On the Road to ...

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Well, here we are backtracking our way from Sangkhlaburi to Kanchanaburi on our way to Ayutthaya. It's the only way. One way in & one way out. We leave earlyish, around 9.30, it takes 3-4 hours to get back to Kanchanaburi. We are making the journey with Regula, a half Swiss-half Egyptian woman who we met. She is going on to Bangkok. We make a stop for food around one hour into the journey (Thais absolutely love to eat). Only a short stop really. I go for a pee as does Wee G, Regula has gone to find food as she likes to eat too. As the bus departs I have to get it to wait & go and shout Gaynor from the toilet. On she jumps & off we set. Gaynor shouts, "Wait!" as Regula is not on the bus. Gaynor scours nearby eateries and finds Regula tucking into a plate of something or other, which she has to leave half eaten. Poor thing. On we trundle down to Kanchanaburi. We change bus here for Suphanburi and onto the slowest bus in the world, I swear. This one is a normal bus, by that I mean non A/C or anything else special. There is no leg room. I need to sit with my legs spread at an angle of around 120 degrees. I dare say Brian Lockwood may disagree as this might not be possible for a 41 year-old man in tight trousers. This really gives your inner thigh muscles a good stretch as we are on the bus for around four hours. We need to change again at Suphanburi for Ayutthaya. This is much better buty at least it's faster. This part of Thailand seems to be the manufacturing heartland: Nikon have a factory here as do Canon. I know this doesn't exactly make up a manufacturing heartland but I am sure there are more factories in this area, unless most of the adult population enjoy walking around in uniforms with company logos on.

We arrive in Ayyuthaya around teatime & find our guest house, which is very comfortable & owned by two sisters whose collective age must around 130 years or so. One of the old dears is a Man Utd AND Liverpool fan (she likes red!)

We rise the next morning and change rooms to an even nicer room with a big double bed with no end on, plenty of space, hot water and a lovely colour scheme. It also has a view of the the lovely pond and lotus flowers in the back garden. All this for the princely sum of 6 pounds & 29 pence. The lack of bed end is always a plus for Graham as it means he doesn't have to sleep diagonally for a few nights! Whenever we stop at new accommodation one of us asks to see the room for bed end or lack of before agreeing to take the room. Ayutthaya was Thailand's/Siam's capital from the mid-14th to mid18th centuries and has a sprawling World Heritage site of temples, which are very impressive, mostly. So, off we go to explore the various temples. One of the most impressive things we see is the head of a Buddha that is embedded in the roots of an enormous tree. Normally when this sort of thing happens there would a look of sheer panic on your face as the roots slowly swallow your head. This is very different as all Buddhas are smiling and this one seems serene by the fact that one day it will be completely swallowed. We then go to Wat Mongkhan Bophit, where one of the largest bronze-cast Buddhas resides. It's huge!! You can shake out your fortune stick & pick up the interpretation for a fee. They are pre-printed of course. There are lots of offerings to Buddha here. These come in the form of money, gold leaf stuck onto different Buddha statues & cellophane wrapped plastic pails containing incense, toothpaste, toothbrush and all sorts. there are shops which sell the pails ready made up.

We head back for food and a little later while having a beer a chappie rides up on his mobile stall. It's the insect man! He is selling fried locusts, maggots and other cooked larvae. Wee G goes to investigate. She tries a locust & it goes down well. A bag of locusts is bought. A little splash of soy sauce (think of salt & vinegar on your chips) & all is well with the world. They are lovely- a roasty flavour with a good crunch & complimented by the soy sauce. The perfect accompaniment to a pint. Maybe this should be our new line of work. Cycling round the hostelries of Saltburn selling bags of fried insects. Gaynor asks him about the others he has; maggots etc but she can't bring herself to try them. I don't blame her as I don't know if I could myself but we'll see. Apparently in Cambodia it's deep fried tarantulas. So with a belly full of noodles, beer & locusts we hop off to bed.

