The nice thing about having a job in Japan is that when you go on vacation you're pretty close to a lot of interesting places. Two friends and I decided to head to Thailand and the Philippines for our two weeks off. Over the past two weeks, I flew on 10 planes, landed in 5 different countries (including Japan), went through customs 6 different times in 3 countries, dealt with exchanging 4 different currencies, met people from Thailand, Germany, Austria, Cyprus, Scotland, England, Luxembourg, Philippines, China, and more. In doing so I realized the importance of my job. They all have a different native language but when talking among each other or talking to people from other countries English is the only way they can communicate. This really brought home the power of the English language.
Now I did all kinds of crazy things and could probably give a day by day break down over the course of several posts buuut because I'm really lazy and I'm sure that my mom and the four people that read this have better things to do (jk) so I'm just going to break it down as much as I can.
Places I went: First we flew from Japan to Malaysia and then connected into Thailand. Malaysia looked pretty great and based on the flight attendants has very beautiful people. I would love to stay longer sometime.
From Malaysia, we flew on to Thailand and stayed a night in Bankok. The first thing you notice in Thailand is that they have pictures of their king everywhere and the cab drivers belong in NASCAR. We didn't really do much the first day and headed out the next day to our "resort" in Krabi.
Our resort in Krabi was more like someones big house in the middle of nowhere. However, the great thing about this is that I actually got to have my own room for a few days. I wasn't so lucky later in the trip. Though it wasn't quite what we expected I really grew to love that place. The owner was a German guy who was super friendly and made you feel right at home there. He also gave great tips on what to do. The hotel was also right on the water and had a great view. Also, it probably had the best food of any place we went the entire trip.
In Krabi, we spent most of our time around Ao Nang Beach where there were mostly tourists and crazy vendors trying to make deals with ya and about a million "tuck tuck" drivers (basically a covered motorcycle side car. **Tip if you're going to take a TukTuk negotiate a good price before you get in. The beach was just beautiful.
What we did in Krabi: Outside of going to the beach we also rode elephants through the forest and spent a day kayaking through the river and caves. The elephant riding was pretty great, it was something I felt I had to do in Thailand. Basically, the elephant was in control of what we did and when we did it. I also got to see some wild monkeys just hanging out in the forest.
The kayaking just amazing especially as we went through caves. We were at places that you could only see by kayak. The cliffs and jungle were just beautiful.
The other cool thing we did in Krabi was take steal the show at a restaurant called "Crazy Gringos." Fitting the title, we basically turned a two person Thai band into our own karaoke performance. They let us play the drums and allowed me to ruin any song I wanted. You just had to be there to enjoy the ridiculousness of it all.
After Krabi, we headed back to Bangkok. We spent a few days in Bankok visiting open air markets, the grand palace and a few temples. The palace just kind of takes your breathe away. Its just plain something you've gotta see.
From here, we took the longest possible route we could to get to the Philippines because China Southern decided to change our flight. We had to leave at 5AM to go from Bangkok to Guangzhou, China to Xiamen China to Manila and get there at 9PM. One piece of advice I have for you here is, if at all possible don't travel in China. When we got there, they were trying to figure out how to let us in the airport to transfer domestically to get to our international flight. Basically, we needed a visa to breathe Chinese air. After a big hassle, we got a free day pass that wouldn't let us leave the airports. We had two 3 hour layovers and of course there were no places to exchange money and wouldn't accept our Visa or MasterCard inside the airports and we didn't have any Yuan. Luckily, we found an ATM that would work. Leaving was also a hassle. At 6PM the customs only had 1 person working so it took forever to get through.
Finally, we ended up in Manila...I'll spare ya and put it in another post.
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