So if you’ve been reading this blog or the blogs of other SALTers I would say the word ‘routine’ is something that is starting to come up pretty often. I would guess that no matter where you live -- as long as you live there long enough -- life will start to become ‘routine.’ In Cambodia I have definitely noticed this ‘r’ word creeping into my life and that’s probably why my recent 2-week vacation with GC amigo Elijah Martens was so super duper!
About Elijah:
Elijah and I became friends while attending Goshen College finding many similar interests such as video games, dinosaurs, laser guns, etc. -- we even started ‘Dragon Club’ together (raarrrrr!). He is currently doing a similar yearlong service term (oh, us Mennonites…) teaching English in China, so we obviously had to make an effort to vacation as a team. Needless to say I was really excited to reunite with him.
It was a warm and serene Sunday night when I picked Elijah up from the airport on the 23rd. We took a tuk-tuk down to the Independence Monument area to find a guesthouse for the night. The reason we stayed in a guesthouse because the MCC office (which does have comfy beds) has guards who like to lock the place up and go to bed at around 10:30. If you’ve ever taken Geometry, Triginometry, or Calculus then you should be familiar with the formula:
The Dragon Formula
X = The time you ‘call it a night’ when on vacation
Y = The time you need to be back at the office (10:30)
Z = No Parents
X > Y = Z
The formula may not be necessary, and may not even make sense, but I have no shame in admitting that we had a good time when a good time was called for. We spent two nights in Phnom Penh allowing Elijah to get a feel for the riverside then we moved on to Siem Reap – a must-stop for any visitor to the Kingdom of Wonder. We spent our days relaxing and seeing the temples and our nights eating dollar tacos and getting our feet massaged by ‘Dr. Fish Massage’ – which is a tank full of small fish that literally eat the dead skin off of your toes, it tickles.
The final morning in Siem Reap we woke to realize that Elijah accidentally booked his plane ticket for the 28th of February instead of January. Whoops? Good thing it takes 3 minutes and 13 dollars to join a Taxi headed for Bangkok. That evening I returned to Phnom Penh to catch my flight the following morning while Elijah spent the day headed for Bangkok. We ended up meeting at the bus stop the following night and laughed at how easy it was for us to reunite despite the circumstances, then we drifted into and joined the massive sea of tourist on Khao San Road, Bangkok.
Thailand
I was blown away at first at the size of Bangkok, mostly because I guess I was comparing my expectations to my experience in Cambodia. Bangkok is huge, and when I hopped off the bus at Khao San, my teeth almost exploded at the site of all the tourists. I thought Siem Reap was packed full of tourists, it pales in comparison. This road is definitely known for being a popular place for tourists and Elijah and I had no trouble fitting in. Everybody spoke English and there were plenty of ways to entertain yourself. The food was delicious, the streets were alive, the people were energetic, and the night was young.
Bangkok is a pretty cool place; I can see the many different reasons that people would come to visit (some less noble than others…). Thai people are very friendly, you occasionally run into the jagoff who wants nothing but to rip you off and take advantage of you because you’re a foreigner, but everyone is just swell! The food was excellent and diverse; I really enjoyed eating the Pad Thai dish from the street vendors that cost less than a dollar and Elijah and I found some really good Indian food.
For the entirety of Thailand, Elijah and I seemed to follow one basic rule: not to plan anything. While I can see the benefits to planning the entire trip ahead of time, I really enjoyed taking each day as it came. Most decisions for ‘what to do today’ were decided 30 minutes prior and it didn’t seem to steer us wrong. We did a lot of walking around and finding things on our own, it was nice.
After seeing popular sights and visiting the zoo in Bangkok we decided to spend the longest stretch of the vacation in Chiang Mai and took the sleeper train over night. I’m glad we did too, Chiang Mai is a beautiful place -- it really is fantastic. A common hub for tourists, the city has many attractions inside the city limits as well as plenty more to do outside. I had no idea there were so many ways to spend a vacation there, if I had more time (and more importantly, more money) I could do it all again completely differently. The city itself is very relaxed and provides many options for the many wandering foreigners that surf its streets. During our stay we casually met people from all over the world (thankful for how popular the English language is) and really enjoyed how relaxed the atmosphere was. Chiang Mai is a great place to just chill out and put your feet up, a good vacation spot for sure. We didn’t engage in any of the major, popular tourist activates that most people do, instead we found our own way around. Ex. One day we rented cheap bicycles from a shop near our guesthouse, grabbed a map, and rode down the street to one of the national parks. It felt really great to just get out and explore, especially when everyone around you seems to rely heavily on tour guides to show them what to do. It’s also a great way to get some exercise; by not knowing where we were going half the time we got a pretty good cardio workout.
One of the days we grabbed a taxi ride up to the MaeSa Waterfall Park where we enjoyed the many different ‘waterfalls’ and swam in the streams beneath (awesome). When we left the park we realized that we didn’t seem to be in the type of area to get a tuk-tuk, taxi, or ride of any kind – so we just started walking in favored direction. After a few kilometers an older Thai man wearing aviators (I would describe as being a ‘badass’) let us into his tuk-tuk and brought us into town to a songthaew heading back towards Chiang Mai. It ended up just being me, Elijah, and around 10 Thai women sitting in the back of a songthaew which would have made a great photo (especially since the woman across from us was breast-feeding her baby the entire ride).
What more to say? Elijah and I did a lot of fun stuff in Thailand, more than I’ll ever be able to fit in a blog post but for the most part we just enjoyed ourselves – and that’s really all I needed. Looking back now I realize there are countless, awesome things to do in Chiang Mai that we didn’t find the time for (aka didn’t have the wallet depth for) such as the popular Elephant nature parks or day-long nature treks, etc. --I technically could have even played with a baby tiger. And if I had the opportunity to go again I probably would do these things. However, I hold no regrets because I got exactly what I needed out of this vacation. 2 weeks of just hanging out with one of my best friends and enjoying life, amen to that.
Now that vacation is over I’m feeling relaxed and willing to fall back into my Cambodia routine. But not too soon, as I’ll be joining Ten Thousand Villages in a Cambodia tour and will once again visit Siem Reap this weekend. Oh, and next weekend I guess I’ll be in Prey Veng… We’ll just say that February will be going by fast for me :D
