No Country For Tall Men

It's a short man's world out there, and I've got the divots in my head to prove it. 30 days in Thailand has only cemented the fact that people over 5'10" are not normally given the kind of consideration we deserve, and bathrooms, hostels, restaurants and nearly anywhere there's a doorway can be a treacherous place.

Yep, my month vacation in Thailand has come to an end, and it was a wonderful and exciting time that I'm sad to see go, yet it feels good to be back home in Korea where things are a little more stable.
Besides all the whacking of my head, I also contracted food poisoning twice, so it has been very refreshing to sit on my couch or bed after a long hot shower and not have to worry about doing activities or catching buses any time soon.

To recap the last month, Shannon and I spent 29 days in Thailand, 13 days in the south and 15 up north.
I know that only equals 28, but traveling ate up at least one day, perhaps even two. In the south, we went to Tonsai/Railay, where we rock-climbed and relaxed for 8 days solid. I had my first incident of food poisoning there, which kept us a day or two longer than we wanted, but it's about the most beautiful place in the world to be stuck at.

Our next stop was in Koh Pi Pi. This was another mega-beautiful tourist destination, where we went scuba diving and then spent a night camping on the beach where that late '90's movie, "The Beach" was filmed. Looking back, I realize that both Tonsai and Koh Pi Pi were incredibly tourist dominated remote locations, with no locals living there that weren't there to make money in tourism.
Foreigners, or "farangs" outnumbered Thais by as much as 5-1, and while we did get to experience the geography of Thailand, there really wasn't as much Thai culture to be found with so many foreigners muddling about.
Still, it was an amazing, magnificent time, and if nothing else, we got to see a 5 or 6 metre whale shark while scuba diving, which definitely had my eyes bugging out of my skull.


The north was much more varied, and I enjoyed it in an entirely different way than the south. Instead of beaches and rock climbing, we had mountains and hiking; most of our stops were only for 2 or 3 nights, and we covered an incredible amount of distance by bus, foot and bicycle.


In Tham Lod, our first major stop, we went caving. I never thought much for caving, but I certainly do enjoy it more now. Our first 7 hour hike took us through three caves, one lengthy deep one with vertebrate fossils in the back, one with 2000 year-old Thai coffins, and another that was a tiny stream cave. The stream cave was something I never imagined doing, and probably wouldn't have if I had stopped to think about it before crawling in.
For most of the 25 minutes going into this cave, you had to crawl on your hands and knees, sometimes even flat on your belly, through a small stream and it's muck to get along the cave. It was only wide enough for one person, and it terminated with a 20 meter waterfall where 5 years ago a Dutch person had fallen to his death. The cave was so small and awkward, it took two days to find a way to get the Dutchman's body out.

The second caving trip we did was a kayak tour through a massive cave filled with birds and bats. The bat poop was several centimeters thick on the ground, and gave off an incredible odour that wasn't terrible, but not at all pleasant either.

After Tham Lod, we went to Mae Hong Son to hike through the mountains. There's many different tours, packages and means to go hiking in Thailand's hills, and we wanted to do it in a way that exploited the people and animals of Thailand the least. One of the tribes living in Thailand are the "long-neck" tribes you may have heard of. Women generally in these tribes will put those metal rings around their necks, extending them over time as a beautification things. Well, at first we thought, "wow, how neat, a cultural event we should probably see." Well, that's not really what it is. See, these people are historically Burmese refugees who have fled Burma and now have started being exhibited in Thailand for the "neat" way they decorate themselves. The neck decorations they do probably would be gone by now, but the people are kept in small villages just off the main road so foreigners can pay $10 to go have a look at them. It's kind of like a human zoo, and while plenty of travel offices/writers seem to think it's okay, every local we talked to and newspaper we read said it was a sad example of exploitation of people in need of help and money.

So, our hike went through more traditional, less exploited villages from other people more closely linked to rebel soldiers than human zoo colonies. We hiked for 5 or 6 hours every day and would spend our nights sleeping in big bamboo huts, raised off the ground. Pigs, dogs, chickens and cows strolled around the huts, and the entire human population of these villages never was more than 10 or 12, and the fist night it was only 2. The second of our three days hiking, we crawled into another cave, which I know distinguish from the others by the animals lurking inside. Our guides, who knew what they were getting into, brought sticks with them to keep any trouble away, which at fist I may have thought was the bats. This cave, being much smaller than the previous caves with bats, had bats flying only a few feet from our heads (or into our guides head at one small point). But, it was the snakes that had everyone on edge by the end - poisonous cave snakes, which I was told will kill you, live in the caves around there, and we came across two of them. One stopped us from going any further, and the second was a good sign for us to get the heck out of the cave ASAP.

Our final event from the north was the self guided bike tour Shannon and I did. This probably would have been one of the highlights of the north if we didn't both get food poisoning again only 60 km into the trip. We spent the next two days and 100+ km struggling to make it to our next destination, ignoring all the beautiful scenery and side trips we could along the way. By the time we got back to the finish in Chiang Mai, I was ready to denounce any and all forms of physical activity for the next few years of my life. In the end, it took only a few more days to get my back on my feet feeling good, but by the time a few more days rolled around, I was in Korea again.

(I'll have a few more pics to add soon, I couldn't get them all of the camera in time for this week.)

And so, tomorrow is Monday, which means I'm back to work at school. I'm not dreading it as much as I thought I would be, but I'm not terribly excited either. I know I'll probably not teach any classes, and spend most of the day on the computer or studying Korea, then have a moderately fun dinner out with all my teachers, full of strange food that even after 18 months I still can't identify it's origins. It does feel very good being back in Korea though - after so much time being sick in Thailand, the familiar foods and feelings, sounds and smells, it all makes me feel quite strong and healthy again. I even ate two big chunks of kimchi (pickled spicy cabbage) at dinner last night and enjoyed it intensely. I may make a Korean out of myself yet.