Transportation | Laughingnomad

Malaysia Visa Run

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Laughingnomad

Sunday (probably your Saturday) I spent 12 hours ferrying onto the mainland and going in a van 400km to Malaysia and back for new visa stamp. I have a multi-entry year long visa that cost me $120 ($54US) but they still make me leave every three months! Three caravaned vans with 10-12 people in each…and there are companies all over Samui that offer the same runs. I thought I would get 3 more months but they gave me only 2 because it is all up to the particular border office what they will give you! Now if I wanted to stay a third month I would have to go to the local Samui immigration office and pay 1800 baht ($54US) for 1 more month! Imagine how many expats all over Thailand or people on long-term stays who are doing the same thing! Way to bring money into Thailand! I think if I had flown out and back in I would have gotten 3 months. But I’m leaving before the third month anyway.

The run was quite an experience as my son Doug who lives here warned me. I think the Austrian trip leader belonged to the gestapo in another life! Maybe even a cousin of Hitler’s! :)) Driving 150km an hour (90mph) with only a half dozen near misses, we got only two 5-minute potty stops on the way and on the way back. And at the border there was a HUGE local week-end market where we were told by the gestapo NO TIME FOR SHOPPING! But some of the guys (and they were ALL guys) sneaked some food. And on the way back at the last stop we only got 2 minutes because the gestapo wanted to make the 3pm ferry to Samui instead of waiting until 4pm. At the border office we got yelled at because we were standing as a group, as we had been told NOT to do, and not lined up one after the other like the SS. Wonder what would happen if he tried to do this in China! :)) Oh well…it was all quite organized. He knew all the border guards and did a good job greasing the whole thing for us. And wonder of wonders he pronounced my last name (Goetz) right! I told him it was the first time ever! Usually people who don’t know me say Go-etz or Goats instead of Gets! Ha! But had never been on the Thai side of the Thai/Malaysia border so it was nice to see how tropical it was. Southern Thailand has been racked in recent years by a Muslim separatist movement but like with all the negative media attention in Oaxaca…no bombers were seen! Ha!

The pony-tailed gestapo trip leader had visited most of the States and worked for two years in Florida as a tour guide. “Did you know Central Florida is the second largest beef cattle producer in the States?” No! I exclaimed. This is an interesting phenomenon. Often foreign tourists know more about the sights than the local people.

I was tucked into the very back seat (seats were assigned by the gestapo) with a young guy from The Netherlands who at one time had a band in NYC…writing the lyrics and producing the music and who now was writing a book about Thai culture and the law to be entitled “RESPECT” targeted to all the young Western guys who are here for “Happy.” Since he was married to a Thai, I asked how long he had been living here. “16 months,” he says. Oh, good, I thought! And you are writing about Thai culture! Guys don’t realize how dangerous it can be here, he says. Give a Thai the middle finger, he said, and you will be killed. And of course everyone should know what happens if you are caught with drugs of any kind. And 8 people are killed every week on the sandy ring road around Samui. Well, it will be better for young guys than reading “Bangkok 8” so it may do some good. I hope.

A Village of Two Houses

Posted on December 19, 2009 by Laughingnomad

I got “home” late last night from a day trip to a “village” just off highway 304 in Chachoengsao Province about two hours east of Bangkok. This visit had several advantages.

I got to see my friends Dave and Syy again and meet Syy’s mother, brother and two year old niece who slept the peaceful afternoon away in a cloth swing while we visited in an outdoor covered area attached to Syy’s mother’s house.

I got to see my Vietnamese friend Nick again. Nick is a flight attendant for United Airlines. I last saw him a couple years ago when he visited me, Doug and Luk on Koh Samui on a quick side-trip on his way to visit family in Viet Nam. He gave me a freshly minted copy of his memoirs on that visitthat included the story of his escape with his family from Saigon in 1975 when he was 7 years old and subsequently resettled in the middle of Kansas!

Dave, Syy and I were imagining Nick lounging in first class on his flight from LA to Bangkok this time too. But alas we gave him our appropriate condolences when he revealed that the flight was full, he got the flight attendant jump seat all the way from LA to Tokyo and a middle seat in coach seat from there to Bangkok! We truly hope that he got a better seat on his return flight this morning….having spent only one night in Bangkok!

