Riding the Rails

Yet another reason to love Thailand. The tourism board is sponsoring a number of day trips to various regions of Thailand, and my friend Jen and I went on a white-water rafting adventure on Saturday. It was a long, long day but incredibly fun and cultural. Our mode of travel was the 3rd class train again, but I'm now convinced that watching the world go by while resting my chin on the windowsill forces me to pay more attention to nature. And pay attention I did. With over 7 hours of the day taken up with train rides, the highlight for me was the fields and fields of rice paddies that are a color of green that is indescribably beautiful.Mind you, it was a tour mostly for locals, so it had its share of cultural features that made it even more charming. Take, for instance, the guides. There were about 8 of them, and they all seemed to have more than one job. This guy was the massage instructor (Thailand takes their massages very seriously and it's a huge health benefit here) and was teaching our tour group. We also had our fortunes read, ate like kings and queens (we drank ice cream with a straw for some reason), stopped off at a national park and finished off with a tame, but fun, rafting trip. The only negative Jen and I could come up with was the nonstop use of the megaphone. 14 hours of a language you don't understand coming at you at a very loud volume made me really want some quiet time.

See what I mean about the green? The weirdest thing is I still have no clue where we actually were in Thailand. It was all hills and green and gorgeous. And, if you can believe this, the entire price for the day for 28 US dollars each. Next month, the town of Lop Buri is on the travel menu. Khmer temples and a large monkey population that is really cheeky.