Laem Chabang, Pattaya and Bangkok, Thailand

Oh Thailand, where to begin.

I guess… I’ll begin at the beginning… derrrr

Before taking my first steps off the boat I got so many emails from friends who have been to Thailand telling me that I will have the most amazing time. I was so pumped for it, I had a great travel group set up and I knew it was going to be one of the top countries on the roster.

Day 1

I laid out on the ship the first day for a couple hours, yea I know, how cultural of me. I had a SAS trip to a Tiger Zoo at around 1 pm. I walk down the gangway and there was a street vendor at the bottom selling beer, I like this place. I got a nice cold road bevy and got on the bus. The ride wasn’t too long and when we pulled in to the parking lot it was screaming “TOURIST TRAP!” I always fall for these SAS schemes. We get off and it is SO HOT. The forecast was 98 degrees and so humid it was practically raining. I thought New Orleans was bad, we weren’t even below sea level and I was on my hot and humid deathbed. The first thing I saw at the zoo was an elephant, a huge one, standing in the middle of a crowd and it was lifting people up with its trunk. It was hot; I wasn’t waiting so I did the “get over excited to get peoples attention” thing. I jumped up and down with my hands in the air and the guy pointed to me, YES. Excuse me pardon me… Yea, I am going in front of you, your heart just wasn’t in it. So you wrap your arms around its trunk and he scoops you up into the air, it was so cool. I think if I had a bucket list for my life that would be something I could cross off. A couple minutes and 5 buckets of sweat later we went inside an arena for the tiger show. The tigers looked miserable. This was totally a mom and pop “zoo” and I realized I paid for this ticket and essentially supported the maltreatment of animals. They did standard tiger performance things and after we were told to walk to the next show, the crocodile show, what? I never envisioned crocs to be entertaining.

We all piled into a different stadium and there were about 10 clearly highly sedated crocs laying on a stage. This was getting too weird. Two “performers” came out and did some sort of crocodile dance, even weirder, and then the “show?” began. The people opened the crocs mouths, pulled their tongues out, stuck there heads in between the jaws, pulled them by their tails, rode them like a surfboard and did many other offensive crocodile maneuvers. At one point a crocodile got a little mad and snapped at the male performer, it pulled his pants down, I had a good laugh at that one.

Next stop, elephant show, this was the worst. Basically the elephant tamers had sticks with spikes on the end that they jammed in the elephant’s heads to get them to respond to the task. I put my camera down, I didn’t even want pictures of this.

The next thing we did was feed a baby tiger; this was cool! The tiger was so adorable, it was lying in my lap and I just wanted to take it home with me. Side note: on the way into the zoo some random people with cameras were snapping pictures of us and I knew they were going to ask us for money for them at the end of the day so I made the most ridiculous face. After going through a couple of these countries where they try to get as much money out of me as possible, I was on to them.

On the way out we passed a bunch of plates sitting on the ground, I look closer, they put our pictures on plates. WHAT? Why would I want a picture of me on a plate? And my face was as ridiculous as I thought, no sale. Here mom, here’s a plate of my face, no.

The next stop was a place called Mini Siam. I didn’t know this was part of the day tour but apparently it was. Mini Siam: Tourist Trap of the Century. It was a little park filled with miniature replicas of all the historical buildings of the world. Pyramids of Giza, Pantheon, Eiffel Tower etc, I didn’t even go in, I went to McDonalds and got fries. Why do they do this? There was a go-kart place there also and I was totally about to do it until I realized it was LEGIT racecar go-karts. They went 80mph, I could just see my Dads face if he was there, it would have been that one eyebrow raised, “What are you smoking?” look. And not the standard Bob Bouchard “no” aka you’ll get it but after I get to say no, a real “no” are you crazy Jaclyn? Haha! Twenty-two years later, I have you all figured out Dad.

After that little excursion I wanted to request that wasted hour of my life back, but we got on the bus and headed to the “Largest Jewelry Store in the World,” seriously, just take me home. I didn’t get off the bus, and convinced the driver, with everyone else agreeing, to skip over that store and drive back to the MVeX (my new name for the ship).

Once back at the ship I changed really quickly for the night and headed out to Pattaya, a little city of Thailand. We hit to a few different places and I saw some interesting things. The sex industry of Thailand is EXTREME, I will leave it at that, if you would like specifics shoot me an email and I will scar your life forever as mine has been.

Day 2, 3 and 4

Today was the day, Bangkok! We all packed our backpacks and caught a 2-hour cab ride to THE city. We had no idea where we were sleeping or what we were going to do but we had high hopes. We got to the city and I knew I would love it immediately. It was honestly one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen. We got out of the cab (2 hours - $15. Oh ya) and wandered. We went to the Silom area and found Hotel Nirai. It was $70 a night and with 6 people in a room that comes out to be $11 a night, score! After we dropped our bags we headed out for some street food dinner. We sat down at this local place on the road and I had the most delicious seafood pad thai. The best thing about street food is that it’s great for $1. We also had spring rolls and fried rice, I ate SO MUCH. We had a lot of leftovers so I got it in a to go box and gave it to a homeless man on street, sweet! Back at the hotel we got ready for the night and we were off!

