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Friday, August 28, 2015

The Night Train

I took the last train out of Bangkok at 10 pm to for an afternoon arrival, allowing the sights of the land passed through to be seen in the morning light. 2nd class, air con. The lower berth for access to the window. The bed was big enough, comfortable, and had clean sheets. There was no door, but a curtain to draw for privacy. The schedule says 14 hours but everyone knows it will take longer. A 20 minute delay to the start served as a first reminder of this. 

We rode out of the city and into the night of the suburbs and industrial parks. We passed the night with eyes closed but sleepless for the constant, erratic shaking and jerking of the train and the occasional feeling of some small insect passing over bare skin. Once sheer exhaustion took over to induce sleep regardless of the perpetual awakening provided by the train, an imbecile with an alarm clock proceeded to hit snooze for two hours straight until 6 am. Breakfast was runny eggs and toast with an alleged piece of ham and slices of cantaloupe. It was overpriced but it did the job. The bitter coffee and excessively sweetened orange juice kept me going briefly to watch the jungle and the rice fields and the plantations and the small towns pass by outside. Ravines and green, jungle-covered hills in the distance were sometimes blacked out by tunnels cut through the earth to make our route more direct. 

Once again sleep overtook me and once again the imbecile's alarm woke me shortly thereafter. 

We passed a half dozen stations and stopped at a half dozen others. Riding high on a ridge, temples could be seen tucked in between grazing cattle on patches of farmland in the valleys below. 

Stopped at a station for a length of time that seemed beyond that scheduled, men wearing coveralls talked into their radios and inspected the underside of the train. Eventually we moved on and about five km out we stopped as smoke billowed from just outside the window. The smell of overworked brakes preceded it. We sat for a half hour until the train workers were satisfied and we moved on. 

Twisted vines and relentless plant growth gave way to overgrown trails marked by potato chip bags fastened to a stick and the relative clearings of banana plantations. A random golf course and an old man on a bike with a sidecar snapped my thoughts away from the jungle and back towards civilization. Cell phone towers and television antennas mingled with free range cattle and rice fields, temples, and the people of the countryside. The destination, Chiang Mai, drew near.

The Night Train

Bright Lights, Big City

Where the magic happens

I’m in the caboose

Leaving the station in Bangkok




This sign says you can go to prison for six months for boozing on the train. Boo.

An old man doing his thing.

On display in Chiang Mai



The golf course in the middle of nowhere.


Saturday, August 22, 2015

Visa Run to Kuala Lumpur, Part Three: The Return

I was unable to purchase round trip transport from Koh Tao to Kuala Lumpur and I couldn't get a ticket  all the way from KL to Koh Tao. So I bought tickets as I went, retracing the route I took to get there. On the way down, the whole trip was set up so each leg was scheduled to coincide with the next. Switching from boat to van and van to bus was no problem because they were linked together. For some reason, this wasn't an option going back.

It started off ok. I caught the big red double decker bus that left almost on time that would take me across the border and on to Hatyai.


After eyeing me somewhat suspiciously and studying the stamps in my passport, the Thai immigration officer informed me I would need a visa if I wanted to come back again after reluctantly giving me another 30 days. Hopefully I can take care of this in a couple of weeks when I get to Laos. For now, I'm good until mid-September. The bus continued on, making just as many stops as we made on the way down, but mostly at places where I couldn't buy food. I slept most of the way this time, so I didn't really care. We got there well after sunset and there was no hope of moving on until morning. The most noteworthy event of my time in Hatyai was seeing an elephant walking down the street in the middle of the city. I've now seen both a random elephant and a random lion in an urban setting. Interesting and sad.

The next stop was Surat Thani. It was the same type of minivan I had on this leg going the other way, but this time nothing went as planned. A lesser, or perhaps better, man than I would have used whatever means necessary to ensure this driver did not prevent the timely arrival at the next stop. But alas I am somewhat lazy, have some morals, and am generally averse to prison. So as it happened, the four hour trip I was sold, became a 7 hour trip resulting in missing the boat to Koh Tao. I did, however, get the pleasure of discussing with my militant tour operator friend my dilemma and the error of the bus company that sold me the trip to this point. Upon my mention of the quantitative difference between the numbers 4 and 7, he immediately got defensive by going on the offensive and telling me it was my fault for the minivan arriving late and then that he had nothing to do with the other company, so why was I telling him this. Dude has issues. I'm so thankful I don't have his life. They did have my Kindle, though, which, as you'll recall from part one of this saga was left on the minivan when I got to Hatyai the first time. My new friend here was quick to point out that had I been travelling with any other outfit, I would have never seen my Kindle again. Apparently every other transportation agency in Thailand is run by thieves. (I do consider myself lucky to get it back, but this guy was still a dick)

So I now had three options, pay a taxi a sum of more than the rest of the entire return trip to get me to the fast boat that I was supposed to be on, stay the night in Surat Thani and catch first fast boat the next day, or hang out around town for 6 hours and take the slow night boat back to Koh Tao. After thinking for several moments on the question of what there was to do around there for 6 hours, the woman selling me the ticket said there was pizza near the pier. I figured there'd be beer to go along with said pizza and I opted for the night boat. My entertainment while I enjoyed my pizza and beer was watching these guys across the street try and kick a ball through a net raised up into the sky. I would have gone over there to show them how it was done, but it was kind of windy with the storm moving in and...


