Touchdown! On the flight to Thailand I celebrated New Years with a tiny bottle of cheap airplane wine at 9 pm, and landed at around midnight on January 2nd after having taken off on December 31st.
I spent the first night in Bangkok in a hotel near the airport and bus station and awoke to the whimsical sound of a man spitting in the shower in the neighboring room. And then after my ~22 hour flight, I started on my 9 hour bus ride to Chiang Mai in the North.
The bus ride was a bearable Martha Stewart on MTV crack kind of hell. I was forced to listen to Thai pop for the entire bus ride played at a volume that canceled out my headphones. Most of the music videos playing on the big screen at the front involved someone singing about being dumped and holding his/her eyes closed as much as possible with a lot of sadly sitting in couches and leaning on walls. They inevitably ended with a close up of the victims heart broken face. There's not even random dancing like our worst pop groups have, just laying around and face close ups... for hours... There were two songs called "I am fine." that were especially ...
Besides that, the bus had a wooden interior, patchwork flower pattern ceiling and pink doiley head rests, pink curtains, pink blankets and general pink decor. Some things I just can't understand.
Ranting about Clockwork Orange style torture aside, it's beautiful here. The towns and cities seem like they grow out of the jungle with tall palm trees and big leafed plants everywhere, out in fields and in between houses. Even the largest buildings don't seem too far away from the reaching foliage. The roads are full of cars, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, songtaews (converted pick-ups that act like small buses), and bicyclists. Everything is really colorful (pink abounds in shirts, cars, taxis, annoying bus interiors, etc).
I'll write more later, but as for language classes, the script is intimidating and hurts my eyes to look at. Its all squiggles with 46 consonants and vowels that go wherever the hell they want with no regard for my helpless learning. They can be placed above, below, in front of (but the sound comes after), or behind consonants. Its about time for class, its sunny, and the streets are full of vehicles all waiting to hit me. Hope you all had an awesome new years!
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5 comments:
Starchy that sounds amazing! And common, you know the pink doyle bus is awesome. Good luck out there with your classes and that crazy language!
thailand sounds like a giant kitsch jungle paradise. good times.
You might just have to become a pop star while you are in Thailand and show them how it's done Ted.
I am really excited to see this Thailand place. Although, I am a bit intimidated about learning Thai as well.
I agree with Christina. Next time I see you, I expect at least a few hit singles.
While on a bus ride in Northern Tanzania I was forced to listen to east african hip hop. Which is kinda okay. But then they switched to awful american sappy music for the last part. Which was painful. My other travel whoa that this reminded me of was when I got really seasick on the ferry back from zanzibar, and an awful bollywood movie and its music/dancing was making it worse. So I stood outside on the boat getting soaked, because that was better.
love Jessie
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