Massaaaaaaaaage and the Mekong

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After the several cocktails the night before, a relaxing day was definitely in order and was pleasantly surprised to discover I had slept till nearly 10. Another excellent muesli and fruit breakfast was followed up by doing what most backpackers to SE Asia do....catch up on what was happening at the Cheltenham Festival! I sat in the guesthouse garden and watched all the main races
from the first two days, though I may have got a little carried away and received some funny looks from the Latvian girls when I started cheering Sprinter Sacre up the hill.....god know what will happen if Kauto is in with a chance when I finally manage to see the Gold Cup!

After spending a few hours chilling out and sending some emails, I decided that I should go for my first Thai massage as Chiang Mai is renowned for being the home of some of the best and cheapest places on offer. After a very short walk from the guesthouse I managed to find a massage school and decided that if people here were teaching they must be fairly decent. I nervously stepped inside still feeling
like I was doing something a little naughty given all the talk you get of 'extras.' The woman who came out to do my massage was about 5ft tall so I was wondering how much pressure she would be able to work on me.

First though, I needed my feet washing, which she did after finding a bowl my feet would actually fit in. Amusingly, while I was sat waiting, an American guy stepped out of the massage room with his flies undone and I was wondering what I had got myself into and whether I should make a run for it! It turned out that you actually just change into some cotton shorts and a shirt that they give you to do the massage in. After having my feet washed I changed and was led into the massage room where I laid across two tables (too big to fit on one apparently) and Leyla got to work.

The first part of the massage was on the back of my legs and was very relaxing, I was close to falling asleep. Then all of a sudden she was on my back and the next thing I know there is an elbow digging into my kidneys. I suppress the urge to cry out and lie there taking the punishment that Leyla dishes out with her unfeasibly strong hands and elbows. At times, she was actually using her whole bodyweight to dig in. She used her home made balm to rub into my shoulders and lower back. It was like deep heat but combined with the massage loosened up every knot and joint in my body. When the hour was up I felt both relaxed and like I had done ten rounds of boxing. I have no idea how somebody so small can cause so much pain but she managed it! People in the UK probably pay up to £50 for an hours massage like that...it cost me £4!

After it finished I was given some green tea and then headed off for a walk around the old town, criss crossing through the back streets and peeking in at some of the many markets dotted around to see what was on offer.I was soon starving though so after heading back to meet James at the guest house we headed off for dinner and decided to opt for a spot of Mexican.Excellent combo of tacos and burritos with some cold beer and then we made our way to the Muay Thai stadium to take in an evening of the national sport, Thai Boxing.

We were greeted on the door by a pair of rather butch lady boys, one of whom had a voice deeper than me. We were shown to our seats, about 4 rows back from ringside and waited for the action to begin. Having seen the line up and the weight categories, I was expecting two really tiny guys to come out first but I was only half right. They were tiny but that was only because they were 11 years old! I would like to say I was surprised that neither of these young boys were wearing helmets or any protection but actually I wasn't at all, we were told by the waitress in the bar that these boys start boxing from as young as 7, training and fighting every week. Their match lasted the full 5 rounds, neither boy probably with the strength to cause serious enough damage to stop the other.

The second fight was fought by 18 year old boys and it was all over in the first round, a series of big punches putting an end to the match. Then it was the turn of the girls, 2 fights for 18 year old girls, one unluckily stopped when one of the girls was knocked out falling against the referee's knee. Then came the 'special fight' where 6 boys were blindfolded and sent into the ring, swinging wildly in the hope of landing a blow. This was put on as a bit of comedy before the main event, 2 lads who were a little older and clearly knew what they were doing. The fight was fairly brutal, with blue seemingly having the upper hand early on after a series of punches. Red hung in there though and in round 5 delivered a massive elbow to the face which knocked blue clean out, he hit the canvas like a sack of spuds and laid there for a good 10 minutes being attended to before he recovered enough to be led from the ring, blood pouring down his head from the killer blow. That last fight was what I had come to see and, while I was disappointed with the overall standard, it was great to see at least one proper bout. The sport is, at its best, fantastic to watch, like any great boxing or martial arts match.Just two people in
the ring tryinng to knock seven bells out of each other, giving everything they have until they are completely spent, or knocked out!