We decide some outlying area by scooter. We insist on helmets & look like X-Wing fighter pilots from Star Wars except we are on a Honda Wave 100cc. We are off to find the Elephant Kraal, where in times past, wild elephants would have been rounded up & brought to - think cowboys on mountains of steroids. Sadly, it's being refurbished. On we tootle as we have seen some real live elephants. Lo & behold we've stumbled on an elephant camp. There's a huge female having a bath. She's reportedly 70 years old. There are infants, one as young as 4 days, that can barely stand up. We buy some sugar cane & go to feed some others. One large elephant is a bit too eager and swings her trunk belting Wee G, who now sports a grazed elbow.

Ayutthaya's night market proves great hunting ground for scoff. Cheap & very cheerful. One guy cooking to order. In goes the oil, then the food, a great belt of flame & then a whoosh of steam & Bob's your uncle, a steaming plate of clams flavoured with fennel. It's been very relaxing here, really easy going.

We are off to Chiang Mai tonight by sleeper train. A 13 hour journey. We wonder how these trains will fare against their Indian counterparts. Well slap me silly!! This is the proper deal. We get two upper berths. Little pull-down beds with a covered mattress and a blanket sealed in polythene. There's space to store your luggage & a wee curtain to keep out invaders. Compared to Indian trains this is luxury and we are travelling second class non a/c. Three young Finnish lads also board with us. They are lovely. One produces a bottle & says, "Would you like to try a little of Finland?" It would be rude to refuse. A very dark viscous liquor with a hint of liquorice. Very tasty. We bump into them again in Chiang Mai. One of them even brought his skateboard. It's safe to say folks that even dogs in Asia hate skateboards as much as they do at home as the poor laddie had been chased by a bunch.

Chiang Mai is said to be Thailand's second city. We weren't that keen. Too busy, too noisy and again a strip of bars catering to the "I want a young Thai woman even though I am old enough to be her father and in some cases old enough to be her grandad" variety. Our guest house is very comfortable but there are airbricks, which connect rooms. This means you can hear most things above a whisper. And we do. We even hear one guy pump in his sleep. One of the best things for us is the tribal museum. This gives a great insight into the many hill tribes in Northern Thailand. The museum actually juts out into a lake and we watch, what we believe to be mounted policemen, bringing their mounts down to the lake and taking them swimming. The best part of this is when one gets out of the water. He is trying to control a horse with one hand, put his trousers back on & answer his mobile phone with the other. Curiouser & curiouser said Alice. Another good thing was eating. Eating in Thailand can be looked at in a number of ways. One way is purely functional. You order, eat, pay & leave. Another way of eating promotes it as a social event and we stumble onto this side of eating in this beautiful country. We think the place is called "19" but can't be sure. They have "Hot-pot or Barbecue". As we ate there twice we had both. Both employ the same principle. Firstly, a large clay flower pot of glowing, white-hot coals is brought to you by a guy wearing asbestos gloves. Secondly, a clay tureen of chicken broth is placed on top of the pot containing the coals. Thirdly, they bring you a tray of beef, pork, chicken, huge prawns and sliced fish, a basket of greens and an egg. Then all you do is put in what you want, wait while it cooks and pick it it out. All done with chopsticks. One of the staff keeps coming round with a kettle of broth & tops up your tureen. Excellent!! The only difference between the Hot-pot & the Barbecue is that for the barbecue they bring a sort of tray -think of a metal sombrero. The broth sits in the well surrounding the dome bit. The dome bit has lots of holes. They put on a few lumps of pork fat. You wait till it begins to render itself down then place your meat or fish or whatever on the dome & wait till it cooks. Excellent again.

The third thing we liked about Chiang Mai was the foreigners' cemetery. Very small and very well kept. Graves here date from the late 19th century right up to New Year's Eve 2007. It's very atmospheric but not spooky. Some of the graves have very grand headstones while others have a simple wooden cross. One cross has the individual's name written in permanent marker! There is one cross that has nothing on it all. A mystery perhaps a job for Scooby-Doo & his pals. You can buy a book which guides you round the cemetery and gives short biographies about those under the sod-a fascinating insight into why certain foreigners (Farang) came to Thailand.

Chiang Dao

From Chiang Mai we head further north to a town called Chiang Dao. Aren't the names great? They remind you of "The Water Margin", if any of you can remember it. We are moving further north towards the Thai-Burma border getting ready for our visa run. As you approach Chiang Dao the road bisects and there is a town bypass. However, it's not yet complete as a lady, who lives within the last 2km objected, saying it had interfered with her rare flora. So she took the army, who were building the road, to court. She was awarded a grand sum of damages & the road's construction halted. Power to the people!

