There's (30) Somethings About Leah

It's now just shy of a week since Leah and I got back to San Francisco, and two days before I leave San Francisco again to go back to Princeton for the year. Before I leave again, though, I've got one final post: to cap off my blog about my past thirty days of traveling, I've put together thirty reasons I learned from the trip about why it's good to travel with a buddy--specifically, a buddy who's also my sister Leah.

Why It's Good To Travel With A Buddy

1. You always have someone to take your picture.

Even when it probably would be best that your picture wasn't being taken.

2. Things are much cheaper when you split them. What's better than a $14/night hotel room? A $14/night hotel room split TWO WAYS.

3. You have someone to hold your hair back and buy you lots of Gatorade when you get a 24-hour stomach bug and begin violently puking. Yep, this happened to both of us (on separate days) while we were in Koh Tao.

Accoutrements of illness.

4a. You can copy each other's answers for the PADI Open Water Scuba Certification worksheets and get out of the classroom super fast.

4b. A lot faster than the British guy who is also in your Open Water Scuba Certification class but isn't traveling with a buddy.

4c. And then once you actually start scuba diving, you always have a buddy for your buddy check!

5. If you run out of lives on your Candy Crush, you can just play theirs for a while. We still have enough pride that we don't ask people for extra lives on Facebook.

6. You can slap mosquitos off of each other. See #26.

7a. They usually have whatever you've forgotten. Like the phone number for the hotel in Bangkok.

7b. And if they don't, at least you don't feel as stupid for forgetting it. Like the phone number for the hotel in Surat Thani.

8. Book sharing!

8a. And impromptu book club discussions afterwards. Mostly regarding whether James Patterson ever writes any dialogue that one could plausibly imagine someone voicing in real life.

9. Double likes for all photos and posts.

10. The bus won't leave without you while you're making a last-minute bathroom or snack run.

We require lots of snacks.

Why It's Good To Travel With A Buddy Who Is Also Your Sister

11. You can take turns painstakingly pecking out email updates and reassurances of safe arrival to the parents (mostly to the mom) on the iPad.

12. Splitting up souvenir shopping for family members.

13a. Thai taxicab drivers call you both "beautiful" and "gorgeous" way more often than you'd expect. Which would probably feel pretty sketchy if you were alone, but just feels flattering when you're with your sister.

14. If you look similar enough, selfies get a kind of mega-boost: it's like taking a picture of yourself and your other self at the same time.

15a. Upon returning to the hotel room after spending the morning slogging through 90-degree heat and tropical humidity, you can both immediately rip off your shirts and spend the next couple of hours cooling off in just bras.

15b. Peeing with the bathroom door open. 

15c. Walking into the room naked to get your towel if you forget to take it from the bed into the bathroom before you take a shower. I still can't figure out why European and Asian hotel and guesthouse housekeeping think the bed is a more appropriate place to put towels than the bathroom is.

16. I suppose you could do 15a, b, and c even if your roommate isn't your sister.

17. There's no chance you'll be surprised by each other's weird habits or personality quirks three days into a thirty-day trip, since you've already been dealing with them for the past sixteen years. For example, at a small grocery store-cum-bakery in Chiang Mai one day, Leah ordered a piece of carrot cake. And then she was entirely unfazed when I followed her Leah considered it perfectly normal when I followed her up to the cashier and ordered a carrot.

18. You share an appreciation for how much easier it is to plan out a day when you only have to consider the conflicting needs of two people instead of five. Especially when one of those five people is our brother.

19. At night, you have the option to either snuggle with or yank the blanket off of your bedmate, depending on how effective the air-con is in that particular room.

20. You just feel special being the only person you meet who's traveling with a sibling instead of with a significant other, college roommate, or random acquaintance made one night in a bar.

Why It's Good To Travel With A Buddy Who Is Also Your Sister Who Is Also Leah Safford

21. She's pretty punny. A couple of days before we traveled to Bangkok, Leah and I were lying on the bed of our hotel room, looking at our travel guides and trying to plan out the two nights we would have in the crowded city. We ended up sketching out an itinerary that would have had us going to a Thai kickboxing match the first night and hanging out at a rooftop bar the second. "This is perfect," Leah declared. "First we'll do Muay Thai...and then we'll do mai tai!" Needless to say, I loved it.

22. She's an aggressive walker. The only thing I hate more than walking down a street with a group of slow people is walking down a street with a group of slow people. Fortunately, Leah doesn't stand for either. If Leah wants to get somewhere, she powerwalks there. And if Leah wants to get somewhere and a slow crowd is clogging up sidewalk traffic, she powerwalks right through it. It's like walking behind Moses.

23. She believes that ice cream is the best thing ever, and that it's okay to act on that belief always.

In fact, it was the last food item we got in Thailand.