After the evening finished, it was back to the hostel to pack the bags for the early departure, a 9am minibus to the border at Chiang Kong. This made a series of pick ups around Chiang Mai before striking out of town for the border. On board with me was Claire, from Newcastle, 2 Danish girls, a Norwegian girl and making up the party were Sam, from Wales but now living in Yosemite, his sister Anna and girlfriend Laura, who was born in Iowa but also now based in Yosemite. While most people slept, Sam and I chatted away about Wales, rugby, NFL and any number of other things to pass the time away. A couple of stops were made, one at a place called the White Temple, which appeared to be very new and only built in order to give tourists something to look at on the way to the border and for locals to have the opportunity to sell them things while they walked around. The temple was like something from Disney World, with grotesque masks and figures outside and inside murals depicting the likes of Spiderman, the Predator and Kung Fu Panda.....all very strange!

We arrived at the border town and pulled into a very nice guesthouse, all wooden with a lovely garden area and even a swimming pool, which felt great to dive into after 6 hours in the van. A buffet dinner was tucked into as we all sat around getting to know each other. Another early start in the morning as we were shepherded down to the border crossing over the Mekong, my first sight of this river which has so much history to it. A river taxi took us across to the border control point, little more than a shack and a small office where all of the backpackers were queued waiting to pay the $36 entry fee and get their visas stamped. From there it was on to a cafe by the slow boat terminal where our travel rep convinced us all to book ahead our accomodation for the evening at Pakbeng due to the potential lack of rooms on arrival from the boat. We collectively fell for his banter and signed ourselves up for the guesthouse he was offering, matching oursleves up to share rooms and keep the costs down.

The boat itself was enormously long but very narrow, with seats in pairs on either side of the aisle all the way back to the bar area, where a group of us managed to get a bunch of seats facing each other with more leg room. As we pulled away from the pier, I really felt like I was now into my trip, heading into the unknown, cruising down a river surrounded by jungle and faraway mountains shrouded in haze. Drifing downstream I got very snap happy and took tens of photos of people going about their every day lives on or by the river, washing pots, fishing, playing or moving from place to place. I sat gazing out of the boat at the dramatic landscape, imagining some of the scenes that may have unfolded here during the Vietnam war when it spilled over the borders. Apache helicopters, landing ships and hundreds of personnel could have been coming through the area and disappearing off into the jungle. Despite the 6 hours on board, I never grew tired of the trip and, if anything, the secenery grew even more spectacular as the sun began to dip towards the horizon and the haze of the day cleared. At various times I was joined by people at the back of the boat wanting to get a better vantage point to take photos and I chatted away with many of them, fortunate that pretty much every backpacker can speak English word perfect. Its always a reminder that English people are generally so bad at languages because there is no incentive to learn to speak others when everybody already speaks yours so well!

Eventually we pulled into the pier at Pakbeng, our stopover point for the night and the hundred or so backpackers on board disembarked to be met by the usual horde of guesthouse touts, showing you pictures and explaining the facilities
in an attempt to attract you to stay with them. We headed up the steep slope to the guesthouse we had booked collectively, only to be told that 5 would have to go to rooms elsewhere as the place was full. While we had paid only £5 each for
our room, I wanted to head back to the border and throttle the lousy agent who had clearly conned us. Other rooms were readily available in the town much cheaper and we had been told that we would all be in the same place. The room itself
had a double bed but Sam and I were happy enough to share and his mrs and sister headed off to a room at the neighbouring guesthouse. At least the room itself was clean and comfortable and the bathroom had a hot shower to clean away the grime acquired during 6 hours on the boat. Feeling like a new man after a long hot shower, a group of us headed across to the Indian restaraunt where I tried a mutton rogan josh, then the left over veg curry Sam had ordered, the leftover chicked rojan josh Anna had ordered and the leftover special rice Charlotte had ordered.......still got it! Feeling very full, I tried to get on the wifi to watch the gold cup but the connection speed was terrible so I had to read the thoroughly disappointing news that the nation's most loved horse had been pulled up and instead, Synchronised, a horse Dad and I had been following for a while, had gone on to defeat the big outsider, The Giant Bolster and the favourite Long Run. As it was a while till the rugby started I decided to give up and head to bed, knowing that 9 hours awaited us back on the boat the next day to get to Luang Prabang.

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