Meanwhile, back in Japan…

It’s still cold :’( I’ve been spending more time out of my house; at school or on trips largely because of how cold my house is. Well, I can tell you about the last 3 weeks maybe. The short story is I’ve been busy and writing however many blog entries didn’t help much. The long story is as follows:

I came back and the weather wasn’t so bad, there wasn’t even snow on the ground. I was relieved, but that night it snowed and ever since there’s been a layer on the ground. I had only been back one day maybe, and Neal talked me into spending the upcoming long weekend in Yokohama, the large city to the south of Tokyo. We were suppose to take this trip in December but things happened and we had to cancel. Either way I’m glad I went as it was a long weekend and the weather there was amazing.

So in Yokohama we met up with our friend Cam. Together we went to the huge China town and had some amazing food, and were shocked when our bill came. It was unfortunate we didn’t understand Japanese enough to know the price for the 3-person-course wasn’t a total price, but instead per person. I understand better the millions of warnings about eating here now, which is crazy considering there is literally like a thousand restaurants in this little area.

There was a Costco nearby and we wanted to do some shopping for stuff we were homesick for. Neal had never been in one before, and it was worth the trip alone walking around watching him rubber neck the store and be shocked literally every time we turned the corner. Well you know Costco, and it was nice to feel like I was back in Canada, but the walk to the train station was rather long and the food was all huge and bulky. Sure I could buy that 3kg drum of nacho cheese dip, but I don’t want to carry it. Lots of purchases were left unrealized; but we hope to make a road trip in that direction sometime so we can fill the car up.

I went into Tokyo that night to meet my new friend, Yumi. She’s really cool and we had a good time together; I got to see new pieces of Tokyo, namely the higher-class stuff… I need a bigger bank roll maybe; Tokyo will kill you in a hurry if you’re not careful. Either way, she’s cute and fun.

Neal, Cam, and I walked around Yokohama for hours the next day, getting a feel for the place. It’s really nice, and much more laid back than Tokyo. We rode a tall Ferris Wheel, and saw interesting things like an out-door skating rink… which was square… and needed cold air to be pumped onto it to stay frozen even though it was mid-January… and was so packed with people I don’t think you could have fallen without getting your finger cut off by someone else’s skate.

I went into Tokyo again that night to see my friend Shiho again. I hadn’t seen her since September maybe, and she figured it was a good time to bring her friend, who was a dude and wanted to learn English. I guess the evening was still enjoyable and the food was tasty, but it’s interesting just how much things and people change in such a short time. To think, I used to be crazy for her, haha. Everything is a learning experience.

Monday on January 12th, Neal and I went to see some famous temples in the area. By co-incidence, the reason this day was a holiday was because it was “coming of age day”. So many now-legal girls were decked out in full kimonos. No matter how often you may see them, they’re still so beautiful and elegant; I especially like the long curly hairstyle that accompanies them. Anyways we saw a big Buddha and some other temples, and Neal got some kind of book signed/stamped. How the book works in the Buddhist religion, is a sort of proof that you saw a certain temple. When you die, the book is burned with you. It was neat to see the monks working away making distinct seals for their respective temple for all types of these books.

A 3-day workweek later and it was Friday the 16th. Our area of teachers got together for a meeting to discuss the looming re-contracting deadline. But first, time to play with some children from Brazil! We learnt a martial arts dance that’s in their culture, listened to some of their music, and taught a little bit of English. The kids were fun.

After we had the long, hard talk about re-contracting. Because of budgets cuts, this and that, whatever, we had one week to decide now to stay a 3rd year or not. Oh and it sounds like JET is dead, they’re not hiring any new ones and instead all privates while waiting for us current ones to cycle out; I guess I’m lucky to be one of the last in one this sweet deal. We all got into groups and made pro/con lists. I filled in lots for both sides, but the biggest thing for me was just to get out of Tatsuno. I’m dying there. I love the job and everything else but not Tatsuno. Looking for accommodation elsewhere is exciting.

Anyways since that was over a week ago you can do the math and know I’ve made a decision. I signed on for a 3rd year, but I will be actively looking for an Engineering job in Japan in the mean time. If I find one in before April or May, I’ll quit and take it. It is simply too early right now to reasonably ask someone if they want to stay or go, and I really want to learn Japanese.

Also maybe the bigger reason I said yes was because my schools would be switching next year, in that I’ll be in Ina 3 times a week instead of 2, and I’ll get to move! I want the Japan experience of living in a little closet they call an ‘apartment’ instead of my big empty frozen old house. It’s exciting to think next year I’ll be able to play volleyball, or go to a pub, or find a Japanese tutor, or be able to take a bus to the airport again. Ina is just slightly bigger, sure, but it can’t be nearly as soul sucking. I need a change.

So ya after that, on a lighter note to get to know everyone better, we made groups and nominated people for certain titles. Things like “most likely to get arrested” and stuff like that. I captured 2 of the 14 or so titles: I won “most likely to celebrate ‘measure your feet’ day” and “most likely to discover cold fusion”. One that I came close to winning, but was beat out barely by Patricia, who just got a new boyfriend, was “most likely to buy condoms in bulk”. Haha… they think too highly of me. I should stop talking about my personal life as people are getting the wrong idea :) I’m still flattered though.

I’m more surprised I didn’t win the “most likely to spend a day in bed” award, I guess I’ve changed a lot since coming from Canada as I would have won that award almost once a week! Haha, I only got up for the bathroom and to eat something fast when I wasn’t playing video games. When the meeting wrapped up, we went up north to Nozawa Onsen for a ski/snowboard excursion.

The previous night was that crazy fire festival I told you about last year, but I didn’t go this year because I was busy looking for jobs and apartments in Tokyo; it’s exciting! Too bad job hunting is such a pain. That night with the heavy decisions above our heads, we did some indulging. This was maybe my first time being drunk since… June. Whenever that was when I got sick at the work party, oh and I wasn’t even that drunk either, as I kept from doing silly things others were doing which left them waking up in the morning and wondering where $100 went, or with burns on their face from flaming shots, or wet clothes from jumping into snowbanks. I still beaned a lot of people with snowballs from Bwahaha

Anyways, I went down the hill on a snowboard as I figured I should grind that skill point up a bit. Near the end of the day I was confident enough to be making helicopter-like rotations, and didn’t fall so much. Dougal was new so we hung out and were a good match I think. The last run of the day from the top to the bottom on easy took 2 hours. It was absolutely amazing and breathtaking; it snowed lightly for most of the day. The only disappointing thing was we were in a town famous for its hot springs but I never got the chance to go because while I was on the hill snowboarding my driver went, and the night before we were drinking so no bathing then. I guess I’ll be back in a couple weeks.

