The World Needs More Ninjas

It’s taken me a while to get around to posting my last journal entry, but it’s finally here! Here are the details of my last day in Thailand….

After heading out of the hotel, I took a taxi to the Grand Palace, which was indeed grand. The architecture and the colors were just amazing! It was a very hot day, but to enter the Grand Palace you had to have your legs, feet, and shoulders covered. Luckily the hotel concierge had told me this before getting my taxi, so I had changed into jeans and grabbed my jean jacket for the trip.

After only about 2 minutes into my visit to the palace I was sweating bullets. Fortunately, I had also brought along some water. I walked around and took a lot of pictures. Apparently I was taking more pictures than I realized because someone actually asked me if I was a photographer, haha.

After seeing all the sights and sweating out about 5 gallons of water, I decided to head out of Grand Palace (mostly so I could shed my jacket). When exiting this nice looking Thai woman was strolling down the sidewalk and she approached me and started telling me about some other sights I should visit. I really couldn’t understand half of what she was saying, so I just did the nice smile and nod. Next thing I know she’s hailing a tuk tuk over to pick me up.

She told me for 30 Baht (less than $1) the tuk tuk would take me to several sights nearby. I wasn’t really sure what all I was getting into, but I’d never ridden a tuk tuk on any of my international trips and I figured, what the heck, if nothing else this will be worth 30 Baht. Sure enough, the tuk tuk ride was quite entertaining. We were jetting in and out of traffic and little side streets. We even got in the middle of a group of monks walking down the street which was quite interesting and something I probably wouldn’t have seen in a taxi. (If you see anyone wearing all orange – like deer hunter orange – in any of the tuk tuk pictures, that’s one of the monks.)

My first stop on the tuk tuk trip was the Golden Mountain, which was basically this huge Buddhist temple built on a hill in the city with shrines going all the way up and a very large shrine on the top. It was pretty interesting, and on the top I had a great view of the city all around. I met some New Zealand guys here who had also taken on a tuk tuk adventure. To my delight, I found an ice cold Gatorade at a concession stand at the top of the Golden Mount. Ah, thirst quenching.

After going back down the “mountain” my tuk tuk driver directed me across the street to this ginormous Buddha statue. It only took a second to look there, and then I headed back to the tuk tuk. This is where the trip gets interesting. So the next “attraction” my tuk tuk driver took me was a jewelry store. I walked in not realizing what it was at first, and promptly walked right back out as I was interested in shopping for jewelry at the time. My tuk tuk driver was surprised to see me come out of the store so fast, and told me repeatedly that she would “wait for me” if I wanted to go back in a shop longer. I didn’t, so I just climbed in the back of the tuk tuk, and so off to our next stop….another store!

Okay, so by this point, I had caught on to what was happening (and had also apparently happened to the New Zealand guys I had met). Yes, I had been duped. For about the first 3 stores, I played along nicely…I went in, browsed for about 5 minutes and then came back out. After each stop, the tuk tuk driver promised we were heading to the next real attraction, but alas, we always ended up at another store. After about the third one, she (the driver) was getting really disappointed that I kept coming out of the shopping stores to quickly. She tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand her very well and she called some guy over (a fellow tuk tuk driver I think) and he tried to explain to me that I had to stay in the stores at least 10 minutes so that my driver could get gas (he also told me this by laying on a thick sob story about my driver having like 4 kids and no husband, yada yada). I just pretended I didn’t understand what he was talking about and got back in the tuk tuk.

My driver said we would then finally head to the next real attraction….so when we ended up at a store where they made custom made clothes I was finally fed up with this whole scam. At first I didn’t mind because, hey, for really cheap I was riding a tuk tuk (an adventure in itself) and I actually did get to see a couple of real local attractions. After walking the store and seeing what it was, I promptly got 30 Baht out of my purse, walked right out the store (while the store clerks were calling “Ma’am, Ma’am”), handed the money to my tuk tuk driver (who looked very disappointed) , and hailed a taxi. Enough of this, I was hot and tired and ready to get something to eat.