Bangkok nightlife, a lot like Pattaya, there’s no escaping it. Fast forward to the end of the night. We realized there were about 200 SAS kids staying in the same hotel so we all decided to go swimming. The pool was so chlorinated I thought my eyes were going to burn out of my head. After a million laughs and an hour later we all ran back inside. The door to our room was up a couple steps that got wet and slippery. We all waited at the top of the stairs and all of the sudden we heard the loudest crash EVER. My friend Jack went through the glass door.  At first it didn’t seem like a big deal, we were all just freaking out because the hotel door was broken. You get the death penalty in Thailand for drugs, what do you get for glass doors? We all started packing our bags (don’t ask why, seemed smart at the time) in a panic and all of the sudden Jack comes out of the bathroom and goes “uhh guys?” He was COVERED in blood. I told him to get in the bathtub, I looked at him and realized he had deep cuts on his forearms, hands, head and a HUGE gash in his knee, I could see his knee cap. I went into Pre-Med mode and knew that I had to block the bleeding from above the cuts so I tried to tie off his brachial and femoral arteries, haha how cool does that sound? I tried the best I could but we only had towels and they were so thick it wasn’t tying tight enough. I sat on the toilet seat and put his hand on the side of the tub. For pressure I put my right foot on his hand, my left on his knee and squeezed his brachial artery with my hands. I held that position for about 5 minutes. I asked him to show me his teeth; he had all those so that was good. He was in good spirits and really calm. I had the SAS numbers in my phone so we called them and they said to just keep them updated. I switched “stop the bleeding” duties with another friend and the second I walked away and really realized what had happened I was covered in blood and freaking out (on the inside). It took about 35 minutes for the ambulance to come and by that point it looked like we slaughtered a cow in the bathroom. They took Jack to the hospital and we cleaned everything up. It was an intense hour.

The next morning we heard from him and he had to get hand surgery on both hands. He had three partially severed tendons and tons of stitches. We went to the hospital early in the morning; I brought him a “Mens Weekly,” a lollypop and a green balloon because it was St. Patty’s Day! The hospital was really nice and modern. When Jack came out of surgery he seemed fine and we were all trying to make light of the situation. He had to stay in the hospital for three days but he was okay, that’s all that mattered.

What was weird was that ever since he was taken to the hospital no one from the hotel had come to our room or said anything about it. The door was fixed by the next morning and there were no questions asked. They never came to clean on any of the three days and just seemed to ignore us. I think they were as scare of us as we were of them. Crazy Americans love suing! The second day we called the front desk for toilet paper and they brought it, with flowers. The next day they came to get the bloody towels and give us clean ones (we called and asked) and they brought an even bigger basket of flowers! It was the strangest thing, oh well.

Every night in Bangkok was essentially the same, minus projectile bodies through glass doors; it was a lot of fun. They had Irish pubs so I got to drink green beer on St. Patrick’s Day and during the day we took boat roads along the river and saw the Grand Palace. On the last night we saw a live Muay Thai fight. We were about 2 rows back from the ring and it was pretty intense. Muay Thai is basically violent kickboxing, it was violent, but really cool to watch.

The Grand Palace was a must see. For those of you who know me, I sweat a lot! It was about 100 degrees and you have to wear long pants and cover up when you visit.  The two were not a good mixture, I was trying not to be miserable but I was crying on the inside. I was sopping wet and it was absolutely disgusting. We did a full tour in the fastest time ever; we may have broken the sound barrier. The Grand Palace is the home of prominent political figures and the world famous emerald Buddha. The detail that was put into this massive mansion was really breathtaking. There was so much gold and so many colors, the pictures I have are really great.

Every night the locals set up a huge market, this was a danger zone for Jaclyn Bouchard. Imagine Canal St. times infinity. I didn’t do too much damage, but there was definite potential for that to happen. There is a big population of cross dressers and “she-mans” in Thailand. At one point I bought this sick Le Sportsac bag from this “woman” and she told me I could get it for about $10 if I gave her my earrings. “She” said “I love your earrings, they are beautiful for a woman and I am a beautiful woman.” She also modeled the bag for me; I think it might look better on her.

After an exhausting week in Bangkok we had to make our way back to the ship. I went to the free breakfast by myself the last morning but ended up sitting down with other SASers. I told them what had happened and how I tried to tie off his arteries but the towels were too thick. One of the girls I was talking to, who will remain nameless, honestly said this to me. “Well, you know, next time you should get a stick and put it in the towel and twist it, it makes it tighter.” Wow, okay, I’ll remember that for “next time,” are you serious? I love people who just like to hear themselves talk. After that I went to check out and they handed me this little green sheet of paper, “Door Brokend 3000 Baht,” haha! Brokend, I love it. I told them I would be right back and when I went to the room to tell everyone we had to pay for the door I subtly said “So we have to pay around $85 for the door, which is nothing…And I’m thinking since you went through the door that mayyyybbbbbbbeeee JACK you should use your credit card.” He started laughing and agreed he would give his. Once we were all paid for we got a cab back to the ship.

A 2-hour drive in a Toyota Rav4, there were 5 of us and 23423 bags. I was squeezed in the back with all the bags. I told them I felt like I was in a cocoon and by the time we get back to Laem Chabang, the port, I will have gone through metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

There was a huge line to get back on the ship because it was near dock time. You should have seen how many eyes were staring at Jack. Within 5 minutes he was asked what had happened a million times, he was already getting fed up. After a few people I started telling people he was in a Muay Thai fight, they actually believed me. Speaking of people who love to hear themselves talk, some guy asked Jack “So, how was your insurance? How much did it cost?” Jack’s response, “You serious dude?”

Safely home on the MVEx after an adventurous stay in Thailand.

I am really really excited for Vietnam because I get to see all the things Nelson DeMille talked about in his novel Up Country. I am also a history buff so this is going to be a low key country filled with museums, culture and first hand discovery of what the Vietnam War really was. We picked up some Vietnamese people in Thailand so they could give us some lectures in Global Studies before we get to their country, the first day the man was telling us stories of the war and he was crying. I have a feeling the whole thing is still really alive there and it’s going to be a really eye opening experience.

Well, only 5 countries left and I am still alive and kicking!

Happy Birthday to my sister Kissy, you’re 25 and really old.

Toodles!
Jaclyn