| Sunday, January 29, 2006 |
| Visit to Bae-Yon-Chris Joon's Winning Mountain Town |
I went to my first mixed, outdoor onsen, in Yubara. It's famous... because it's outdoors and mixed-sex. It's about 2 hours north of Kamogawa, in Yubara town, and if you drive much further, you'd hit the next prefecture. We were swayed by the tourism poster in the Okayama station tunnel, featuring a girl looking coyly over her shoulder as steam rises from the otherwise empty tub. Perhaps we could have had Bob turning a coy, bearded chin over his shoulder and winking knowingly at the camera, and created a tourism phenomenon of our own. However, Chris and the Betsarazzi were not brave or pervy enough to get close for that shot.
 This is a very helpful sign we encountered before getting in. Don't speak/read Japanese? Neither do we! Our translated onsen guidelines: (L to R)
1) No washing in the tub.
2) No pouring beer-- use a can.
3) No samurai mischief.
4) No elderly.
5) No watching... hop in or leave, pervert.
6) No fatties.
7) No touching yourself. (You can, however, collect a good profit for that at one of the Sutorippu Ruumu in town.)
8) No jazz hands.
9) No staring/laughing at baka gaijin (unless they deserve it).
10) No gigantic-hipped blondes in bikinis.
I would have felt less awkward had the gender distribution not been about 12:1, but fortunately a tattoo-emblazoned yakuza chick and her boyfriend hopped in the tub after awhile, so I had some company. Traditional onsens prohibit people with tattoos, but as it wasn't pictured as a no-no on the signpost, it must have been okay. They also brought in several cans of chu-hai (approved by rule # 2 ). The rest of people in there were mostly old Japanese guys.
 Snow was falling all afternoon-- here's (M)Adam, predictably underdressed for the cold; shivering Betsy-chan; Huddled Mr Bob; Always Suave Chris-Yon Joon.
 Oh no! Adam took one look at Chris' Luxury Mansion (car park and neighbors included!), thought about the Yoshikawa Ice Tray Aparto he called home, and tossed himself 4 floors down. Did he jump... or was he pushed?
 Luxury Mansion Sleepover in Katsuyama! We get so much older, and yet never age...
 Saru-chan, saru-chan, you are mine! Attempting a five-finger discount at monkey mountain in Katsuyama, though I shouldn't have gotten so close... that big monkey got edgy and was probably getting ready for "ebola jaws" if I took one step closer to the baby.
 An alert lookout monkey. Looking out for unsuspecting tourists that deserve ebola jaws, that is. I still get nightmares from "The Hot Zone", so why do I continue to tempt fate?
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posted by Raychaa @ 8:00 PM  |
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| Wednesday, January 25, 2006 |
| Japan wins again. |
 Yes, the Key Fuctory. I saw this from a bus window my first month in Okayama, and have spent the last 18 months searching for it. My life is now complete.
 Honey Coming! Hey, didn't blaxploitation go out sometime in the 70s? I checked out the website on the box, and this is apparently a TV show. Starring Japanese actresses.
 Mitsuya White Cider-- this is a seasonal beverage, because you should (of course) only consume snow-inspired beverages that defy common sense when it's snowy outside. Silly me, I was looking for it all spring, summer, and fall. Cider, have you met my dear friend, Condensed Milk? |
| posted by Raychaa @ 12:49 AM |
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| Sunday, January 22, 2006 |
| Christmas fools, a snowbaby, and a hobbit |
A few belated Christmas pictures from the orphanage:
 "Twas the Night Before Christmas" in action! Caspian Spice Dan as Santa; Eric and Richard Left-eye Shelley as Ma and Pa; Chris, Kathy, Emma, and I as reindeer.
 For the past few years, the kids at the orphanage have drawn designs for Christmas cards, which were then printed and sold by JETs across Japan. This year, about 235,000 baht (about 70 man en, or $7000 US) was raised on card sales, which covers operating costs of the home for almost a month. Richard L (on the mike) collected it and brought it to Thailand, and Clay made a big check with the total, a la Ed McMahon. (Yes, Mr/Mrs/Miss Baan Unrak, you may have already won TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND BAHT!!!)
