Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

I was flipping the calendar from January to February the other day and paused to reflect on the month. Starting with the new year, I try to write one sentence highlights for every day of the month. Its kinda fun to look back and read "wanted to strangle my 3/3 students today". What fond memories. I looked at January 3rd and it read: Planes trains and automobiles. This wasn't a comment on the John Hughes movie, but rather an entire day of travel from Phuket to Thawangpha. It surpassed 24 hours, and I explored nearly every mode of transportation (except the toboggan). Here's the full story.

Saturday, January 2nd

6:45 am - My last night of vacation. I spent it with a Canadian, an Irishman, a Brit, and a "Michigander". I wikipedia'ed it, Michigander is the preferred nomenclature. No craziness to report on this particular night. Just a pleasant end to an unforgettable vacation. My crew spent our last night walking around "the strip" people watching in Patong, Phuket. Patong could be described as the seedy underbelly of Phuket. Lots of bars, lots of ping pong show offers (use your imagination), and lots of suit tailors relentlessly begging you to buy a suit, in broken English. While walking the strip, I soon felt numb to the frenzy of activity that surrounded me. Neon lights, food vendors, sex solicitation, strippers, street performers... After 20 minutes its all white noise. What DID catch my eye was a stump. A typical stump like you'd see on a BLAMO commercial on Ren & Stimpy. Sticking out of the log was an upright nail, and a hammer right there next to it. Pounding this nail was more tempting than popping bubble paper. To reference Ren & Stimpy yet again, it was like the shiny red button, irresistible (I hope SOMEONE has seen this show). Folks from the UK like darts and billiard games, Japanese like karaoke, but it seems that Thai people are big supporters of getting liquored up and pounding crap with hammers. I like Thailand.

At the end of the night I headed back to the guesthouse where I shared a room with Al the Irishman. We both had to wake up early for a flight to Chiang Mai in the morning.

Sunday, January 3rd

7:15 - Caught a cab to airport.
Transportation: Honda Civic taxi cab.

10:00 - Flight from Phuket to Chiang Mai.
Transportation: Air Asia, Boeing 737.

12:30 pm - Chiang Mai airport to Tha Pae Gate for lunch, coffee and used books.

Transportation: Tuk Tuk. 2:15 - Catch a ride from Tha Pae Gate (downtown) to the Chiang Mai Bus Station.

Transportation: Songthaew.

3:00 - Bus ride from Chiang Mai to Nan.
Transportation: Mercedes, commercial bus. Air Conditioned, first class. Complimentary water and cookies, but no blanket. This leg of the trip lasted 6 hours. I remember finishing slaughterhouse 5. Vonnegut's major work.
9:00 - Nan Bus Station to the "Princeton House".

This was a long 6-hour ride. And although I didn't really exert myself sitting down reading, I was still exhausted as a result. When the bus rolled into the Nan station, the sun had long since set. I checked the time as I peeled my sweaty back off of the seat. The time was 9pm and I had been traveling for over 13 hours. Unfortunately, for your narrator's sake, the Thailand busing schedule did not allow for a quick departure home that night. To briefly explain, Thawangpha is a sleepy little farming town. Anyone with a vague understanding of how supply and demand works could tell you that it wouldn't make economic sense for a bus company to offer their services to a place incapable of matching or surpassing the the basic costs of operation (labor, fuel, maintenance). Naturally, the last bus passing through Thawangpha runs at 5:00pm. Which is pretty much when businesses in town close down for the night. Well aware of all this, Tyler and I (John Candy and Steve Martin), got off the bus and called up the Nan girls for a place to stay for the night. The Nan girls are 4 young American teachers, like ourselves, that we have become friends with during the past few months. They have been teaching Thai elementary kids through the Princeton Fellowship program pretty much right after their graduation last June. This is where we'd crash for the night.

Back to the story... We got off the bus, and I'm grouchy (Steve Martin), mumbling to myself 'glass-half-empty' thoughts because in the back of my mind I knew we still had a long walk ahead of us, with luggage in hand no less. In the midst of my negetivity, a Christmas miracle occurred: after getting off the phone with one of the girls, Tyler informed me that there were two bikes parked at the bus station that we could ride back if we didn't want to walk. That's a no-brainer. We biked home, cutting 20 minutes of walking off the trip. We get to the house and fall fast asleep.

I had come a long way, but the journey wasn't over. We still had to wake up with the roosters at dawn and catch the early bus before school started.

Transportation: Two Schwinn bicycles

Monday, January 4th:

5:40am - Nan to Thawangpha.

Tyler and I Woke up in time to catch the 6 o'clock bus to TWP. Like most things in Thailand, the bus ran late. We didn't get picked up from the bus stop until about 6:20. This was a bus ride to remember. The morning air is cold damp. Why would I pack short sleeves unless I planned on sitting next to the only window on the bus stuck wide open. 1 cold hour later...

Transportation: the beater bus. Slow, old, and rarely on time.
7:18am - Wat Aham to Thawangphapittayakhom School.

The bus driver has overshot our stop. Tyler and I waving our arms in the air to alert the bus driver to stop. We got off the bus in a hurry with our luggage intact. The bus dropped us off further away than usual. We were tense because we needed to get back in time to perform the routine "English Today" skit in front of the school in less than an hour. I remember getting off the bus, looking at my phone, and saying 7:18AM to Tyler. 40 minutes to get home, get changed, and look like a teacher for 2,000 people WITH a speech prepared. Let me give you a visual: At this point I was going on 25 hours of traveling, Old Spice being my only means of sanitation. I hadn't shaved since I left TWP 5 days previous. Bed head, hobo stench, scraggly facial matter, and a mustard stained t-shirt to throw it all together . Got a good visual? Imagine two Americans running through a sea of uniformed Thai kids- our hands full with luggage. I unlock my door and its 7:45 now. 15 minutes before the assembly starts. I enter my room and throw my stuff down. Like a man possessed I rinsed off, shaved, and threw my work clothes on in record time. Not sure how, but I made it to the stage ON TIME and delivered the skit with Jesse.

Transportation: Chaco sandals.