It was a 5-day workweek and I think stuff happened… I started a Japanese class on Monday in a city far away and Wednesday I got Sushi with Junko. Mrs. Matsushima, Mr. Kasuga and Mrs. Matsui helped me out during the day Wednesday to sign up for a “Hello Work” membership. It is like a government sponsored headhunting company where you can look for jobs. I’ve never known these things existed in Canada anyways; it would have helped a lot I think with the pain of applying for everything. There are some other companies that I will sign up with later through the newspaper.

Friday night I was back in Tokyo and got together with Yumi again. She’s really sweet; she could only meet for a little bit and had to go back to the office at midnight, where she worked until 4 in the morning finishing a report. Regardless, Saturday she booked movie tickets for both of us, then helped me look for jobs for a couple hours at “Hello Work” in Tokyo. The job place is all Japanese and it’s a bit inconvenient because you can’t really do searches, so we spent most of the time flipping through pages of stuff that didn’t apply to me at all. Atleast I got some ideas for where to send my resume.

She had a food party that night, and I had a wedding party to attend so we parted ways. I found out later though from my friend when she sobered up enough to reply to my messages that the party ended at 6 and she was too sick to go out. :) I ended up having a relaxing Saturday night out in Tokyo just walking around and seeing new things; I like the Ebisu area where my capsule is. Oh and I went into an Internet café; they’re expensive! Not like that Matrix back in Regina where we played games for hours; this place didn’t really have games…

On Sunday I met up with Richard who was also in town and together we went to a “stand-up” sushi restaurant. This was my first time at a sushi place that wasn’t on a conveyor belt, and I was amazed how much of a difference there was. It was so tasty; I ate and ate. The place was cool too, in that your plate was a big green leaf laid out in front of you, and there were no chairs so you ate standing up. I want to go again ^_^ It’s too bad I probably won’t love conveyor belt sushi like I used to after a taste of heaven like that.

We walked around and looked at stuff. I was close to buying an iphone, but I don’t think it’s worth the price; that and if I move out of Japan it won’t work anymore. I spent all my bus trips back writing up more blogs and it looks like I finally caught up! Crazy! School has pretty much winded down at Yayoi for me, I have 6 classes until it starts again in April I think. Well that’s one less thing, time to look for more jobs and study more Japanese.

"You were born an original. Don't die a copy." -John Mason

tnoy

Tony Then Travels To Taipei, Taiwan

Richard and I were together for this leg of the trip too, Jan 2-8. Noboru was lucky (depending how you look at it) in that he was going straight home because he was so sick. Anyways, the plane had a lay-over here for us, probably at no extra expense :) I figured this would be a good way to see 2 in 1 kind of deal, but the lesson I learnt here is it’s just too much going from one to another like that. I wonder now how people backpack for months from country to country.

My staples for traveling have been to meet the people, try the food, learn new things and open my mind. Maybe I’m just getting fatigued from traveling all over the world now and long for something simpler? Maybe this is why my sister Patty threw in the towel after globetrotting for a while. For now, let’s blame the feeling on the hard goodbyes I had to endure again. They’re never easy, but I should be happy to have experienced them, it means we shared something special that is just ours… I wonder how Phuong, Sao and Dung are in Vietnam… I wish emails worked to that crazy country. Atleast they ‘kinda’ work to Thailand, but the language barrier becomes obvious suddenly.

Without digressing too hard too early, we checked into a nice looking place, but were paying too much, and were lucky to find a nice nearby hostel for the remainder of the trip for a fraction of the price. When I go back to Bangkok, that’s one thing I will do differently. You meet more cool people that way; I hate hotels. It’s funny how each time I visit a country before I wanted to move there… not so much with Taiwan and Thailand now for various reasons.

We didn’t do much that first day again. We saw some of the city, ate some of the amazing food, and saw a movie again I think. We were tired from the travel and having to get up so early again so it was a lame night.

One parting gift Noboru gave us though was contact with his sister, May. One hand washes the other right? When she visits us in Japan we’re going to treat her for lunch. She’s really cool and it’ll be good to see here again. Anyways, despite being 3 months pregnant, she gave us something of a tour and took us to an amazing restaurant. So many forgotten things came back to me from my trip to China, like how you tap 2 of your fingers twice on the table to say “thank you”, and the best part, just how amazing the food is.

She took us to some memorials and other famous landmarks, like the Taipei 101. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it, so look at the picture; it’s massive. There is symbolism all over the thing, like how it splits 8 times because 8 is so lucky in Chinese culture (08/08/2008 ring a bell?) it’s meant to look like bamboo, the 101 is the number of floors and was meant to be binary to represent the new digital age. It is illuminated with different coloured lights depending on the day and if you want to see something really cool, check out Taipei’s New Year’s countdown; the fireworks shoot off this bad boy like it’s on fire. (you can see the building's shadow in the picture)

We walked through cool areas with interesting architecture. There was a dog show going on, and there were weird human statues doing poses. Hahaha… that ‘art’ is so lost on me. I see those (guys?) standing there with a pound of make-up on holding some ridiculous pose and think two things: one is how much pain their body must be in, and the other how I hope they’re not getting paid too much as to not encourage others to waste their time doing this too, it was a cold day too. Stay in school kids.

One thing that came up was Taiwan had a surprisingly low level of English, and we were in a major city too. I mean, Japan might even have a higher level, and they have always been the lowest so far that I’ve seen. The travel book mentioned this briefly, how their education system is similar to Japan’s, in how you have to memorize millions of grammar points instead of learning to speak something intelligent. Although I’m not in a position anymore to say if Japan is worse because I can speak some Japanese now. One woman didn’t even understand the word “English”. Points of interest for sure, good thing I studied some Kanji as I needed them to decipher some of the Chinese menus we came across. Some characters were the same as Japan’s; others were quite different. For example in the elevator “open” was the same, but “close” had something funky going on inside it… it looked… Chinese! Haha

So ya, it was surprising how many menus we stumbled upon that had no pictures or English. What Taipei had a lot of though, that we quickly fell in love with, were “night markets”. Here, there is lots of shopping, and tons of food. Delicious fresh food for cheap everywhere you looked. You almost wished for even smaller portions so you had room in your stomach to try another treat. One dish that stood out was this beef noodle shop that was on the tourist map. Actually, that particular place wouldn’t let us in because they had crappy hours, so we went next door to the competition that would take our money. That was one of the tastiest meals I’ve had yet; the beef fell apart in your mouth, the broth was rich, and the noodles were freshly hand made. Amazing. I miss China some days…

Back to the Taipei tower, it has the fastest elevator in the world, and at one point it went 1010 meters a minute. It was still a smooth ride, and coming down was a bit slower. Up top you had an amazing panorama of the city and surrounding mountains. Inside too, you could see the world’s largest damper on display or something. Either way, it’s a monstrous counter weight to help reduce the building’s movement by 40%.

