Planes, Trains and Buses, oh my!

Caves, Ruins, Cambodia, Myanmar, and More

As the semester comes to an end, I am finding myself getting preemptively nostalgic about my life here. There are numerous basic/obvious things that I will miss: cheap delicious food (it’s MANGO season so I get a mango smoothie daily now), smiling at all strangers, riding my motorbike, cheap massages (yeah, I couldn’t go another post without mentioning them), and of course,

Mom look I got some people to pretend to be friends with me!

all my friends. But like I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to miss most having the time and capacity to spontaneously do things. And by “things,” I mean anything from intense caving to a day trip to Myanmar.

So as promised, here is the adventure/fun side to my Respect post. It covers everything extra I’ve done from for the past few months, organized by region rather than chronologically.

Fun around Chiang Rai

Tam Luang Cave: Near the Myanmar border (~45 min away), there is a cave that is kilometers deep (allegedly has been used to smuggle drugs from Myanmar). I visited with some friends, and thank goodness one of them has been to this cave numerous times. It would go from massive caverns to literal crawl space and back again. At one point we were in water up to our waists. I LOVED IT.

This is at the entrance on the way out, you can kind of tell the scale by looking at the people.

Showing off our battle scars (those are my calves — not pants — just my new mud-skin).

Bike for Dad: To celebrate the King’s birthday (December 5th, oops I forgot to talk about this earlier), cities all across Thailand hold a huge bike event at the same time. The Chiang Rai Bike for Dad was so congested that in the beginning we were all just walking our bikes for awhile.

I did it with my friend Kristin! I obviously did not take the picture on the right, but it is the Chiang Rai start line.

“Camping:” My friends and I wanted to go camping, but instead we ended up on a porch at a friend’s friend’s house in a village in the mountains. It was GORGEOUS and lots of fun.

Other Thailand Adventures

Ayutthaya & Sukothai (Central Thailand): Ayutthaya is a former capital of Thailand, with ~600 year old ruins. We (Kanav and I) rented a motorbike and drove all around town. The ruins are sort of just scattered among all of the modern buildings, which was a neat set up.

This was my favorite part of Ayutthaya. Front/side view from where I was sitting.

In addition to ruins, there were also some interesting monuments.

Sukothai is also a former capital of Thailand, with ~700 year old ruins. It is much more put-together than Ayutthaya; the ruins are in parks that are very contained and well-manicured. We rented bicycles, which was a fun change.

Creeping on a couple that was taking their engagement photos in traditional Thai clothes. There were also TONS of kids taking graduation photos, though I didn’t sneak a picture of any of them.

I know I’m reposting from Instagram, but I can’t handle how much I love these photos

We took a plane, a taxi, the subway, a day train, a sleeper train, a bus, a motorbike and bikes within and between all of our destinations (CR → Bangkok → Ayutthaya → Sukothai → Chiang Rai). Kanav has the special talent of sleeping in any type of vehicle, while I just sit jealously and try to keep my carsickness at bay. During another trip, I also took the train all the way from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, third class (broken up in two parts over 2.5 days). One of those was the busiest travel day of the entire year. For anyone curious about that experience, I live-documented my feelings while it was happening and decided to share it.

Khampaeng phet: The rest of my time in Nam’s hometown was filled with animal adventures. We visited a bird park, where there were the most exotic birds, and despite being literally the 2nd hottest city in the entire world while we were there, I had a great time. We also visited a place with an unbelievable amount of monkeys (it actually became terrifying how aggressive some of them were fighting over the bananas we bought to feed them). Then my favorite part was when millions of bats came out of a cave a sunset.

So what looks like weird smoke is actually MILLIONS OF BATS!! Impossible to capture well but absolutely incredible in person. Happens every night at sunset.

Sticky Waterfalls: In Chiang Mai, there are waterfalls that are completely climb-able. It seemed terrifying at first, and then I saw tons of little kids scramble up no problem. It was the weekend of the New Year so it was packed with Thai families, but it was still a great time.

Koh Phi Phi/Scuba Diving: I snuck off for an extended weekend to get SCUBA certified on an island in the South. I also enjoyed lots of sun, fire shows, beaches, and (alcohol) buckets and had way too much fun. Basically, it was a perfect week.

Wreck! Working on my underwater photography skills….I also saw a massive sea turtle and two leopard sharks, and as Kanav put it, “lots of big fish”

Outside Thailand

Angkor Wat and Beyond:

So yeah, I also went to Cambodia! I found a window of time and flew down by myself. I did the “small tour” in Siem Reap, involving Angkor Wat and two other main groups of temples. It was over 100F/40C and I woke up extra early to catch the sunrise (and to try to escape some of the heat — although not the crowds), so I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. However, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Angkor Wat was obviously incredible, but I also particularly enjoyed Ta Prohm, which is the temple that has been overgrown by numerous trees.

The coveted sunrise photo of Angkor Wat and all the people pushing each other to get the same thing. When I was leaving a few hours later, that same spot was completely deserted.

I got a guide while in Angkor Wat, and he insisted on making me take some hilarious photos, this is just one of the many awkward-senior-photo-esque shots that he took.

I also made it over to Phnom Penh to check out the killing fields. I didn’t take many photos (in my head at the time it felt more respectful), but I would highly recommend it to anyone who goes to Cambodia. While I was in Siem Reap, everyone scoffed about Phnom Penh, but I think visiting the killing fields/genocide museum was an invaluable part of my experience in Cambodia.

My only form of transportation in Cambodia: tuk-tuk!

And of course, this beer was the most important discovery of all of my travels for the past three months. While walking aimlessly around Siem Reap (my new favorite past time in new cities), I stumbled across a Brewery. They had a promotion, and so I enjoyed two spectacular IPAs for $3 (No conversion done….they use USD in Cambodia, which was a fun change!)

Myanmar

One Sunday in March I was in Mae Sai (the Thai-side border-town), and my friends called me because they were going over to Myanmar. I had them stop at my house to grab my passport and then an hour later, I was walking across the border with them.

Most Thais go to the Myanmar-side border-town (Tachileik) to go to the market, under all of those umbrellas. It’s where you get cheap alcohol, pirated movies and music, and any sort of knock off article of clothing/accessory you could want. So after 2 hours of blowing our money, my friends headed back home. But since it was literally 50 times more expensive for me to enter the country, I stayed back to explore the city more until the border closed (10 baht/~30 cents for Thai citizens vs. 500 baht/~$14 for me). I ran into one of my students at the pagoda, saw some interesting temples, and made a new Burmese friend while trying the food he picked out for me.

So maybe next year I won’t be going caving or driving my motorbike around, but hey, at least I’ll still be able do a 45 minute border run if I get the urge to country hop again — watch out Canada, here I come!