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Sorry again for the long delay in this blog entry, a) didn't realise how much time had passed since the last one and b) since getting to Laos, internet connection is very erratic. It's now taken me about a day and a half to upload all the photos I wanted to put on this blog and there are loads this time. And what I've decided to do this time is do a much shorter writing bit (ha ha, I guess we'll see how that turns out!) and let the photos do more of the talking. So I'll just try and do (the several) highlights of the last few weeks.
I ended up in Bangkok for 2 weeks which wasn't planned at all, and I wasn't particularly enjoying it, not least because of spending my first week in Rambuttri Road, in the Khao San Road area, which is like the worst of the worst travellers' ghettos, with not much apart from internet cafes, 7-eleven (though to be fair, there is a 7-eleven approx every 20 metres around the whole of Bangkok anyway), travel agents, clothes stalls, restaurants and bars, and thousands of westerners who look like they've forgotten they're in
someone else's country - know that sounds strong but it's how I experienced it. After my friend Daniela (who I met in Japan and who was one of the reasons I was so long in Bangkok) arrived, I moved to a hostel in another part of town with her, which was a big improvement - this is the Hi Sukhomvit hostel near the Thong Lo sky train station, and Bangkok felt much better from that part of town. Though it was worth being in the Khao San Road only because that's where I'd run into my friend Reiner who I'd met in India, and it was good to hang out and catch up with him for a few days, but apart from that, I couldn't wait to get out of there...
Still, while I was still around Khao San Road, it got me out to see a bit of Bangkok, in desperation to get out of the area, so I had a good look at the Wat Pho temple, Wat Arun, Chinatown, Jim Thompson's House, and Spiderman 3 at the MBK centre cinema (not technically sightseeing in the literal sense of the word, maybe.....).
So far I wasn't feeling
like I'd really scratched any surface of Thailand or Thai culture; Bangkok is mainly a very westernised, modern city, quite different to how I imagined, and I felt like I only briefly brushed anything more traditionally Thai; mainly from eating at street stalls where I did have a few really good Thai curries; and an encounter in a neighbourhood in Bangkok one day where I ended up when I was trying to get to Wat Arun - I found myself walking along tiny alleyways alongside wooden shacks on stilts along the river, almost feeling like I was walking inside peoples' homes, being able to see inside all the houses; and after getting lost was kindly shown my way out by a very nice Thai man who called out to me asking if I needed help.
The Thai language is an interesting one to hear - it almost sounds quite childlike and people talk in a sort of sing song way, which is part of the language - language means different things according to the intonation.
When I moved on from Khao San Road, I began to come across more of the Thai friendliness I had heard so much about -
in the Khao San ghetto, cafe owners and street sellers can be a bit grumpy which I'm sure is in reaction to probably years of getting shit off all the travellers in the area.
As in Japan, I found it really interesting to go around the temples and see Buddha images, and watch people making offerings to the shrines; you get a real sense of the history of this religion in the country.
The day I was due to leave Bangkok for Kanchanaburi, by the River Kwai, I had gone out clubbing the night before with some people I'd met at the hostel, (great fun) not got in till the morning, and then slept through my check out time, so I delayed it a day, and ended up travelling there with Charlotte, who I'd met at the hostel in Bangkok.
We both wanted to go to the Tiger temple, a while away from Kanchanaburi, which we'd heard about; a Buddhist monastery which looks after tigers, treats them really well and keeps them well fed, and consequently, the tigers are tame enough to be touched.
We met Julia in the minivan which was taking us there, and arrived towards
the end of the day, with the people there hurrying us along to get our tickets. Slightly disconcertingly we had to sign a disclaimer when we got there, promising that our friends and family would not hold the monastery responsible if anything happened to us at the hands of the tigers, and Julia and I also ran off to the loos anxiously scrubbing our deodorant off after reading a sign saying the tigers might go for you if they could smell any sort of perfumed scent...
