I'm moving to Thailand

Beautiful, delicious, cheap – what’s not to love?

It was quite a refreshing change from India – symbolized by all the trouble I had on the India side before leaving and then how shockingly smoothly everything went once I reached Thailand. So first of all, my taxi to the Delhi airport ended up somehow being more expensive than normal, even on the meter, and I didn’t have enough cash. Thankfully, the driver was OK with me being 50 rupees short. Or maybe he was saying OK to the idea of me going inside and getting more money from the ATM. We couldn’t really communicate. In any case, once I went in the airport, I wasn’t coming back out. Air Asia specifically instructed me (via multiple emails and text messages) that it was not possible to check in at the airport – that I had to check in online first and print out my boarding pass. But India apparently has different rules, they would later explain to me, after I had spent forever waiting in line at security only to be told that I had to go back and get a different boarding pass and have all the Air Asia staff act like it was the end of the world that I was so late to check in, but I got to the gate just before they started boarding. I landed in Bangkok at 5 am, and my colleague buddy Anita arrived at the same time from Hyderabad. Thank goodness we were on time because we had created our own connecting flight (NEVER bodes well for me) from Bangkok down south to Suratthani. The whole connecting process was a breeze – you don’t need visas for Thailand and my previously printed web boarding passes worked fine once in Thailand. Once we landed in Suratthani after a 1-hr flight, we just missed our bus to the pier after getting distracted by steamed buns in the airport, but luckily got a shuttle to the bus station where we could also catch a bus to the pier. The bus took 1 hour, then the ferry took 1.5 hours to get to the lovely island of Koh Samui.

There were supposed to be four of us on the trip down to the islands, but Monica (Anita’s friend) and Sree (Monica’s friend) arrived in Bangkok a few days earlier and ran into lots of challenges trying to book transport down south, so they stayed in a beach resort town closer to Bangkok. They had heard that there were terrible storms down in Koh Samui, and Anita and I had been beginning to reconsider looking at the weather reports ourselves, but in the end we were not able to refund our flights from Bangkok to the islands so we just went with it.

We were so grateful that we had! It was beautiful and calm on the beaches we visited over our three days in the islands, with short periods of rain (that actually made the beach look really pretty as well) but bright overcast or sun in between. On Koh Samui that Thursday, we arrived at the pier and took a song-thaew (common mode of public transpo – pickup truck with two benches set up in the back) to our bungalow resort on lovely Thong Ta Kien beach. We ate some yummy fresh shellfish and pad thai on the beach, then hung out in the warm, amazingly clear water until it was time to wash up and make our way to the busy Chaweng Beach for a feast of grilled seafood and ribs!

The next morning, after a breakfast of Thai rice soup with seafood, we got back on the beach for a little while before catching a boat over to the neighboring island of Koh Phangan. We hopped on a shuttle to our hillside resort on another peaceful, secluded beach called Haad Salad. As the sun went down, we walked along the beach and picked a restaurant where we could order delicious steamed fish and actually lie down at our tables on triangle mats! The perfect after-dinner treat was a stop at one of the many beach-side massage stations – this one open until midnight – where you can get Thai massages (where they bend and pull your limbs around, but it feels great) and coconut oil massages (amazing – they make you smell like a macaroon hot out of the oven) at $10/hour!

Saturday, we spent some time on the lovely beach, bathing in the sun and the clear, shallow water (so clear that you don’t need to snorkel to see all the tropical fish swimming around you – making sure not to step on the sea cucumbers or urchins!), and of course catching another awesome massage. In the afternoon, we caught a ride over to Thong Sala by the ferry pier, where Anita could get in a little shopping and I could get a private Muay Thai (Thai boxing) lesson! It’s probably the most exercise I’ve gotten all summer, but it was so much fun! I wish I had time to get back in the water after that workout, but it was time to catch a 2-hour ferry followed by a 1.5-hour bus and songthaew back to Suratthani train station. After dining on some street food, we realized we’d have to hang out at the train station for a few hours as our midnight train heading to Bangkok was delayed 2.5 hours. Once we finally boarded, we were happy to find that the sleeper trains were super comfortable – with spacious beds for each of us, fluffy pillows, clean sheets, and a curtain for privacy. Monica and Sree had arrived back in Bangkok the day before, but sadly our train took 12 hours to get to Bangkok instead of the scheduled 10, so we just missed Sree before she had to get on her Sunday afternoon flight back to India. Anita and I met Monica at the lovely Radisson (arranged for us by Anita’s friend that works for them) and soon headed out for the exciting and overwhelming maze of funky designer boutiques, craft and art shops, and food vendors of Chatuchuk Weekend Market. Once night fell, we went back to the hotel to get glammed up and head out for the Vertigo Skybar on the roof of the Banyan Tree Hotel for dinner and drinks to celebrate Anita’s birthday!

Monica left Bangkok early Monday morning to return to India. Anita and I set out to see a bit of Bangkok sights, catching a ferry to Wat Arun and Wat Pho along the chocolate milk-colored and surprisingly squally Chao Phraya River. Wat Arun is the Buddhist ‘temple of the dawn,’ covered in colorful sculptures and (very) steep staircases to the top. On the other side of the river, the Wat Pho temple houses a giant, golden, reclining Buddha! The more popular Wat Phra Kaew of the ‘Emerald Buddha’ next door was sadly closed that day for prayers, so Anita and I jumped in a tuk-tuk just as the monsoon thunderstorm hit and – at the instruction of the ‘tourist police’ - ventured over to a small temple housing the white stone Buddha. After our tuk-tuk took us to a gemstone export store, we decided to ditch the tuk-tuk and hop in a cab to massive MBK center for a trip to the Thai food court and a very quick runaround through the bustling indoor market before we had to run to the airport to catch our flights back to Delhi.

Leaving Thailand, I knew that I could have easily spent a few more days… or better yet weeks… exploring the country. People visit and leave Thailand with mixed reviews, but I absolutely loved it. Clean, tropical, inviting, inexpensive, tourist-friendly (which is sometimes synonymous with the blatant sex tourism business in Bangkok – that Indian man giving me the ‘come hither’ wave as I passed in a cab may or may not have been asking for directions – though still didn’t ruin the charm of Thailand for me), with the most delicious food and countless gorgeous places to visit on land and at sea. Anita and I were so blessed to have made it safely and smoothly down to the islands and gotten such unexpectedly lovely weather. And we didn’t take it for granted – we constantly reminded each other of how lucky we were. Even when we weren’t so lucky (5-hour train delays, monsoon storms), we were still just so happy to be in Thailand.

I can’t wait to go back to Thailand (and really Southeast Asia in general) someday and do more exploring!

Now I just have 1 fleeting week left in India before it is time to end my summer here. It’s time to check off the little to-do list and wrap up my work, sighhh. I will spend my last weekend in Jhabua, in the field, visiting Fabian’s school, and being close to some of the villages in which our nutrition project – which has sadly not come to initially scheduled fruition due to government delays (but we are still optimistic that we are on the right track and will roll it out very soon!) – will take place.

Final post coming soon!

:)