Roosters and ruins

Jan 10 2010

This morning I woke up to a rooster. The first half of his cry was lovely by rooster standards, the second half sounded like he was getting strangled. It was funny, during the brief moments of my morning consciousness. There is a lot of wildlife to listen to during all hours of the day, which is refreshing after the bustling of Bangkok. Brittney keeps retaining the sounds of birds to better quiz John when she sees him again. My favorite was a song bird this afternoon…

I think the consensus is that we don’t enjoy Bangkok, not for its chaos, money hungry tuktuk drivers, for all the sales pitches or traffic. It is gorgeous out here in other places…

We three travelled into the city of Ayutthaya to see the various ruins, which were absolutely amazing. The only negative being that it was unbearably hot, scorching hot, miserably hot. Now, I enjoy the summer, I do enjoy the heat…but not like this. Shade was scarce as you can imagine, and as we three are concerned with bugs bites that lead to Japanese encephalitis and Malaria…we keep quite covered up, which is damned smart, but makes us warmer and annoyed with our clingy cotton clothing, wishing for shorts and spaghetti strap shirts.

Truthfully I think what gets us is in not being able to refresh ourselves with iced beverages, cold water off the street or vendor ice cream. There are fantastic claims to be careful about the water here, that it can carry parasites and things that our bodies are not adjusted to, hence sterilizing our drinking water and refusing ice…the ice being made from local water. It had been an awful test of dedication and paranoia not to get sick, because we three simply cannot afford to get sick overseas. I will admit though, I do regret having some of the local vendor ice cream, we all splurged and it was the price of 10baht that bought in our interest, and I am not going to lie, my stomach has gurgled a few times and each time I freeze from fear hoping it’s not Giardia, hoping to God that its just my weird lunch settling…

January 11 2010

I saw my first rice patty today. We are on our way to Sukhotai, the bridge town between Bangkok and Chiang Mai. The country side is amazing, comparable to Hidden Valley Ranch imagery. The grass is golf course green, and naturally well kept. There are square and rectangle shapes of grass and then strange sets of organized banana and palm trees. Occasionally I see the quintessential lone tree in a sea of green.

It seems the locals take so much pride in the land, but what lacks is the standard of living as you watch these gorgeous sets of land pass, and then a sort of mud pit appears where a house sits with trash littered on the outside. It’s strange to me, and while I feel it’s inappropriate to make judgments about what I see, I feel a need to explain what I see.

Thailand has some gorgeous skies, many columnus formations. From a photographers perspective of landscape photography, there could be made some fantastic cloudy sky pictures.
We’ve been on this bus since 10am. It’s now about 2-3pm. What is a bit frustrating is that there is no announcement of where we are or when we have stopped for bathroom breaks, it’s all a great leap to recognize what’s going on. It’s nice to sit on a bus bound for miles away, but sometimes the mix of body odor and old age gets to me as there is a particularly stinky old French woman behind me.

Our guesthouse in Sukhotai has proven to be one of the loveliest places I have ever been, and it is such a joy to me that we are spending two nights here. The menu here is an enormous relief as there is more Americanized food, an exciting change as our diets have accepted rice at every meal, and sometimes don’t sit well. Tonight we had a version of a grilled cheese and ham sandwich with a small set of fries, Elena and I tried their version of tom kha gra soup, which proved to be one of the more questionable meals as far as digestion, but the sandwich and fries were heavenly.

The nature here is SO LOUD! So many cricketing bugs and frogs, so petite and cute. It will be nice to sleep to that consistent sound. Tomorrow morning we are venturing for more ancient ruins and a nice relaxing day before our venture up north.

Our room...with weird lighting...

Until next time...