Difficult to know what the true situation is down there. What didn't feel great was that there were hundreds of tourists all allowed in at the same time, descending on these few tigers in a relatively small area. The tigers were chained, though on long chains, and it was difficult to tell exactly how well looked after they are, although you are given a thick booklet, which describes the name and character of each tiger in detail, and explains about the monastery. Well, I don't exactly know what the truth of the set up is there, like I said it didnt' feel that great but my ego got the better of me: I'd gone
there to stroke tigers and that's what I was going to do, so I did. After we got back we got talking to somebody who told us that the monastery isn't really a monastery, and the people there dressed as monks are not really monks - I haven't had time to google for more info on this and am not sure what I really believe, but it might be interesting to check out more info, if anyone wants to do this...
I really wanted to stay in a rafthouse on the Kwai so decided to stay a bit longer in Kanchanaburi in order to do this, so I stayed one more night with Charlotte in our original guesthouse, then moved further down the river to a little rafthouse room on the Kwai, with a hammock on the verandah outside.
I visited the Kanchanaburi POW cemetery and museum, which describes the history of the building of the 'Death' Railway and bridge over the Kwai, instigated by the Japanese who wanted a route into Burma; it's definitely worth a visit to the museum, and although I knew some history about this, I was shocked at the statistics of the numbers of
POWs who had died during this time.
In between this, I spent time with Julia who I'd met on the way to the Tiger temple, and a couple of New Zealand guys in my guest house; and relaxed on my hammock, looking at the river and the mountains beyond, and would have stayed longer than 4 days but because of all the time spent in Bangkok, I was now running out of time and wanted to start heading north.
My next stop was Ayutthaya (keep spelling it wrong but may get it right at some point), to look around some temple ruins there, and I spent a couple of days there, walking around, got a bit sunburnt, and spent the two evenings with some people I'd met, in a Jazz bar across the road from my guesthouse.
My next stop was going to be a place called Phitsanlok, which was described in the good ole Lonely Planet as being a good town to have as a base for visiting the ruins in Sukothai, about an hour away, as apparently it was more of a vibrant town with more nightlife and stuff to do in between sightseeing etc. So
this is what I did, and got off the bus in Phitsanlok 5 hours after leaving Ayutthaya, though there was a slight niggling in the back of my mind that maybe I should go straight on to Sukkothai, and I almost stayed on the bus, but didn't. It turned out to be an accurate intuition; I arrived at the hostel I'd earmarked to stay, and turned down a dirt track to find what looked like a cluster of abandoned buildings with no lights on anywhere and no-one around. I was convinced the place must have close down since the last guidebook had been written, or moved, and it was only noticing a half drunk bottle of water, cups in the sink etc, that I knew there had been recent signs of life (such a detective, I know...) Still, I couldn't find anyone, so started walking back up the road until a woman on a moped called out to me, 'youth hostel? here here' as she was driving back towards the buildings. I followed her, feeling a bit uncertain about staying there, and asked if anyone else was staying there, and she said no, just one guest (ie me apparently). I
decided I didn't really want to stay there alone, so thanked her, and began walking up the street again, thinking maybe I'd try one of the other guest houses, though had no idea where the hell I was and the LP didn't have a decent map; also there were no tuk-tuks (rickshaws) in sight. It was getting late and dark by this time, and the whole town was not really looking much like its 'vibrant' description in the book, with near deserted roads and hardly any people, and I thought maybe it'd be best to to go back to the bus station and see if I could get another bus on to Sukothai before they stopped running for the night. Luckily I came across a nice couple who ran the shop on the corner who told me which bus to catch back to the bus station, and I got back there in time to catch a bus up, kicking myself a bit that I hadn't just stayed on the last bus, and would have been in Sukothai and settled by now. However, I got there, and managed to book into a guest house quickly, which turned out to be a
good choice as it was here that I met Barry and Rod, two lovely Irish guys, Dubliners (except Rod lives in Australia these days), who I'm now travelling with (Baz who I'm kind of together with, which is lovely), and also now travelling with Baz's sister Eimear (Liz - pronounced Imir; everyone else - pronounced eemer) who came to Thailand a few days later. (several pics of all of them below!) Barry was talking a lot about going to a place called Lampang, and suggesting I go, and I'd been reading about the place since Daniela had mentioned it in an email - a chilled out kind of town, and near to an elephant conservation centre. As it turned out, the reason Daniela had been thinking about it was because she'd met Barry and Rod a couple of days before in Sukothai and they'd spoken to her about it, then she'd told me, and then I'd read about it, and then they met me and told me about it - kinda weird!
