Bangkok

Last month I took a trip to Thailand and Laos, where I traveled for two weeks with my friend Allison from Colorado. We spent our first couple of nights staying on Khaosan, Bangkok's backpacker street. Khaosan street is a carnival of blaring music, tourists and costumed vendors hawking things. In the evening, street performances of break dancing, fire dancing and limbo under a burning pole spring up.

A friend told me that Khaosan is like a zoo. Foreigners go there to see Thai people, and Thai people go there to see foreigners.

I'd guess that you can buy anything on Khaosan. Half a block from my hotel a street booth sold fake IDs including California drivers licenses, international driving permits supposedly issued by the United Nations, international student cards and press passes. They could take your picture and print your personal information on the card while you wait. I passed these up and instead visited a Dr. Fish foot spa where the fish feasted on my dead skin and callouses, particularly my peeling Balinese sunburn.
The food on Khaosan is unremarkable backpacker fare, and everything is international. While drinking a mojito at an outdoor restaurant I watched as a Thai woman, working in a shop that sold dreadlock wigs and Bob Marley hats, painstakingly created dreadlocks in a white tourist's hair. Nearby, a human billboard advertised a Mexican restaurant, and a street vendor sold Latin American style hammocks. Other street vendors wore beautiful Southeast Asia hill tribe clothing, but I suspect it's just their work uniform. Scantily clad women in Heineken outfits advertised a restaurant. Khaosan has a 7-Eleven, a McDonald's, a couple of Subways, and many drunken backpackers from all around the globe.

In Bangkok we watched Thai dancers performing at a shrine,

and we visited the beautiful Wat Po, a Buddhist temple with many golden Buddhas including a 46-m long golden reclining Buddha which fills a gigantic building.

Wat Po is full of beautiful glass-decorated stupas that house the cremated remains of wealthy people.

Wat Po is also famous for its excellent massage school, and I enjoyed a Thai massage, which is done while wearing loose fitting clothing, and involves stretching as well as deep massage. The massage therapist used her arms and legs to maneuver me into the stretches.

We also visited the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, which housed the royal family from 1782 until some time ago when the royal family moved to a new palace. I had never seen so much glitter and gold before. I can't imagine that the Wizard of Oz's Emerald City could have been any more sparkly! We also saw a Thai masked dance performance.

A highlight of my visit to Bangkok was a spectacular dinner with my two United World College friends, Amporn and Sally, and Sally's husband Narut. Sally arranged a really special dinner at Chakrabongse Villas, a former palace on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. The palace is owned by a woman who is the granddaughter of a Thai prince. A century ago, the prince was set to inherit the throne of Thailand until he committed the misstep of marrying a Russian woman. His granddaughter has converted the palace into a beautiful villa overlooking the river with beautiful sunset views of Bangkok's most picturesque temple, Wat Arun. We were able to enjoy a private dining experience at the palace because the granddaughter is a friend of Sally! Thank you so much, Sally and Narut! I hadn't seen Sally and Amporn in 17 years!
The next day I took a bicycle tour, which started with a tour of a local market where I saw more kinds of hot peppers than I had ever imagined!

Above and below: Mangosteen

I hope this guy's mask was protecting him from the bird flu!

We tried mangosteen fruit, spring rolls and spun sugar wrapped in crepes.

Then we rode over several canals which once were part of the major transportation network which earned Bangkok the moniker "Venice of Asia," through crazy Bangkok traffic, and through a slum under the freeway. It was an area of crowded unpainted plywood housing which reminded me of migrant farm worker housing I've seen in the U.S. Many of the people, especially the children, came out to wave at us and shout "hello" as we passed. In addition to shacks, there were several tiny stores operated out of people's homes and a daycare in the slum. We then crossed the Chao Phraya River on a longboat, together with our bicycles. Once we arrived on the opposite bank we were no longer in the city but rather in an area of fruit orchards.

Here, we cycled along a narrow cement path raised 3 to 4 feet above the ground in a marshy area. Our guide cautioned us against falling off the path, as she had done while learning to bicycle on those paths as a child! We rode past small farm houses, a small temple, and banana and other fruit trees. We saw a couple of green water snakes and were greeted by many locals.