It's pouring down when we arrive in Chiang Dao & continues for the next two days. We were not expecting this and feel very cold epecially when the temperatures plummet after sundown. Our guest house, the Chiang Dao Rainbow is owned by an ex-Oxford professor called Christopher & a Thai guy called Mongkon. (We could not figure their relationship out either folks, even after six days.) The guest house is in a village outside Chiang Dao town & we're assured that it's all very pretty when the cloud lifts! We can make out few low hills in the near distance. Suddenly there is a break in the cloud and these are not wee hills we are looking at but Thailand's largest limestone mountain over 2000 metres high. Mongkon produces some excellent food on that first night but soon after it all goes to pot, hilariously so at times but a pain nevertheless.

We walk through the low cloud and drizzle to visit Chiang Dao cave. A 4km walk & you come to a small village & the temple compound that surrounds the cave. There is a local legend about the cave but I won't go into that here. The walkway to the cave goes over a very clear pond, which is teeming with enormous, slow swimming carp. Up the stairs & in you go. There are two caves; one is lit but the other isn't so you need a guide with a gas-lamp! The unlit cave is very very very dark. Our guide's stock phrase is, "Mind your head", which actually sounds like "Mine you heh." Wee G does not like this cave whatsoever. It's pitch black & very hot. She wants to leave so the guide takes her back and leaves me. I watch the light from his lamp get dimmer & dimmer until -pop- there is no light & I mean no light at all. I just stand stock-still. If something did move in front of you, you would not know. The guide comes back & carries on taking me through the cave with constant, "Mine you heh." He shows me formations in the shapes of different animals. The best one is the Chicken and I swear to you, this did look like a chicken, well a cockerel actually. All the way from it's beak to it's tail feathers. Very weird what nature can do and stranger still people's imagination. Two other formations/shapes make me chuckle. There is one on the floor, which is like a fried egg. Guide just says, "Fly eh." Another one is a collection of rounded stones each with a knobble bit on top. He starts saying, "Nom, Nom" & puts his hands, where my breasts would be, were I a lady. Stone chickens, boobs & fried eggs. Now there's something that works up an appetite. I find Wee G after a while & we go through the lit cave. All is impressive. Stalactites, stalagmites & strange folded formations.
Next day the sun comes out after a little coaxing & it turns into another beautiful day in paradise. We rent a scooter and head off up route 1178 to Pong Arng hot springs. They do pong a wee bit, bubble a tad but they are hot. Dangling your feet is called for. Ooh, that's lovely. Just like a gentle foot massage. On we move up to another part to see a waterfall & we do a little nature-walk. Two & a half km, mostly uphill & downhill. Good to stretch your legs though. That night we change rooms as our one felt a bit damp. we move into one of the wooden stilt bungalows. Later we meet Elmar & Mirielle, a Dutch couple. We form a very good social bond & much hilarity ensues over the next few nights. Mongkon suggests a trip out. A sly way of selling you a trip. We are to go up this great lump of limestone (but not to the top), visit a Lihsu village, go to another cave, visit another waterfall, go back to the Lihsu village, visit another Lihsu village for some rice whisky & then back to the Rainbow. We drive up to the first Lihsu village, where we pick up our guides to go to the cave. The cave - this one is real boys' adventure. No lights so headtorches are used. I wish I'd taken my own as my battery kept dying on me. Wee G & Mirielle do not come into the cave. Rightly so, they, well Wee G would have gone insane. Squeezing through narrow holes & into large galleries. You could even see stalactites forming. The crystals would reflect the light from your headtorch. There are lots of beasties that live in the dark. One beasty backs away from the light. It's around six inches long, has multiple pairs of legs & lots of feelers. It looks like the thing from The Matrix that enters your body via your belly button. I have no desire to form a symbiotic relationship with something that someone dreamed up in a FX studio somewhere. So we are offski. Next are the spiders. You don't see them until you nearly put your hand on them. What you do see are their eyes. They are like little balls of gold as they reflect the light from your torch. When you see them they are anything from around three-four inches across, yellow & black and Mongkon tells us they are Thailand's deadliest spider. I hope he was joking. So it's back through the stream & up into the light.