And I got to find out how to catch a van to outlying areas. Skytrain to the Victory Monument. From the skytrain platform, look for one of the figures on top of the monument of a sailor holding a torpedo. Walk in the direction that the torpedo is pointing. Take an exit off the platform to the right…to a small street named Ratchatewi 11 that runs parallel to the raised BTS walkway above. About half way down that street look for a restaurant called Pong Lee. Next to the restaurant is a sidewalk desk to buy a ticket for the desired van. Show them a piece of paper that says in Thai (presumably you have found someone to do this for you) Pratchinburi/Klong Rang/Tawa Ravadee Hotel so they can direct you to the right van in a very long line of white vans lined up on the street. The fee for us was 130 baht one-way…or $4.00. (But Dave said it should have been 120 baht so we don’t know whether to blame Nick or me!)

Dave wrote a little description of the “village” for his email list that I think I will lift for this post because his description is much better than mine would be. He says:

<em>the village is composed of two adjoining houses, Na Tit’s abode and Syy’s mom’s old house. Syy’s moms house is now an empty shell housing a few relics of the past including a clock stuck at 5:30 and memory filled photos on the wall reminding one of an earlier time. The house has been gutted of all inner conveniences and last night I was forced to sleep on the hard wood floor, waking up with an ache in the back or maybe an ache in the heart for the old home.

The days are warm and mild, the chickens wake us up every morning at 5. Now we have to make the long walk through the overgrown remnants of what used to be a garden but is now planted with thorny eggplants to Somsak’s home for our tri daily meals. Since we were here last, Somsak has built 2 small adjoining rooms on the estate, one for mother and one for Far. Somsak and Duen’s small room was slammed with lightening not long ago which tore out their AC unit.

Ants and papayas seem to be the big cash crops this year. The backyard is filled with recently planted papaya’s already loaded with young green fruit. The homes that were removed this year from the village have been completely replaced by the tropical vegetation and now you can never tell they were ever there. As a result, there is a new natural feel to the village, having lost its human component, and has been replaced by a veritable green paradise.

We started our meal last night with a bang, eating big green and white ants with enormous abdomens that literally pop in your mouth, making a sound akin to popcorn bursting into action for the first time on the bottom of a hot grease filled frying pan.</em>

As I sit here writing this, I hear fireworks. It seems very familiar. Then I realize I am in Thailand not Oaxaca Mexico! I step out onto my small 8th floor veranda and see the sky between the buildings alive with light and sound. I feel right at home because I have no idea what the occasion is…just like most of the times there are fireworks displays in Oaxaca! 🙂 This is the 3rd fireworks in a month here. Last couple fireworks I figured was in honor of the King’s birthday.

This time…Christmas?!!

Almost Didn’t Make The Plane To Kunming

Posted on February 12, 2008 by Laughingnomad

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.

International Driving

Posted on April 22, 2007 by Laughingnomad

Don’t know if it’s just Oaxaca or maybe it’s the whole of Mexico. However, my dentist says that drivers in Oaxaca are worse than in Mexico City! But in Xalapa they were ever so polite…big fines meted out if they are not.

But you are taking your life in your hands in Oaxaca. The taxis and buses are the worst…speeding, honoring no lanes…forcing you over. No stop signs, lights, when there are lights and when they are working, are suggestions only. And then there are the “topes” or speed bumps everywhere. Never know when one is coming up unless you watch the cars ahead and hope they slow down…however, one, with drivers from Veracruz, didn’t slow down until they got to the tope. Then they stopped. Bam. Their little car could do it. My big Toyota Land Cruiser couldn’t. So I slammed right into the back of their car. Good thing no one was hurt. Good thing for insurance.

Actually I expected this…but thought I’d get side-swiped by a bus. Now I know why Mexican immigrants in the north get into so much trouble! A couple years ago in my home town in Oregon I was T-boned by an immigrant going through a red light at about 60 miles an hour…she had no insurance. No one has insurance here except the expats.

There are rules here…just not the posted ones. And heaven help you if you don’t obey them! Boils down to buses and taxis and very small cars do what they want…and that includes just about everyone. Except the gringa with the Toyota with a US license plate. Yes, I know I should have put more space between me and car in front. You get conditioned to keep close…cars, buses and taxis will try to edge into even a sliver of space forcing you over. If you leave a lot of room…say a couple car lengths you never get to where you are going because the whole city will move in front of you.

Thailand is no better. Was rear-ended by a motorcycle there once. Today got an email from Bob who is living in Thailand: “Now if I could only learn to control my mini-rage reactions at Thai drivers,” he says.