We went out for some nightlife and met some cool ex-pats. (ex-patriots, or foreigners) they were cool, but kept asking “why did you come to Taiwan now? This is the absolute worse time” It just worked out that I asked for a layover and didn’t really look too far into it. He had a point though, as it rained every day, it was cold, things didn’t seem lively like clubs that were suppose to have lines going out the door and things were closed because of the just-passed new year, and the upcoming monstrous Chinese New Year where the country shuts down for a couple weeks. We were told up to 80% of their friends were all gone this time of year, out traveling like we were. Oh and the banks were all closed pretty much the whole time we were there, so we had to exchange money for bad rates at the shopping mall.

At the club we went to, we met some cute girls. A little while later, we were warned by the bartender not to talk to them because they were mafia, and things started to click when the ugly burly dude nearby would snap his fingers or something and the girls would quickly go back to him. He wasn’t a happy dude obviously, probably because he had to pay for their company and even then they’d rather hang out with us. They left not too long after. Interesting experience I guess, no one got hurt :) Any other night we tried to see some nightlife, everything was closed and we got soaking wet for our efforts because of the rain; clubs were only opened 3 days a week I think.

I realize I’m blending days together as really not a whole lot happened outside relaxing, eating, walking around when it was nice out, and feeling burnt out from the duration of the trip already; the last day for example was us making a trip up north to see a “fort”. It was an old building that just didn’t pique any interest at all. For example, one room was empty save for a square metal ‘water tank’ inside. It explained its purpose, how and when it was used and yadda yadda yadda I don’t care. We tried to care, we really did, but it wasn’t happening.

There was one big notable trip of note, we went out to a gorge along the crazy easy coast. We got really lucky with this trip too, we started off in the early morning and it was pouring rain, while we were there it was sunny and perfect and on the way back it started pouring again :)

So we got there and first thing we did was rent a scooter. They wanted to know if we had a license. We didn’t, but I showed them my Japanese license. They wanted to know if we had experience, and luckily I had spent 10 minutes driving one in Vietnam haha. So we got the rental, and driving it alone made the whole trip worthwhile. We cruised down a highway parallel an amazing ocean on one side, and monstrous mountains on the other; it was incredible. I learnt to drive a lot better, and Richard learnt too.

We cruised up to the gorge, and hit points of interest like bridges and other neat sights like white marble river bed, temples built into the side of the mountain, waterfalls, beautiful buildings, caves and just cool roads in general. We took turns riding on the back snapping pictures and soaking it all in. The cliffs above, rock overhangs, tunnels, fresh air, sunny day… like scuba though, there’s only so much I can say. You need to experience something that beautiful and wonderful for yourself, I’m just going to run out of positive adverbs!

At least English has a leg up on Japanese that way; they only really say “sugoi” over and over and over and ov…. Unless there is a young and ‘hip’ dude saying it, then he’ll throw in the occasional “sugehh” which means the same thing, but it’s slang! Crazy kids, what will they do next?

While Thailand was freckled with Buddah temples, Taiwan was freckled with the similar looking ‘China/Japan/Korea/depends-where-you-first-saw-them” temples, but with a twist; they had some really elegant and flashy decorations on the roofs. The people come off as not very friendly, but that’s a Chinese culture thing more than anything, and it was quite the contrast after just being in Thailand. The people really are cool, but Mandarin just sounds like people are angry. Oh and one shop had pig brains soup. It was tempting just to say I did it, but I wasn’t in the mood.

That’s about it. I can’t help but feel Taiwan got a rough ride from me. I feel I need to go back another time when I’m a little fresher, but I’m just not sure if I care enough to try. Again I’m starting to wonder why I’m traveling anymore; I look forward to visiting family in Canada to maybe … recharge? I don’t even know. It’s surreal to think about ‘home’ anymore, having been gone for well over a year now.

I was all set on leaving JET, mostly because of my little town, but in the hostel I got to talking with another traveler. He asked what all I did last year and I started to list them off on my fingers; New Year’s is a time for reflection after all.

I stared it in Korea, then my mom Visited and I saw a lot of Japan. In the summer I went to Vietnam, then in the Spring to Okinawa where I learnt to scuba. Now I was finishing the year in Thailand and Taiwan. During my rant it kind of hit me hard that I had it pretty good last year despite me whining and moaning all the time; what other job can really offer me that much time and opportunity to go crazy? Suddenly my decision to stay for a 3rd year became difficult.

"Big goals get big results. No goals gets no results or somebody else's results." -Mark Victor Hansen

tnoy

Tony Tries Thailand’s Thrilling Treats Finale: Back 2 Bangkok

Richard got up early to take a tour I’ve taken previously, so I spent the majority of the day hanging out with Lily. We checked into a real hotel this time, which was cheaper and nicer than the one I first stayed at, and it had a pool. I’ve never understood before why someone would travel thousands of kilometers to hang out in front of an artificial pool all day, but I finally understood this trip, as it’s a relaxing reprieve from the frantic sight seeing. A couple times during the stay I sat by it just reading a book or two. (Picture: Richard, Lily, me)

Anyways, Lily and I had some Thai curry for lunch then went to a large shopping mall where I was hoping to see the aquarium. Because it was so close to new years though, the place was absolutely packed with school kids, so that idea was scrapped. I ended up just walking around the mall with Lily, talking and learning new things, like what celebrities were on various posters or what food we were looking at.

That night, Richard, Lily, her niece and I went to see the famous cabaret. Lily is so cool, if not a bit strange. She loves cats, and there are millions of strays in Bangkok. She keeps food on her and when we see strays she throws out some fish bits for them. Anyways the cabaret sports “lady boys” in full force. We were treated for over an hour to a song-and-dance show of various cover songs.

Now if you don’t know the “lady boys”, they are quite famous in Thailand. They are men who dress in drag, and the hardcore ones had extensive surgery to look like women. The easiest such surgery is breast implants, but some do more like remove their adam’s apple or other stuff. Some of the people on stage were really pretty, sure, but you knew they were men; and like Richard said: “I’m not sure how I’m suppose to take this”. Haha I tried to enjoy the cabaret for what it was, but it was always in your mind that you shouldn’t be checking out the cute ‘girls’ in tight clothes and tighter bodies walking around on stage.