 Karaoke fools on Christmas day-- we were handed a microphone and told to sing Christmas carols while the kids lined up for treats. Just like at school, Anglophonability overrides tone deafness. And really, after the December ambush of "Rachel sensei, please sing 'We are the World'... alone... without the CD'" at junior high, Jingle Bells didn't seem so difficult. I can't sing well, never have been able to, and I do believe I was "selected" to play xylophone instead of joining the altos in my 4th grade chorus club. But, the power of karaoke turns anyone into a star. After going through our short list of upbeat carols, microphone still in hand and a helpless audience of 300 kids, I was hit by a strange desire to sing Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie's masterpiece, aka The Corniest and Most Condescending Song Ever Written, the way my students would. ("...we are za wolllld, we are za chil-dennn... we are za ones who make a bli-taa day so let's starto gi-bing...")
 Group photo on the river Kwai.
 Our last picture together, in the beloved cafe-- (back) Washerwoman Hong, Rachelangelo, Annie Banani, Leader Richard, Richard Left-eye Shelley, Caspian Spice, Clay Pigeon, Int'l Man ofMystery Eric, (front) Chris Chringle, One-track Elisabeth, Happy Kathy, January/February/March April, Hollywood Kristin, Emma Dilemma.
 And while I'm thinking about Christmas, two of the best presents I received. Adam and Ashley brought a snowbaby poster for me from Thailand! A snowbaby all to myself! Wow!
 And all the way from Walla Walla, Jen was thoughtful enough to steal this from an Olin Hall bulletin board for me-- hobbit love, yo! What's the significance of the title? Stud Dance? Disco Stu's comeback? Students that dance rather than spell? Sudan with an extra T (and C E)? Oh, nostalgia...how this brought me back to the Master 'n' Commander days. Nothing says Whittie like a pretentious hobbit. And did I mention it's been signed by Russell Crowe? |
| posted by Raychaa @ 7:58 PM |
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| Tuesday, January 17, 2006 |
| Rock climbing in paradise... |
 April and I ended our vacation on Railay, in Krabi province. The beaches are only accessible from Krabi town by boat, and there are so many resorts packed onto the small landmass that even really crummy rooms cost way beyond what they're worth. Railay is good for rock-climbing, so we spent the afternoon doing a beginner's course, placed in a group with 2 people that (predictably enough) turned out to be JETs as well. It was so busy, with so many people competing for space at the wall, that we only got 3 or 4 climbs in over the course of 4 hours. Our guides were hilarious young Thai guys, all short and tanned and impossibly ripped, and we had a really fun afternoon. April is a rockstar, and skittered up all the climbs in no time flat, whereas a scary slip on one tough section caused a bit of a panic situation for me, and I had to talk myself into going up the next one. Even when you know you're perfectly safe, it's hard to calm yourself down and override your body's "You are about to die, fool!" adrenaline response.
 Many climbers, little bitty climbing space.
 April mountain-goating up to the top.
 A friendly soccer game on the beach, played by many of the local guys who work here.
 This is the sunset from West Railay beach-- a gorgeous wide beach with classy bungalow resorts all along the expanse of sand. The beachside restaurants were uniformly mediocre, with non-existent service, but at least the view is pretty.
 We stayed on East Railay (above), where the backpacker level of lodging is. (Ours cost $25-- a lot for Thailand-- and though there were no bugs, we inexplicably had salty water coming from the taps.) Coming into East Railay at high tide, you sail through trees and bushes rising up out of the murky blue water that form the mangrove swamps. It's rather pretty, but as the tide goes out, the entire bay turns into a mud flat, with debris and trash embedded into tree roots. I had to wade through the knee-deep muddy tide for about 100 yards to catch a boat in the morning, and nearly slipped while wearing my pack, if not for some random Italian man there to catch me. (God bless those Italians...)
