Happy New Year everyone!
Sorry I've been MIA since Thailand. To tell you the truth, I've been more than a little bummed to be back in the concrete freezer after sweet, summery Thailand. And it's not just the landscape and weather and amazing food I miss. The Thai people are incredibly generous and lovely. Very polite and kind (even when dealing with obnoxious foreigners), which is somewhat of a pleasant surprise after being in Korea so long. Koreans once you know them are like any other humans on the planet I suppose, but in public they take the cake for rudeness. After 2 years, I still just can't seem to get used to getting butted in line, elbowed and shoved out of the way on subways, buses, and elevators, and the general air of me-firstness that permeates relations amongst strangers. Don't get me wrong, there's much about Korea I love; my adorable students being at the top of the list. However, I'm just plain tired of it here in general. I'll do one more year, switch gears in a new job in March, chop up my year with 10 weeks of vacation, then it's annyongi-kaysseo (bye) for me. I want to live somewhere poorer, more gritty, more authentic, and more alive.
So, I guess you can tell....I really loved Thailand. Well, the Thai parts of it. Unfortunately we happened to spend most of our time in the most touristy towns, and I did not really like it there. I don't like how tourists can completely change a landscape, so that you see nothing but shops selling western clothes, western bars and restaurants, and swarms of westerners with hardly a Thai to be seen who isn't serving someone. I'll definitely be going back to Thailand next year, and in that time, I will stay away from the large tourist traps and try to see a little of the Thailand that is Thailand and not Touristland.
Ok, where shall we start with the photos? I think, Bangkok. It was the end of our trip, and is quite an interesting city. Yes, we'll start with the city, and move slowly back to the beach (beginning and middle of the trip), so that the beach can be the last thing in my memory as I make my way through Korean winter. :)
One of the most interesting things about Bangkok is the river. Not just for scenery this one. It's a veritable highway, with bus-boats that come at regular intervals just like any bus, river taxis, and tourist boats. While only there 2 days, I rode the river for hours, and enjoyed every minute of it. You can even take a 2-minute boat ride directly across the river (like a bridge I guess), for less than a cent.
This is an academy of some sort if I remember correctly:
And this is the Temple of the Dawn. More on that later:
For me, one of the most difficult things about traveling is actually seeing the poorest of the world's poor up close. This always creates some cognitive dissonance for me, as I tour around on vacation, spending what would support a family for a year in the country I'm visiting. I'm just not sure how to deal with it. I find myself refusing to feel anything, because if I feel compassion for these people, how can I just hand over a bill and walk onwards to the next restaurant, temple, or shop? How can I even be so frivolous as to be a tourist at all? I see young mothers with dirty babies, cripples, blind men, you name it, these cities have it. One thing Seoul does not really have is beggars. I found Tibet to be worse than Bangkok, but still, Thailand sure has its fair share of slums. And many of them right on the river:
Is it ever eye-opening to actually see fellow humans in 2009 living like this. Shows my privilege at birth, doesn't it? And yet, amongst these poor, hard-up people, still I find happy, glowing, lovely humans who offer genuine smiles. I cannot really grasp it.
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