The show was really good, and after it, the pretty ‘ladies’ thanked you as you walked out. You could get pictures with them so we did; you can see one of the prettier ones in the white dress, too bad that one in red snuck in… he was maybe the worst. When we went to pose, they grabbed you and threw you in for the picture. The strength in which they grabbed and threw you was surprising at first, but they’re dudes! Easy to forget that with many of them… After the picture one asked for a tip. Sure, the show was fun and thinking the tip was for everyone, I gave a small tip. He stuffed it in his bra and walked away like a prissy queen, and 5 others aggressively swarmed looking for a tip too. It was scary really, reminded me of those horrible bums in China; ask my buddy Chris for more stories about them. We got out of there as soon as we could right after, too bad they had to ruin the mood like that.

After we walked around to see more nightlife. Our first stop was coincidentally another ping-pong show with different acts, but we didn’t stay long as the girls were nasty and it was weird with Lily and her cute Niece joining us. The next stop was a small step up, a “go-go” bar. Here it was more ‘family friendly’ in that the girls weren’t doing nasty things and had ‘some’ clothes on, but in essence it was little more than a sleazy place to find ‘workers’. The girls had numbers on their chests and worked in two big groups. While one group was on stage dancing, the other would go around finding ‘customers’.

These girls weren’t interesting or fun like my first night at the ping-pong show. Here if you weren’t going to buy their ‘services’ right away they left and wouldn’t talk. The dances were little more than a bit of hip shaking to uninspired music. We grew tired of it quickly, and feeling bored, we called it an early night. Lily gave us lots of warnings about these girls too; how some tourists get drugged or robbed or whatever, and if we wanted a ‘worker’ she knew some nice places to take us to find one where they performed more respectable business practices. Haha you’re so sweet Lily, but we’ll be ok without one.

I guess we did a bit more walking around, seeing a bit of a night market and other things like elephants on the sidewalk (a small one). In the hotel I logged on to the Internet any our friend Noboru was online. He needed a place to stay for the night and wanted to sleep on the floor :) well you can’t say I’m not there for a friend, haha We gave him blankets and stuff and that night’s stay was a little cheaper.

It was New Year’s Eve now and there were 3 of us. We got a bigger room with 3 beds and did our separate things for the day. Noboru walked to the grand palace, Richard went on another tour and I took a class on Thai massage. Lily was awesome, again, and sent me to her friend’s for a private lesson. It was bit strange with her working a food stand out front for a little while during lunch, and taking a small nap during part of my hands-on massaging. Maybe I’m just that good already? Anyways, I got lots of information; hand on experience and the foundation for being a good masseuse ;) Something that came up, not only in the massage class, but again and again, was the “you’re a fast learner.” …I like that.

That night we went to a monstrous countdown for the New Year downtown. We got there a couple hours early and the roads were closed a couple kilometers in advance. Poor Noboru ate something funny, and was feeling under the weather. He tried to muscle it out, but literally on the 11th hour he threw in the towel and spent the rest of the trip near the toilet and for a week or two after. Poor guy, good thing we were there to help him out and stuff though. There were so many live bands you couldn’t make any of them out as it was just a pile of noise.

Richard and I stuck it out until the end for the somewhat confusing countdown. The main clock was digital on a spherical ball, but the specific spot we were at had the minute counter hidden, because it was a sphere. Our section ended up counting down 4 times or more, not to mention another clock on a big building in the background was a minute or two fast. Finally when it was zero, it was projected onto a big screen in its background. That video feed had a couple second delay. Geez.

Anyways, happy new year, crackers went off, silly string was shot, fireworks lit up the sky close to the crowd and we all tried to get out of there. I fell once but there was no room to fall so I hurt someone and got a face full of someone’s butt. It’s an experience sure, and I’m glad I did it, but I understand why people watch the countdown on TVs at home now. It’s a long wait with too many people for something very short and unsatisfying during one of the coldest time of the year. Oh and my new years was like 12 hours before Canada’s :P 2 hours behind Japan’s though.

I think we saw a movie the next day in those amazing, amazing theaters Thailand has and didn’t do too much more. I guess we got some presents too in a large market; it was good to haggle together and get better prices on some simple gifts. A hard goodbye to Lily and a crazy taxi ride to the airport at 4 in the morning later (the idiot backed up on the freeway! You could hear tires screeching behind us), we were on our way out of Thailand. Oh and one of the screens at the airport had a windows error message on it.

Now I said before I wouldn’t talk too much about girls, not to be confused with the posted picture of men looking like girls. No, I’m not a player, and I didn’t like the structure of my Vietnam’s posts making me sound like one, so I’ve omitted stories up until now. I met many wonderful girls on this trip; I broke some hearts, some broke mine, and some just didn’t kick off at all usually because of short time. There was a Burma girl on a tour with me, Lily’s English teaching friend, a blond Russian in a thong bikini on the beach named Helen, a Thai tour guide knick-named ‘w’, a cute Chinese girl sitting beside me on the bus, and various other Thai girls, but one girl and I shared something special.

Her name was Anna. She dripped with personality and was gorgeous. We had each other laughing and enjoying ourselves the whole time, talking about whatever we could with the language barrier, it didn't matter. She did cool, quirky things, that reminded me of things I used to do in the past, but have since become distant memories; where did that piece of old Tony go that I loved so much? We only got together twice, and no more as she was busy with work and I was busy with seeing the country. She didn’t want to move to Japan and I didn’t want to move to Bangkok so that’s where it ends. In tears, she put a ring she was wearing on my pinky and told me to always wear it to remember her. I had nothing like that to give her really, but did have a Canadian pin for her. That night, my pinky turned purple and was in pain. I had to use soap to take it off.

Sorry Anna, and Thank you for the memories.

"A smile is the shortest distance between two people." -Victor Borge

tnoy

Tony Tries Thailand’s Thrilling Treats, Part 3: Koh Chang

9 hours, a ferry ride and $30 later, we arrived in Koh Chang. The ferry was pretty cool; maybe this was my first time riding one that big. I wonder if my sister Patty rode similar ones to get to Vancouver. We got to our amazing bungalow, where we were spending about $50 each per night. Because this was the absolute peak season, the prices were more than double off-season prices. Either way it was really swanky, really close to the beach and equipped with more things than you’d ever need in a hotel like satellite TV and a table on the porch.

