Thailand ... Yeeaaaahh.

One of my roommates from school (Alonzo) is spending a few months in Thailand climbing, and, because my school gets a few weeks off for Christmas, I'm going to meet and climb and catch up. He was planning on meeting me in the airport, and we had formulated vague ideas about meeting next to any columns with 'A' or '1' on them, for lack of a better landmark. So when I made it through customs I was a little concerned about actually meeting up, but as I was walking past lines of people Alonzo stepped up beside me. Then commenced a festival of hugging. At first we hugged cause it was good to see each other. Then we hugged because Brian (another roommate) had asked me to give Alonzo a hug for him. Then we hugged again because Brian had also asked me to tell Alonzo to give me a hug for Brian. Then we hugged again, just for good meAsure. Then we headed to the hotel.

After breakfast the next day we caught a bus to the train station. Here is such a contrast from Taiwan. There you can scan a magnetic card to pay for the trip, and the buses have TV's on them, and doors that open and close. The buses here have wooden floors, and the no real doors and a woman that comes around to collect the change for the bus fare. And our bus driver was wearing a pair of really dirty flip flops and his toes were about 3-4 inches long.

Anyway, we made it to the train station OK and we got tickets on the next train to Chaing Mai. It didn't leave until 2:30 in the afternoon, so we killed some time and tried to find a place where I could withdraw some money. We didn't find one so we went back to the train station, and put our stuff down. I went to make some more rounds on different ATM's and when I came back Alonzo had made a new friend. Or a new friend had made Alonzo. A middle aged Thai woman (with poor English) was trying to communicate. She seemed like a scammer but, I wasn't quite sure what her scam was, so I talked to her some too. She also had a ticket on the 2:30 train to Chaing Mai, which was a little dubious, but after talking to her for a few minutes, we grabbed out bags and went to get on the train. After I put my backpack in the rack above the seats, I went to get out my book, and found out that my tube of toothpaste had busted open, and green apple toothpaste exploded everywhere. I was disappointed and I cleaned my book off, but decided to wait until later to clean up the rest of it. Alonzo and I had the seats at the beginning of the row, and just as we started to sit down a man came around, and turned our seats to face the ones behind us. I thought this might be a little awkward, because then we would be staring at the people in front of us for a lot of the 12 hour ride, but then the man turned those seats too, so now Alonzo and I were sitting in the back of the car instead of the front.

The train ride wasn't too fast and was a good opportunity to see the countryside. It also provided a good opportunity to try real Thai food because people were walking past pretty regularly. And they walked past about a dozen times, so you could really scope out what it was first, and decide whether or not you wanted any. We ended up getting something that I thought was noodles, in part because a middle eastern guy across the isle got some too giving Alonzo and I a good opportunity. So we got some. It looked like fiber glass, and was a little scary to eat, but it was made from sugar cane, and tasted like cotton candy. It was pretty good, and we talked with the middle eastern man some. Later on we saw the crazy woman coming towards us on the train, and we pretended to be asleep until she walked past, but she outsmarted us and came right back after we stopped pretending so, we had to talk to her.

It got a little weird when she started leaning on my knee to support her as she sat down in the isle. It still wasn't clear what she wanted, but I wasn't cool with her using my leg as a backrest, and my thigh as an armrest, so I started to ignore her and try to read. Then I made an ass out of myself. Because I was ignoring her the woman shifted her attention to the middle eastern man beside me, and started haranguing him. I thought I should offer some friendly advice, so I said maybe if he said something in Arabic she might get confused a leave. My assumption he spoke Arabic wasn't completely baseless. I had seen him reading a Lonely Planet guidebook earlier, and it looked like Arabic. He'd also been talking to the girl beside him in what sounded like Arabic. Even though my assumtion had some basis it proved to be completely false. After I gave him my little tidbit of advice, he smiled and said he didn't speak Arabic. So I felt like a jackass, but he was really friendly about it. I made some excuses, and went back to reading. The woman ended up leaving, and Alonzo introduced himself. The couple was actually from Israel, and they had been reading and speaking Hebrew. They were really nice, and gave us some fruit.

After a while it got dark, and we couldn't look at the scenery anymore, so we went to sleep. It got really cold on the train and I pulled out my blanket, and Alonzo and I huddled together for warmth. The train got in at a little after five in the morning, and Alonzo and I caught a 'tuk-tuk' to a guesthouse called 'Same-Same'. Thai people have their own sort of English, and one of the common expressions is 'same-same'. I don't know why they say it twice, but they almost always do. Anyway, we made it to the guesthouse ok, but it was still only 6 in the morning, so we just loitered around out front. I tried to clean the toothpaste out of my bag, but it didn't work to well.