Blog: Travel

It's been three-quarters of a year since I posted on Alpie.net. Greater Greater Washington has taken up much of my time, as has preparing for a wedding. I'm hoping to make a new effort to get all of the pictures in the interim posted, including wedding and engagement pictures, last fall's trip to France, and even the uncompleted photos from our 2007 trip to Southeast Asia (whoops!).

For our honeymoon, we went to the Caribbean island of Curacao. We stayed at a resort in the quiet western end of the island, lounged around on our patio and at the pool, and went on a great boat ride. I snorkeled for the first time.

We also got to visit Willemstad, the island's city; those pictures will be the next installment.

Airlines charge a lot of fees—for phone reservations, changing a non-refundable reservation, checking bags, snacks. At this rate, our future airline tickets will look something like this.

When we buy a ticket, most people just look at the bottom-line price. But the fees can completely change the equation, especially if you end up having to change your plans now that some airlines are charging $150 per ticket.

Rick Seaney of FareCompare has a handy chart of fees. Keep it in mind next time you book. Now, why don't some of those travel sites start including this information with their price comparisons?

In the hills of Thailand reside many ethnic minorities in small villages. These villages are poorer and less economically developed than the cities (something true in Western nations too, of course). Many of the male villagers farm for subsistence while the women make handcrafts to sell to tourists in markets down in the cities.

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After our disappointing second day in Bangkok, we flew to Chiang Mai and resumed having a wonderful time. We checked in to our extremely cute hotel, Yaangcome Village, then headed up the mountain to the temple of Wat Prathat Doi Suthep.

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I've been busy again with moving, but the Thailand pictures should resume sometime next week. Sorry for the delay! You'll be pleased to know that our third day, in Chiang Mai, was much more fun than the second day.

While our first full day in Southeast Asia, in Ayutthaya, was one of the best days of the trip, our second was one of the worst. The activities changed from interesting, pretty places filled with Thai people who were fascinating to watch, to dull, overly commercial places filled with Western tourists.

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Bangkok evokes, to me, what I imagined of the anarcho-capitalist cities depicted in cyberpunk novels like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. In the lawless cities of the future in these books, housing and shopping developments barricade themselves behind fortifications and private security, the only way to stay safe. Bangkok is far from lawless, but our hotel nevertheless had security guarding its gates to the street, and a restaurant we visited was located in a small shopping center surrounded along with its parking lot by a gated wall.

The city has developed so quickly and become so commercialized that many sections of main road simply pass mall after mall situated right next to one another. There are few pedestrians, with most tourists riding around in taxis and most locals using motorbikes. For those who do try to brave a short walk, the sidewalks are narrow and poorly maintained, and in many areas practically nonexistent, while traffic does not even stop reliably for red lights.

The closest analogy in the United States is the Las Vegas strip, a similarly tourist-centered fake environment.

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The main religion of Southeast Asia is Theravada Buddhism. I have had some experience with Zen Buddhism, at least as it is practiced in the United States, but that much more closely resembles Western religions than the Thai Buddhism.

For example, Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship together at set times and in communities. The congregation is a major feature of the religious experience, and for many people is the primary draw, a social gathering with familiar faces. Not so in Thai Buddhist temples, where prayer is an individual activity. According to our tour guide, a person or a family may visit eight to ten temples on a Sunday, staying for only a few minutes each time. Each temple centers around a particular Buddha statue, each of which has its own distinctive draw—one may be especially large, another very old, or made of emerald, or in a reclining pose. Instead of visiting the same temple each week as in a congregation-based religion, Thai Buddhists will try to visit as many as possible of the hundreds of temples in their city.

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After seeing the Summer Palace, we took a long-tail boat up the Chao Phraya River toward the main city of Ayutthaya. The banks of the river are lined with houses, each with a boathouse. Some of the houses and boathouses are elaborate, others simple; some are immaculate, others run down. This river was a primary transportation link to and from Bangkok, and some people still use it to commute, avoiding the car traffic, though the houses now all have road access as well. As it was Sunday, many people were out on the riverfront eating, doing laundry, fishing, or swimming.

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Ayutthaya, about an hour's drive north of Bangkok, was Thailand's capital from 1350 to 1787, when Burmese invaders conquered it and killed the king. The Bang Pa In Summer Palace is a royal residence, originally used during the Ayutthaya Kingdom but then rebuilt in the 19th Century. Now it is mostly a tourist attraction, though occasional state dinners and similar events still take place there.

King Rama IV, who revived the Summer Palace, appreciated architecture from around the world, and so rather than following a single traditional style, the buildings reflect an eclectic variety of global styles, primarily European and Chinese (Thailand is about 30% Chinese, with good relations between the Chinese and Thai populations), as well as some small Thai buildings. The grounds are laid out with manicured gardens around an artificial lake.

Unlike many of the other tourist attractions we visited on our trip, most of the tourists at Bang Pa In were Thai students from nearby colleges. The most interesting part of the palace visit was the opportunity to anthropologically observe the Thai young people - their Hello Kitty umbrellas and Playboy tote bags which American women would never carry, or the way two female friends would hold hands while taking a picture.

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