Sweat was oozing out of his pores when Philipp Meier arrived at Koh Chang, an island in southern Thailand. The peace and quiet, however, promised to be the perfect antidote after the tourist hustle and bustle of nearby Koh Phayam.
All tagged Thailand
Not All Who Wander Are Lost, But Most Are.
Richard Collins was at a low point in his life when friends decided he needed a night out at Healing House, a performance art center in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He arrived feeling resistant and awkward, but like life often does when you are at rock bottom; the experience surprised him.
Thailand is renowned for having some of the world’s best prostitutes.
It also has some of the scariest.
My first order of business upon arriving in Bangkok was an early morning trek to the Damnernsaduak Floating Market, a 90 minute drive south of town in light traffic, and one of the most fascinating places I’ve ever been.
The Damnernsaduak Floating Market is a series of canals lined by rickety wooden stalls selling all manner of goods, from tacky tourist items to local art and sculptures. You can purchase exotic spices and oils, native clothing, a vast array of fresh fruits, and even play with snakes.
When you arrive at Damnernsaduak you hire one of the long-tailed wooden boats to guide you through the markets. A 2-hour tour is around 300 Bhat (about $9), and the boatman will just float along past shops til one peaks your interest and you ask him to pull up alongside. There are also numerous merchants in other boats selling fresh fruits, meats, or cool drinks. They’ll pull up beside your boat to pour you hot tea, show off their fruits, or describe (always in a language I don’t understand) what their meat on the stick is and why you must buy it.
In the middle of the market is a non-descript shack that at first glance appears to be selling nothing. There are a couple of guys lounging in chairs enjoying a smoke. Upon closer inspection you discover that the men are draped in huge snakes, and are all too eager to show them off to interested tourists.
I can’t resist bad decisions like this, so of course I stopped.
by Don Mankin
It’s Colts 13, Houston 0 as the half winds down. My wife and I are watching Peyton Manning lead the Colts to yet another NFL victory on a big flat screen TV. Nothing strange about this, except it's Wednesday afternoon and we are sitting in the lobby of the Dental Hospital in the heart of one of the poshest districts in Bangkok. Like many other cash-strapped seniors, we are dipping our toes into the wave of the future with our first adventure in medical/dental tourism.
This is not my first dental experience in Thailand. In the late 1990s, on a flight to Thailand for a business trip, I cracked a temporary bridge eating some nuts. It didn’t hurt and wasn’t much of a problem at first, but as I talked and chewed, the sharp edge of the broken bridge jabbed into my tongue. The easy solution – don’t eat or talk for two weeks -- was not an option, so the first thing I did upon landing in Chiang Mai was to ask my colleague who met me at the airport to recommend a dentist.
The dentist office did not look promising. It was dark and dingy with equipment I hadn’t seen in years. The possibility of pain was the least of my worries, though. It was at the height of concern about the spread of AIDS throughout SE Asia, and I wasn’t at all sure that I wouldn’t get the disease from this hapless dental adventure. My heart started pounding and I broke out into a sweat. “Should I leave and risk looking like a wimp and insulting my colleague,” I asked myself, “or should I stay and risk pain and death?” The risk of embarrassment won out over the risk of pain and death, as it usually does for me.
As the dentist lowered my chair to get a better look, I gulped, or at least the closest thing to a gulp given the wad of cotton in my mouth. I caught a glimpse of my colleague in the waiting room smiling and waving to me as if I had nothing to fear. In just a few seconds I realized that he was right.