Chiang Mai

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For some people, the idea of a vacation is booking flights, arranging transporting early to an already reserved hotel and then diving into the mapped out museums, restaurants and other points of interest found weeks in advance in travel books and on the internet. If this is you, you're missing out. I don't mean to sound judgmental, or to tell you that you're going to have an awful time on that trip to Paris you've got itinerized, but you're missing out. Until you've showed up in a city with nothing but a hope to meet the right people and find great things to do, you haven't gotten the full experience of being a traveler. Do it sometime.

We got to Chiang Mai yesterday afternoon and after 17 hours in tight quarters with a bunch of hygiene difficient backpackers, we were ready to shower and do some laundry. Bangkok is sort of a gathering place for all sorts of people who wish really hard they were hippies. The big tourist area is called Khao San Road. You could start at one end of the street looking like a Christian missionary from Princeton and after being tattooed, pierced and installed with long fake dread locks, come out looking like a shiny new hippy. You can really tell those committed to the hippy art of living from those who are backpacking in Asia to see what its like. Most people just want to stick their little toe into the hippy life and get all the pictures taken so they can show them to the future generations and say: "Yeah, when I was a wild child backpacking in Thailand..."

Anyway, we stumbled off the train and not two seconds later were assaulted by a woman I like to call Admiral Jessica. She's sort of the dictator of guest houses in the new part of Chiang Mai. She's a shorter but round woman with round black framed glasses. She putters around town on her little moto scooter just begging for people to sing the wicked witch theme as she passes. There are a lot of places to stay here so the Admiral decided to set up camp right at the exit of the train and start negotiating right there. She weaseled us into her van and had her driver take us to her first guest house. We pull up outside the tallest and thinnest building around. Each floor has 4 rooms and as they lower to the ground they get more expensive. The top floor, the 7th, is shared bathroom with a fan (or what I like to call "hell") for 150 B ($5), then down from that you get your own bathroom...We weren't really feeling this place, so we started to walk away when Admiral Jessica muscled us into the van again. I say muscled because this woman could take me down. I mean it, I'm 6'2 and 190 pounds and I'm still certain this Thai women could make me scream uncle with tears running down my face.

By the time we got to the second guest house, we were so exhausted we gave in. 150 B for a shared bathroom and fan on the second floor. It was cheap, we were desperate. How do these guest houses survive on $5 a night rooms? Upselling. They do your laundry, arrange trips, arrange your future travels ect... For example Jeff was walking out with a bag of our dirty cloths to take them next door when the Admiral caught him and before he could turn around she had taken it, weighed it and was putting it in the soapy water and asking for money. Every time we pass her she drills us on where we're going for the day and what we're doing tommorow. This doesnt sound like such a big thing, but they dont take no for an answer. The constant stream of questions, pamphlets and suggestions is just too much. We half expected to find an itinerary taped to our door this morning with a bill. We finally told her that we're leaving for Laos (which technically we are, just not for a week or so) and we're checking out tommorow.

We are having an amazing time here however. We've just been wandering around the city and have stumbled on some incredible experiences. We met an 65 year-old Thai artist who has galleries in Seattle and around California, but has never left Thailand. His gallery here is signifigantly cheaper and is basically piles of paintings everywhere. We walked past a temple while the monks were meditating and praying and spent three hours with them, including a long talk with the only monk who spoke English. We found a cooking course, which we took today, which was hysterical! We have a video of us learning to make a curry by lighting the pan on fire, we'll get that posted by the next blog. Our instructor took us to the market and explained all the ingredients to us as we bought them. Then we went to the cooking school and learned to make some incredible food. On our way home we past a spa and went in for massages and reflexology. Tonight we're going to the night bazaar and tommorow we leave for a three day elephant trek to the hill tribes.

So, my advice is to spend time wandering on your vacations. You're always bound to find interesting things if you keep your eyes open.

Something interesting we learned from the monk yesterday: "You always striving. If you don't paddle your boat, you don't go far."

Jeff is going to get us thrown in prison

First let me catch you up on the past few days. We've been traveling with these great Canadian girls. Of of them is doing missionary work in northern Thailand and had to go out to a little village to do her training, so we went with her. It was a few hours outside Bangkok, but it was far enough to get out of the tourist industry which was really nice. We stayed the night at the university, which was so cheap and so nice. The next day we all got up and went to the zoo. The zoo in Thailand is a much more hands-on experience. Jeff paid a dollar to dangle a whole chicken on a string over a large pool of crocodiles. Eventually one lept out of the water and snapped the chicken into pieces, almost taking Jeff with it. We held an orangutan, a kangaroo, a bunny...it was really fun and sort of scary. Jeff and I bought a bunch of bananas and fed some elephants too. Big elephants that weren't behind a fence. Huge elephants standing around, hungry, waiting for tourists with bananas to feed them. You could even have the elephants walk over you and tap you on the butt. You've got to know that its only a matter of time until someone gets hurt. There were shows with people putting their heads inside crocs mouths, and pig racing, and tigers jumping through flaming hoops. There were even stands selling deep fried crocodile on a stick. Crocs that didn't do well in the show I suppose.

