Phitsanulok: "Why you go to there?!"

My friend Caitlin is also in her second PiA year teaching in Nan, northern Thailand.  I last saw her in January when I spent a weekend in Nan.   Last weekend I had two days off for midterm and I attempted to find a way to visit her, but learned that though Nan looks very nearby on a map, it would take forever to go there.  Eventually we realized we would have to meet halfway.

Glamorous downtown P’lok.

To try to make a vaguely relevant comparison, imagine you live in New York City and your friend lives in Princeton.  You decide to meet decide to meet halfway–say in Rahway or Secaucus. Despite being worlds apart, this is not unlike what we did last weekend.  This is how I ended up going to Phitsanulok, Thailand.  It is not insignificant (it was the Thai capital for 25 years in the 15th century, and has one important temple), but no one really goes there.  This does not mean it is a quaint, charming, untouristed town like Nan either.  There are a smattering of sights, but nothing to plan a visit for, only things to do if you happen to find yourself there.  Any tourist who usually finds themself there is stopping over on the way to nearby Sukhothai.  There is no great natural beauty.  Just an average Thai city.  So, the main reaction to this excursion from my students, Caitlin’s Thai friends, and even the man at the bus station was…“Why you go to there!?”

Wat Phra Sri Rattana Mahathat

On the way, I stopped overnight in Udon Thani with my friend Sam, who was on the way to Bangkok.  We only needed a centrally located place to crash for 5-6 hours, so we looked for something cheap.  Turned out to be the worst place I’ve ever stayed.  Half of the rooms had no doorknobs and remained half-open, abandoned.  Mine smelled like a mix of basement and locker room and looked like a mental institution, with tile floors and a bed with a chipped metal frame and stains on the walls.  I had a fitful night’s sleep, filled with nightmares of bedbugs.

Never did figure out what the “surprise” was…

A 7-hour bus ride later, Caitlin and I reunited in Phitsanulok, in our hotel’s restaurant, unambiguously named, “It is A Cake.”  It seems anyone with a dictionary can be a translator in most of Asia, which results in tshirts with sayings like “Fabulous WOW to restore ancient ways” (I own this one, in fact).  Phitsanulok was no exception, with the “Happy toilet” clearly competing directly with the nearby “Clean toilet,” and enticing signs for “solar dried bananas” and a “hygenic park.”

How to describe Phitsanulok?  Not many tourists come so we were often stared at as if people were asking “why are you here??”  Not in a hostile way, nor even a curious one, just simply perplexed.  One small Thai boy scout was so interested at our presence in the night market that he stealthily followed us around for 20 minutes.  The Nan River, which flows through the center of town, was flooded so streetlights and tree tops poked out from its banks, where stairways led straight into the muddy water.  Scores of street dogs curled up to sleep in the most inconvenient locations in the middle of the sidewalks downtown.

The rising waters of the Nan River.

Stairway to muddy water.

But the trip was mostly about catching up, which is what we did, comparing notes about teaching in Laos and Thailand (Caitlin teaches kindergarten and sixth grade English) and the past 8 months since we last saw each other.  A search for something to do on Saturday night resulted in visiting two live music bars.  The first–“Thank You Club”–smelled like a toilet, had an old hippie singing Beatles covers, and an obnoxiously drunk Thai lady named Po who installed herself at our table.  Once we extricated ourselves from her clutches we went to Sanuk Nuek, a much better choice.  There we sat with the house band, who were filled with questions about how Lao is different from Thailand, and the meaning of important English idioms like “bling-bling.”

Pit stop on the way out of town.

On our second day, we rented a motorbike to drive outside the city to check out some waterfalls.  Minus a mildly-worrisome mysterious crunching sound that the bike began to make partway through, it was a smooth ride, and took us to some nice scenery about 30km outside the city.  After the quick visit, Caitlin and I hopped on our respective buses and watched P’lok (as it’s called by those in the know) recede into ever-present dust.  Certainly we’ll see each other again in Asia, and who knows where next?