24. She will not let me lead us wandering for more than 20 minutes without knowing where we're going. When I'm trying to get somewhere by myself, I'll often stubbornly walk for an hour or two on a stupid route rather than ask for directions or take a cab, even if it means I don't have any time or energy left to explore the somewhere once I finally get there. After suffering through a couple of these walkabouts early on, Leah wouldn't let me lead us anywhere without answering the question "Do you know where you're going, or do you just think you do?" I quickly came to realize that this is a question I should be asking myself always.

25. She's really good at TripAdvisor. We (thankfully) were happy with almost every place we stayed, everywhere we ate, and everything we did, but my two favorite hotels and some of my favorite restaurants were Leah picks.

26. She attracts all of the mosquitos, which sucks for her (literally), but diverts them away from me.

27. She eats less than me. Which means I get the extra.

28. She understands the best way to visit temples. Enter temple. Locate the most important relic, figure, altar, or building in said temple. Nod appreciatively and take a picture. Leave to get a fruit shake.

...and done.

This is also the best way to visit famous sites and art museums.

29. She can hold up her end of a conversation on just about anything.

30a. I bother her sometimes...

30b. ...and she bothers me sometimes...

30c. ...but usually, other people bother us both a lot more. I'm looking at you, Obnoxious Dude From Calgary Who Insisted On Telling Us Stupid Jokes And Recounting Drunk Exploits From The Previous Night For Twenty Straight Minutes When All We Wanted Was To Eat Breakfast In Peace.

The Only Thing That's Not Good About Traveling With A Buddy Who Is Also Your Sister

Leah and I have always been close, and I think that our experiences in Thailand only made us closer. The downside to having such a good relationship most of the time, though, is that it's really painful whenever something does sour it. Over the course of our thirty days together, we had two big fights--one in Chiang Mai, one in Koh Tao--that both ended in tears. Though neither lasted more than a day, the fact that we don't usually fight meant that the times when we did were, at least for me, far and away the lowest points of the entire trip--even lower than the nine hours we spent waiting in a tiny outdoor train station for the delayed train to Bangkok while I was sick and puking.

So, after thirty days together, I can easily come up with thirty (and more) things that were wonderful about traveling with Leah Safford, my sister who is also my buddy, but only one that wasn't: the fact that we had to go through a couple of lows together in order to have a lot of highs. But what highs they were:

Love ya, dude.

Star Trekkers

Every student knows that the important parts are always bolded and/or boxed in the book (except in engineering classes, when the important parts are always left out of the book entirely and instead only communicated once during non-mandatory office hours with the TA).

Based on this principle, I was able to conclude while reading our Rough Guide and Lonely Planet that the important parts of Thailand include, to name just a few, Budget Accommodation, Shopping for Everyday Stuff, The Festival of the Holy Footprint, Mengrai Mania, Food Walks and Dinner Cruises, and Trekking. After concluding that I could Shop for Everyday Stuff without help and reading (to my disappointment) that The Festival of the Holy Footprint only takes place during the dry season, I turned my attention to Trekking. "Trekking must be important," I concluded, "because it has a sub-index in the index."

But trekking, like fugacity, is a term that I've seen many times but still can't define. "How is trekking different from hiking? Isn't it just one of those terms that people use because they want to sound all fancy and expert? For that matter, isn't fugacity?" I wondered.

For the last question, I had a ready answer: definitely yes. For the others, I had differencebetween.info:

The main difference between [hiking and trekking] is that hiking is mainly a leisure activity which is done by walking in we'll-made trails and man-made roads. However, trekking is more rigorous, and is a more challenging activity. It tests one's physical ability, endurance, and even their mental or psychological capacity.

"Interesting," I thought. "So if walking is a bell pepper and hiking is a jalapeño, then trekking is a Thai bird's eye chili! And I like things Thai spicy!"

This is the somewhat overconfident assertion, you'll remember from last week, that often leaves my mouth burning by the end of lunchtime. So I suppose, in retrospect, that it makes sense that each of the three treks that Leah and I have gone on over the past several weeks has presented a wealth of new sensations, uniquely Thai experiences, and more than a little pain.

#1: Karen Jungle Trek, Kanchanaburi

The Karen Jungle Trek was actually part of a two-day tour organized by Good Times Travel, a tour that was highly recommended by our guidebooks (in fact, I think it may have been bolded) for the number and variety of activities it included: a visit to a museum, a soak in some hot springs, bamboo rafting, a ride on the Death Railway, and more. The consequence of such a packed itinerary, though, is that while you're busy thinking about all of the Good Times you're going to have, it's easy to overlook the text stating that the tour is for experienced trekkers only. (You'd think that I would have noticed this announcement given that it was both bolded and italicized, but I guess my keyword radar was kind of worn out after spending so much time reading guidebooks.)