Hot & sweaty we all tread off to the waterfall. Not particularly impressive but getting to it was fun. Wee G leading the way up rickety bamboo ladder cum stairs, swinging round trees & slipping on wet rocks. No-one gets wet though & all very good fun. Coming back and in the distance we actually see opium poppies. Less & less of this is grown now and is being replaced with other viable cash-crops. In the village we have tea in the headman's hoose. He rolls each of us a fag, except wee G. This is ingenious. They don't use fag papers but use a dried maize (corn) leaf. They tear a very thin strip off. They roll the baccy in the leaf & twist the thin strip round & tie it off. It was weird smoking a potential corn flake. Off we go down to the other village to pick up some rice whisky for the park guard. We also get a taste. It's surprisingly smooth. A little like Grappa. We head back towards the Rainbow. the sun is setting behind us, the mountainside & hillsides are in sillhouette & all is right with the world until a little later. After dinner (the set menu- quite expensive you know) & a couple of beers, 10pm or so, we are all confused as to whether dinner was included in the price of the trip. Nobody wants to ask. Everytime someone brings it up we wet ourselves laughing. Finally, up steps Wee G & checks it out. Boy you can count on her when the going gets tough. She returns triumphanly grinning. The meal was included. Then Mongkon comes up to us all & in a slightly smarmy way asks us if we could pay for trip now. It's 10pm, booze has been partaken of. The atmosphere is now very weird, we ask him why and he says he has to go the market. Nobody has all the money so we give him what we can. Next day we move to another room. this time right in the village. Not a room exactly but a house and all to ourselves! A traditional wooden house & very comfortable it is too. I go to rent another scooter and see my second live snake. This one is a buff green colour, around three feet long and snakes its way into someone's garden. The rest of the day is spent tootling about. We visit some nearby hot springs, which you can smell before you see. That night chaos seems to reign in the kitchen. You do get what you ordered but roughly an hour to an hour and a half later. Wee G is not a happy bunny & we think that Christopher the ex-Oxford don can sense it. On the way back to our abode we wake every damned dog up in th village. Growling & howling is now the order of the day. We have one more day and know that this will happen once again.

The next day we are awoken by cockerels, dogs and a cat that needs something special. We hope it gets it as it will then shut up. We decide to scooter around 60 km up to Chai Phra Kharn as there is a crocodile farm there. On the way we stop at a Royal Project development centre. These have been set up by the Royal Family to encourage more sustainable agricultural practices in general but also so that hill tribe people can have an alternative to growing opium poppies. This doesn't mean to say that all hill tribe folk do this as they don't. Just some who have tradionally generated income this way. On we go. The ride is lovely- big winding roads, limestone crags & views aplenty. We get to our destination only to find that the crocodile farm is closed. Bugger! Nevermind. We decide on an alternative route back. A straightforward route according to our map, which is really just a pamphlet giving no useful information other than the road number. Off we go onto route 1346. A lovely meandering route with gentle hills. We stop for some of the most disappointing food yet & carry on. When you get to a gradient here the sign only shows a truck on an incline. There is no information as to the degree of the slope. Oh my god! We spend the next hour to hour and a half going up (mainly) and down some of the biggest hills I have ever seen. two bodies, one Honda Wave 125cc = struggle, which we did. I had to change down to first but there was too much power still in the engine (I know what I'm talking about but don't know the jargon), it tries to run away. I wrestle with it, reaching for the brake, Wee G is still hanging on, it wingy-wangy woos & then we are on our arses. Well knees actually, which are now slightly skinned. I feel somewhat embarrassed. On the next hill Wee G decides to walk up. I carry on tootling & a truck passes me in the opposite direction. God knows what the driver thought when he saw a foreign woman walking up the hill wearing a pink crash helmet. We get back to the Rainbow & promise not to mention this to anyone- until now obviously!