So, had a lovely day and a bit in Sukothai, ran into the people I'd been with in Ayutthaya who turned up at the guesthouse we were in,
so I looked around the ruins with them, then went back and spent the evening with Baz and Rod and we left the next day for Lampang, a bus ride north for four or five hours, which was initially a bit cramped but after a while some monks got off (in Thailand the back seats of the buses are reserved for monks, which means you can sit there if there aren't any monks on the bus, but can be a risky business if the bus fills up, then some monks want to get on, as you would then lose your seat altogether. However we thought we'd risk it, and if we caught sight of any flashes of orange or saffron at the side of the road as the bus was stopping, we would run back to our own seats before anyone else could get on; fortunately this didn't happen so we were able to spread out on the back seat for the rest of the trip.
After getting to Lampang and eventually finding our way to the one guesthouse listed in the book, the Riverside guest house, which turned out to be really nice, we just had time for something
to eat and drink and then Barry had to head off back to the bus station to get a night bus back to Bangkok to meet Eimear the next day, then come back up the day after that. So Rod and I spent the next couple of days together, which was really good; we went up to the elephant conservation centre the next day, which was an amazing place. Having had a kind of weird experience at the tiger temple, I was a bit wary but immediately on going into the conservation park, it had a nice vibe to it - the elephants seemed quite happy, and the mahouts (elephant trainers) seemed happy and chilled out and seemed to have a good connection to the elephants. The conservation park takes care of elephants that would otherwise be obsolete and end up dying, due to the previous work they had done, mainly logging, not existing anymore because of deforestation of the teak forests. Our mahout training teacher (see more below for that story!) told us that just ten years ago there were 100,000 elephants in Thailand; now there are just 5,000. The conservation centre has a website at www.changthai.com which has
some interesting info. The park also has an elephant hospital, where sick and injured elephants are brought from all over SE Asia for treatment and recovery.
We watched a daily elephant bathing, and then the elephant show, where the elephants have been trained to paint pictures (yes! Rod has one), as well as showing their abilities in moving logs with their trunks etc etc. Rod was really keen to do the 3 day Mahout training course, where you stay in the jungle for 2 nights, learn to ride and control/direct an elephant, and learn more generally about elephants. I was quite interested to maybe do a one day course - as it turned out, the 3 day course didn't seem to be available, and we thought maybe the four of us, once Baz and Eimear got back, could do the one day course together, if they wanted to. We were wondering how we were going to get back from there as we'd got there quite late and everyone seemed to have gone; on the way there, the bus had just dropped us on the dual carriageway and we thought we should just go down there and see if we could
flag a bus back, when some people in a minibus passed us and asked where we were going; they ended up taking us back to Lampang, and wouldn't take any money or anything.
Rod and I went back to the Riverside restaurant that night, where we'd all been the night before (and would become the local haunt very quickly and then we stayed up and had some drinks back at the guest house as it was my birthday once it was midnight and the next day!
We just had a quiet day the next day, eg journal writing (at least Rod was) and I had stuff to do but didn't get any of it done, but passed a clothes shop and thought I might buy a couple of pairs of 3 quarter lengths - not the sort of thing to do if you want to feel good about yourself, are in Thailand, the land of the tiny women, and are at least half a stone if not more heavier than you were when you went away. (as you'll see from the pics, and yes I do blame the good food!) The clothes sizes in Thailand are completely different to England,
ie whereas I am a small in England, I am clearly a size 'extra huge' in Thailand, (or would be if they even had that size which they don't), so the pursuit just ended up with me struggling in the makeshift changing room in the corner of the shop, barely having got my leg in one side of the pants, and then got stuck, with the shop owner calling 'madam? madam? ok?' every 5 seconds.