Our trek began around 2:30 on the afternoon of the first day of the tour. Out trekking party consisted of eight members: me; Leah; a Danish family of a mom, a dad, and two youngish boys who all had complicated Danish names; a twenty-something Dutch man who had an even more complicated Dutch name; 

The intrepid trekkers...

and Noom, our Thai guide who had a thankfully monosyllabic name. Noom was a stocky, cheerful guy in a T-shirt, shorts, and backpack, with thick quads and large, chiseled calf muscles that pointed the way directly into a pair of bright aqua plastic rainboots. Noom was essentially a male, adult Dora the Explorer.

...and Noom.

We began the trek in the trunk of a truck, a pickup truck that Noom drove through pouring rain and foot-deep puddles to the trailhead while I and everyone else bounced around in the open back, trying to keep as much of ourselves dry under three-dollar ponchos as possible. The rain, of course, stopped as soon as we started hiking (sorry, trekking), leaving us all with sodden plastic sheets to carry around for the rest of the day.

Truck on the ride back. It was too rainy to take out my camera on the ride out.

For the next four hours, we followed Noom in single-file, trying our best in sneakers to avoid the muddy gullies and streams which he and his rainboots splashed right through. As we made our way through the jungle, we learned all sorts of things. We learned that the trail we were on had been used to connect the village we were heading to with the main road, until a wider path was cleared for motorbikes. We learned that a certain kind of tree that grows in the area produces a sticky resin that can be stuck in the fork of a split piece of bamboo to make an effective torch (Noom demonstrated a little bit too close to us). We learned that it was a good idea to be careful when Noom announced that an upcoming part of the trial was "slippely," but an even better idea to be careful when he was too busy focusing on keeping his own footing to remember to warn us. We learned that Danish children have remarkable stamina, and that Noom's favorite activities include smoking, pointing out spiders, giving his charges particulary cool spiders to hold whether they wanted to or not, and chopping down things with his machete. I'm pretty sure that several times, Noom intentionally led us off-course just so he could chop a path back to the trail with his machete. We learned that it's pointless to spend hours diligently avoiding getting your feet wet on a jungle trek, because thirty minutes from the end there will be a deep river that you have to wade through anyway that Noom definitely knew about the whole time. Finally, we learned that the Thai jungle is so beautiful that it easily makes up for any hardships you encounter while moving through it, even when you know you have to trek back the way you and the next day.

#2: Baanchang Elephant Trek, Chiang Mai

I'll cut right to the chase on this one. Elephants are big. Even Asian elephants, the "small" species of elephant, are big. This bigness is the great advantage and the great danger of trekking on the back of an elephant. On the one hand, it's a lot faster to get from point A to point B when your vehicle can simply stomp down and crush any obstacle in your path. On the other hand, you're also very aware of the fact that, if you were to fall off your elephant, you might inadvertently become an obstacle in its path.

And then they might stomp on you. Or at the very least, whack you with their ears.

Like the Karen Jungle Trek, the elephant trek was a part of a two-day package, although this one was all spent at the same place (the Baanchang Elephant Park, an elephant rescue and conservation center in northern Thailand). Our guide this time was Tom, and our companions were a Dutch family of a mom, a dad, a son, and a daughter (the daughter's name was Madeliefje--I gave up after that), three mahouts, and three elephants.

More intrepid trekkers...

...and Tom.

We set off on this trek perched two to an elephant, each of us attempting to control the elephants with Thai commands learned the day before, abandoning the pretense of control once it became clear that the elephants only listened to the mahouts who were walking alongside, and generally enjoying the experience of moving through the jungle while far above the mud and dirt of the ground below.

Until we elephant-trekked through a river and we remembered that elephants like to spray muddy river water all over their backs--and whoever is sitting on them--to keep cool.

#3: Nature Horse Trek, Krabi Province

Leah has been horseback riding for eight years, which is probably why she was unfazed by the following TripAdvisor review of the Nature Horse Trek in Krabi (area on the Andaman (west) coast of southern Thailand):

Two observations. First "holding on for dear life" is not a phrase that becomes better with a "lol!", especially when the person holding on for dear life is probably going to be me. Second, Leah did not keep my riding ability in mind when she decided to do this tour.

"I told them you were experienced," she announced. Clearly, I was in for another dose of Thai spicy.

Our guide this time: Bang. Our companions? None, unless you count our three horses. The experience? Benign name notwithstanding, the Krabi Nature Horse Trek was the single most terrifying and exhilarating experience that I've had in Thailand so far. The stable was built right next to the beach, so within minutes of mounting our horses, we were galloping full speed across the sand. Bang and Leah whooped it up. I held on for dear life--no "lol!"s--and hoped against hope that my horse wouldn't ever decide to "kick & jump about."

"Don't worry!" the stable-owner, who had ridden down to the beach on his motorbike to see us off, assured me as we came to a temporary stop. "You'll be out there for hours! Plenty of time to figure it out."

I don't know that I ever really figured it out, but I did manage to stay on, which I counted as enough of an accomplishment for one day. Plus, after we finished the trek, we got to do this

Horseback riding like I've never experienced before.

which even made it worth this:

Chafing like we've never experienced before (top: Hannah; bottom: Leah).