After the tour I took Bangkok's efficient new elevated Sky Train, and then a river taxi back to my hotel area, avoiding Bangkok's traffic jams. Allison is so cool! In our hotel room, she was pumping water. Rather than buying plastic water bottles, she brought a small water purification pump to Thailand, so that she was able to drink tap water!

The next day we would leave Bangkok to travel through northern Thailand to Laos, but I'll save that for another entry.

Bali

One of the courses I was scheduled to teach got cancelled, and I suddenly had a two-week vacation, so I decided to take a trip to Bali with my friend Maki.

Bali is famous for its beaches, but the place I really loved in Bali was Ubud. An hour into the island’s mountainous interior, Ubud is a vibrant tropical paradise full of culture and warm people. We checked into a guesthouse called Sania’s House.

Entering the grounds felt like entering a temple, and I can hardly describe how beautiful Sania’s House is!

Apparently the place is a rich person’s estate turned into bungalows. A series of beautiful stone buildings are nestled among a tropical garden and swimming pool, stone sculptures and flowers. All for $30 a night for two people.

In the morning I took a bicycle tour which started with breakfast overlooking a volcano and crater lake.

From there we bicycled 35 km downhill through terraced rice fields and small villages, giving high fives to local school children who came out to meet us with shouts of “hello.”

We stopped at a coffee plantation where we learned that coffee beans come in female and male, and we watched two bean sorters meticulously sorting the beans by their sex, which will result in different tastes of coffee. I may be completely undecided about my future career path, but I’m sure I don’t want to be a coffee bean sex sorter!

Then we sampled several coffees and teas, including a very special and expensive one called luwak coffee. This coffee is made with the help of an animal called a civet.

The civet, who eats the coffee bean when it is enclosed in a fruit, is quite a coffee bean connoisseur, choosing only the best beans. The fruit passes through the civet’s digestive system and the bean comes out whole.

The coffee farmers were angry with the civets, who ate the best coffee beans! Trying to recoup their losses the farmers gathered the beans from the civet poop and washed them, roasted them, and made coffee from them. They discovered that the civet’s digestive process actually removed the coffee’s bitterness, resulting in a spectacular cup of coffee! The below beans on the right are luwak coffee, while those on the left are regular coffee.

So now, luwak coffee, made from civet poop, sells for up to $100 a cup in gourmet restaurants in the U.S., Japan and Australia. In Bali, it’s only $3 a cup, and I tasted a sip of it although I gave up coffee a couple of years ago.

On the bicycle tour I also visited a rice field and saw how the women threshed the rice by hand.

First they loosened the hulls by flailing the rice stalks against a board. Then they separated the grain from the chaff by repeatedly tossing the rice in the air. The chaff slowly floated away.

When finished, the women poured the rice into 50 kg bags, which they carried on their heads, seemingly without effort.

A Swiss tourist did it less gracefully!

We visited a Balinese farm where we saw a typical kitchen.

In Bali, the women cook only once a day, at 5 a.m. They leave the food in the kitchen and the family members can come in and get something to eat any time they like, as there is no set meal time and the families, who work together all day on the farm, don’t eat together.

In Ubud Maki and I watched several beautiful dance and music performances and met many kind people.

In addition to Balinese and Indonesian, most of the people I met in Bali spoke English very well, and many also spoke some Japanese.

Here, a woman paints a beautiful batik.

I feel that in all my travels no locals have been as warm and friendly and helpful as the people of Bali. Although this island is heavily touristed, the locals remain friendly and genuine toward the tourists. Maki was especially good at making friends with the locals.

Every morning the locals make small offerings and place them everywhere, in shrines, on the sidewalk, on the beach, and they look beautiful.

It turned out that Julia Roberts was in Bali at the same time as I was, filming part of “Eat, Pray, Love” which is based on a travel novel which I read last year. (Thanks, Sue, for giving me that book!) The locals were all excited about it, but I didn’t see her.

Of course we also spent a couple of days on the beach, where Maki tried surfing and I played in the water. I hope that I can return to Indonesia soon, to visit its other beautiful islands.