“Earlier this week I was driving in a line of autos and a bus tried to pass the whole line of 5-6 cars. He encountered oncoming traffic and cut in front of me–not really in front more like forced me onto the shoulder.

I offered selected auditory and visual feedback. (Had to laugh because the same thing happens here in Mexico!)

But the curious cultural phenomena is that I was the heavy in that I lost my cool. But driving is very unsafe here–most trips (even to the market) produce an anxiety or at least an edge of apprehension. And the Thais cannot park. It is humerous to watch them attempt a parallel park, most often most of the car is left somewhere out on the street. And I have two significant dings being clipped me while I was parked. Oh well…..”

I think I detect a note of Thai-speak in that syntax.

Market In Tlacolula

Posted on June 19, 2006 by Laughingnomad

Yesterday my friend Sharon and I hopped a diesel-spewing bus for the hour ride to Tlacolula, southeast of the city, where vendors from multiple little villages around the Oaxaca Valley come on Sundays to buy and sell. The market is huge and we haven’t managed to cover it all by 4pm when it begins to close.

Crispy Rendered Pork Fat When Broken Up Into Pieces Is Called Chicharones

On the way out I buy boiled goat meat in a delicious sauce for my dinner. We stand in the aisle of the bus on the way home. I will return to buy a rug for my bedroom.

Tuk Tuk Tour

Posted on April 15, 2006 by Laughingnomad

After the Lao Cotton Company party, Villa, the driver, took a nap in his tuk tuk while we rested in our room. Later that night we toured the city under the lights.

Villa, it turns out, is not just a tuk tuk driver. His other job is finding unexploded ordinances that had been dumped onto Lao by the millions during the Viet Nam War by CIA pilots dressed in T-Shirts and shorts. Of course at the time Nixon insisted we weren’t in Lao or Cambodia during the war. We weren’t…officially. But ask any Lao whether we were and you will get your answer. Before any new thing can be constructed…like a new dam that is being built now in the south of Lao, unexploded bombs have to be found before people get their bodies blown to bits. This will be going on for years and years to come.

Villa’s father fought in the war against the French and he was quite knowledgable about his country’s history. “As long as we are not disturbed by any other country we will be able to develop economically,” he says. “We are at peace now, he adds and I think the future looks good.” I agree.

I spent two days on this trip trying to find the old neighborhood in the city center where I had stayed two years ago and couldn’t figure out why I didn’t recognize anything. It turns out the streets have been paved, street lights put up and new businesses put up by the dozens!

Sabaidee Pi Mai Lao!

Posted on April 13, 2006 by Laughingnomad

Lao New Year (and in Thailand) is a time to encourage young people to absorb the spirit of cleaning their temples, houses, stupas of their ancestors and apparently the bodies of anyone, especially the foreigners they come across. The purpose of cleaning is to create new and better lives for the new year…making stronger health and prosperity while all the bad elements of the past year are washed away with the dirty water. Using hoses, buckets, pans and water guns young people soak anyone within reach…hoses often aiming for the crotch…buckets poured over the head. Our wet T-Shirts are definitely iffy looking.

Westerners accomodate the cold onslought with enthusiastic screeches which delights the kids. Then comes the white sweet-smelling powder sprinkled all over the head and face.

Leila and I had made a deal with a Tuk Tuk (pronounced Took Took) driver to spend the morning taking us to visit nearby silk and cotton weaving projects.

The UN sponsored “Lao Cotton Company” had closed for the day and the many water-soaked employees were all outside partying…drinking free wine and beer, eating soup, seaweed, pork and fish and dancing to a Lao band. Leila and I were kindly invited to join them so we fetched Villa, our driver, and made him join us. A table was set up for us and food brought. One after the other of the many younger boys wanted to dance with us…many making us drink a glass of beer first. To his delight Leila taught one young guy the swing…kids turning the hose on all of us all the while.

After many beers and much dancing and soaking, the head of the Project offered to open the store for us. We crazily piled up ridiculously inexpensive hand-woven sheets, pillow slips, fabric for curtains and table cloths to take home with us. Now to get it all on the plane I am having to throw away half my clothes which I didn’t have many of anyway. But my cozy little home in Mexico will look beautiful.

President Khamtay wishes the people of Lao a good new year in the English language Vientiane Times. “The year of the dog will be a great year; we have already begun the year by implementing the resolution of the 8th Party Congress, state five-year plan and we will continue to carry out the 10 year strategic plan for developing the country,” he said. Plans. Communist bureaucracies apparently not much different than democratic ones.