Section Review

In this post, we learned the difference between hiking and trekking. We saw three examples of different kinds of trekking in Thailand, and identified some important similarities:

1) All treks should be led by a guide with a monosyllabic name.

2) Trekking parties will often include Western European families with young children.

3) You will get wet. Don't try to avoid it; it's pointless.

4) Sometimes you'll get scraped, bitten, or chafed, but it's worth it.

Pretty soon, Leah and I will finish our Thai adventure and make one long final trek back home. Planning to have at least one more post before we wrap this blog up!

Going Places (In the Wrong Direction)

I've always suspected that I have a terrible sense of direction, but luckily from the age I've had to seriously navigate myself somewhere , I've had an iPhone. By far, the worst part of leaving my phone at home for an entire month was that I no longer had access to Google Maps, which is a constant presence in my everyday life. A few years ago, I had a conversation with my mom, in which I expressed my concern over the fact that--despite having lived in San Francisco for my entire life--I had no clue where anything in the city, whether it be restaurant, street, or entire neighborhood, was located. My mom responded without pause, assuring me that when I started to drive, I'd quickly figure out my way around.

I've had my license since January, and the only place I can get to 100% of the time without a GPS is my school. Which is a mile from my house. It's honestly ridiculous. 

I tried to force myself to get home from my friend's house in the Fillmore District without my phone's help once, after driving there multiple times. After driving through a few questionable alleys and nearly getting on the freeway the wrong direction, I pulled over, opened Google Maps, and haven't gone without it since. 

Armed with a Boy Scout worthy set of navigational skills, I set off for Thailand.  

My already horrendous sense of direction has not benefited from spending no more than 5 days in the same place, not to mention that I can't read any of the signs or say anything but "hello" in Thai. Hannah will often try to show me on a map where we are, where we're going, and how we'll get there, to which I typically nod and walk off the wrong way. I'm essentially a slightly less competent Dora the Explorer.

The most concerning thing about all of this is that I'm not getting better at navigating. At all. After spending three days in a place, I'm still just as hopeless at getting back to ourguesthouse from the 7-11 around the corner as I was the day we arrived. Likewise, I can't comprehend a map any better almost three weeks into this trip than I could on day one. 

I'm going to try to force myself to make more of an effort to take responsibility for getting us places, in hopes that I do make (some) progress. After all, how lost could I get us in the next week? Luckily, we're heading to Koh Tao, a small island off of the Gulf Coast tomorrow, so I'll only be able to lead us a maximum of seven miles in the wrong direction. Hannah told me the other day that "if you think you're going the right direction, you should turn around." Hopefully by following that advice, I won't do too badly.

But next time I'm bringing my iPhone.

Hungry Hungry Hannah (and Leah)

One of the primary reasons that Leah and I decided to spend thirty days in Thailand was that we wanted to spend thirty days eating in Thailand. So far, the food has not been a disappointment, especially in Chiang Mai. In fact, I'd say that food has figured so prominently in our experience of Chiang Mai that it deserves its own blog post. I understand that by devoting a blog post entirely to describing and displaying pictures of food that you can imagine but not taste, I risk being infuriating in the same way that Guy Fieri is whenever he takes a bite of a delicious, delicious sandwich from a Diner, Drive-In, or Dive that's two thousand miles and ten states away. But because I am secure in the knowledge that no one could possibly be more annoying than Guy, that's a risk I'm willing to take. So, without further ado:

Chiang Mai, My, My, This is Tasty: A Post in Three Meals (Plus Some Snacks)

BREAKFAST

I wake up earlier and hungrier than Leah, so in Chiang Mai I went straight down to the hotel breakfast buffet before she got up. I was, consequently, the only one of us who got to watch the daily 6:45 feeding of the Giant Chinese Tour Group. For those of you who have never seen a Giant Chinese Tour Group at a breakfast buffet, know that there is a simple way to distinguish it from a Giant American Tour Group in a similar environment: where the American Tour Group proceeds in orderly yet interminable single file through the buffet, the Chinese variant will only move as a single entity between stations. First, everyone has to get rice--all at once!--from the giant silver rice crock. Then, the action shifts and everyone has to get pork and vegetables--all at once!--from the pork and vegetable tray. The actions shifts again and we're moving to chicken curry. Huddle around the teacups! Veer left to the tea! Conclusion: the Giant Chinese Tour Group is a highly gregarious species that exhibits a group locomotion similar to that of a team of five-year-olds playing YMCA soccer, complete with the few daisy-picking dreamers who drift over to the American section of the buffet for some French toast and jam.

The disadvantage of eating at the same time as the Giant Chinese Tour Group is that it's really hard to break through and get some tea. The advantage is that the tour group introduces so much chaos into the dining room that the kitchen staff are too distracted to notice me filling up four giant water bottles from the cold purified water dispenser. In Thailand, that stuff is liquid gold.