Nothing much to say about the boat. Proving me wrong, it turned out to indeed be seaworthy enough to get us to Koh Tao. And I got to watch the stars from the top of the boat while out in open water away from light pollution. So that was nice. It wrapped up a pretty good trip to a city that was definitely a pleasant surprise.

Visa Run to Kuala Lumpur, Part Two: The Weekend


The only thing I knew about Kuala Lumpur before I decided to go there was that it was home to the Petronas Towers. When they opened, so long ago in a prior millennium, they were the tallest in the world. Before I left Koh Tao, I read about the Batu Caves just outside of KL. It’s a Hindu shrine and tourist stop with monkeys. I had two days in the city before heading back to Thailand and two things I had planned to do. I did neither of these things.

 On the way into the city I saw a sign with the Starbucks logo that said PanduLalu. So I thought that Starbucks is called PanduLalu (Pan-Do-La-Loo) there. Say it. It's fun. PanduLalu. PanduLalu. PanduLalu. The fact that this made me happy signified one of two possibilities. 1.  The 26 hour boat and bus ride had not broken my spirit. 2. The 26 hour boat and bus ride had broken my mind and I was now as easily amused as a slack-jawed yokel. Either way, I had a smile on my face and was looking forward to the weekend ahead. It turns out "Pandu Lalu" means “Drive Through”, but I’m going to stick with Starbucks for now. Most of you tell your kids Santa Claus is real, so don't judge me for knowingly spreading false information.

Upon arrival at the bus station I hopped off with my day pack, my only luggage for a five day trip. I'm finally starting to get the hang of packing. Long ago I figured out how to deal with shady taxi drivers, but this new breed I've witnessed only in KL were stubborn. After about 10 drivers refused to take me to my hotel based on the meter, even though the side of their cars clearly stated they were required to use it, I was getting frustrated. Apparently most of these guys would rather sit around in hopes of a sucker, then make a quick fare. I finally flagged down a driver that would run the meter, but he had no idea of where the place was that I wanted to go. At first I thought he was just trying to run up the cost by taking me for a ride. My hotel was in one of the biggest tourist areas in the city. He genuinely didn't know, called my hotel, got directions and took me there for less than a third of what the others wanted. To spite the other drivers, I doubled the fare with his tip just for not being an asshole.

It was pushing midnight by the time I got out to look for some food. Not feeling very optimistic, I ventured over to Jalan Alor to find a host of 24/7 street food vendors and small restaurants.


Best Vietnamese food I've had in a while. Only Vietnamese food I've had in a while. A huge score.

The next day I wandered towards the Petronas Towers and stopped at an Irish pub for lunch. While there I watched an entire rugby match for probably the first time in my life. Seeing the All Blacks pound the Wallabies was interesting, but it still isn't really my thing. Maybe if I understood the rules better. Anyway, when I got to the Towers, they had stopped selling tickets for the day and told me to come back tomorrow before one. So I just wandered around eating, drinking, and people watching. I had more Vietnamese food for dinner, (the same order at the same restaurant). Then I wandered into a shady looking bar off some side street that reminded me a little bit of Creekside and a little bit of that place in "From Dusk til Dawn". After deciding I was not going to be accosted by a Salma Hayek looking vampire, I left through a back door staircase that lead to the stock room of the 7-11 above the bar and out to a street near my hotel.

My second and last day in Kuala Lumpur I had planned to go to the Towers and then check out the park next to them. I got there an hour and a half earlier than the lady told me to the day before, but they had once again already sold out. So I walked through the mall inside that had every overpriced store you can think of like Gucci, Tiffany's, Louis Vuitton, Starbucks...all of em. I felt like just being there was going to cause the money in my wallet to vaporize.  I headed for the park and then quickly decided to find another indoor activity (nap back at the hotel) due to the inappropriateness of the heat / humidity combo going on outside.

Not wanting to break the streak, I had Vietnamese food again for dinner. This time at a different location that happened to have a fashion show going on next to it.




That's all I can show you of Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week 2015, as I promised the ladies I wouldn't publish the pictures from the after party. It got pretty wild. Maybe you can catch a glimpse on TMZ.

I do have some more pictures and anecdotes from my hotel and the city, though.


Durian is a fruit that some people find so obnoxiously stinky that many hotels have banned it. I'm not sure what mangosteen is. I think maybe my hotel was just anti-semitic.

Here are some photos from my hotel room contrasting the rich and poor.It reminds me of Elysium.






If we could only find a way to stop balance out the wealth gap, perhaps people wouldn't resort to stealing snatches.