Happily I managed to extract myself from the pants leg and get out of the shop, and went back to the guest house. Rod and I went for lunch at the Riverside, and then Baz and Eimear turned up in the afternoon and we sat there for more hours, then went back for a while, and then back for dinner later, which was lovely; all of them though I'd only known them for a few days, (and Eimear just that day) wouldn't let me pay for anything which was really nice of them.
The next day we went back to the elephant conservation park and Barry and Eimear were as impressed as we had been, so we decided to try and do the one day
mahout training course the next day. We decided to take an elephant ride (on a seat) that day anyway - a half hour jungle trek, as it was called. It all started off well enough, Rod and Eimear on one elephant, Baz and me on another, till they started leading the elephants up narrower and narrower, steeper and steeper, and muddier and muddier paths with sheer drops off to one side. Each time we went towards a path on an even steeper incline I was thinking 'oh we won't be going up there, we'll be going along this flat bit here' Ha ha. It was starting to get really scary, especially when the elephants always seemed to insist on grabbing for foliage that was overhanging a precipice, and then Rod and Eimear's elephant started misbehaving, and the mahout was struggling to bring it under control and seemed to just be making it more angry. Rod and Eimear were getting paler and paler on the back of the elephant and Rod said afterwards that he was thinking ' just let the damn elephant eat and stop shouting at it'... Anyway, it was all ok in the end, and hey! we'd all
just booked on a whole day learning to ride one of these huge things that had nearly sent us toppling over the edge of the jungle cliffs - we had so much to look forward to...
We were all pretty quiet on the way to the elephant park the next day, getting there by 8.30 as we'd been told. We were the only four doing the course, which turned out to be really nice. We had to change into our mahout outfits (see pics - in fact, if you can't be bothered to read all of the next bit and yes I know I said this blog would be short and isn't, just look at the pics of the mahout day as they're pretty comprehensive and will probably give some laughs); and then had an introduction session with Miss Tu, our teacher, which started the way the day continued when she was trying to pronounce our names and repeated back to me, 'Grabby' when I said mine, which the other three thought was hugely funny and have called me it ever since despite the fact that she also called Barry, 'Crabby' and unfairly this did not stick.... She didn't
even attempt Eimear's name and Rod cut her short with his when she had managed Rod ok, then went to try Rodney. Anyway we sat for a while as she went through various facts of elephants, their sizes, weights, what they eat etc etc and the history of elephants in Thailand and of the conservation centre. Then she went through some basic commands we would need in Thai in order to guide our elephants and instruct them to do various things, and since then my elephant Thai speaking is better than my human Thai...
Miss Tu handed us slips which had the names of the elephants each of us would be riding for the day. Mine was Pang Wan De, a 43 year old female, and her mahout trainer who would be training me was Jaan, who was really nice and very (necessarily) patient with me.
I nearly backed out of the whole thing when we went outside to meet the elephants, were shown once how to command them to get up on to them (have not got my phrase book on me but something like, 'song soong' for them to lift their leg up): then you climb on to
their leg while yanking their ear with one hand and grabbing (my new name was already proving appropriate) the skin on the side of their body, and pulling yourself up on to them. Easy?????
I took one look at Pang Wan De and so nearly said, I'll just take pictures of the rest of you for the day,..... but I bit the bullet and thought, do it now before you bottle out, and had a go. Jaan was already laughing hysterically at me within about 5 seconds and pretty much laughed at me the whole day from then on, but I did somehow manage to get up on to her. The rest of the morning was taken up with learning the commands for getting on and off our elephants in various ways (see pics for the full glory of this), practising these, riding around and commanding and guiding the elephants to go straight on, turn left and right, and (thankfully - the most important ones to remember in a panic) slow down, and stop. Towards the end of the morning we rode our elephants down to the elephant hospital and were all feeling much more comfortable by this time, just
in time to pass a group of tourists who were visiting the centre. All of us admitted to each other afterwards that we had all felt the same sense of 'look at us! We're expertly riding elephants; we're mahouts!' as we'd passed them, conveniently forgetting the last few hours of undignified grabbing, yanking, pulling, bums in the air and limbs flailing displays back at the training centre...