LUNCH

Leah and I generally do most of our sightseeing and activity-ing during the first half of the day, so by the time we get to lunch, we're starving and I'm pumped up in full-on adventure mode, ready to order a lot of something colorful and spicy. Now, i have a pretty high spice tolerance for a white girl (a tolerance no doubt enhanced by the past four years of dumping Cholula hot sauce on half my food at Princeton), so I've actually been able to handle most of the dishes I've been served here so far (though I'm pretty sure that the waiters here aren't really serving me "Thai spicy" when I ask for it). The problem is that I think so highly of myself and my ability to take the heat that I invariably overuse the condiments that grace every Thai restaurant table.

"Look at you, Hannah. You managed to haggle down the price of that songthaew (taxi) ride down by a whole ten baht," I'll think to myself, lifting the lid off the little ceramic jar of chili paste. "Thai-level bargaining skills merit Thai-level spiciness."

On goes a spoonful.

"And now you're eating at what the guidebook says is the most authentic northern restaurant in Chiang Mai! And you managed to navigate here with only one wrong turn!"

Another spoonful, along with the whole bowlful of raw onions that comes with the khao soi. 

"Yep, Hannah, you're no average tourist. You are one adventurous motherf***er."

I'll take a bite.

Because I am not, in fact, that adventurous a motherf***er, I can't know this for sure, but I imagine that eating really spicy food must be something like doing drugs. The first few tastes you have are great. It's only once you stop for a moment and give your body a chance to really react to what you've just put into it that you begin pay for what you've done.

AFTER-LUNCH MISSION

Armed with the liquid gold stolen from breakfast and the side of rice served with my curry, II can usually make it to the end of my adventurous lunch. Once we leave the restaurant, though, internal burning catches up with me, and external heat and humidity catches up with Leah. These are unmistakable signs that it's time for the after-lunch mission: fruit shakes.

We in the U.S. have a truly bizarre, fraught relationship with liquified fruit. At one end of the spectrum, we accept that any juice from Jamba Juice should contain at least four different kinds of fruit, and some sort of mysterious "boost" that may or may not be edible and we publicly ridicule the proliferation of juice cleanses while privately feeling guilty that we're not doing them ourselves. At the other end of the spectrum, we process the pulp and nutrienta out of pureed fruit, decry the juice product as empt calories, and then serve it at snacktimes nationwide without thinking twice. But somehow the rest of the world (or at least all of the countries I've been to outside our hemisphere) has figured out that all you need to do to turn ripe fruit into one of the most wonderfully refreshing beverages you could imagine is to blend it up with some ice and a little sugar syrup, and you're done.

Fortunately, Thailand has the art of fruit shaking down pat.

Unfortunately, Leah and I sometimes get overexcited by the simple pleasures of fruit shakes and end up suffering from their only drawback: brain freeze. 

DINNER

Dinner is our wild card meal. Sometimes, we get Thai food, and I'm a little less ambitious with the seasoning. Once, we got Mexican, just to see how it compared to San Francisco (conclusion: tortilla was overfloured and the cheese was a little unusual, but my God, can Thai chefs make a mean salsa). Because Janet told us to, we had French. And then of course one evening we ditched regular dinner altogwther and instead made a meal out of snacks from the stalls at one of Chiang Mai's famous night market, just as all of the guidebooks insist we do.

Eating at a night market, Leah and I agreed, is a lot like eating at a high school club fundraising festival, a college dining hall, or Hometown Buffet. You walk in there and see all these things that you think you'd like to eat, and you can't imagine how you'll ever decide between them. You walk around for a while, scoping out your options. You get hungrier and hungrier, but are afraid to eat anything for fear of spoiling your appetite for the really good dish that you're sure is just a few steps that way. You realize that these are embarrassingly first-world problems, and get the next thing you see. It's pretty good--not great, but at least good enough to whet your appetite for the next thing you have, which will be even better. You try something else. And something else. And something else.

And after an hour trying a whole bunch of disparate things (some of which--summer rolls with green chili sauce

--were worth it, some of which--whatever mysterious brown paste was wrapped up in the banana leaf on the left

--were definitely not), you discover that you're full but not satisfied, and you're out the same amount of money or more than you would have been if you had just had a regular sit-down meal. And you know that there's only one solution to this, again, embarrassingly first-world problem.

Dessert. 

Sweet corn with butter, salt, and sugar? Delicious!

Fried banana crepe on a stick with powdered sugar and caramel sauce? Tastes as good in Thailand as it does at the Texas State Fair!

Steamed bun with custard filling? I don't even really know what custard is, but it's heavenly!

Durian ice cream? I don't quite think that durian is tasty enough to deserve its nickname as the "king of fruits"**, but ice cream is ice cream!

{No photo available, unfortunately.}

Chocolate banana waffle? Enough said!

