The next day we really didn’t do anything besides sit on the beach. We sat on the beach and we read, we sat on the beach and dried, and we sat in the water, that was about it. Since there’s not much to talk about about what we did I want to focus a little on some interesting observations about Thailand. Thai people seem pretty laid back in general. Maybe it’s a tropical climate thing, but no one seemed too rushed, this is especially noticeable when coming from China whose main export is hurrying. The Thai do share some things with the Chinese despite, or because of, being darker skin than the more northern Asians they still use skin whitening cream, and most of the girls in the ads seen barely Asian. If KFC is the national store of China 7-11 made its homes squarely in Thailand. It’s possible to go into a 7-11 and get a Slurpy and by the time you’ve drunk it be standing at another 7-11. Maybe the only thing to distinguished Thai 7-11’s from their American counterparts is the greater liquor selection.
Haggling is omnipresent in Thailand. Even sometimes when you get into a metered cab you’ll end up having to haggle with the driver. That touts are also present in much stronger force than I’ve seen in China, maybe because tourism makes up such a large part of the economy in Thailand. Thailand has all that tourism for good reason, it’s just riddled with spectacular beaches. Pretty much anywhere there is coastline, and going all the way down to Malaysia there’s a lot of coastline, there are great beaches, especially just offshore on all the islands. The bus system in the country is really good also so getting to those beaches isn’t a problem.
Our beach was pretty long, the island actually had far more coastline where the jungle just came down to the water than beaches. A number of hotels were situated right along the beach and I rented a chair for the whole day for about $1. There were a few young people on the beach but mostly besides us it was just old European tourists. The water was amazingly clear and when the sun was out turned almost translucent blue. The beach had an incredibly gradual slope so I could wade out and get more than 50m offshore before I had to swim. There were no real waves to speak of and while I’ve seen beaches with warmer water before they’re pretty few and far between.Later in the day Peter, Sean and Sarah decided to rent motorbikes and tour around the island a little. My response given that none of them had ever driven one of those things, and that the roads on the island twisted up and down hills enough that we once even saw a local slide and fall off their moto was to ask them what music they wanted played at their funeral. Sean wanted “Only the Good Die Young.” They did make it back OK, as is evidenced by the fact that as you are reading this more than a month has passed since the day in question and you surely would have heard about one of my friends dying in Thailand, so we went to dinner.
The place we wound up that had a nice mix of American and Thai food, pretty common in tourist places, including some of the better egg rolls I’ve had in Thailand. When I first came to China the one food I hoped that they really ate was egg rolls, and I’ve never really got over my disappointment that they don’t, so on this vacation I tried to eat egg rolls with every meal. The restaurant was really great though for its cover band who thankfully didn’t interpret playing for the dinner crowd as one step away from Madison Square Garden and weren’t too loud. The band did good covers a pretty much every classic 60’s and 70’s song from John Lennon’s “Imagine” to Johnny Cash’s “Cotton Fields.” They had pretty heavily accented English but they played with a lot of heart, changing up the songs enough to make their unusual voices work with it. At one point a few people even got up and danced. I’ve been wondering why it is that I listen to my parents’ generation’s music but they didn’t listen to their parent’s music much. Is it that people today are more accepting of a wider variety of music, or was there just something uniquely better about 60’s music? Will the next generation go back and listen to Nirvana or will we all still be listening to “Hey Jude?”P.S.
Finally got some photos up both here and on Flickr
2 comments:
First of all, yes -- there was something uniquely better about 60s music. It's a fact. Second, I want to sit on that beach and rent a chair for a dollar a day. Now.
You don't remember -- or maybe don't realize -- how many show tunes and Sinatra songs and Cole Porter standards I know from listening to the radio with my mom. Or how many opera tunes pop in my head because my father every saturday used to put a stack of them on the record player, which had an automatic record changer After one album ended, another would plop down on top of it. Terrible for the records--they'd get scratched-- but easier to listen while sitting on an easy chair.
I also remember my school music teacher-- must have been junior high school-- saying the Beatles would never last. Not tuneful enough. It really was like that back then.
Post a Comment