Christopher has had to go to Chiang Mai, this means Mongkon is in charge of everything & tonight they have a full house. He has asked everyone what time they wanted to eat. People gave their time but I believe that Mongkon will attempt to feed everyone at the same time. You can hear a lot of orders being given in the kitchen, a hell of a lot of chopping and Mongkon keeps popping out to see if everyone is ok. He does have a nearly empty glass of white wine. It has all turned into Keith Floyd meets Fawlty Towers & Mongkon is playing all the major roles except for Sybil Fawlty. It's actually very funny until you get, or don't get, as was the case for one guest, your food. I had a dish, which was just pepper- only white pepper. An American woman described it as a "Bowl of Fire". Before the village dog gauntlet, Mongkon asks us what time we want brekkie. "8.45 please, and could you organise transport down to town so we can catch the bus to Fang?" we reply. Up in the morning, packed, hump everything along to the guest house & no Mongkon but all the guests are waiting for brekkie. Six of us are leaving. We deicide to leave rough estimates for our bills & organise our own transport. Suddenly, the housekeeper appears & she looks great. Fresh & with full slap on. She phones Mongkon, who arrives just as our transport does. We manage to settle most of the bill & we are off to Fang with our final destination today being Mae Sai, the border with Thailand & Burma. Tomorrow folks, we make our visa run & it's my birthday too. Three buses later & we pull into Mae Sai. I have also realised that I still have the keys to the house in the village we were staying in!

Mae Sai

We find our hotel; the Ying Ping Yunan Guesthouse above the restauarant of the same name. There is no English only Thai & Chinese, which means that both Wee G & I are now fluent in both. The fact that it was the ONLY Chinese restaurant on the street might also have helped a little. Our room is massive but basic. It has a double bed, hot-water & a tv but there are no English language channels. We do watch Journey to the West, which is "Monkey" but a different version to the one we got in the UK. We get clean & head out to eat. It's dark, windy, a little chilly & the streets are nearly deserted. I look for the tumbleweed. It's too cold to sit on the street & eat so we venture down a darkened road. The shops are all closed but here is some light. It's "Uncle John's Restaurant", which is recommended by the LP. It's sheltered from the wind, has low lighting, a snooker table & a very large flatscreen tv showing a dvd of Shakira (South American singer not a martial art). We sit, order beer & food. Then Uncle John sits & introduces himself. He is a retired Thai (50 ish), who spent most of his life in the UK & other spots. He is basically a Thai Del Boy & has a Thai-London accent to boot. He straightaway tells us about his life - how once in Tokyo he went into a Thai cafe, saw a Yakuza guy & then I quote, " Oi took orf my soot & bashed 'im." Lovely. He tells us how he was basically a slumlord in London & now has his little restaurant. He even brings out the imported meat to show us & tells us that it's only for his friends, which of course means us. We are now his friends. He does give us some good advice regarding crossing the border into Burma. When we cross the border, we should pay in dollars not Thai Bhat as it is actually cheaper. We don't have any dollars. Uncle John leans in & tells us that he can get some for us. Woo hoo! The black market. Actually, it's nowhere near as dodgy as you think. We go back in the morning for breakfast & Wee G orders a fruit yoghurt. She gets a yoghurt but instead of fruit there are kidney beans, sweetcorn and barley in it! The waiter asks us how many dollars we want, we say forty & give him 2000 Baht. He goes off on his bike & is back ten minutes later with four brand new 10 dollar notes & 200 Baht change! So off we go to Burma. We join the queue, get stamped out of Thailand & cross the bridge. We then go into an office, hand over our passports, have our picture taken & are then issued a temporary one-day pass for Burma. It's sort of like Alton Towers. They keep your passport until you come back. Hundreds of Thais & Burmese cross the border everyday. They basically do their shopping in different countries. So we cross into Burma. The town here has a big market & it appears you can buy anything. About the only thing you can guarantee about what you buy is that it won't be the genuine article. It will be illegal or of particularly low quality so that when you get it home it will not work, will fall to pieces or completely disintegrate. Guys with cinema usherette trays offer me cigarettes, knives, Viagra, ping-pong dvds, battery-powered shavers & most bizarrely - military dictator playing cards. The cover card had a lovely portrait of Saddam Hussain. This is turning out to be quite a birthday indeed.

