Dungeons and Dragons

Umm… no.  I have not been passing time in Thailand playing fantasy nerd games.   This blog entry will recount the epic tale of my escape from a Thai dungeon, and my heroic encounter with the infamous Suphan dragon.  All in a weekend’s work, my friends.  All in a weekend’s work.

My story (dramatic pause) begins here…

Clare and I had big plans for Bangkok last weekend.  Well… that’s not entirely true.  Plan.  We had one big plan.  And that was food.  Ally and Clare (you know Ally and Clare– my seasoned-Suphan friends who I refer to in just about every entry because they have been my guiding lights) have made it clear that there is one real motivation for a Bangkok weekend, and that is to eat foreign food.  Don’t get me wrong– I think I’ve made it clear that Thai food is da bomb, but sometimes you just want to gorge yourself on delicious cheese and bread and other wonderful goodies that the Thais just don’t seem to understand.  So Mexican food and Western-style bagel sandwiches was the plan… plus a jazz club and temple, you know- while we digest.

But, alas, the plan did not come to fruition.  On Friday afternoon, mere hours before our intended departure, we heard word that the commute to Bangkok might be much longer than expected.  The flooding is under control enough that the highway to Bangkok has been opened, but people have supposedly been moving the sandbags lining the highway because their homes are still underwater.  Can’t say I blame them.  If my house were flooded and its drainage was being sacrificed so that foreigners like me could satisfy their cravings for enchiladas, I’d be angry too.

But, there was a perfectly good weekend in front of us yet, and still so much Thailand to be explored!  And, what is Thailand if not a chance for adventure?  Clare and I set our dreams of cheese aside and went to the bus station without a plan or destination to speak of.  After a quick assessment of our options, we boarded a bus bound for Saraburi.

Saraburi.  It was about 3 hours on the bus to reach the province’s main city, during which we scavenged my Lonely Planet guide for some travel advice only to find that, like Suphan, Saraburi is a bit too off-the-beaten-track for inclusion in the L.P.  This was okay– I’m cool with finding my own way, and luckily we had Clare’s fine Thai language skills to help us along.  The problem is that no Lonely Planet-mention means no hostel listings, and arriving in a strange city around 8:30 pm, we were keen to find ourselves a place to stay as quickly as possible.

Which brings us to the “dungeon.”  Upon arriving in Saraburi, we asked the first person we saw where to find a hotel, and he pointed to the “Saraburi Hotel,” right across the street.  We booked a room and were led up an elevator with missing buttons and down a dingy white-turned-grey hallway with exposed piping and chipped paint.  Imagine an old, abandoned 1960’s psychiatric institution.  The hospital from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but how it would look now, comes to mind.  And inside our room, Clare said she felt like she was contracting an STI via osmosis.  We came to know it as the dungeon, and we vowed to find a better spot first thing the next morning.

Later that night, as we wandered back from exploring the Saraburi night market and sharing a dinner of plaa yung (grilled fish), we realized that we weren’t sure of the way back to the hotel.  When Clare asked a Saraburian, we were shocked and appalled to hear them say that the Saraburi Hotel was a very bad place for us to stay.  When we “finally” arrived “home,” we barricaded ourselves inside the room, just in case.

The door still opens to the outside, so it wasn't much of a barricade, but at least any potential harm-doers would make a noisy entrance.

But don’t worry, Mom… I never actually felt threatened.  It was more amusing than anything else.  And next time I will shop around before settling myself into a Thai dungeon for the night.

True to our promise, we woke up early the next morning to move the furniture back into place and break out of the dungeon, and found our way to a much more agreeable housing arrangement.  Here, the hotel receptionists pointed us in the direction of Wat Prae Phuttabat, about 40 kilometers outside of the city.  Prae Phuttabat was absolutely stunning, and housed a Buddha footprint around which Thai people knelt to deposit coins, flowers, and small bits of white paper, the significance of which I am still uncertain.  I had a delightful afternoon wandering the temple grounds and interacting with some friendly temple staff who enthusiastically led me around the shrines, miming and modeling to guide me in paying my respects to the various statues.  One woman also read my fortune to me, but seeing as it was in Thai, the future remains as much a mystery as ever.

My temple friend with the laughing Buddha-babies

While I had visited the beautiful Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok’s Grand Palace, Wat Prae Phuttabat wasn’t nearly as tourist-ridden, and most of its visitors seemed to be worshipers.  I loved the peaceful and spiritual energy that emanated from this beautiful temple.

Later that night, Clare and I hit the town for SARABURI PUB CRAWL 2554 woooooooooooo (according to the Thai calendar, it is the year 2554 right now, btw.  And let me tell you, the future is looking grand!)!!!!!!!!  We went to three bars and ordered a Leo and a bar snack at each one, and just narrowly avoided Typhoid fever when we discovered one pork dish to be exceptionally rare.  Our Saraburi weekend was officially deemed a success having hung out with a fun group of locales at our final stop of the night.

The next morning, after a glorious night’s sleep in a hotel room that didn’t require fortification, we left Saraburi and returned home to Suphan.  But the story doesn’t end here.  Oh, no.  Recall that the title of this post is “Dungeons and Dragons,” and our protagonist has yet to come face-to-face with the Suphan dragon.  Well, wait no longer… here she is:

I knocked that smile off her face real quick

Meet the Suphan dragon, also known as the Dragon Descendents Museum.  She resides in Suphanburi’s own little Chinatown and I rounded out my weekend by paying her a visit.  Whoops… cough cough… I mean slaying her.  It is a random and quirky little pocket of Suphan, this Chinatown.  I wandered around (you know, in search of my foe), but didn’t go into the museum because, first of all, it means voluntarily entering a dragon’s belly (and every good hero knows that that’s a stupid idea), and second, because it is something like a 500 baht entry fee (about 15 USD), and that is just absurd.

Tomorrow I’m off to Lopburi for the annual monkey festival.  Tune in next time to read about my battle with the ravenous monkeys that live among the ruins of this ancient city.  That’s right– no villian is too large nor small for this hero.

For now, I am on my way to a “Thanksgiving dinner” of burgers and pasta salad with my fellow foreign teachers.  I may not have turkey, but I have plenty to be thankful for.  A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you.  Eat an extra helping of mashed potatoes for me, please!