Thailand….

Elephant riding, bamboo rafting, mini-trekking, waterfall, our living conditions

Various touristy things we did in Thailand.
Unemployed dogs
The two of us riding bikes... or me attempting to ride a bike while Lulu just looks too smart. Why do I look like an idiot while the sister looks like an actual cyclist?

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Thailand - is not a place that I’d like to live in. Too hot, too humid, too many people, too many cars, too polluted, too noisy, too dirty, just too much stuff and not enough space (yeah, I really like my space)

I will never ever get used to squat toilets.

Whilst in Thailand, I missed little luxuries like free public toilets, toilet paper in toilets, flushing toilets, and hot water showers.

I still can’t quite believe that not only do I have to pay to use public toilets here, but the toilets are filthy, often there is no toilet paper, most likely you’d have to use a squat toilet, and occasionally it isn’t even a flushing toilet! What kind of deal is that?!

Crossing the road is an interesting exercise. Our guide, Kai, tells us that one must do so –slowly – cars tend to hit people who try to sprint across the road so we must take our time, dawdle a bit. That proved kind of difficult because not only is it a purely human reaction to run when you see a car driving really fast towards you and it doesn't look like stopping but both Lu and I are fast walkers, it’s near impossible for us to walk at a snail’s pace. How can people with much longer legs than ours walk so much slower than us?!

I’m convinced that Thai trains are the slowest in the world, I could’ve walked faster than the trains we were on, no wonder the trips took so darn long.

Bike ride around Sukhothai (the old capital of Thailand) and some temple ruins, that was interesting. I tried to ride a bike last year, unsuccessfully. You see, I have a problem stopping, I just can’t do it, I can only go forwards and have a lot of trouble trying to stop. I’m so stupid.

I thought it was funny that my bike was called ‘Turbo Fairy’ because I was anything but, Lulu kept yelling at me to go faster cos I was riding like a granny. She doesn’t understand that the faster I go, the harder it is for me to stop….. but I became better at it, it’s just that the moment I started to get the hang of this ‘stopping’ business, we had to give the bike back :(

Thailand is full of unemployed dogs. Many just flop down in the middle of the road and sleep all day, only moving if they absolutely must, usually only for passing vehicles.

The first few days of the tour I was thinking, why do I have to be stuck on a tour with a group of hot chicks?! They have messy hair, sunburnt skin, smelly, dusty clothes just like I do, but why do they look like they just stepped out of a magazine while I look like I just woke up after a hard night’s drinking? How does that happen? Life is so unfair….

After a few more days, I thought, hmm… actually, they’re not that good looking, they do have messy hair, they do have smelly, dusty clothes, and they don’t look like they came right out of a magazine. I think I was too exhausted and overwhelmed by everything, everybody and their dog would’ve looked fantastic and hot to me in my delirious state. In fact, what on earth was I thinking?