Phousi Market

Posted on April 9, 2006 by Laughingnomad

I discovered today that the Talat Dala Market that used to be up the street toward the river has moved to the outskirts of town and is now called the Phousi Market (pronounced “poosi I say it carefully.) After a short ride in a Tuk Tuk, I watched the women from the countryside sell their fruit, vegetables, palm sugar, sheets of seaweed and other items, many unidentifiable, while having a leisurely Lao Cafe…strong Lao coffee in a little glass poured over sweetened condensed cream…served traditionally, as in Viet Nam, with a glass of green tea on the side.

Mystery Message

I haven’t been able to figure out what happened in Lao in 1983…anyone have any idea?

Then after a breakfast of delicious noodle soup I purchased sweet dried beef, lao cookies, seaweed and a bag of cherry tomatoes for snacking.

Lao “Disco”

Posted on April 3, 2006 by Laughingnomad

Last night a lively 50 year old woman that teaches kindergarten in Alberta Canada, a young woman from California who is a consultant to a California educational testing company, an even younger woman from Germany, Gabe a thoughtful young guy who is translocating from Washington D.C. to China to study Mandarin and two charming Lao trekking guides and myself all piled into a tuk tuk to go to the local Lao disco.

Traditional Lao dancing looks like a cross between Western line dancing, folk dancing and sometimes a slow salsa except that the hips don’t move much. In fact nothing moves much. Very Asian. Little feeling showing up in their bodies…but they are having great fun. We try it…stepping all over ourselves. Then suddenly…old fashioned DJ techno starts up and we are all on the floor…the Laos not changing their moves much. They are very sweet and refreshing…feels like a middle school prom in the States. I suspect that in years to come this will change.

We walk slowly all the way back on the dark road to our guesthouses…sharing travel experiences and insights.

The others walk me to my guesthouse first…I protest but I guess they are deferring to my age. Good grief! It is only 11:30pm and the metal gates to my guesthouse are closed. Oh F___k! This happened to me one time in Hanoi and I had to go find another guesthouse for the night. Look, the gates aren’t locked one of my friends says! Thank goodness…I pick up my key…the last one left in the bowl on the table in the darkened entry. After a CNN/BBC check on the Thai election results I fall into bed. When traveling in Asia, after fighting heat and humidity and noise, I am usually finished by eight pm. This morning my knee hurts. I am afraid we might have made a spectacle of ourselves last night.

Luang Prabang Lao

Posted on April 2, 2006 by Laughingnomad

Luang Prabang is an outstanding example of the fusion of traditional architecture and Lao urban structures with those built by the European colonial authorities in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its unique, remarkably well-preserved townscape illustrates a key stage in the blending of these two distinct cultural traditions. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The last time I was here was in 2002. There are few changes and not as many tourists as I expected but then this is the off season. I’m in the Jaliya Guest House on the Pha Mahapatsaman…about three blocks from the tourist center along the Mekong River…a lovely cottage in a nice garden in the back with air con and TV for $12.

A few doors down this woman was peeking out the door of her shophouse…just as I saw her doing two years ago!

Yesterday, renting a bicycle for a dollar to scope out the village left me with sore legs. There are few tourists here now as this is the beginning of the hot season. It’s a relief to be out of Thailand…girls here are very different…no 70 year old farangs hand in hand with 19 year old “children” and besides such a thing is illegal here. Thailand ought to take a lesson.

I notice there are many more guesthouses and restaurants cropping up everywhere. The Red Cross up the street used to offer the only massage in town and now I see signs for massage all over. Chucking my bike for an hour, I enjoyed a “refillable” cup of coffee in front of the Scandinavian Bakery while visiting with a guy from Seattle Washington who has been living in Phuket Thailand for three years and is on a two-day “visa run.” He is planning on moving to Bend.

Typical Building From French Era

It is getting close to the time for the water festival and the children have already started throwing water…giggling at startled pedestrians, taxi and tuk tuk drivers. It is best to keep a watch out!

Every evening, near the night market, the Hmong people from the mountains set up their racks of woven fabric and other goods to sell in the middle of the street through town. I am learning prices.

While having early morning coffee this morning I visited with a young woman from Eugene who knows Boni, a friend of mine from Salem! Susan has been living in Manhattan…but is planning on moving back to the northwest…and maybe even to Mexico to visit me!

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