Earlier this year, New York Times reporter Michael Moss released a best-selling book titled Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. I may release a spinoff titled Salt Sugar Fat: How to Save a Confusing Dinner.

In the time it's taken me to write this, Leah and I have moved from Chiang Mai to Krabi, an estuarine town on the Andaman coast of southern Thailand, where we'll be for a few more days before heading east to the Gulf coast. It is astonishingly beautiful.

*Which, side note, sometimes comes charmingly molded into the shape of a heart or a star, like this:

Rice: It's magically delicious!

**In case you were wondering, mangosteen is the queen.***

***In case you were wondering, this is what durian and mangosteen look like.

Durian

Mangosteen

They do kind of seem to go together, don't they?

Podology

The National Institute of Health defines a hypochondriac as someone who "believes that physical symptoms are signs of a serious illness." Wikipedia adds that hypochondriacs "become unduly alarmed about any physical symptoms they detect, no matter how minor the symptom may be." To help you visualize the difference between hypochondriacs and non-hypochondriacs, I've created the following helpful graph:

Now, I'm a tough cookie. Though I am, as we discussed a couple of posts ago, somewhat prone to injury and accident (especially on bicycles), I'm pretty good at bouncing back from anything that happens to me. I don't freak out. Well, at least not initially. I am, I suppose, more of what you might call a "stoic hypochondriac." Let me refer you to another helpful graph.

So when, towards the end of our stay in Kanchanaburi, I discovered that I had an infected ingrown toenail on my right foot, I toughed it out for a couple of days.

"Toe update!" I'd announce to Leah every morning. "I just dug some more crap out of it and now I think it's definitely going to start healing."

"I think you should stop digging crap out of it and go to the doctor," Leah would reply.

"No, no, it's getting better. I'll be fine."

And then I'd spend the rest of the day driving Leah crazy by periodically reminding her of the stabbing pain in my perfectly fine toe.

This went on until the evening that we got to Chiang Mai on Wednesday and I looked up toenail infections online.

"Can you die from a toe infection?" Yahoo Answers asked.

"Yes, if you have a gangrene infection, and if it spreads, it can kill you," the Best Answer Chosen by Voters answered, citing a "Distant relative [who] died of gangrene infection."

"Leah, I need to go to the hospital tomorrow."

As it happens, Chiang Mai is home to The Podology Center--the only clinic in the nearest five countries that specializes in the treatment of skin and nails on the feet. The German founder, Dirk, regularly treats the toenails of, variously, the royal family, the daughter of the man who controls all of the gold in Thailand, and local elephants. Or so we were told by Janet, the sextagenarian expat from Kansas City, MO who's spent the past six years working as an assistant at the Podology Center and who, because Dirk was out of town for the week, picked me and Leah up from in front of Tha Pae Gate at 10:30 last Thursday morning. Janet, we quickly learned, was a little nutso.

As we sped along the highway leading from Old Chiang Mai towards The Podology Center, expounded at length to me and Leah about podology, expat life in Thailand, and the character flaws of her husband. We learned a lot.

"Podology is a science only practiced outside the U.S., mostly in Germany, and is not the same as podiatry. Podologists study the causes of foot problems, but podiatrists just treat the symptoms. It's the difference between pulling off the head of a weed and digging it up from the root. Speaking of which, if you go to a podiatrist with an ingrown toenail, they'll want to pull the entire nail off. If you go to a hospital in Chiang Mai, they'll just chop off the toe. And you don't want that!"

"No," I agreed, "we certainly don't want that."

"Podologists are much better for long-term foot health. My husband and I receive regular treatment. But my husband is such a baby about it. Us women are much tougher. A couple of years back, we went with my girlfriend and her husband on Flight of the Gibbon, that ziplining tour--have you done it?"

This last with a pointed glance into the rearview mirror.

"Um, no, not yet," I offered. "After all, we only got into Chiang Mai last night."

"Well, you simply must. It's enormous fun. At least for me and my girlfriend. Oh, we were laughing...and our husbands were shaking on the platforms!"

I joined in, a half-beat late, to Janet's conspiratory chuckle. Ah, men. What babies!

"Yep, my husband, you know, he even gets nervous when I'm driving! He thinks I go way too fast, and he hates the roads here. In fact, when we first got to Thailand, he refused to drive at all! So then one day, we were out to dinner with my girlfriend, and we suddenly just got up and left him at the restaurant with the car to drive home. Oh, we went shopping, and had such a time! Yes, we were laughing..."

Another chuckle.

"Have you been to that restaurant? La Fourchette?"

Another pointed glance.

"Uh, no. After all, we only got into Chiang Mai last night."

"Oh, you have to! It's wonderful! We have our annual dinner there every year. People offer us extra to get in, but we fill up the reservations so fast! I always make them napkin rings for their Christmas gift."*

By this time, we had arrived at The Podology Center. Janet led us past the German shepherds, iguana, and turtle in the front yard into the clinic, where she sat me down with my feet soaking in a warm iodine bath while she bustled around collecting supplies from where they had all apparently been misplaced by Dirk and his Thai assistants. 