We didn’t do much except buy fresh fruit and supper from some carts set up and had a relaxing night. For Christmas, we spent the day on something of a tour but not really. You got on a larger boat and it took you to points of interest, like surrounding islands and coral reefs. Everyone loves a boat ride, but unfortunately the weather was a bit yucky, so in certain areas we couldn’t see the bottom of the ocean many meters below from the boat like you could on a sunny day. Once we were there, we donned snorkeling gear.

This was my first real snorkeling experience, and given the price it’s almost better than scuba. It’s not much more than floating/swimming around interesting areas, and viewing the beautiful sea life below. We went to a few coral reefs and other areas, and saw interesting things I’ve never seen before, but it’s too hard to paint a picture for you. It was really relaxing, amazing, and everyone should try it before they die.

There was a buffet on the boat for lunch, and sun tanning on the roof. Oh and we weren’t suppose to use the bathroom when we were stopped at a place; I guess unless you wanted to shock the other snorkelers haha ;) Near the end of the day on the way back, we stopped by a “monkey island” and threw left over food to maybe a hundred monkeys scrambling around making noises. They come down from the island to break oysters along the rocks using stones and eat them. Oh ya, and one of the passengers had a monkey as her pet… she was effectively creepy.

After returning, we heard we were on the quiet beach, so we went up to the “party area” where there was white sand and we hit the jackpot: turkey supper and wine to compliment the Christmas vibe of oddly decorated trees and cute hostesses walking around with Santa hats and merry smiles. We ate on a wood table on the beach of course, and the meal was topped off with a live band not too far away, but far enough that we could talk without yelling at each other. To get there we grabbed a taxi, which is the same as a pickup truck running up and down the only road running along the coast. You sat in the back on makeshift seats, but at least it was sheltered somewhat.

It turned out that this island wasn’t much for parties, but we still enjoyed ourselves regardless by wandering around and soaking up the atmosphere. You can never tire of hearing gentle waves crash against the soft sand. There were swings, music, restaurants, decorations, sand castles, fire spinners, and other treats for the soul. We stayed up late, drank more, relaxed on the beach, played pool, met new people, and went to bed late. Despite the lack of snow, it was a Merry Christmas after all.

We still got up somewhat early as we booked a scuba diving trip. Luckily we weren’t hung over, but we were probably playing with fire still. Thailand is famous for its scuba, and the many shops set up keep the prices competitive. Regardless, a half-day cost almost $100, as this is an expensive hobby. We did two dives, and saw more wonderful things like rock cliffs, ‘flowers’ that would hide when you got close, monstrous schools of fish, huge urchins, fire coral, strange coral formations, some wreckage from damaged ships, and other breath taking sights.

The diver master helped out by leading us along, and the only thing we needed to worry about were these “trigger fish”. I guess they chase you and bite you if you enter their circular territory; it was compared to that of a hamster biting you, and we were given instructions how to escape haha. He also speculated what it would have been like to be in the ocean during that tsunami. One minute you’re floating around, the next your gauge says you’re over 30 meters deeper and your ears feel like popping from the pressure. I also got to experience thermal streams, where currents inside the currents were greatly different temperatures, but we were never too uncomfortable. Another remarkable experience.

When we returned, we were bushed. I think we ended up napping in the room for the next 4 hours. That night we went out and had fresh seafood BBQ, a whole red snapper or something, on the beach along with more wine, cheese, and other delicious Thai treats. There were live fire-spinning performances every night.

Finally we decided for a lazy day on the beach. The water was nice, the weather was sunny and the women were beautiful. From my scuba I’ve learnt to float a lot better, and I spent a lot of my time in the pool doing just that. Eventually we decided to go see something, as we were planning on going back to Bangkok the next day. We heard of a waterfall and made the trek and weren’t disappointed.

Not only was the brief nature hike there intensely wonderful for the nature lovers, but the water fall was spectacular. We swam in the fresh water pool below, and took pictures from the rocks. When we left, there was a lady selling whole rotary chickens for $5 each. I would have been a damn fool to say no, so we picked one up for supper. We got back, got pictures of the sunset, had another awesome meal on the beach which included more Thai treats and wine, and had a good night’s sleep. With all the wine we drank on the trip, we should bring girls with us next time, haha

With our bus ride back to Bangkok booked in the afternoon, we spent the morning on a 2-hour elephant ride through the jungle. It was nice, not sure what else you can say about it. Relaxing maybe. About as relaxing as those hour long Thai massages you could get right on the beach; the old lady that worked on me could break a tree trunk with her grip! We enjoyed the beach as long as we could, and got back to Bangkok later that evening. We got back a little late and Lily couldn’t find us a room, so she put us in her brother’s place. It was a strange situation, but we had a place to stay for the night; Lily is really cool.

"Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response." -Mildred Barthel

tnoy

Tony Tries Thailand’s Thrilling Treats, Part 2: More Tours

I got up early again for another full day tour, this time I went to the River Kwai, where the horrible war crimes took place in World War 2 when the Japanese had POWs build a bridge and thousands died. The cemetery and bridge were really interesting to see, but the museum could have used a bit more funding, as it seemed a bit weathered. In all it was interesting and we even rode the old train after it crossed the bridge to where we had lunch.

The next part was for me to ride an Elephant. I got on the back and the rockin’ beast took us (the driver and I) around on a little path which included a dip in the lake. It sure wasn’t a smooth ride, but it was relaxing, and the guy made me a crown made of leaves and flowers to wear. I liked when the elephant kept straying off course much to the irritation of the dude telling it where to go. Usually it was to grab some food, or to start wrecking havoc on a tree with tasty vines growing up it. Elephants are pretty cool! :) I remembered seeing them when I was young and all I really remembered was just how bad they smelt. These ones didn’t smell anymore than cows back on the farm. Oh and the driver tried to sell me some jewelry made from elephant tail hair; it was really thick and strong, but just too weird for paying money for.

After this, I got on a bamboo raft and we lazily floated down a river surrounded by beautiful trees and other goodies. It was so peaceful and relaxing, even if the seat was a bit uncomfortable given the materials of which it was composed. I love being out on the water. Since I rode the raft though, I had to pay extra if I wanted to see a tiger den after. I was exhausted from the late night and early morning, so I took a pass while others on the tour went into the mini zoo to see tigers.