We had planned on meeting up with our friends from Vancouver again here, but got an email from Fred saying that they had spent the day in a Phuket hospital after their climbing friend had fallen 7 metres off the wall and landed on a large rock. The guy was lead climbing, and was inches from the first clip when his foot slipped. Fred said every person on the wall froze as the guy fell 20 feet straight down. If I had heard this story earlier, I would not have even gone up on one climb. The guy works for the United Nations, so had the connections and money to find good doctors. He will probably be fine, though has some cracked ribs, and they were concerned about a punctured lung. Could have been much worse! After hanging around the hospital for a day, Jesse left from Phuket and headed north, so we didn't see him again, but Fred came back to Railay that night to stay in the UN guy's posh bungalow and climb some more, so the three of us went out.
 This is a sketch joint called "The Last Bar" that promised a fire show and snakes, though we also got to see some completely crap Thai boxing. The real thing is an elaborate and intense display of physicality, but they probably just pulled these guys out from bartending duties to entertain bored foreigners. Fred has been doing karate for 20-something years, and spent the last week of his trip at a hard-core Muay Thai boxing camp in Phuket, which he said was kicking his ass. This performance was just child's play, apparently. (Not that I can compare it to anything I've actually seen...)
 Here's the snake show. The highlight of every set was when the guy would end up with one ore more snakes in his mouth.
 Tempting the cobra... before he puts it in his mouth.
 I instructed Fred and April to look frightened-- Oh no!! Terrifying snakes!! About to go into that guy's mouth!!-- but they clearly didn't follow directions. I see no fear. We were all a bit underwhelmed by the show.
 An expensive little bungalow resort, good enough for the UN guy. As we were leaving the Last Chance Saloon/Snake Snogging Bar of Wonder, Fred ran into a bunch of the crazy Thai rock climbing guides he was friends with, and stayed out all night with them. And thus was still intoxicated when April and I showed up to steal his breakfast buffet tickets in the morning. (Our bungalow only had saltwater showers on the menu.)
I had to go back to Phuket to catch my flight, and ended up again on Patong while I wasted 5 hours. Shopping is too expensive there, and Patong is more depressing and dingy by daylight than in neon glow, so I found sanctuary in a beauty salon and paid for girly things I don't often bother with, like a mani-pedi and massage and hair wash/cut/style. I don't know how to tell the legit massage parlors from the bad ones, but this one had a man getting a massage in the light of the main room, with plenty of windows, and they said they always sanitized the nail clippers for manicures, so I took a chance. The guy getting the massage was a friendly teacher from Estonia (my first Estonian person!) who wouldn't stop talking to me the entire time. It's hard enough to enjoy a massage from a complete stranger when you have some guy from the Baltic quizzing you on English grammar points. (Is differentiative a word? Differentialize? Do I know or care?) (Answer: No, I didn't know, because my brain cells commit ritual suicide every successive day I spend living in Japan. Though maybe I did care, because I'm a big dork, and I looked up the words when I got back home.) I had to take a taxi alone to the airport when the minibus was full-up, and my driver was a very kind man with the ugliest circa 1984 mullet I've seen in awhile. At one point, we pulled up to a stoplight, and I looked over to see a family of 5 stacked tightly on one motorbike. Meanwhile, I sat windblown and relaxed in the back of my chartered taxi truck. Felt rather unresourceful at that moment. The Phuket airport was a madhouse, chock-full of awkward Japanese tourists and sunburned Germans, and I was relieved to finally board a plane that would help get me home to Nippon. Good-bye, Thailand.... |
| posted by Raychaa @ 4:46 PM |
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| Wednesday, January 11, 2006 |
| Koh Phi Phi |
 Here's Koh Phi Phi-- a gorgeous place! The clarity of the water and whiteness of sand on the Andaman coast islands were staggering, and I liked the scenery here more than on the other coast. It was hard to find lodging on Phi Phi because about 50% of the resorts were damaged or destroyed in the tsunami. Everything about the islands reminded me of the horror of what happened last December. Being on Phi Phi on new year's day 2006 was spooky, recalling all the terrifying news footage Annabelle, Rose, Michael and I watched from the relative safety of our Koh Phangan resort, just a few hundred kilometres away and one year previous. Sailing in on the ferry into the crowded Phi Phi harbor on January 1st, I could still remember all 4 of us a year before, perched nauseous over untouched toast and fruit, as CNN continually updated the death toll as it climbed into an ever-larger six-digit sum.
