Thailand Medical Adventure - 1 - Bangkok and Chiang Mai

With much anticipation… the next journey of Dr. Laube – Into the wild begins.   

I have had so many amazing experiences before starting my rotation at a hospital in Tha Muang, Kanchanaburi province.  Located about 2-3 hours by car from Bangkok proper, toward the Myanmar border and along the famous river Kwai.

I flew into Bangkok and spent 4 days acclimating and getting used to the heat!  40C for a few of the days.  I visited many of the typical tourist spots, including the Grand Palace, Emerald Buddha, Wat Pho (reclining Buddha), Wat arun.  They have an amazing water taxi service right near Khao San Road, which is the lively backpacker hangout in the city.  Khao San Road seems to be the main launch point for many backpackers before traveling Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam Etc. on their southeast Asian adventure.  My favorite question is, what prompted you to travel?  Since many travelers are embarking on a 1-12+ month adventure with no clear schedule.  Most common is, mid-20s and quit their job and they are looking for something new.  Others have broken up with boyfriends/girlfriends, or are just graduating high school and on their gap year.  Either way, much of the activities revolve around meeting other backpackers, going on tours, and of course, drinking the incredibly cheap alcohol in this country (large beer (double) is about 50 baht from 7-11).  The drinking is not a surprise because so many people are in a transitional state and seem to have pent up energy to release.  I stayed at Nap Park hostel, which is one of the huge well run hostels 2 blocks from Khao San Road.  I met people from all over including, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Mexico (but living in Singapore), American, Russia… I know I am forgetting some.  It strangely seems normal to interact with this many nations because of the many international trips I have taken.  It is so exciting to meet so many interesting people at different times of their lives. 

It also makes me appreciative of how lucky I am to be an American.  I became friends with a Russian girl who is a tour guide for Russians visiting Greece.  She does work for a few months then travels, and repeats.  What a great life!  We were talking about travel and the issue came up of her limitations of being from Russia with a Russian Passport.  She said to obtain visa approval from most countries it takes months, significant paperwork and of course money.  Thailand seems to be one of the many welcoming nations to most foreign nationalities.  She asked to look at my US passport.  Sure why not?  Her eyes seem to light up when I handed it to her.  We sat together as she flipped through each individual page.  I mean, reading every single word and taking in each picture.  She seemed to be absolutely mesmerized by the document.  It became clear that she saw significant potential and opportunity in my little passport that I rarely think about.

On my second to last day I went on a bicycle tour of Bangkok with Josh, a Dutch guy who I met at the hostel.  It was called CoVanKessel tours and was started many years ago by a Dutch man.  Naturally 90% of the guests were Dutch =D haha.  So was a bit of a struggle to get English in, but was not a problem.  We biked through some really dicey narrow bike trails through china town, rice fields, canal bridges.  It was a blast.  When can you have a chance to take a bike through an active fish market haha.  So crazy.

After more street eats, significant sweating, fruit salad, obtaining a Thai Sim card (from a hidden True Mobile shop with NO signnnn grr, and also is a coffee shop??) I headed to the Bangkok train station for my overnight train to Chiang Mai.  It was a beautiful station!  Felt like out of the past with rows wooden benches and people waiting in the massive open building.  You just walk right up to the train (tourist train #1 =D), and hop aboard.  My cabin was air conditioned and I had a bottom bunk.  It is pretty nice actually.  They serve dinner and breakfast, and the sitting area converts to a bunk bed with pretty good privacy.  I met two crazy fun Dutch girls who had great energy.  After a few beers the train became quite and it was off to sleep.  I arrived in Chiang Mai and stayed at the Rustic Guest House.  It was a good 10 minute walk from the tourist center of the city, which was exciting because the front door was practically in Waruot market (china town).  It was my first entry into being THE Farang =D.  Only locals here, but no one seemed to mind my presence, nor did they mess with prices.  I was able to eat at a local food stand and managed to order Khao Soi, the local dish that is a brown hearty curry with egg noodles and fried crispy something on top.  I ate at a table that didn’t allow my knees to fit underneath =D and a had to sit little stoop.  Over the next handful of days I kept busy and appreciated Chiang Mai more and more.

I decided that doing tours would be the best way for a single traveler to see everything.  Usually I am into getting things done without commercial intervention, but I realized that many tours are just run by individual families.  I spent two days and 1 night at the elephant nature park.  It was an amazing experience to spend time with the rehabilitated and saved elephants at the park.  Many elephants are blind, have injuries from working in the jungle or city, or land mine injuries.  I took a cooking class with Thai Organic Farm cooking.  A taxi picked up our mixed group, including an American lawyer living in Singapore with girlfriend.  We had a great time talking about Asian culture and the many differences from growing up in America.  It was great to speak to someone fluent in English and highly intellectual.  The organic farm was beautiful, with fruits and vegetables steps from the cooking area.  We received a tour of the farm and met the plants (the teacher called them her “friends”).  The tomatoes, Thai herbs, and coconut that we picked were part of our creations.  I cooked pad Thai, tom yam soup, sweet and sour chicken, green curry (made fresh with mortar and pestle!) chicken, and mango sticky rice.  Our teacher was a local woman who was hilarious, and may be manic!  Haha. Every chance she had was devoted to making a sexual joke.  Beating the curry, “harder, harder, like your man” she would say.  Haha. The Germans in the group were initially shy, and then got into the fun haha.  Various jokes about length of cucumbers, the usual cooking sex joke menu. Haha.

Another tour was a bicycle tour of Chiang Mai with a local bicycle fanatic Nooh.  He is an exile from the craziness of Bangkok and is truly in love with the his city.  He eats 6 meals per day haha, and never cooks.  The city has so much street food, and little make shift restaurants that you never need to cook.  The tour was a trip to his favorite places to hang out and eat haha.  Very local and cool.  I was with two Americans that live in Singapore, and were on holiday with their kid and older parents.  Was a bit dicey with one fall by the grandma… and the little guy was under close watch by a very anxious mother (understandably!  It’s a crazy place to bike!).  We survived though.  Bike for 45 minutes, eat, bike 30 minutes, drink, bike 1 hour, eat. Haha.  Was so fun and chill.  My last day of touring was amazing.  I went with Something Different Tours on an off-road motorbike tour… haha.  I know what you’re thinking… that can’t be safe haha.  Well it was a bit dicey, but I had a helmet and I ride a moped at home.  Except this was manual (4 gear), driving is on other side of the road, and we were driving on unpaved roads through the jungle!  Amazing.  We went to a national park to hang out at waterfalls, ride through fields of rice, vegetables and even marijuana! Seriously.  We ate lunch at a hill tribe family’s home.  Our tour guide is actually from a hill tribe and is married to a local girl there.  Not sure how it works with him being in the city.  The family practices subsistence farming and supplements income from having occasional tours and selling their local handmade clothing/scarfs.   It was a wild and crazy experience.

In the evenings in Chiang Mai I kept busy with various night markets, a lady body cabaret at the night bazaar (that was interesting… haha), backpacker bar scene (zoe in yellow), main city market Sunday that was massive, meeting up with the Dutchies from the train, meeting up with Brits from elephant park.  Never ending and completely exhausting!  The best way to travel I think.  Onward to the next postt.