We trek back to Thailand, queue up & get another thirty-day stamp. Hunger beckons. We decide to pop into the KIK KOK Chinese restaurant. I order duck & rice & Wee G the yellow curry & rice. I ask for spicy & it is. Wee G has a taste of mine & promptly loses the plot. She is coughing & spluttering for England & thinks she is going to have an asthma attack. I did tell her it was the spiciest thing I have had yet. The owner is giggling away to himself & I do have a wee chuckle too. On recovery & when we have eaten we make our way to the bus station as we have to break our journey in Chiang Mai tomorrow for one night.

Tickets bought we decide to go to TESCO. Yes, there is a Tesco here on the border between Thailand & Burma. This is not odd for Thais but it sure is for us. In fact Tesco have a major foothold here. We have seen them everywhere & they go by the name Tesco-Lotus. This is to distinguish it from Tesco-Thornaby... In we pop. Yes the packaging is the same even the economy stuff except the contents of those packages are entirely different. In time-honoured tradition Wee G leads the way to the reduced section but we still can't make head or tail of what's in there. However, we do manage to get some sunblock at a bargain price! Wee G looks at some socks & a member of staff sees that I am at a loss & directs me to where the Nivea cream is shelved. We manage to buy a few edibles & head back to town. We have dinner in the Ying Ping, although we do forego the pigs ear & inflated fish & settle for something more conventional. The need for sleep & the prospect of a five hour bus journey take us to bed. It is wonderful to be on a quiet street in a town instead of in the countryside with the endless sounds of cockerels. Tomorrow back to Chiang Mai but only for one night. After that, who knows..... actually we are off to learn to be mahouts for three days. Yes we are going to train elephants. It could not get anymore "Jim'll Fix It" than this.
Bye for now folks.

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Photos

Buddha in the roots.
The fallen head head of Buddha nestling in its new home.

Wat Phra Mahathat
One of the biggest wats (temples) in the Ayutthaya Historical Park.

Twin Buddhas.
Part of the Ayutthaya Historical Park

Wat Phra Si Sanphet
Sun just setting behind the three stupas.

What are you looking at?
Very curious elephant in Ayyuthaya.

Night time flare up.
Cooking at Ayutthaya night market.

Wee G's new pal.
In the "dining car" of the sleeper train from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai.

I can't talk right now!
Speaks for itself. He tried to put his trousers on as well.

Monument to King Nesran the Great in Ayutthaya
This was absolutely huge, with some seriously steep steps.

Skewering chicken
Lady threading tonnes of chicken onto wee sticks. Yummy!

Foreigners' cemetery in Chaing Mai
I wonder who it was?

Barbecue Chiang Mai style
Steaming chicken broth & loads of meat!

Vespa.
Vespas seem to be really popular here. Things of beauty & style.

I don't like it!
In Chiang Dao cave and I did not force her.

Tree & staffs.
These staffs do have significance but I didn't find this out.

View from Chiang Dao Rainbow Guesthouse
A break in the clouds on a gloomy day.

Lihsu children at play.
They were running around like loonies with an old teddy bear.

Wee G Leads the way.
After the cave with beasties & onto a waterfall.

Rickshaw.
Cycle rickshaw driver in Mae Sai on the border with Burma.

Long & winding road.
not long before we ended up with skinned knees.

Chinese New Year
They went from Chinese business to business & house to house bringing luck for the coming year.

Me outside Tesco in Mae Sai
A strange place to spend part of your birthday

Tea in the Headman's house.
In a Lihsu village taking tea.

Bits & bobs
Trinkets & stuff for sale in Tachilek - Burma

Bum rinsers from Tesco.
A wee scoosh from these & you are as clean as a whistle. I wonder if they'll catch on back home.

Get yer paws off!
This was on the back of our hotel room door in Mae Sai.

Comments

[Dean Heslop]

No Bum Fondlinggg!
what is the banta with that. sorry i havent been in touch my man, been very ciaotic over here the last few months, i got into 4 out of 5 best music colleges in Europe and have decided to quit all bands that thought they had a future and focus purely on my composition (music for film) i'm still depping the odd part for when someone needs me. you will have to send me an e-mail when you get this so i can actually keep in contact this time. speak to you soon. take care ma man x :)