"I'm going to shoot them," Janet muttered audibly. I was concerned for Dirk and the Thai assistants.

After ten minutes, treatment commenced.

Pre-operation consultation.

"We'll start with the left foot," Janet declared. "Wouldn't want you to be uneven, right?"

I felt this was akin to a dentist suggesting that it was necessary to extract your left molar because the right had a toothache. This did not seem right.

"Right!" I replied with enthusiasm, not wanting to join Dirk and the assistants on Janet's hit list.

Janet pulled my foot out of the water and immediately began tsking.

"Your skin is very dry and hard, and you're retaining a lot of water down in here. You've got a corn starting on this toe, and oh, I don't like the looks of this callus on your big toe. I've never seen that before. I'd better take a picture and send it to Dirk."

She whipped out her Samsung, did so, and continued.

"But don't feel bad. I've seen feet that are much worse. Yep, I think I'd better see what I can do here. I'm going to need my power tools. I love my power tools!"

Janet removed a small electric sander from a nearby rack and went to work on my dry, hard, water-retaining left foot. I stayed very still--a wise move for all those who happen to find any part of their anatomy in close proximity to whizzing German power tools wielded by a small, feisty grandmother--and tried not to think about what would happen when Janet began working on the foot that I had actually come to have treated.

What did happen was this. Janet zipped a zip tie around the knuckle of my big toe. Leah was enlisted to hold my foot down in case I kicked while anesthetic was being injected into it. Janet loaded up a standard syringe with lidocaine. Hannah was thankful that there was going to be lidocaine, and that it was not going to be administered with any sort of German power tool.

Post-lidocaine, pre-nailectomy.

And then...everything went great. Janet cut away the offending part of my toenail (while I watched with morbid fascination--it's really quite surreal to watch someone cut into part of your body without feeling it at all), cleaned up the wound, wrapped my toe up with enough tape and gauze to stock Princeton fencing's medical bag, and gave me some antibiotics to stave off any recurring infection. Three thousand baht, four days, and one follow-up appointment later, my toe really does feel fine, and I'm a new believer in the power of podology.

Finally fine!

And that is how I received minor surgery in Thailand for less than a hundred bucks.

*Leah and I did, in fact, eat at La Fourchette the following night, where we each had an amazing three-course French meal, with wine, for less than $40 total.

Purchasing Power

I mentioned in my last post that American purchasing power in Thailand is astounding. You'll recall that Leah and I each rented bikes in Kanchanaburi for 25 Thai baht/day: one US dollar is about 30 baht. Some other pricing examples:

-A made-to-order dinner of green curry and rice at a restaurant = 60 baht ($2). The same meal from a street cart is even less.

$2 worth of food in Thailand.

-An air conditioned guest house room with private bathroom, for two people = 500 baht/night (<$20).

-Laundry service for a week's worth of clothes from two people = 140 baht (<$5), including  cleaning of sneakers caked with mud (requested) and the nylon bag I dropped the clothes off in (a happy surprise).

-A 250 mL bottle of sunscreen at 7-11 (the cheapest and largest we could find) = over 300 baht ($10). Yeah, we can't figure that one out either.

Sunscreen notwithstanding, the enormous difference between the prices of goods and services in Thailand as compared to the United States or Western Europe emphasizes the income disparity between developing and developed countries to a degree that is impossible to overlook. The average per capita income in Thailand is around $8,200/year, or just over $22/day, meaning that even students like me and Leah can easily afford purchases that most Thais cannot.

But purchasing power and the privilege it bestows is a double-edged sword.* It is, obviously, wonderful to live in a place where a taxi ride pretty much from anywhere to anywhere sets you back only a couple of bucks. Leah and I have run into a bunch of Australian, European, and American expats who have moved to Thailand for that very reason. Yet I'm always beset by a sense of guilt when I hand the cabbie his hundred baht--a feeling that even though I'm almost certainly being charged way more than standard fares for locals, I'm the one ripping the driver off by not paying him nearly as much as he deserves.

One can make many points to fend off the guilt. Tourism bolsters the local economy. Even a small amount of my money goes a lot farther in Thailand than I realize. Standards of living are much lower here than they are at home. Money doesn't buy happiness, and essentially all of the Thais we've met seem perfectly happy. People don't want charity, and even if they did, I can't even come close to helping everyone. I tip more generously than a lot of people do, anyway.

At the end of the day, though, these are all rationalizations, and they're uncomfortably similar to the ones that I make on a regular basis in the U.S. whenever I encounter a janitor, taxi driver, or gas station cashier. Indeed, one of the blessing/curses of travel is that it forces me to acknowledge the ubiquity and degree of such rationalizations in my everyday life.