That strip of land below is called Ton Sai-- the port/ town/ center of island life. On the left is the actual bay (Ton Sai), and the bay on the right is Loh Dalam. When the tsunami hit, the water was sucked out of Ton Sai first, then came crashing over the pier and overland, and moments later another monster wave (estimate-- 3 stories high) came in through Loh Dalam. It flattened and/or flooded all of the hotels and resorts on that stretch of land. There was no higher ground to run to, and the bi-directional wave impact caused undercurrents and whirlpooling. Many people drowned quickly, particularly those who were trapped in hotel rooms. Many others were severely injured by debris and the force of the water.
 This is one of many memorial sites on Ton Sai-- a tree surrounded with flowers, plaques, banners, photographs, and stories. I believe this is where the Princess and Charlie resorts were, where dozens of guests and staff members died. We were both crying before even making a lap of the tree. The death toll estimate for Phi Phi from the tsunami is about 1000. Nearly 2/3 of Thailand's fatalities were on Patong Beach, where we had been the day before, but there doesn't seem to be much attention paid to that fact around the town, and it felt like business as usual. Other tourists that had visited Phuket in the past said that Patong looks exactly as it did pre-tsunami: overbuilt, overpriced. Phi Phi has clearly not recovered yet, and there is so much palpable sadness amongst the shopkeepers (many whom operate from tents, rickety tables, or folding chairs inside the skeleton of a building), tourists, and the destroyed beaches themselves.
 April out in beautiful Loh Dalam bay, with the ghostly expanse of trees to mark where a village of resorts used to stand. It's very shallow, and you can walk nearly to the mouth of the bay and only go knee-deep. We kayaked from here, around the smaller lung of the island, and finished at the Ton Sai pier about an hour later.
 That sign reads "tsunami evacuation route"-- don't know if it was put up for when people were trying to leave Phi Phi, or if it's a future precaution.
April and I spent 2 nights in a bungalow overlooking the sea, on a secluded beach called To Koh. Our friend Kristen, another JET from our orphanage trip, recommended it, and she actually was still there when we arrived. There were about 15 small bungalows, one family that runs it, one family dog, our own personal cabin mouse, and about 10 million ants. We moved over to Ton Sai for our last night, and had more fun being in town. Our place there just opened 2 weeks beforehand, and it was more like a lovely hotel room in bungalow's clothing. Electricity all day long, mirrors, TV, beautiful clean beds, no ants in sight... we were in heaven. Champagne backpackers again, after too many crawly friends!
We hiked around the island our first day, caught the sunset from a viewpoint above Ton Sai, and had to fumble back through the jungle in the dark to get back home. The next day we did a snorkeling boat cruise to Phi Phi Leh with 2 other teachers that happened to work for NOVA in Okayama city. (Sean: "Oh, we live in Japan, too! But you've never heard of the place we live. It's called Ok-a-yama.") It's a small world after all! We hung around town our last day, bought bootleg DVDs, shopped, and returned twice to an amazing little bakery before leaving for Krabi. (Good bread is hard to find.)
 April, me, NOVA superstars Sean and Amber.
 This is Maya Beach, where "The Beach" was filmed. Leo was nowhere to be seen.
 Longtail boats to navigate around the island. There are no roads or cars on Phi Phi, though there are occasionally motorcycles.
 April and I swimming in a bay of Phi Phi Leh island.
 A happy shot overlooking the bay to counterbalance sad tsunami thoughts. Peace! |
| posted by Raychaa @ 6:44 PM |
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| Tuesday, January 10, 2006 |
| Welcome to Patong. |
You might be in a classy hostel if...
