bangkok

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better late than never, here is the first of our thailand entries...

we flew from hongkong into bangkok on 13th nov, a smooth journey with cathay pacific and instantly we were welcomed to completely different way of life from that of china.

from the airport we jumped on the bus and headed to bangkok. found our hostel with relative ease and headed out to get our bearings and find the infamous kho san road. from what tommy tells me the area around kho san road has changed alot since he was last there. the area has expanded, swallowing the surrounding roads, jammed packed with little market stalls selling everything under the sun. we wandered through the neon lights and found a nice place for a beer.

bangkok is instantly more chilled, although you do get alot more pestered by traders and tuktuk drivers, and it's farmore easier to do the more simple tasks of eating and generally getting around. we used bangkok as a place to chill out for a bit, have a few bottles of chang and get our train ticket to changmai.

the train to changmai took about 20 hours but was quite a pleasant journey. although the trains are older they are more spacious than chinese trains. in the morning we could enjoy the stunning countryside as we travelled through the mountains with our heads out the window.

we got a tuktuk to probably the nicest hostel we've stayed in so far, put our bags down and had a wonder. we booked a trekking trip for the next day, ate in a nice restaurant and found the appropriate named bar thc where we listened to some reggae and drank chang on the rooftop terrace.

so the next day we were up early for the trek. the day was fully packed with a unexpected visit to a butterfly farm and an unusual visit to a mountain tribe where the females have long necks stretched over the years by metal rings. we then had a shower in an impressive waterfall and trekked through the jungle on the back of an elephant with our mowgli look-a-like guide. then we had the white water rafting which was pretty jokes. after a short breifing with everyone looking a little confused we jumped on the boat. after 20 seconds we hit some large rapids and the dinge capsized which i'm pretty sure isn't meant to happen. pretty scary but all survived. then after some more confusion on whether we were carrying on or not i ended up on my own down the river with the guide. the rest of the ride was alot less eventfull. after the rapids we had a lazy ride on a bamboo raft then back to the hostel.

that night we went to the muay thai kickboxing which was really good. afterwards was the strangest ladyboy cabourett which we promptly left when they came round with tips, searching our pockets to find we had nothing suitable.

the rest of the time we chilled in changmai. from there we caught a bus to changkong to cross the boarder to loas. we got to changkong at night, found a charming little guesthouse where the kindest of hosts left us with the keys to lock up when we had had enough to drink and were going to bed.

the first part of thailand was great and looking forward to the second leg when we are going to find some nice beaches to reside for a little while.

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