I'm reading a book right now called The Fortune Cookie Chronicles about the intricacies of Chinese food in the U.S. and the rest of the world,** which spends a chapter discussing the economics of Chinese restaurant labor. Over the past several decades, thousands and thousands of Chinese immigrants have paid up to $70,000 each (a large sum to the average American, and astronomical to the average Chinese) to be illegally smuggled into the U.S. Many, speaking little or no English and therefore facing limited job opportunities, end up working twelve-hour shifts seven days a week for decades at Chinese restaurants scattered in nowhere towns across the U.S.

I'm sure that the situation is similar for restaurant workers from other developing countries as well. And this is something that I overlook with a 20% tip.

This post is clearly of a much different flavor*** than prior and forthcoming posts. Leah and I have been talking a lot about these issues, and as you can see, we haven't really resolved any of them--nor do we expect to. But we welcome thoughts or comments that any of you might have!

While we've been talking, we've also been traveling. In lieu of a full recap of the past several s\days, we'll be posting a kind of photo essay later today. And I'll pick up next time with details of how I used my Thai purchasing power to receive minor surgery for a hundred bucks.

*Of course, travel to any country (even one in which you don't benefit from a favorable exchange rate) is a privilege in and of itself. Business Insider reported that in 2012, about 1 billion tourists traveled internationally--less than 1/7 of the global population. Assuming that many of these are repeat travelers, the percentage of people in the world who have ever left their home country is considerably lower: less than 5%, by some estimates.

We're some of the lucky few who get to see places like this.

**From which I'm learning some fascinating things, by the way. There are more Chinese restaurants in the U.S. than the number of McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC establishments combined. There is an enormous black market of smuggled shipments of chicken feet and pork trotters thrown out by Chinese restaurants in the U.S. (which are patronized by Americans, who don't like them) to supply Chinese restaurants in China (which are patronized by Chinese, who do). General Tso's chicken is named after an actual general. Soy sauce from La Choy Food Products, Inc., the company that produces over 40% of the shelf-stable Asian products sold in the U.S., doesn't actually contain any soy.

***And length, because I'm now in Chiang Mai at a hotel with computers in the lobby that are much easier to type on than Leah's iPad.

Pedal Power

I do not, historically, have an excellent relationship with bikes. To those of you familiar with my talents as a runner, fencer, and general athlete, my ineptitude on two wheels may be something of a surprise. To those of you familiar with my distinct lack of talent in walking gracefully and without injurious incident on two feet, however, it's really really not.

Two weeks into my freshman year at Princeton, I flipped off my bike and had to get six stitches in my chin. A month ago, I crashed during a family bike ride in Cape Cod and suffered abrasions on my left shin, led knee, left elbow, left hand, right hip, and both thighs that have yet to fully heal. When I went to Israel with BBYO in tenth grade, we had to ride these tandem bike things around a very long loop for mandated fun, and I got very sweaty and grumpy.

So it was with outward bravado and internal terror that I suggested to Leah that we spend our first full day in Kanchanaburi riding rented bikes to a guidebook-recommended "wat" (temple) about six miles away. And it was with guarded optimism and entirely undisguised and well-founded fear for my safety that Leah ultimately agreed. We left our hotel, casually walked the Death Railway along the Bridge Over the River Kwai into town,

Hoping that the Death Railway isn't taking us to the death-by-bike way.

 and stopped at a laundromat-cum-bike rental shop, where we each traded 50 baht for a two-day rental of single-gear bikes and locks and were off. (50 baht is about $1.80. Tourists have a lot of purchasing power in Thailand.)

Imagine you're playing Mario Kart on one of those city mode levels; you know, the ones where there are all kinds of other cars and giant caterpillar buses zooming around and honking. Now imagine that instead of karts, there are all kinds of moped/scooter things; instead of shells whistling up behind you, there are stray dogs chasing at your heels, and instead of smiling billboards of Mario, there are giant pictures of King Bhumibol. That's about what the first half of our bike ride was like.

Once we got out of the main city center, things were considerably less chaotic. In fact, we even had time to take some pictures. You can re-appreciate the one I showed you last time:

Not the wat what we wanted, but still somewat beautiful. 

and also appreciate these other ones:

Leah at the wat.

Chinese cemetery in the countryside.

Since getting out of the city took a lot more time and many more wrong turns than we were expecting, though, we didn't actually make it to the wat we were heading for. After biking in the countryside for a little while, we turned around, Mario Karted ourselves around some more wrong turns in the city center for a while longer, and eventually gave up and hailed a taxi to take us and our bikes to a restaurant for lunch. For all of you following the analogy, this felt aswonderful as getting a Chain Chomp in your item box.

Sweet salvation.

The we went to the pool, took a nap, and ordered vanilla milkshakes from room service. Conclusion: rented bikes can be an enjoyable way to see a new city. Especially when they're sitting next to you in a taxi.

Stay tuned for scenes from our next episode: 

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