Dearest Friends and Fans,
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\nWhen we last left you, we were winding down our sojourn in Bangkok.\u00c2\u00a0 After writing the last installment, we came upon some street performance, while wandering through a city park. On one side of the park there was a small orchestra playing traditional Thai music.\u00c2\u00a0 A few hundred meters away, a crew of shirtless Thai B-Boys was doing some of the best breakdancing we’ve seen since Berkeley.\u00c2\u00a0 The perfect summation of Thailand: holding fast to their traditional culture, while embracing all the manifestations of Western modernity.
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\nRandom Thai Fact #1 – “George”
\nSurprisingly, every Asian\u00c2\u00a0we’ve talked politics with (Thais, Burmese, Kashmiri) seems to be really into George Bush. They think his pillaging of Iraq’s oil\u00c2\u00a0is a good thing (gas is expensive here), and\/or they’re hoping he’ll do something similar to the brutal dictators running their home countries.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re not doing a great job of getting across the depths of our hatred for the man, nor have we been able to communicate our disinterest in the Miss Universe pageant (a current Thai preoccupation) – but that’s a whole other story.
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\nSo, on our way out of BKK we spent an afternoon in Ayuthaya, riding bikes in the sweltering heat around amazing ruins of temples and headless Buddhas.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Riding on the left side\u00c2\u00a0of the road took a bit of getting used to!\u00c2\u00a0 As we were getting sick of looking at Wats (temples), we came across a bunch of elephants and their costumed mahouts packing up for the end of the day – they loaded the giant animals onto the back of big trucks and drove off. We followed them, riding to the outskirts of town to the King’s elephant encampment.\u00c2\u00a0 We watched in awe as dozens of elephants ate, wrestled, and did tricks with their trunks.\u00c2\u00a0 After a little while, we were invited in to play with the baby elephants.\u00c2\u00a0 So cute!\u00c2\u00a0 They were very mischievious, untying Steve’s shoes and trying to hug Phil.
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\nRandom Thai Fact #2 – “Farangs”
\nWe didn’t realize that being Farangs (foreigners) would be our ticket to instant popularity with the under-6 set.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only do parents get to point us out to their children and identify us as Farang, but our very presence is enough to evoke everything from gleeful screams of “Farang” to exhortations such as “Hello-1-2-3-4!” as we pass by.\u00c2\u00a0 Seems like everybody’s working on their english.
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\nWe took a cool overnight sleeper train from Ayuthaya to Chiang Mai.\u00c2\u00a0 Very fun – never before had we taken a mode of conveyance where you get to lie down.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a bit of confusion at first- everyone seemed to have berths except for Phil, who just had a chair.\u00c2\u00a0 But soon the porter came by and with a few deft maneouvers transformed her seat into a bed.
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\nRandom Thai Fact #3 – “Bags”
\nPlastic bags play an important role in thai market culture.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only are they good for your sticky rice, your curry, and your soup, but also your Coke!\u00c2\u00a0 Vendors will actually open a glass soda bottle and pour it into a bag for you to take with you, with a straw of course.\u00c2\u00a0 Interestingly, also, any time you buy something in a bag you can be sure the bag will come puffed up to maximum plumpness, no matter how small a quantity of actual products\u00c2\u00a0lie therein.
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\nAfter a pretty quick stopover in Chiang Mai, we were off to Pai, a little hippie town in the “toes of the foothills of the Himalayas.”\u00c2\u00a0 We stayed in a very cool place on the banks of the river, across a little bamboo bridge.\u00c2\u00a0 Our room was a little hut on stilts, next to a garlic and soybean field, sorrounded by wooly green mountains in every direction.\u00c2\u00a0
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\nPai has become quite a destination for euros and israelis on the year-long travel circuit.\u00c2\u00a0 If anyone has a fetish for hippies on motorcycles, this is the place for you.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently this otherwise peaceful town has been having an epidemic of motorcyle accidents, however.\u00c2\u00a0 In our two days in town, we witnessed two people in arm bandages, our neighbor at the guesthouse drove into a Thai kid within his first hour in town, and we saw a drunken girl simply drop off her bike and struggle to pick it up, all the while insisting she was fine.\u00c2\u00a0 In light of this, we opted for travel by elephant, which seemed a safer way to get around.
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\nWe had a great time swimming with them in the river – they would dunk us over and dump us off their backs, and squirt us with their trunks.\u00c2\u00a0 And we were lucky to get to hear our elephant trumpeting – an incredible sound that vibrated the elephant’s whole body (although the sound also seemed to trigger all the other elephants spontaneously peeing).\u00c2\u00a0 Afterwards, our bow-legged thighs were ready for our first thai massages.\u00c2\u00a0 We were slightly surprised to discover that a thai massage includes your ass-crack!\u00c2\u00a0 Josh’s masseuse in particular was giggly and reeked of whisky.
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\nRandom Thai Fact #4 – “Dogs”
\nThai dogs seem to be considerably more lethargic than their american counterparts.\u00c2\u00a0 There are lots of them, and we tend to encounter them sacked out, semi-conscious,\u00c2\u00a0strewn about the ground\u00c2\u00a0in various random places – like in the middle of\u00c2\u00a0a busy street.
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\nFor the past few days we’ve been bumming around Chiang Mai – a pleasant, if heavily touristed, city.\u00c2\u00a0 We bought our first custom-tailored clothes, attended a glitzy rock concert promoting dish detergent, spent time at the kitschy – but beautifully air-conditioned – Chiang Mai museum, and shopped at a few too many markets.
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\nRandom Thai Fact #5\u00c2\u00a0– “Books”
\nChiang Mai has many english-language used book stores.\u00c2\u00a0 (Some of them also double as excellent vegetarian restaurants.)\u00c2\u00a0 We were happily surprised when Steve found a\u00c2\u00a0copy of Dracula shelved in the Biography section.
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\nTomorrow is our last day in northern Thailand. Steve has left us for the sunny beaches of the south.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got a batik class and a dance concert to attend.\u00c2\u00a0 Then we’re off to Laos!\u00c2\u00a0
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\nMore news, and hopefully photos, to follow.\u00c2\u00a0 Keep us posted on your happenings too.
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\nLove,
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\nJosh (in the composing chair) and Phil (suggesting apt turns of phrase and arguing for grammatical correctness)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dearest Friends and Fans, \u00c2\u00a0 When we last left you, we were winding down our sojourn in Bangkok.\u00c2\u00a0 After writing the last installment, we came upon some street performance, while wandering through a city park. On one side of the park there was a small orchestra playing traditional Thai music.\u00c2\u00a0 A few hundred meters away, … Continue reading SE Asia Travelogue #2 – More Thailand<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joshuarosenstock.com\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}