trouble crowding to get onto a bus…in fact it sometimes becomes a matter of who can push harder. If you stand back and wait “your turn” like the nice people we learned how to be from our first grade teacher your reward will be to end up standing on the street with no ride.

Hot Train Carriages

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Most carriages are of East German origin solidly built and warm in winter. Each carriage is staffed by an attendant whose “den” is a compartment at the end of the carriage. She collects your tickets, lets down the steps at stations, and comes round with a vacuum cleaner and a small broom dipped in a bucket of dirty water to keep the carpets swept. She maintains the samovar, opposite her compartment, which provides a continuous supply of boiling water for drinks and cups of dried soup. She is the ruler over all that happens in the carriage and you are her subject.

The only place where passengers may smoke is in the unheated area between carriages. In second class, there is a bathroom (such as it is) at both ends of the carriage and compartments have four births…two on each side with a little ladder that swings out for the person lurching onto the top bunk. (First class has only two bunks in each compartment but is twice the price so we are going second class.) People wear slippers to pad around in especially when headed toward the toilet where the floor is usually wet. Track suits are the fashionable attire of the Russians. There is a small table in-between the two bottom births under the window that passengers can use to share their lunches with each other and on which sets the vodka bottle.

During the day you will find yourself sitting on your bottom berth sharing the sitting space with one of the passengers from the top bunks. During the night, with window and door closed, the compartments are claustrophobic and hot as hell (as are most of the homes and public building, by the way.) One night in frantic despair of getting any sleep I take a pillow and lie on the filthy floor in the space between the cars where there is some cool fresh air.

We welcome our breaks from the train at various stops. Bob hops off in the freezing cold in his shorts and does some jumping jacks causing the locals on the platform to stare at this grey-haired foreigner in disbelief. Bob actually wonders later why all the locals don’t do this. This is dangerous however for another reason: if the train takes off while you are off the train all your belongings will be tallied and taken off the train at some unknown station! A Swiss couple we heard about luckily had enough money with them to hire a taxi to speed toward the next stop to overtake the train.

Jet Lag

Posted on by Laughingnomad

After twenty hours sandwiched in a pressurized cabin in the air we drift down through darkness…time and space dissolving down long corridors and up and down escalators. We change money and language. We are different persons now. The next morning…or was it two days ago…we wake at 2 am…I get up to go to the bathroom but someone has moved the door and I walk into a lamp. I wait in the dark again for a time when I will not feel lightheaded and queasy…is it the flu?

Bob prowls the streets. By 2 in the afternoon I want sleep again desperately…I draw the curtains against a frenetic city. Voices…noises…elevators going up and down…somewhere outside my consciousness…I am not in synch…waking dissolves into a not quite dream and then I open my eyes again to a bright light on a hot foreign continent. Feeling disjointed, I try to focus on dazzling urban architecture and public art in Frankfurt. Finally feeling hungry, we devour sausages and boiled cabbage.

Off The Boat…Where?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Back on the boat from the little gorges tour, a woman appears at our cabin door…in her little English she says “I have a hotel for you…a bus will pick you up and take you to the hotel…Yichang is small…it might be hard to find a hotel room at 11pm.” Later, Jana reads in Lonely Planet that the city has nearly 4 million people! We think she may have meant that the city isn’t as developed for tourists as other cities are…or she is just touting. We would get to Yichang, our ticket destination, by 11:00pm she said.

At 8:30pm we received a knock at the door…”quickly, quickly”…as we frantically packed our things, not expecting to be off the boat until 11pm…and then stood at the exit with our backpacks on for 20 minutes. Finally out the doors and up the ramp, we were led to a waiting bus where about 15 Chinese were frantically elbowing each other to get on. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The company apparently overbooked the bus-we think probably with the last minute addition of the three foreigners! To make room for everyone two poor Chinese guys were forced off the bus by the driver and tour operator after much sustained yelling and waving of arms…controlled rage, Jana called it.