Overall I thought KL was a great city. It was clean, had lots of good food, good nightlife, was super cheap, and outside of the bulk of the taxi drivers I dealt with on the first night, the people were friendly and helpful.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Visa Run to Kuala Lumpur, Part One: Getting There

It's that time of month again. Yes, that time. After 30 days, it was time for another visa run. This time instead of going to Burma for 15 minutes, I went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the weekend. The trip to Burma was about 24 hours round trip. This one took about that long to get to KL. It started off the same as the last trip, a taxi (pile into the back of a pick-up truck) from the resort I’m staying at to the pier, but the weird thing is both times there was a sobfest of a group of British guys talking about how much they would miss each other. I thought they were going to cry. It was uncomfortable. What happened to a fist bump, see ya later, and then facebook comments until you gradually fall out of touch? Maybe it’s the full moon parties. I don’t know.

The next step was the overnight boat to the Thai mainland. Now, the best strategy to ensure a comfortable 26 hour journey that includes cargo transport boats, minivans, and buses with no toilet is to eliminate any sense of hunger. Eat as much street food as possible. The more questionable the cleanliness of the food stall, the more delicious the food will be. I mean, why would anyone eat from a dirty little wagon next to a garbage pile, if it wasn’t absolutely Michelin quality. They just don’t get the stars because of politics. So after a couple of pretty good street kabobs,


and a few shots of Jack (also imperative for overland, trans-national, journeys on public transportation), it was time for lights out. Helpful tip here…if you want to sleep good on the overnight boat from Koh Tao to Surat Thani, check in early so you get a good bed away from the toilets, and/or bring a bigger bottle of Jack.

From the pier in Surat Thani, another truck took us to a tour operator’s office. These people were way too militant / loud / bossy for 5:30 in the morning. “Shoes off! Shoes on the line! Where you go?! Bags there! Wait there! No shoes inside! My bathroom cleaner than your shoes! You want wear shoes, go to bathroom outside!” So the dude went outside, put on his shoes, and walked around the corner, assumingly to pee on the side of their tour office.

Next we split up into groups based on our destination and piled into vans with seating for about 12 people no larger than five feet tall. Fortunately only a few people were going to Kuala Lumpur and we were all able to awkwardly stretch out a bit for the 6 hour ride to the bus station. It would have been a couple hours less if we hadn’t kept stopping apparently for the sole purpose of our driver to smoke cigarettes with people along the way. Most of the times he didn’t even say a word. He’d just stop, get out of the van, walk over to the nearby building, talk to whoever was there, smoke a cig and come back with no explanation. At least after the first few he started letting us out to go to the bathroom and at the last stop before the bus station we even got to eat some really terrible food. When we got to Hat Yai to transfer to a real bus, I was a little too eager to get away from the van and left my Kindle behind. Much to the thanks of the lady at Konsortium bus company, it would later be returned to me on the way back.

For the final leg of my journey to KL, I rode a double decker bus that I summarize as follows:

On a scale of 1-10, zero being a kick in the nuts by a mule and 11 being the delicious strawberry ice cream of El Bolson, Argentina, the bus gets a D+, make it C-, what the hell.

The good:  Seats were relatively comfortable, it didn't smell bad and the driver didn't kill us. Here is my view from the front of the bus and the start of a scooter race.



The bad: SLOW. We could have made KL two hours earlier had we not stopped so much. I prefer the South American bus driving strategy of going insanely and extremely dangerously fast on treacherous winding mountain roads where the slightest misstep would mean certain death for all on board for the sake of getting to an isolated and completely shut down town at 3-5 am, 


when you could have taken it easy and gotten there safely right when everything was starting to open compared to the Thai/Malay approach of driving the speed limit on a well maintained paved highway, making leisurely stops every hour.

The tortuous: The need for shocks. The first four hours or so were spent bobbing up and down like a baby in one of those things that babies bob up and down in when their parents grow tired of the adorableness of puking, pooping, and screaming. This simultaneously made me sleepy and nauseous. After one of our lengthier stops, the up and down bobbing turned into a side to side shimmy that made it impossible for me to tell if that bell ringing was just in my head, part of the bus, or in the luggage of the lady next to me. I'm pretty sure that jingling sound flies in the face of the Geneva Convention. 

45 minutes away from our final destination we make another bathroom break. Are you kidding me? I use the opportunity to buy more questionable street food, some sort of beef and bean, curry manapua (delicious) and an Alicafe-  “premix coffee drink with Tongkat Ali,” as it says on the label. A quick search of the interwebs just now informed me that tongkat ali is a sexually stimulating herb from Malaysia, and is finding its way out of the jungle and into bedrooms. Just the thing to keep me alert to scams on my first taxi ride in the Malaysian capital. 

Back to the D+ / C- rating for this bus ride…It did occur to me that the delay in getting there could be deliberate in order to avoid potential rush hour traffic in downtown KL, but I pass swift if not arbitrary, cruel, and uncompromising judgement “Return to Paradise”-style on bus companies. Judgement stands.

All in all, it was a pretty good trip and I was ready to enjoy my mini-vacation in a new exciting city.