Took a flight to Phuket today as I continued my Thailand coastline tour. Thailand is so beautiful. A large portion of my last days in Thailand were rainy, but it was still great to be there. Rain storms usually bring some great sky shots.
As per most travel days, and first arrivals into a city, I spent a lot of it walking around vs. doing any touristy planned activities. That was all set for tomorrow.
Flew to Pattaya today to go bungy jumping. Enough said. Here’s a video.
This terrified the living ef out of me. One, cause I am afraid of heights, but two because he PUSHED ME. What the heck.
“Believe in yourself, my friend. Bye!”
On this day, I did something new. It was to get a pedicure… a fish pedicure. I’ve heard it tickles and it’s a fun experience. When I posted it online, I got several comments, mostly good, but some negative. The negative comments bothered me. Why are people so upset over this? Can fish really spread disease? Aren’t they just nibbling away at my skin? Is it really inhumane to do this? Is this just some sort of hating? Is this pushing animal rights too far?
Thinking back, I can’t believe that the few negative comments is what first popped into my mind for this day. I’ve had so many positive comments and likes but for some reason, the negatives are what I remember?
I’m conflicted on how to write this day. On one hand, I want to say that the fish pedicure was a positive experience. When I do some research on this though, it does seem inhumane, even to fish. And that makes me want to say it was a negative that I paid for something like this.
But regardless of how I write about it, it already happened, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. The only thing I can do right now, is to reflect and take away something learned.
What did I learn? That everyone has something to say, no matter what you do. That experiences are what they are, regardless of good or bad. It’s an experience, and I should be grateful I could even do something like this.
Yes, it doesn’t seem nice to fish to leave them in a tank and feed them dead skin feet. Sounds gross, actually. Yes, I’m not even sure how clean that water is, and maybe there is a chance I’d catch some disease. But now I’ve learned and moved on. To be honest, I think my chances of catching a disease from a fish pedicure are as high as breaking my leg from jumping off cliffs. Either way, I”m still alive, I didn’t catch anything, and haven’t broken legs.
This post was not written in one sitting. It was also filled with other life notifications. I’m trying to get better at sitting down and writing straight without interruptions. It’ll be better as I practice being more present and mindful.
Thanks for reading thus far all. Remember to be grateful that we aren’t fishes in a tank waiting to be fed dead human skin. Or… are we??
Baseball. Baseball. Just in case you didn’t get the notice that today is baseball day. In 2017, it was fantasy baseball draft day. In 2019, it’s Opening Day. It means it’s time to start staring at the waiver wire looking for hot sauce free agents and staring at my team roster willing them to get me points. All for the hope that in 6 months, the cookie crumbled in the right way to lead me to a championship season.
My first baseball draft was in 2008. I can’t believe this is my 12th year in fantasy baseball. Since my first draft, I’ve lived in 3 cities, 13 apartments, held 6 jobs, went to Korea 7 times, visited 13 other countries, and won 0 baseball championships.
When I think back like this, my life has been great. I’ve had so many great opportunities and experiences. I am trying to be grateful for it all, even the 0 championships. Cause behind that number, I’ve at least made the playoffs 50% of the time and got second place in 2018. It’s not perfect, nor will it ever be, but I’m fine with those outcomes. Fantasy baseball has been a great way to keep in touch with friends.
Anyways, lots of thoughts on baseball today. Ironically in 2017, I spent most of the day thinking about the draft while walking around Chiang Mai. I actually think I wrote a post about it… maybe I’ll find it later.
This post has been everywhere. It’s taken me over an hour to write this tiny post! Couldn’t concentrate with trying to do so much. I’m trying to be more present and focused on one task at a time. Multi tasking is evil. Anyhoooo going to stop writing now.
I’ve heard amazing things about Chiang Mai. Some people say it’s their favorite city in Thailand. There’s culture, delicious food, and tons of activities. I got to enjoy all of that, but more importantly, I was there because of their reliable internet.
You see, my fantasy baseball draft was happening the next day, and I couldn’t afford to be in a place where the internet was spotty. Also, I wanted to be in a place I could draft for a few hours without interruptions. I ended up booking a place at the Le Meridian, which was by far one of the nicest hotels I’ve stayed at in my life. Once I got checked in, the first thing I did was to make sure that a.) I had internet and b.) I could load the ESPN draft page. Baseball fantasy drafts are extremely important. Entire trips, events, marriages, babies being born, etc. must be scheduled around this time.
I forgot to mention that I was in Myanmar earlier in this day. I sent out some postcards that morning and some of them didn’t even get to their destination until a couple weeks after this trip ended. Meaning the postcards took over a month to arrive. At least they got there though. I’m sure they had a rough, long journey.