We did not know for sure where the boat had let us off until we passed the lights that covered the construction site of the dam and the locks. It would be another couple hours to Yichang where the bus let us off at our hotel…no third bed as promised…this time the foreigners were fooled.

A Merry Christmas Wish 2002

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Today, Christmas Day, we will take Jana’s Blessing and a van back to Tengchong and catch a bus for Ruili on the China-Burma border.

While we sit here at 7:00am bleary-eyed waiting for the water to get hot so we can take a shower we are wishing each other and you HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!!

It means good luck, Jana said as we listened to the cricket in our room at the Hot Springs…it was prophetic…we were going to have another adventure!

On the ride into Tengchong I wondered how much the automobile companies saved by not installing shocks on the minivans…another Chinese mystery. Then, eating noodles at a sidewalk stall in front of the bus station, we were delighted when a young girl sat down with her bowl…good morning she said eating quickly…she only had 10 minutes before her bus left for Baoshan…on her way to a rock music concert…oh we wish we could go with you we said…she plays the piano, sings and dances she says…so excited to meet foreigners she laughed…then seriously-English is very important!

Waiting for the bus we saw three of the six people we met at the Myanmar Tea House! Then Li Bing from the T.C.C. Cafe came in to see off a friend…wished us Merry Christmas and we wished him a happy Chinese New Year…

As the bus detoured down a pot-holed dirt road through some vegetable fields and across an old stone bridge to get to the next little town I said to Jana…you know…we piss and moan but I wouldn’t travel any other way. I wouldn’t either she said.

But we no more than smiled at each other over this thought when the guy behind blew cigarette smoke…and when Jana opened her window the guy behind with a mean face closed it again….can see him in the driver’s mirror she said…we could get into a big fight with him if we wanted, I said laughing…that’s all I need Jana groaned. Then we talked about how traveling was a metaphor for life…have to go through a lot of drudgery in order to experience the high points…like marriage or backpacking or running a marathan…but then of course you have a story to tell afterward!

On the way south to Ruili we drove through little Chinese villages…trucks full of firewood, full of sacks with contents of unknown origin, full of rocks…vendors on each side of the road with barely space for one lane of traffic wending it’s way…like through a parking lot…careful not to hit the women in ethnic dress sitting behind their little piles of oranges and spinach. Then through a town full of carved cement slabs for burial markers…ladies with cream-colored towel headdresses…then a pick-up full of ethnic ladies with bright pink dresses & and pink towel headdresses…people barely moving out of the way as the bus honks it’s way through…another whole town making nothing but bricks.

There are so many people in the world I say…everyone thinks they are the center of the universe. The “issues” we thought were so important back home have taken on a distinct perspective. We have it very very good and have no idea how lucky we are to be born in America.

Then ancient terraces full of green vegetables together with modern tomatoes covered with plastic and back up and over the mountain range on a dirt road that threatened to shake the bus into it’s parts. Our laps held a picnic of mandarin oranges, boiled eggs, crackers and water. But when a poor old woman, on her way to visit her grandchildren in Riuli ran out of her tolerance for switchbacks and vomited profusely all over the floor our picnic lay uneaten.

Then the bus stopped behind a long line of vehicles waiting for the construction workers to open up a way for us ahead. Everyone piled out of the cars and buses to sit on a grassy area for an hour and a half…waiting…while we listened to the entire Chinese Men’s Chorus…the chorus of hacking and spitting…incessently…one after the other…like dogs marking their territories we thought! It got to us…now we each have a cold. The women talk loudly…like they are angry…but we don’t think they are. Finally, it is a relief to pile into the bus again and at the summit the road suddenly turned from ancient cobblestone to blacktop again.

Further on it is impossible to discern the names of the towns…we think this must be a little like what the migrant workers from Mexico feel when they are brought to Oregon by the coyotes and sold into bondage to the labor contractors…not knowing where in the world they are.