I hung out in a cafeteria and snuck in a nap. On the TV they showed a new prime minister being appointed, or whatever was going on with all the political ruckus that scared off how many tourists, and will make millions of Thai people suffer this year from the lost tourism money alone. The tour guide came over and apologized to me that this was going on, and said about how one million people will lose their job this year because of that mess. I heard it from numerous people before I came over “don’t go, you’ll die!” but maybe that’s a risk you run when you travel?

Either way, the news isn’t much more than a fear-mongering machine to keep you locking your doors, suspecting everyone, and spending your money inside the country instead of other places or else ‘the terrorists win’ or some crap (most news anyways). I’m so glad I’m out of that box; before I left Canada, the news got me paranoid enough to think the USA was close to invading us. Traveling helps open your mind I’ve learnt. The whole time I was in Thailand there wasn’t one thing to be scared of; the people were so friendly.

When the tour was over we headed back to town. One thing that bugged me about Bangkok was the traffic. After some tours you were stuck for over an hour in jams. Apparently there is a subway which I unfortunately didn’t get to use, but I did use the sky train, which is more like a monorail which lacks the flexibility you’d get somewhere like Tokyo, where you can transfer and go all over as opposed to up and down the city. Forget the buses, they were caught up in the traffic too. Anyways, I got back, ate and had a cheap long massage at the hotel again and went to sleep.

The third day in on the 21st, I went on another daylong tour to the old capital, Ayutthaya. All of these tours were about 1-2 hours from the city, were cheap and fairly well organized. Plus you get to meet lots of cool people in the vans that are also traveling around. It’s hard for me to talk about while trying to keep it interesting, as you have various old buildings that old kings built and what they used them for, or the tree that Buddha came to and found enlightenment under; things of that nature. It was a gorgeous place obviously with lots of history; so don’t let me rob it of that.

We later saw a large Buddha statue with a gold head, I’m sure it holds a record for something, but after seeing a million statues and temples you start to lose interest in the repetitiveness. Either way, this thing was massive, and people would pay for these gold colored robes. The robes would be opened over the crowd, and then sucked up towards the statues, perhaps as a way of taking their wishes to heaven? I just know later they would fold the robes back up and sell them again to the next people.

This was much like the food offerings at a different temple I saw. Only monks could enter the sacred room itself to bring the food offering someone bought, and not too long after someone would take the offering around back to the front to re-sell to the next person. I guess it kinda makes sense to not be wasteful, but they didn’t have to charge so much if that’s all they were doing (about $7 each for the food) Since the new year was approaching these places were hopping.

While you’re driving around Thailand though, there are pictures of the monarchy everywhere; love and respect for the king is intense. We then went to an island where 7 very old and diverse temples presided. Our tour would only visit 3 of them, but it was still an amazing experience. One thing that stood out: many of the Buddha statues had their heads chopped off. It was quite unsightly, but I can’t imagine the jerks that paid money to have it done. It seems to be a common theme visiting these old ruins anywhere in the world. They talk about how happy and prosperous that place once was, until some jerks got uppity, invaded, stole everything of value and burnt the rest. The walls were scorched from the fires. Shameful the things we do to each other.

It was really cool climbing the one place though; the steps were so weathered from the centuries and millions of people that ascended them. I guess what you do is you take a small piece of gold and stick it to a Buddha statue, this made them colorful and cool looking, you could tell which places saw more love from its colour.

This tour ended a bit early so I had time to prepare to hit the town! I went to the travel desk to talk with my new friend about things to do that night. As a joke, I said “where can I go to find a girlfriend tonight?” meaning a popular nightclub or something. Her response was to write a price (less than $50) on a piece of paper and asking what time I wanted her to come over. Again, it’s shocking how open this world of “workers” is, but it also explained the many couples you saw walking around that didn’t quite look right. Half the time, it was a grey haired dude with a big stomach walking around with a pretty girl in her 20’s. Half of those girls I then realized didn’t look too happy for a reason: they were there to be seen and not heard; they were “working”. It turns the stomach really, and I’ve heard much worse stories of the kinds of “workers” these tourists were hiring.

Anyways, I found out about a cool night market area that I should check out. It was a huge open-air area with tables set up and a stage for entertainment. It looked like some contest for “Miss New Year Bangkok” or something. After some food and a drink or two, I headed to the nightclub that was recommended, but unfortunately it was Sunday night. The club didn’t really get people inside of it for the first couple hours, and there was no real dancing all night. At least there was a live show by multiple talents on stage to make it worth the steep cover charge. I think I was in bed by midnight.

The next day was my first time to really sleep in and be lazy; I believe I stumbled out a little bit for some food. Later that afternoon I went on a tour of the main river running through Bangkok. It was cool seeing things from the river like huge temples and the grand palace, but I was more interested in the residential area. People would walk down their steps on the porch and start bathing in the river, nearby houses worth millions of dollars from the wood they were built from alone.

When I got back, I got talking with a tour booker named Lily. She’s a sweet old lady who would be easy to mistake for your mom or grandma. At first we talked to each other in Japanese for a while in our horrible, broken foreigner way, then later we went to a movie Thai movie at the theater. Thailand takes their movies very seriously as this was the swankiest theater I’ve ever been in; and it was a ‘lower class’ theater too! The upper class stuff was more expensive, but was set up like a nightclub; with couches and mini tables and the like. Anyways, we ended up seeing a movie called “ong bak 2”. The story was a bit weird, but the action was amazing! Almost non-stop impressive martial arts by this dude who is like Thailand’s Jackie Chan. I want to see the first movie now.

We really just talked a lot and I learnt a lot about Thailand and its culture. I love speaking with locals for exactly this reason; they are super friendly in Thailand too. We later went for Karaoke together and the next day (Dec 23rd) she gave me a private, free tour of the Grand Palace. This place was massive and had lots to see, but I won’t go on too much about the different Buddha statues, houses of resident and other things inside, other than it’s rather magnificent and needs to be seen. Also they say Buddha’s ashes are kept here, and Lily showed me how people pray and stuff.

Once that was over, my friend, Richard, arrived at the airport from Japan. Before I left Japan we agreed to meet up and travel together; he’s been over at my place a couple times now to watch movies. Anyways, with Lily’s help, we went to an arena and saw some Thai fighting.

The price was a bit steep, but these guys were pretty intense. Matches started with a spiritual dance by both fighters, but after the bell rang huge kicks and knees and punches were flying around; these young guys were built for punishment. It was entertaining, and the audience was really into it. Guys were placing bets in the back, and they made noises when blows landed. The intensity got your blood rushing. After the show, we even got a picture with one of the fighters. You could tell he gets that a lot though, as he hardly posed and walked away after, ignoring our “thanks”. Ah well. It was explained how this was part of their training in keeping a solid mind.

