The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

After traveling for the past several weekends in a row, Sarah and I thought it best to give our bodies a rest before our next couple of weekend trips. So, rather than planning a nice tropical beach vacation, or exploring the ancient temples of Thailand, we decided to take it easy in Suphan. And although our weekend was supposed to be relaxing, it was more like a roller coaster ride. Along the way, we saw the good, the bad and the very, very ugly. 


Let's start with the good, because no one really wants to start reading on a bad note. On Saturday morning, after an epic fail of a Skype date with some friends back home, we ventured into Bangkok to get some things done and to enjoy our day. (It really isn't easy staying entertained in The Soup for an entire weekend). The main purpose of the trip was to head back to Siam Paragon and to see a movie....in English! Siam has this ridiculous movie theatre and they offer a small selection of recently released English movies. Sarah and I, being huge movie-goers, thought this was the perfect way to spend our Saturday. And it was. We made our way to the enormous theatre, settled into our leather recliner seats and got sucked into The Social Network. It had been so long since I have seen a movie that the whole experience was all I could have hoped for. The movie was good, the seats were comfortable and the popcorn was fresh. I just love a good movie. The whole movie-going experience is pretty similar to back in the States except 1. You can pay for extra-premium seats, where you are essentially given a bed, pillows and a blanket while watching the movie. There was even a pretty extensive pillow menu! I will clearly be trying this out at some point. 2. There are assigned seats. I figured when most of the theatre was empty, I would probably have some space, but sure enough, we were surrounded on both sides despite the surplus of free seats in the theatre. 3. Before the movie begins, instead of the reminder to be quiet (Silence is Golden!), everyone rises and watches and sings along to a dedication to the King. It's adorable how much they respect their King. The movie was a success and I am already looking forward to my next excuse to go back.


On to the not so good parts of the weekend. The other main purpose of going to Bangkok was to go to the bus terminal and buy our tickets to Chiang Mai for the New Year. We have a 4 day weekend and really want to spend it in the best place on Earth. Apparently so does everyone else because counter after counter told us that they were sold out. It was a huge disappointment and our hearts were a little broken because we have been looking forward to this trip for a while now. We decided to not let it get to us until we looked at all possible solutions to getting there. Which brings us to the ugly part of this weekend. 


We recently discovered that Suphan has a train station and although not many trains pass through this gem of a town, they sell tickets for all stations. We figured why not give it a whirl and see if we could buy tickets from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. We knew it was down a random path, but we were also told it was a walkable distance from the main road. We hopped on the songthaew to the general area and then tried to find our way to the Rot Fai (train station). A motorbike offered us his services, but we kindly rejected, assuring him we would walk, even after he warned us that it was far. Off we went and soon the bustle of the town disappeared and we were walking along a dirt path with no people, buildings or cars in sight.  All we could see were the train tracks to our left and the rice paddies to our right. We joked around that we would probably die of exhaustion, never to be found on this deserted road, when we suddenly noticed an abandoned shack ahead with some wild, stray dogs lazing around. Once the dogs took notice of us, they angrily came sprinting, growling, and barking  towards us. We made the decision to freeze, and not to run, and just let them rip us apart. These dogs were pretty large and we had no chance of survival if they decided to eat us. As we froze and shook with fear, we could only hope that they would not start attacking. When we tried to backtrack, we were trapped by another group of dogs, just as angry, glaring at us and giving us no chance of escape. So, we stood there, trembling, with no way out. I have seriously never experienced fear like that before. Being surrounded by big, wild, hungry dogs with literally no escape had my life flashing before my eyes. We slowly inched our way forward and hoped that the dogs would back down...and eventually, they did. We hadn't yet recovered when another couple of dogs came running from yet another abandoned shack, but luckily, these ones weren't as hungry and went no further than the grass. To make matters worse, after that episode, we made it to the train station just for them to tell us Chiang Mai was a no-go. Lessons learned. 


Our attempt at a relaxing weekend was kind of a failure, but I just need to put it behind me and hope to get into the Christmas spirit despite the lack of...well, Christmas, here. Hope everyone else is in full Christmas mode and embracing all of the joys of the season :)