After lunch, a hand at making paper out of elephant dung (YES!), one of the fundraising activities of the centre, and watching the elephant show again we took the elephants bathing (again see pics) which was really good fun, and then went back to the training centre where we were all expecting a test which we'd have to pass to get our certificates - luckily this didn't happen though Miss Tu did comment to Eimear and me that when we got back on our elephants for the last time that that was our worst attempt yet, though both of us blamed our sandals which were slippery from the elephant bathing.
All laughs aside though, it was really an incredible experience that I can't really put into words, and two weeks later I'm still
thinking about it, and would really recommend it to anyone if they get the opportunity. They really are amazing creatures.
Ok I'm stopping rambling now and really am going to just do highlights of the next bit. We spent a few days in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, and were pretty lazy there, also our guest house had a pool so we were kind of co erced in to being lazy, but thought we should do at least one thing while we were there, so booked on a Thai cooking course for the day, which was pretty good fun and quite interesting, and also ate what we'd cooked about every hour and a half so ended up having about 4 meals and could hardly move by the end of the day. The pic on the top of this blog is from that day which I had to use for the top picture because of the way we all look in it...
I had been intending to go on to Vietnam from Thailand and my 30 day entry visa for Thailand was about to run out, but as it was so great travelling with the Irish lot,
and they (at least at the time, can't speak for them now 2 and a half weeks on...) were happy to have me along, I extended my visa for a few extra days, cancelled my (immediate) plans for Vietnam, and arranged to travel on to Laos with them. So we took a bus up to Chiang Kong, the border town with Laos, and stayed a night there, planning to cross over the next day. The hammock pictures are from the night in Chiang Kong, we were all very slightly merry on beer and whiskey and happy to be off the long bus journey up there. We spent the next day trying to break down our Thai 'Bhat' into smaller notes - in Laos the currency is Kip but is very weak so Thai Bhat is used as are US Dollars. After wandering around Chiang Kong the best part of the day trying to sort our money so we had an assortment of small notes and dollars, and failing due to lack of currency exchange places, we went to the river border, and crossed over the Mekong River (a journey of probably less than a minute in a little wooden boat)
and were in Laos, where we also stayed for a night intending to make a 2 day boat journey down the Mekong the next day to get to Luang Prabang (where we are now).
Eimear and I thought we'd get the tickets booked, having annoyed the guys because we'd been in charge of choosing the accommodation, which they'd done in Chiang Mai, but we'd failed to make a decision and then ended up tossing a coin, so we went to see the owner of the guest house's sister, who deals with boat bookings. She spent about the first 25 minutes going through the stamps in our passports with us, explaining at length about how we had needed the entry visa in order to be in Laos etc etc etc.... and when we got a word in we set about booking 4 seats on the slow boat to Luang Prabang, stopping overnight at Pak Beng, a tiny stopover village on the Mekong river. Or so we thought. The passport stamp explainer lady was very keen for us to pay in Thai bhat, and not at all keen to hand over any kind of receipt, was saying 'no worry no worry this
is my place, you have tickets' though I managed to get a receipt out of her in the end, and she gave us the impression they then sort out the tickets in the morning for us. The next morning we were sitting in the tuk tuk outside the guest house with a group of other travellers waiting to be driven down to the slowboat, when we noticed that they all had piles of stapled kip in their hand, and then the tuk tuk driver started asking, 'does everyone have their kip to buy tickets?' at which point the plot unfolded and it turned out we had not booked tickets after all, we had basically done a currency exchange with the guest house with a commission rate very much in their favour, but in our case we hadn't even got the exchange.... we had to go back in and get our stapled kip piles (in return for the bhat we'd handed over the night before) and then were taken off to the riverside where we then bought tickets for the boat. Scammed within a few hours of arriving there...