I'll be honest, the past two days have been kind of hard. Yesterday moning we got up at 6 and caught a rickshaw to the bus station, a bus to Bangkok, a boat up the river, walked to the wrong train station, took a tuk-tuk to the right train station, and hopped on our train to Aranya Prathet at the border of Cambodia just before it pulled away from station. We were too late to get seats on the train, so we were looking forward to 6 hours of standing on a train with no air conditioning. Luckily, we fell upon some seats early in the trip and claimed them until we arrived. The train was hot, muggy, and full of strange smelling food. We bought a bamboo stick filled with sticky rice finally because we were starving. Our train was two hours late and by the time we got to Aranya Prathet at the border of Thailand, the border was closed, so we found a place to stay for the night. We stayed in a cement building above a garage, on the fourth floor. Its wasn't a bad room for $4. We had our own bathroom with a squatter and sink and a ceiling fan (a major plus.)

This morning we got up early (again) to head over to the border crossing before the lines started. We made it to the border at around 7 and started the ugly process of getting out of Thailand and then into Cambodia. When we finally got everyone on the Thailand side happy, we crossed the big bridge into Cambodia. Now, we had heard that Cambodian immigration officers are a pain to work with, but come on. Jeff had got himself all worked up to stand his ground about how much he would pay for a visa, so we walked up to the counter ready to argue if necessary. After only a few moments Jeff and the officer behind the counter were in a heated argument. The officer wanted Baht only which we didn't have enough of and so we were being told that we had to go back to Thailand, exchange money, and then try to immigrate again. Caboom. I'm not quite sure when Jeff got used to being a traveler, but he definately is now. The argument was in full swing at this point with me standing in the middle. Finally the officer offered $25 for each visa, only $5 over what the sign right above his head was asking for. I threw the money and passports down and pulled Jeff away from the counter.

Today we had our first taste of Angkor Wat. I've been dying to visit this place since I was living in China. Its the largest religious builing in the world and was built between 800-1100 A.D. There are hundreds of temples in the area as it was one of the largest empires of the time. The population was over a million at the time when London only had about 50,000. The temples were in poor shape until the early 1900's when a team from France started to restore them. They managed to stop the jungle from breaking some of the temples apart when the civil war stopped their efforts. So now its like an Indiana Jones playland, but for real. We paid a tuk-tuk driver about $8 to drive us around for the day. Jeff is planning a blog to talk more about the temples, so I'll leave that and the pictures to him.

This is my last plea to email us. Its nice to hear from home.

The Great Bangkok Tuk-Tuk Scam

So, we had our first real scam pulled on us yesterday, but came out pretty much unscathed, except for the blisters on our feet.

We're been traveling with two Canadian girls we met on Koh Tao island (who are a total riot I might add). So we wake up on our first morning in Bangkok to go hit the city and we wander out in the street to figure out where we are. Almost immediately a very friendly man walks up and asks us who we are and where we're from. When we tell him that we're going to the Koa San Rd market, he informs us that its closed for the morning, but he can tell us where to go until then. He makes quick friends with us and has us pull out our map, which he writes all over and tells us where he thinks we should go. Then just moments later, his friend in his tuk-tuk pulls up and we all crowd in. At this point, we're having a GREAT time! We paid about .30 cents each to spend the whole morning going to temples and seeing Buddhas. Perfect.
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We pull up to our first stop, which is a suit shop. We get ushered in and a bunch of really pushy guys try to sell us really over priced suits. We turn them down politely and get back into our tuk-tuk for our second stop, a travel agency. Again, over priced travel. By this time we've already started to figure there weren't going to be a lot of Buddhas in our morning. Back in the tuk-tuk and to another suit shop. This time though, the driver pulls over and sits us down for a little talk. He says that if we stay in the suit shop for at least about 20 mins, then he will get a gas card from the store he takes us to which will really help him out. Now, we're nice people. We're in for a good bit of fun to help someone out. So we go in there and put on the best show ever! We're trying things on, we're acting interested, we're pretending our pockets are just exploding wish cash to spend on tailored suits. After 30 mins, our performance is over and we start to head out, at which point the store owners get angry. They start yelling at us that we're waisting their time and telling us that we're too poor to afford their suits anyway. Shamefully, we get back in our tuk-tuk.

We were done playing. So we told our driver we just wanted to go see some stuff. He was obviously a little upset, but said he would take us to see a famous Buddha the most lucky one in Bangkok. He said it didn't matter that it wasn't in our travel book, because it was generally unknown. It was a little far away, we were driving for quite some time, but sure enough we ended up in front of a little temple area. We hopped out and headed in to check things out. Now, I've been to some amazing temples in my life and then I've been to some small ones. This one was nothing all that incredible. Yeah, buddha was there, but come one.

When we walked out to get back in...our tuk-tuk had taken off. He drove us far out of the way and dropped us far away from the tourist track. Luckily, we're still in good spirits. We laugh about the whole thing and pull out the book to try and salvage what we can of our day. 3 buses, $10 and 4 hours later we had made it back to downtown. We ended up walking for much of that time and didn't end up back at our hostel until 10:30 pm.

