Chalao and his wife, Wan, invited me for a weekend outside of the city. It took me a full quarter of a second to respond with a resounding ‘yes!’. Did I care where we went? Nope. Was I positively delighted to get a Thai perspective on traveling within the country? You ‘betcha!
So, for the second weekend in a row, I suited up with my backpack and made a foray outside of the urban jungle. Saturday morning Chalao and Wan swung by my apartment to pick me up. I had the entire backseat of his truck to myself (my abs were still throbbing from my balancing act on the train) complete with A/C and company that didn’t look at me like I was an alien. We chatted a bit on the ride but mostly I just enjoyed the window view. Being a passenger is a foreign concept to me... since I have had a driving permit (and actually before, thanks Mom!), I have driven everywhere Roadtrip? I’ll drive! It just is easier that way. (Can we say control freak?) Being able to kick back, relax and enjoy the view was a real treat. That being said....
Would I ever drive here? Hell. No. Not only is there the tricky factor of lane/steering-wheel orientation but traffic is INSANE. Utterly ridiculous. Take Atlanta traffic at 5pm, on a Friday, before a Braves game and a U2 concert; add 3 million motorcycles, 10,000 tuk tuks, a few thousand food cards, and a disregard for any concept of road courtesy and *ta-da* you have just created Bangkok on the very best of days. (Now imagine its worst) Needless to say, I was completely impressed with Chalao’s driving skills. In moments where I would be white-knuckling and spewing profanities he just chuckles and manages to maneuver through the traffic with ease and safety. Incredible.
Anyways, the drive there was neat and before long we were out of the realm of Bangkok. Amphawa is in the Central Coastal Plain area of Thailand. Much of the land between Bangkok and there is in the coastal floodplain and, consequently, is utilized as salt flats. Very intriguing. The water is pulled, via windmill (hey, hey Dutch roots), from the Gulf, deposited into neatly organized flats where it evaporates, and then is hand harvested. That’s right. They hand-harvest salt. I will never again take salt for granted.
Once we were in Amphawa, we checked into our homestay. It was beyond lovely. Situated on the Maeklong River, the restaurant/cottages we were staying at were surrounded by coconut plantations and not much else. A view up or down the river revealed a limited number of other houses and two temples. Precisely what this rural-loving girl likes to see.... as little human development as possible.
We set out, after lunch, for the sightseeing. We met up with B, Wan’s friend from work, and her husband, Tum, both of whom were very familiar with the area and served as our tour guides for our stay. It was a delightful afternoon, full of laughter, pictures, and lots of good memories. We spent alot of time on the Maeklong river both in paddled and motorized longtail boats. Our evening was spent time at the night market and on a firefly tour to see the famous synchronized blinking of the local species. Too neat.
The next day we visited the famous Maeklong Station market... a market which is literally built each day on top of the railroad tracks making in necessary for the vendors to pull down their tarps and pull back their wares as the train passes. It is a sight to be seen. The transformation is nothing short of incredible.
This area was PACKED with Western tourists... Most of them German or French. Nearly all were unhappy, bitter, rude, and epitomized everything I hate about tourists here. They were unappreciative of local culture, travelled in hordes, were disrespectful in dress, action, and word and just were generally pests. Now, I fully acknowledge that for the entire duration of my time here, I am basically a tourist. Fine. But these people? They were terrible, awful, very-bad, no-good representations of Westerners everywhere. I was ashamed. When one attempted to talk to me (a German man who seemed to think my eyes were around my collarbone) I feigned naiveté.
After the train fiasco, we walked around the town, visited the temple, and took a ride on the river ferry (funny how the tourists were absent from the true cultural gems of the city). We grabbed a pumelo for the road and then ventured to see the Gulf of Thailand. Exciting! I was beyond thrilled when we wound around a bend and there it was, a watery expanse that, in theory, connected me back to the States. Nifty, nifty, nifty. I gawked out the window, cooed about the mangrove forests, and was generally over-the-moon with contentment. We stopped by a temple to visit a museum and stepped into a village for the Sunday afternoon tradition of fish-fighting and, naturally, gambling. We then proceeded to a provincial park to visit the mangroves, the resident monkeys, and see the Gulf up close and in-person. Our tour-guide also doubled as the security guard and brandished a sling-shot to keep the curious simians at bay. He talked about mangrove ecology, the fact the the Gulf we were seeing was actually high-tide and that the real Gulf technically started 8km to the South (this, by the way, is one of the longest horizontal tide changes in the world) and that when the tide was out clams were harvested from the mudflats by the locals (both humanoid and simian).
Before bidding adieu, he recommended a local restaurant that his wife worked at... Naturally, we stopped there on the way home. It was divine. Mudflat clam curry, a whole fried fish, and a variation of Tom Yum Goong (my fave soup here) that incorporated both local shrimp and crab with local coconut and pumelo juice. I left in a contentment coma. It was the perfect conclusion to a perfectly blissful weekend.
I felt so welcomed by Chalao, his wife and their friends. This was easily the most lovely weekend I have had so far. Every single moment was simply magical.
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