 Went out on Khao San road during my brief night in Bangkok. Chris, Elisabeth and I went to a pub/bar/meatmarket, and quizzed each other with the *Hooker or Ho?* game for most of the Thai chicks in there. Must've been a slow night-- not nearly enough dirty men to balance out the odds, so when Elisabeth and I hit the dance floor, it was us in sea of (possible) ladies-of-the-night.
I flew to Phuket (riding high in style, Annabelle says) in the morning, and met April there, who bought a bus ticket from a man selling on a card table in a muddy corner of the bus station parking lot. Paid way too much for a decently nice room on Ao Karon-- though it had satellite tv and hot water (hallelujah!), we were forced to escort a cockroach outside nonetheless. We wanted to be out of Bangkok to ring in 2006, and originally imagined a chill, quiet night on the water. Plans changed, and we ended up in the heart of Patong beach. Welcome to the jungle...
We arranged to meet up with some boys from Vancouver that we had met earlier, but got lost and couldn't find them at our meeting place. April and I hung out on the quiet beach for a bit, and did our best friendly-yet-needing-to-escape conversation routine with some older Hungarian men amidst the balloon launches.
 We were wondering about what happens when all these balloons sail back down into the ocean the following day. Probably an endangered turtle would choke on one, only to be rescued by a dolphin, who, in her haste to help the turtle, would jump into a tuna net and end up as a can of Chicken of the Sea. Oishii yo! In some brush with serendipity, we ran into our friends an hour later in a different part of town, and went for drinks where the ladyboys play.
 These are our buddies from Vancouver-- Jesse (left) and Fred (right). They're both traveling on long holidays from their jobs. Having a mixed group is the best way to navigate Patong, as April and I alone kept getting hassled or approached by weird men, and the boys said that the more aggressive hostess girls would grab and/or grope them and try to drag them into the bars.
 And here is the avenue of ladyboys. At this moment, the girls are being rather PG -- we were close to the main street, which is the safest place to be since the bars got seedier and scarier as you ventured further back. However, these ladies were fully post-op, and were willing to show that off to... everyone. If you were a guy and made eye contact or took a picture, they'd force you buy them a drink or give a tip.
 Typical hostess bar along the main drag-- "Good food! Clean ice! Clean toilets" is what they advertise, plus a little cartoon white dude with an asian girl in his arms. Ah, feels like being home.
   Fireworks on the beach and away from the bars. I managed to miss the official countdown for the 3rd year in a row. Throughout the night firecrackers kept going off in the middle of the street, and sometimes right under your feet, at which point you'd have to run for the sidewalk.
 The Tiger... rowr. It was a really fun club, but would have been better if they had played something besides 3 straight hours of techno! Had a few Thai men befriend our group, one of whom took quite a shine to Jesse, to his amusement. They taught us something in Thai-- sawadee pii mai!! (Happy new year!)
Patong was a much different scene than Koh Phangan, where I spent last new year's. Phangan is just a gaijin ghetto on the beach, whereas Patong is a diverse group of western foreigners, asian foreigners, young thais, ladyboys, hostess girls, sex workers and the revolting men who pay for and love them. There was a huge billboard outside of town proclaiming "Phuket is back!" but I hope I never am. Ao Karon (where we stayed, south of Ao Patong) had a handful of girly bars, but wasn't as seedy as Patong.
 This is Ao Karon (where we stayed) in the light of new year's day. Gorgeous white sand and fantastic waves close to shore for bodysurfing. Ao Patong looks very similar, only more crowded.
If you want a nightlife, Patong has it, but it's such a weird environment. Of course, much worse things go on in red-light districts all over the world, but this is not a red-light district. It's a resort town, and people pay ridiculous sums of money to spend a vacation right on Patong beach. We saw entire families of European tourists, complete with toddlers, walking up and down the main street at 11pm. You wouldn't bring your baby along to a brothel, but why does the facade of Patong make it alright? Maybe most people, like our group, were there for the carnival aspect of it all. It was fun for an evening, but we couldn't leave fast enough in the morning. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 12:57 PM |
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| So wrong it's right. And then wrong. And then wrong again... welcome to the inaka. |
| About Me |
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Name: Raychaa
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About Me: “No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.” (Florence Nightingale)
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