Bruised and tired, we rubbed tiger balm on our foot sores and went to bed.

On the good side, we did find the biggest market in Bangkok and did some great gift shopping.

Our Room Came with Pets

Its hard to keep a travel blog up to date. Every day so many things happen that you wish you could share with someone. Like yesterday

So I've decided to just type up a few sections right from the pages of my journal to kind of get caught up. I've added some photos too, finally.Check out the album to see the photos.

5.9.07 In the Taman Negara Rainforest

"The jungle on this side of the river is much thicker. We saw a few monitor lizards and a monkey while hiking. After a few hours we came around a bend and ran into the Orang Asli village, the aboriginees in the area. They didn't really seem thrilled to see us. The women had large afro like heads of hair, each with several combs tacking parts down. A little naked girl ran around a corner and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw us. This seemed to send up a red flare to people around who all immediately turned to stare at us. Awkward. A man finally said that we could walk around the village if we wanted, so we headed in. All the people were wearing half tribal wear and half Nike t-shirts. We walked past a hut with a girl standing out front in a pink flowery dress with puffy sleeves. Something I might have seen at church in the 80's. Just then I realized that I was looking at all the D.I. Commercials I've ever seen. "Even small donations bless Malaysia" I thought. True, its less catchy, but it was standing right there in front of me. When we started to go, the man approached us again and said that we could take pictures if we wanted for 5 ringgit (about $2). We had snapped some photos of a hut, so we paid him but declined having anyone pose. The magic illusion of a bunch of people fairly unharmed by technology and the outside world was gone. They were working the tourists! Good for them I suppose."

5.10.07 Kuala Tahan

"We're sitting in our new hostel, just as cheap as the first night, but at least twice as worse. The mattress pads and pillows are stained with some scary looking colors that make us bless the heavens we have our sleep sacks.We used the internet today in someone's house. Right across from our hostel there was a big sign that said internet. We walked over and were met outside by a girl who asked us to take off our shoes. She led us through their living room to a back room with a few computers inside."

5.13.07 Kecil Island

"We are in Paradise. Paradise with a capitol P. We have a private bungalo on the beach, we take all of our meals right in the sand, our laundry is done for us, we're eating the best fresh fruit picked from right behind our villa, and we went snorkeling with sharks and giant sea turtles today. Amazing.

There are cats everywhere here. When we got to our room, there was a cat waiting for us on our balcony. It just lounges all day long and never seems to leave. We're not sure how it eats or drinks, but it has taken on the general persona of the people here, ULTRA laid back."

5.15.07

"Jeff and I have started playing a game. You know you're in Malaysia when...and filling in the blank. Here are some that we're come up with thus far:
...The word chicken describes a wide variety of meat including goat and cat.
...You're hotel room always comes with an animal.
...The only bugs that bother you are the ones that are bigger than your hand.
...Animals you normally just see at the zoo are crawling across your shoes, stealing your food and flinging poo at you."

Well, I only have a little bit of time, I hope to get better at this so I can keep everyone updated. Please email us or comment on here and we'll get it.

Less Traveled Road

The road less traveled sucks

And what is the road less traveled anyway? Someone once said that the road less traveled is just a trick of retrospect. That no matter what you choose its going to be a beautiful life. Thats great and all, but I have a hard time buying into it. When the two roads are staring you down waiting for a decision, its hard not to think that one of the roads might end in at a nuclear waste site (like the one's just approved by the legislature and the Governor didn't veto or sign, he just let the bill pass into law. Coward.) Except that both my roads probably end up waiting tables for the rest of my life.

Being an actor is no fansy-pants strut down the yellow brick road. If you hate applying for a job once every few years (if that) then try having to audition for a new job every six months. You have 90 seconds to prove yourself, and even if you're talented you might be too fat, too tall, or not attractive enough. And sometimes they just tell you that. So when you applaud at the end of a show, remember that you're applauding away all the rejection that someone went through to end up finally getting a part.

I made a big decision this week. I got about 14 offers from companies for work this summer. I know, woe is me, I have to pick which job offer sounds the best. It was a pretty broad spectrum too. One offer was to be the back-up singer in a touring Hank Williams tribute band, one for a milkman, a roman soldier, a history teacher...the list goes on. The most popular show for the summer is definately Thoroughly Modern Millie. I got three offers for Jimmy and one for Trevor. Oddly enough, the highest paying contract was to be a clogger in an outdoor variety musical in the middle of no where.

I narrowed it down to two choices and then got really sick about them.

I know the road less traveled ok. I'm a road less traveled kind of guy. I moved to France by myself when I was 16. I take jobs that don't pay well because I love the work. I make choices that might seem drastic because I know that they're right. I live my life out of the box. At least I try to.

That's faith for you, I guess. Close your eyes and just make the best decision you can. Trust that its going to work out for you.

So, I took the contract at Tuacahn playing Freddy in My Fair Lady and understudying the Prince in Cinderella and Billy in 42nd Street. I'll take my Actor's Equity card at the end of the fall.

Maybe you can't see the road less traveled sometimes because you're on it.