Puppets and Me

Greetings again.

Since leaving Krabi I made my way east (and slightly north) and found myself in the quiet town of Nakorn Si Thammarat. It's one of the bigger cities on the east coast gulf side of Thailand and isn't on most tourists lists of places to go. It was on my list however and for one overriding reason - it's home to one of Thailand's most well-renowned shadow puppet craftsmen and performers. I was introduced to the art of shadow puppets in Malaysia last summer and really enjoyed it. The Malay and Indonesian puppets are similar to the Thai puppets (there are similar characters etc.) but there are different unique features to the Thai puppets, so I wanted to take a look. It was short hop (about 3 hours) from Krabi and was then easily connected to my next destination so I jumped at the chance. I got in late in the evening and one of the people I was traveling with helped me find a place to stay, which was nice. I had a nice big dinner of Thai food, which was a change. For that past few days in Krabi I'd been eating wonderful foreign food. The abundance of choices and the similarity in price to Thai food made it an easy choice. Why pay exorbitant prices for Thai food I can get at home much cheaper and why not eat good foreign food that I can't eat at home? I couldn't come up with an answer so I ate. But it was nice to have Thai food again. The next morning I hit the street running only to run into rain. I holed up in a little coffee shop for a little while and waited for the rain to pass and then went to the Shadow Puppet Museum. I was the only one there so I had the whole place to myself. It's a little family home that's been turned into this museum. They show you a bit of the history of the family and their involvement in making puppets as well as a bit about the history of the art itself but the neatest part was watching them make the puppets and the performance. I spent about an hour and a half talking with the daughter of the puppet maker (Suchart Supin) after walking through the museum. She was really cool and walked me through the whole process. After that I headed off to the National Museum where I walked around for a while. It was...a museum. Then it was a stroll past several of the temples and remnants of the old city walls and whatnot before I hit the Internet to escape the heat of the day. A little net then a little dinner and a surprise on HBO in the form of The DaVinci Code in English rounded out my evening. One of the highlights of this part of the trip was the enthusiasm I was met with when people discovered that I spoke Thai. I don't know what it was about this town, but everyone I met whom I conversed with in Thai was so enthusiastic. The lady at the shadow puppet museum was very happy and excited but all the reactions pale in comparison to the reaction I got from the guy working at the post office. I went to mail a package back to Lampang (I bought some things and they were a bit too large to carry around so I mailed them home). I went up to the counter to mail the package and said in Thai, "I want to send this to Lampang" and the guy just about burst! He immediately reached across the counter grabbing my head and shaking it vigorously while exclaiming, "You can speak Thai! So fantastic!" He continued to this effect for quite some time before starting the normal line of questioning i.e What's your name? Where are you from? Do you have a girlfriend? and so on.
We shook hands about 5 times while I stood there sending my package. It was awesome.

From there I hoped on a little minivan and scooted south to Hat Yai where I changed minivans and headed for Penang, Malaysia. It was a pretty simple trip with the usual antics at the border - lines and stamps and short trips in no mans land in between the border checkpoints. I got to Georgetown, the capital of Penang and found a place to stay. I rode down from Hat Yai with some folks from England so after getting settled and a quick orientation stroll around the city, I met up with them for dinner and drinks. It's been nice to have a few drinks in the evening in Krabi and then again last night. It's been good to have something other than whiskey and water or Leo beer. Last night was Carlsburg, Tiger and even a Guinness Stout.

I spent the day wandering around town. There were a few museums and temples and such to see but mostly just walking around taking it all in. I booked my ferry ticket so I'm all set to head out tomorrow. Tomorrow it's off to Indonesia - I'll arrive in Medan and then hopefully will be on an overnight bus to Aceh where I'll then get on more buses and boats and by the end of the day Sunday (today is Friday) I'll be on the beach on Pulau Weh.

Talk to you later.