I took the taxi back to my hotel and I realized that it had been more than 24 hours since I’d eaten anything and I was absolutely starving. (I had planned to eat lunch out, but I had gotten so hot at the Grand Palace that I wasn’t really very hungry at that time.) I grabbed a wrap at the hotel deli, then went back to my room for a much needed shower and a little rest. I had my work stuff to do that evening from 6:30-9:00.

When looking at my flight schedule, I realized that I would need to leave the hotel at 3:30am to get to the airport in time…so I figured what’s the point of even going to bed tonight? I thought maybe if I just stayed up all night, then I could get some sleep on the plane. I was really, really hoping to find someone to go to the night market with since that was the one thing I had on my list of things to do. After asking around, I did find a group of other recruiters who were planning a trip to the market. Yay!! I went to my room and changed and we all met in the lobby around 9:45 to head out.

We went to the first market and it was great! We stayed there for a couple of hours walking around and finding some good bargains. We also stopped by a little local restaurant to have some dinner…it was quite tasty actually. Around 11:45ish, we decided to head over to the most popular night market, Pat Pong (sp?). Actually, by the time we made it there, a lot of the “stores” were already packing up for the night. I was surprised that the night market would be packing up already, but I guess it was past midnight.

One really nasty thing about this market was that about every 10 feet there was someone shoving a flyer in your face about going to one of the many sex shows…apparently very popular in Bangkok, especially those of the transgender nature. We only stayed at this market about an hour, I didn’t find that many good bargains at this market, but I did get one or two things. Around 1:15am we headed back to the hotel. Since I felt so absolutely nasty, I took one more shower (my third for the day) and packed all of my things.

By the time I got all of this done it was time to check out of the hotel and head to the airport. Surprisingly I wasn’t that tired…probably because the night had been so eventful. It really was a great time going to the markets, and I’m glad I made the effort to find some other people to go with. I made it to the airport with no problem…although my taxi driver apparently thought that because there was not much traffic at 3:30am that it was okay to drive about 500 KPH. There was a nice older gentleman from South Africa that I talked to for a bit while waiting for my plane…it was a nice way to pass the time…plus he’s the manager of a golf resort in SA and he gave me his business card….so maybe if I ever make it to SA we can have a nice place to stay.

My first flight was from Bangkok to Tokyo (about 6 hours), and even though I hadn’t slept in a long time, I just couldn’t fall asleep. I did watch “The Longest Yard” which was pretty funny. I didn’t have too long of a layover in Tokyo which was nice. However, when I was waiting near my gate there was a American guy who was in the Navy and headed home for visit. When I walked by him, he said something to the effect of, “oh aren’t you just so adorable, precious, blah blah blah.”

I just kept walking like I hadn’t heard anything and went and got in the line to board the plane. To my dismay, the Navy guy came over and got in line right behind me and started talking to me. The first thing he asked was if I was married and I said yes, and then he just went into hysterics…”oh I finally found a beautiful woman and she’s married, %@#$ @#$#@ @#$#….” I was so embarrassed…here’s this tall American guy being all loud and using all this foul language and all these Japanese people were just staring at him. Then the Navy guy started asking the flight attendant if he could change his seat and sit next to me. I told him no, he had to sit in his assigned seat. By this time I was finally getting on the plane and was happy to see that the seat next to me was already occupied and Navy guy’s seat was on the other side of the plane a few rows away.

One tip for any woman traveling alone, always say you are married, even if you are not. For singles, I’d probably even buy a fake ring to wear if I were you. So many guys overseas will see you as a foreigner and they will be so interested in you and it’s helpful to say you’re married which makes them back off (usually). <sigh>

My flight from Tokyo to Detroit was about 11 hours and it went pretty smoothly. I was finally able to take some cat naps on and off. When I arrived in Detroit I found out my flight was delayed about an hour….not surprising since I usually have trouble at the Detroit airport. But after traveling half way around the world, one hour late is not too bad. I got back to Champaign between 6:30-7:00pm on Friday evening and Matt was there waiting for me. On the way home Matt stopped and bought me a Sonic strawberry milkshake (my favorite!). Although seeing new places is adventurous and fun, it always feels so good to be home!

Pictures from my trip are posted in our gallery.

Thanks to everyone for all the prayers while I was away. Next week I’ll be heading to Austin, TX for a couple of days so look for more trip postings soon.