Thailand, all good things must come

...to an end. Enjoy.

July 5 - In this final email Mr. Lee, esteemed guest blogger, kindly cobbles together not only some "best of" tips from his recent adventures in Thailand, but (finally) includes four very excellent photos he took along the way to leave us with these last tasty.....


~assorted bits~

In Ayuthaya the men in green vests are taxi drivers, maybe the only taxi drivers, and their taxis are tiny motorbikes. If you are born riding this way and are small, you will ride gently, gracefully, talking on your phone or perhaps reading the daily news, and if you are female you will even ride side saddle. But I grabbed onto the driver like I was drowning and I didn't let go. I wasn't going to fall off the back of his bike with no helmet, not into traffic. He was mildly perturbed when he dropped me off but I let him overcharge me by a dollar so what the hell.


Of all the Thai massages I had, the one in Ayuthaya was the best. It was pure local style, not for tourists, and I was the only Westerner in the place. Forget about your Swedish massage, Thai massage is communal and social and people chat and talk on the phone and grunt openly with pain and pleasure. There is no oil and you wear the clothing they provide. In my case, this was a comically tiny suit that covered to my knees and elbows, but nobody seemed to care and a couple ladies who were also being massaged asked me if I liked Thai massage and how often I got a massage and I said yes and weekly and they seemed to approve. My masseuse was short and round and his hair was frosted with blond highlights and I'm not judging but I have never been groped quite so vigorously by a man. It was the best and most thorough massage I had in Thailand.



Just outside Khao Yai National Park, Thailand's first but now just one among many, I saw two million bats fly out of a cave at sunset. It took an hour. They streamed out in a twisting column. It was a miracle. It happens every night. And then I walked among them as they fed. The next day, inside the park, I saw gibbons and hornbills and deer and macaques and snakes, poisonous and not, and I saw a sun bear climbing down a fig tree and a spider as big as my hand. It was the start of the rainy season - how much more exotic to call it what it is, the beginning of the monsoon - and the leeches were mustering and I had to wear leech socks which at first I thought were kind of a joke but later came to appreciate mightily. Leeches are surprisingly fast. They stay on the ground and whip around when they sense you coming and attach to your boot and work their way up looking for soft skin. They burrow into folds in the leech socks and wait for opportunity. Some move above the sock cuff, above the knee, onto the pants. They are relentless, they are the zombies of the animal world. Once, I stood off the path and peed onto the forest floor and the leeches came from all sides, inching toward the stream, looking for...food. I stared at the leaf scatter and the dirt and I stared into tiny mouths of hell. I checked my legs for leeches and moved on.

The ticket lady at the Bangkok municipal pier shortchanged me by a buck. I watched her shortchange other tourists while I waited for the riverboat. Later, a really helpful tout claiming to work for the government made me board a tuk tuk and negotiated an actual Thai fare, for which I was grateful, and sent me to "Thai Pier" on the Chao Praya River, the big muddy running through the heart of Bangkok, for an overpriced tour of the river and canals. I declined the river tour and really only got on the tuk tuk because I was tired and hungry and because there would be food sellers by the pier (and truthfully because I just wanted the novelty of paying what a Thai person would pay for a tuk tuk ride).

I found a food in Pak Chong, gateway to Khao Yai National Park, a food which could rival my beloved flan. It is called Kao Neow Sankayah. It is sweet sticky rice made with coconut milk and topped with egg custard and wrapped in a banana leaf. Ok, so it's flan, basically. Ok.



--M. Lee

Big thank you very much, Mr. Lee. Happy Travels.

Sound of one hand clapping.