Step Three: Romanticize Public Transportation

Private transport is for lightweights and capitalists. As hip hardcore travellers we have already experienced, most of the time on purpose, public transit at its finest. The BTS sky train in Bangkok is amazingly convenient and fast, if there is a station near to where you want to go. Unfortunately for us, we took it anyway and found ourselves wandering a mini highway for half an hour before reaching the bus station to take us northeast to Pakchong. We also realized pretty quickly that our plan to go through the northeastern Issan province is one that not many non-thais seek out though many Thais vacation here. Think of it as the Muskoka or Mt Tremblant of Thailand. Interestingly enough, with the amount of cowboy themed hotels, steakhouse restaurants and parks, not to mention billboards of the king in saloon-wear, this could be a central canadians dream location. And a hip one at that! Our tour through Khao Yai national park was amazing, a day and a half of bats and monkeys, gibbons, snakes, spiders, scorpions, waterfalls, nature! A much needed oasis after a few days in hectic Bangkok. This was Alyx's introduction to songthaews, speedy and bumpy bench-lined pick up trucks, but since they are common means of public transport around here, we're both obviously pros now.

The train can be a quaint, scenic, economical, some would even say romantic, choice in Thailand. Our ride from Pakchong to Ubon Ratchetani was pretty much that and more, except we missed the first express 5 hour train and ended up leaving 3 hours later on a 3rd class 7+ hour journey sitting on the sunny (read: HOT) side of the train (also read: no Thais were on our side because they knew what took us hours to catch on to), and we didn't bring food with us because someone (Amy) was sure we could easily eat on the train... The scenery was beautiful, don't get us wrong - acres of rice fields and small child monks playing in them create quite a picturesque, if painfully typical, vision of this region of Asia - but it probably would have been just as nice seeing it go by 3 hours quicker. We sure didn't look hip at the end of the day, tired and sweaty, but we made up for it in what is hands down one of the hippest cities this side of the Pacific.

Once we arrived in Ubon we hopped on another songthaew that took us to our guest house for 10 baht. That's like a 30 cent bus ride! The amazing thing about songthaews is that they pick you up and drop you off anywhere along their route. If only such a modification could be made in Canada! Though to be fair sitting on the back of trucks in the dead of winter in Montreal might not go over so well.

Ubon Ratchetani is hawt. There is a beautiful park in the center which is home to an outdoor gym. Last night we enjoyed watching people playing badminton, spinning, doing a salsa dancing class and passing a band of buff bros returning from a workout on the top notch muscle building equipment. There was also a night market where one stall was selling all kinds of shirts adorned with moustaches, and another with long "sailor" print shirts. Now I realize sailor isn't very 'hip' right now, but watch out, because I bet it will be in the next 6 to 8 months! If they've got it in Ubon it's coming to a store near you.

We also enjoyed some delicious food and finally found a stall with a yellow flag, marking  vegetarian food in observation of the current Taoist vegetarian festival. It was uncanny how similar this market was to the Richmond night market, though perhaps with fewer Chinese food stalls or Vancouverites in big glasses and tight jeans. As we sat and ate our food a busker serenaded the crowd with a Classic, Heart of Gold, and we couldn't help but feel as hip and in as could be. With all this excitement we were in bed by 9pm.

Today we are on our way to Khong Chiam, a town outside of another national park where we're stopping to see some 3000 year old cliff paintings...nbd. We're thinking of renting bicycles to make the 40 km trip, but even sitting still in this heat is hard, and it wouldn't surprise if melting was actually possible, so still not sure. One consideration is, of course, that though going out of our way to use inefficient public transport has been awesome, nothing brings one closer to hip enlightenment than the feeling of smooth pneumatic tires between your legs.

a&a