The slow boat experience to Luang Prabang was mixed to say the
least; you are advised not to take a speedboat which takes 6 hours rather than 2 days, as apparently there are several fatalities a year caused by the boats slamming into rocks in the middle of the river, so basically the slow boat is your only other choice. About 80 of us were in a longish wooden motor boat which for the first day took about 6 and a half hours, and on the whole was not too bad, as although everyone had really uncomfortable wooden benches, you could move around a bit at the front and back of the boat, and even climb out onto the front of the boat and also sit up on the sides. The scenery is definitely completely spectacular if you can get beyond your discomfort to appreciate it: mountains on each side, amazing cloud formations over them, lush greenery everywhere. We got to Pak Beng, which is basically one street long, in early evening and went to the guest house we had booked on the boat, and then just got some dinner apart from Barry who fell asleep from the time we got there till the time we had to get up in the
morning and go to catch the boat again.
I woke up the next day in a bit of a bad mood, it has to be said and first of all had a tantrum over my rucksack (after 10 months of living out of a bag there are days when it gets to me), and then my cheese sandwich for breakfast which didn't have any cheese in it. I had warned Baz as soon as I'd woken up that I was not in a good mood and to just be warned, and he turned out to be very grateful for the warning, though still could not resist imitating at length my dialogue over the sandwich with the person who had made it, which I won't repeat in its entirety here, though have to admit he did a pretty good impression of me saying 'no, I don't want you to just take the salad out, I want you to put the cheese in....oh forget it, just forget it, I don't want breakfast'.....
The second day on the boat was much more gruelling, mainly because it was a different boat and half the size but with the same amount of people, and there
was nowhere to walk around or climb out onto the front, and you couldn't sit up on the sides for very long because the boat kept tipping. Also it was a longer journey. (see pics) My bad mood pretty much stayed for the whole time which was nice for Barry, Rod and Eimear but luckily we arrived into Luang Prabang about 4 hours earlier than we expected to, and within about half an hour were sitting in a really nice French cafe having a meal, while sorting out somewhere to stay.
So here we are still in Luang Prabang but probably leaving tomorrow for a place beginning with P that I now can't remember (such great travel writing I know - I should write a book), which will be about an 11 hour bus journey to get there. Luang Prabang has been lovely, a real chill out time, as it is a quietish town with lots of nice places to eat and a pretty place to wander around. Lots of colonial influence which for us has been nice as we've had baguettes and real cheese! We took a trip one day to the waterfalls which turned into a bit
of a rock climbing expedition in the end, as we though we'd see how far we could climb up, and it got steeper and more rocky every minute. Halfway up my new 3 quarter length pants which I'd got in the market at Luang Prabang ripped up the crotch and continued to rip with every lunge I took. It was getting slipperier and scarier and eventually Eimear and I gave up and went back down, which was even more treacherous, and then went swimming in the waterfall pools, which looked like a sort of paradise but in reality were very cold (and it was 5pm by this time) and full of rocks which you kept smashing into as you swam. I ended up having to chuck out my pants and wear Barry's swimming shorts back, and the dye from the pants also ruined my white camisole so it was not a good day for clothes. But the waterfalls are very pretty... 😉
Since I have spent a lot of the last two days writing and losing this blog as the computers keep freezing, I'm not going to push my luck anymore and will stop here for now, again, sorry
for the increasingly boring ramble but the pictures are good and I did warn you back with the elephants about the writing, so if you're still reading, it's your own doing.
There are a good few pages of pics below so don't miss them!
Till soon, xxx
PS am aware have not said enough really about the Thai culture, I feel as if I didn't get much of a handle on it and would need longer there (am due to go back before going to
Australia) or the Laos culture but have just been here for a few days so will say more next time. But a lot of the scenery and lush green everwhere has been reminding me a bit of Kerala.
PPS and thanks to Baz as some of the photos are his (ie the good ones). He is a really good photographer and you can catch more of his pics on www.flickr.com and search under member: bazkeogh. And you can see Rod's travelblog on the same site as mine if you search bloggers under Rodney Mullen.
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