So far, my lookback posts on Myanmar haven’t been too entertaining, in my opinion. I haven’t been too interested in what I was doing there most of the time. It’s not to say I am not grateful for the opportunity to have visited Myanmar, but thinking back, it seems that I’m more interested in active tourist attractions versus going to look at temples. And Myanmar has a lot of temples.
But, now that I’m writing this, I don’t want to have a negative lookback on any day. I did something each day that I decided I would do, and that’s positive enough.
For example, I believe this day was one of my most widely remembered days due to this insta post. Or just watch below cause I figured out how to add videos! Go watch it if you haven’t. People either loved it, hated it, thought i was crazy, or just the last two.
I’m so excited for learning this basic ability of loading a video via YouTube! Anyways, yes, I ate a fried rat. I’d eat it again, but it wasn’t great. At least I know that if the world ends and i learn to catch rats, I will be able to eat them.
Today was market and food day. Explored nearby markets and ate at random joints. I also ate again at Innlay Hut!
I just had a random thought as I was selecting pictures to post. Look at the top left picture of farming tools below. I originally took that shot cause I thought the machetes were cool. Just now, I realized that this shop owner’s living comes from making and selling these knives. People use them in their daily lives. I took a picture as if it was a souvenir. I am grateful to be able to go to a market as if it was a tourist attraction. I am even more grateful to come to an understanding that markets aren’t a tourist attraction. It represents the community’s daily grind.
Inle Lake, Nyaung Shwe, Myanmar was my favorite of all 4 places I visited. Something about water seems to relax me. When we arrived at 5am, I immediately hired a boat to take me around Inle Lake. This village exists solely because of the lake. It was here that I had a pondering thought. While watching people’s daily lives, I realized that being a tourist in a lot of cities was just witnessing people live their day to day lives. Wouldn’t it be strange if people came to your office and watched what you did? And took pictures?
We cruised around Inle Lake for about 8 hours. I got to watch the sunrise, witnessed fisherman at work, visited tons of small businesses along Inle Lake, visited Shwe Inn Dein Pagoda, Nga Phe Kyaung Monastery, and went through the floating garden. It’s incredible to see how different how people live their lives and how they adapt to the resources around them.
Go eat at Innlay Hut. It’s an Indian restaurant and it is bomb. Kumar is awesome. He loves the 313 and Eminem. Seriously, go eat here.
I’m looking at my calendar and it feels like I did loads this day. I marked it as a travel day, since I’d be hopping another bus tonight to head to Inle Lake. The bus wasn’t until 8pm, so I had the entire day to see more of Bagan. As I wrote yesterday, I was all temple’d out by this point. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to rent an electric motorbike to cruise around town. I grubbed and cafe’d at a few places in the afternoon, cooled off at the hotel lobby (Myanmar was really hot), then had dinner at Sanon.
Sanon is ranked 4th on Tripadvisor as of this writing. They were number 1 when I was there. The food is great, so don’t let the ranking deter you. Sanon is actually a “training restaurant” that teaches local kids to cook. Maybe that’s why the ranking dropped because it’s chefs that are under training? Regardless, I like their mission and I wrote a lengthy post about them on Instagram. I’d go there again to support the establishment’s goal.
Bagan is known for its morning sunrise tours with the hot air balloons in the background. Or you can actually go take a hot air balloon ride. I looked into this but found it too expensive for my taste.
One thing I’ve learned is to look out for tour guides at airports or bus stops. They are either in a taxi or tuk tuk, and know all the tourist sites. It was difficult to plan for Bagan due to the number of temples you could visit. There’s over 2,200 of them. So I let my tour guide decide the next 6 hours.
The most important was where I would watch the sunrise. One of the most popular places to watch the sunrise is Shwesandaw Pagoda. My guide said it tends to be overrun with tourists and could be a better experience in the evening. He suggested I go to Lowka Oushang Temple, where the view would still be good and it’d be less crowded. I think any tall temple would have worked, in my honest opinion. You have to arrive early to get a good spot though. Even at Lowka was a little crowded.
After the sunrise, I got some breakfast and then proceeded to visit 10 temples and Minnathu Village over the next 4 hours. I was pagoda’d out by 11am. Sunrise by far the best. I visited Shwesandaw Pagoda for sunset, which was just as gorgeous.
At Minnathu Village, I got to try a cheroot, a traditional cigar. They are made of tobacco, bark, stems, roots and sundry leaves wrapped in a corn husk. It was good, and surprisingly light, even though my face doesn’t show that.
Anyhow, if you love temples, go to Bagan. You will not regret it.
OutsideTheWell 