It wasn’t a late night though, as I know how Richard must have felt after how many hours of traveling, and we were getting up early the next day to hop on a bus for Koh Chang, Thailand’s 2nd biggest island close to Cambodia. We wanted to spend Christmas on the beach.

"Change. It has the power to uplift, to heal, to stimulate, surprise, open new doors, bring fresh experience and create excitement in life. Certainly it is worth the risk." -Leo Buscaglia

tnoy

Tony Tries Thailand’s Thrilling Treats, Part 1: The First Day

I left on the 18th already, seems like so long ago. Good thing I have so many pictures to jog my memory, I’ll keep this as family friendly as possible as I discovered after I arrived that Thailand is kinda seedy. I suppose legalized prostitution will do that, let’s call those girls “workers”. More on that later.

My adventure began by staying over at my friend Patricia’s place as my little, lovable town of Tatsuno no longer receives airport service... She was coming back from a party around the time I was waking up at 4 to catch the bus. I was traveling alone. The first day is always the hardest with all the transportation involved, not to mention the lack of sleep that contributes to the whole experience, but our plane still flew over a crater of some sort that was really cool; a pocketed hole in the Earth far below and became a lake.

I want to clarify something important: of course, my current reflections leave me with millions of ways on how I’d do things differently next time, and of course I am a very different person than the one that left for Thailand over 3 weeks ago. I made a fatal mistake, which I discovered much later in my trip, in that I approached Thailand as if it was Vietnam. It is not.

One of my biggest humbling moments of the trip was when I finally realized, finally understood… is that no matter how much you learn and how much experience you gather, you still don’t know much. “To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge” -Confucius. I should have known this lesson already from my Engineering oath, but perhaps I got the necessary smack I needed in re-affirming my, and every person’s role for that matter, as a student.

Now that that’s out of the way and before I start sounding pretentious, I arrived in Bangkok around 8 at night Japan time. I thought I was maybe getting ripped off right away with the hotel and taxi service I seemed to be persuaded into booking, but I don’t think I did too bad considering. I checked in to a place that was cheap by Tokyo standards, but swanky by Bangkok standards. I wanted to go to Cambodia with a friend the next day and buy travel guides for cheap, but because I didn’t book ahead the plane ticket prices were ridiculous. Some travel people downstairs helped me right away book a tour for the next day instead and got little protest from me as it was cheap and a great way to see things close to the city. It’s easy to be overwhelmed when you first arrive. I got an in-house Thai massage and went to bed, as I had to wake up in 6 hours.

This was my first time getting a Thai massage, and it was a greater treat than what I experienced in Vietnam. It seemed like the common and recommended massage was for 2 hours, and it’s fairly physical. The first hour is work on your legs, and the last hour is work on your upper body. The 2 hours massage was about $10, and there were girls in the hotel ready to give them; don't worry, I was assured they weren’t “workers.” It’s really relaxing and interesting; so much so that before I left Thailand on a much later day, I took a class on how to give such a treat. I guess I’ll talk about that later, and through massage I met someone very special, Anna. I don’t want to talk too much about the different girls I met like my Vietnam trip, but she’s special and I’ll talk about her later.

My first day in Thailand started off early in a van to see the floating market. There are various places around Thailand that have these boats that float down the river selling their stuff; be it goods, food, drinks or whatever. They ranged from paintings to spicy noodles. It was really cool to see floating shops like that, they were too varied to describe them all. The place we visited was a particularly busy market more geared for tourists.

We rode on a similar banana shaped boat to get to the market and saw all kinds of interesting things along the way. The local’s houses (wooden cabins), their pets (some monkeys), their laundry and how they cleaned it in the river, their food (lots of fresh vegetables), their vehicles (some boats were like ours, complete with a car’s engine outfitted with a long propeller!) and other cool things.

On the many tours we saw lots of students interviewing tourists. I’ll pick stories from various tours I went on and tell you now. One group of university girls came after me saying “you!” as I don’t think they knew “excuse me” yet and wanted a picture with me. Other students had no idea what poor-grammar questions were even on their paper, as they couldn’t read them out to ask them, and when I was spelling my answers to them, they struggled understanding what letter I was saying. Maybe I just ran into a lower-level batch, as most people I talked to had really good English; this is a country that thrives on tourism after all.

All these full day tours were less than $50 each, included buffets for lunch, and went to multiple destinations. Our next destination gave us an option to see a monkey show, snake show or ride elephants. I saw the monkey show where they dressed up like people and ran around doing things like dunking basketballs, catching fish in a pool, picking fruit from a tree and jumping through burning hoops. It was entertaining I suppose, but I felt bad for the monkeys a couple times, as they were always on a leash around their neck, not too far away from someone leading them around.

After this we watched an Elephant show, where they explained how and why they were the symbol of Thailand, performing mock battles complete with swords, cannons and fireball explosions. On the light side, they also danced to techno; swinging their trunks in circles and doing handstands. They dressed up in soccer uniforms and took turns booting balls at a goalie, this and various other performances. A crocodile show followed, where they put their head in their mouths, slid on concrete into their face, wrestled a bit and other dangerous looking things. Crocodiles sure don’t seem to be a happy lot.

The last stop for the day was to watch various Thai cultural performances and have them explained. Many things were shown from folk dances with bamboo, to rice/harvest dances, to various fighting styles with various weapons like swords, bows and pikes. The part I was really interested in was when they showed a Thai wedding: The couple places paper halos attached to each other on their heads while family members come up and send their greetings.

The bus stopped at a couple shops to coax us into buying treats; I got a couple things already but the last stop was a huge jewelry store. I laughed inside, knowing they were wasting their time on someone like me, but I still found interest in the one room where you got to get close and see them cutting the stones and setting the rings. As a geek/engineer, I find that stuff fascinating. It wasn’t too long before an employee found me and started leading me around the huge show room of expensive shiny stuff.

Lots of the stuff was pretty, sure, but what a waste. I’d much sooner buy the same stuff from a pawn shop for a fraction of the price, should I ever need something shiny (I don’t). Either way, I was setting myself up in many social situations to practice my people skills; this particular trial for me involved talking to a sales person, keeping it interesting, and not giving in to their pitches. This skill helps tremendously with bartering and teasing cute girls. (life is a big video game) If I go through a day and haven't felt anxiety, fear or being nervous, then I didn't take enough risks and need to push myself harder the next day. Baby steps.

I wonder if I should even mentioned social skills I am grinding and how I’m doing it, but then I remembered this blog serves 3 purposes: one is my email home telling everyone I’m not dead and I miss them without spamming their in-boxes, another is my personal diary, and another is cultural differences/new things as I encounter them and my opinion about or experience with it. If I can do all that and keep it interesting I think that’s a good skill to develop. Everything is a learning experience, but of course I can't talk about everything.

Anyways, part of her strategy to shake my state was to shoot at my weak points obviously. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” came up a couple times, and “isn’t it lonely?” I remember being rattled at the time and the old Tony’s blog post would have been “why do people go out of their way to remind me how lonely I am” but now I’m kinda chuckling. I went through a lot, and sometimes I’d be thinking to myself “if only I could go back blah blah years and slap myself silly with the stuff I know now” and then had something of an epiphany: “how would I smack myself silly today one month from now?” I’m learning to take risks. Heh it’s funny, when I’m going through a difficult trial, I start imagining how I’d write it up on my blog and it seems to help, but I do this less and less now, and more living in the moment.

In the end I didn’t give in, but I did buy a silk shirt later because it looked nice and since I lost so much weight I need clothes that aren’t so baggy. When I visit Canada I’m going on some big shopping trips I think; now that the Canadian dollar is so weak, things are so cheap and everything will be in my size. I understand now why John spent so much on clothes like he did when my sisters were helping him out. I’m indifferent about it all, but responses you receive are not.

That night, after getting back and booking another tour for the next day, I was quickly making friends with the tour guides. I went out for lunch and the one guy, Peter, tagged along. We went to some cool street-stand restaurants and got some spicy delicacies. Thailand knows how to do spicy and I was delighted. I had a good talk with Peter and he even bought me some food to eat with him.

One thing I tried a couple times was this “papaya salad” or something, where they minced things up right in front of you. A weird thing about food in Thailand though, is that some ingredients are for flavour and not consumption. So there I was one day with this chicken soup/curry. Over half the things in the bowl I wasn’t suppose to eat, but I didn’t know that as I crunched away on these horrible roots, cloves and other weird stuff I’ve never seen before; other than those it was quite tasty. A lot of the food is soup based.

So while we’re talking, Peter asks me if I want to see a “sexy show”. Anyone and everyone has heard of the mythical “ping pong show” and it’s practically a cultural experience in itself. He said he'd go with me and it’s cheap so why not.

For the faint of heart, you can skip the rest of this post and visit back tomorrow when I post part 2, but I’ll still try and keep the story clean. If that is even possible… let’s use more code words then. You already know “workers”, and now the girl’s ‘place down there’ will be her “hat”.

We got to the place and Peter told me he had to do something and would join me in a little bit. I’m treated to a dim room with a triangle stage in the middle, surrounded by 3-4 rows of chairs and people with funny looks on their faces. Right after I’m seated alone in the back, a ‘worker’ is all over me. She could hardly hold my attention though because of the crazy stuff that was happening on the stage. While everyone knows ‘ping pong’ show, what I didn’t know was that ‘ping pongs’ are actually a very small part of the show; one ‘act’ in a play of around 20 ‘acts’ that kept running in a loop with no breaks or end with dance music in the background.

It’s hard to describe, but you’ve seen a McDonald’s worker right? You know the soul-less look in their face of being bored with work, the monotony of the same thing over and over again. Imagine that face, then imagine a naked body underneath, doing things you’ve never imaged of with their “hat”. Some acts looked painful, like removing a bottle cap. Some looked skillful like shooting darts through a straw to pop balloons far away, or writing message with a pen. Some were dumb like smoking, and some were interesting and almost pretty (if you can say that) where they turned on the black lights and she slowly pulled many meters of neon ribbon out of her “hat”, and wrapped it in patterns around the poles on stage while dancing; or a glowing strand of flowers.

It was almost more fun to watch the audience and the looks they would get on their faces. What really stood out for me was when this girl showed up to join her friends in the front row. She sat down, then looked up at the stage in front of her. Maybe 3 feet from her face a guy was doing his thing with a girl. The look she had was priceless. Another dude with his girlfriend would get up and try to read what the girl was writing passionately, and held his hands out to catch ping pong balls flying out of the “hat”.

So here this “worker” was hanging all over me, as a young guy like me sitting alone must be sending all kinds of signals and she wants “work”. It was pretty funny talking to her (remember that social skill I mentioned earlier?). Anyways, while they kept lowering the price, they got more creative with their offering. Her friend came along and says “if you pay 3000 (less than $100) then you can have me too for free.”

Heh, not too long later, she was up onstage doing her bit of the show. She sees me in the audience and starts yelling at me with a big smile “I’m free! I’m free!” jumping up and down excitedly. Everyone turned their heads to look at me sitting there laughing with this “worker” hanging off me. It was amusing, and then she started to pull razor blades out of her “hat”. Ya. Razor blades. Later, she sliced through paper to prove they were razor blades. What a crazy show, I’m glad I went. The one that was hanging on me all night later gave me a toy. It was a little stuffed dog puppet that was cute. She was either really into me for real, or was putting on an impressive act for “work”, as when it was time for me to leave because the show started looping, I returned the toy to her to say goodbye, she was quite sad. You may like me, but your track record causes me to worry.

Peter was still outside; he never did join me inside. I later found out part of the tour-guide’s job was to take us to these kinds of places as well, as prostitution is legal, and they wait for you to “finish up” with a "worker" and help you get back. That, or they maybe get a commission for leading us to these places, and here I though we were going out like buddies to see a ‘sexy show’. Anyways, Peter took me back to the hotel and I got much needed sleep; not bad for my first day eh?

Peter later informed of these “girl farms” where you go in and there are rows of girls behind a pane of glass. You pick a number, and you get 2 hours with her. I’ve heard the argument from people before that prostitution should be legalized because it’ll happen anyways and at least this way it’s somewhat controlled. There are no pimps, the girls are in ‘safe’ places where they won’t get hurt by ‘bad dates’, they are tested weekly for diseases, pay taxes like normal people, and have other services provided for them.

The part that's hard to swallow is a lot of these girls are almost exploited because they’re pretty, and most times poor and have no other choice. Many can’t find jobs, or they have a kid or family they’re trying to support. I guess this is a crazy topic I won’t debate on, but because it’s so crazy to me I naturally asked a lot of questions and was surprised more by just how open and honest they are talking about “workers”. This trip was the first time I’ve heard of “sex tourism” but after what I was told I can see why Bangkok is so popular now.

"Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts." -Arnold Bennett

tnoy