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Published: June 22nd 2008
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THAILAND
Our Asia trip has carried us through Thailand several times, and we are now here spending a week on the island of Samui before we head to Japan. Outside of our numerous passes through the Bangkok airport, we made our first Thai outing after parting with my Mom and Phyllis in Vietnam about a month ago. We visited northern Thailand, where we spent a few days at the Four Seasons - Chiang Mai for our one year anniversary before departing on an overland trip to Mae Hong Son in the northwestern corner of the country. The Four Seasons was incredible; in retrospect we could have used a few more days there, as the trip north proved to be a mixed bag. The scenery was beautiful, but I think we were both feeling a little exhausted after traveling for a month and a half. Our guide did not help matters by talking incessantly, and mostly about nothing. And he was somehow inspired to repeat every irrelevant and uninteresting fact ad nauseum. But worst of all, he turned out to be a prolific master of the obvious (e.g., “It’s raining”, “This is a very windy road”, “We are 30 kms from
Mae Hong Son” . Helaine retreated to her ipod, and I tried to take up reading in the car, despite the fact it makes me sick. But those subtle hints were completely lost on him; he never stopped babbling.
We drove through a lush, mountainous landscape in route to Pai, a small hippie magnet of a town on the way to Mae Hong Son. On the way to Pai we stopped at a set of hot springs and several massive caves. Helaine happens to loathe caves, and must admit these were little more than guano-caked tourist traps. We beat a quick retreat from the 1st set of caves and skipped the next ones.
While we were ecstatic to get out of the car (and away from our guide) upon reaching Pai early in the afternoon, our excitement was quickly dampened as we were shown to our room at the “Belle Villa”. It was not the kind of place you wanted to hang out for the rest of the day. The pool had an eerie yellowish hue; it certainly had never been swam in. Adjacent the main line of
bungalows was a canal half full of stagnant stands of water. But my favorite touch was just beneath our stilted bungalow; someone had the wherewithal to remove a dirty fold-up mattress from the room and place it in direct view underneath the bungalow and adjacent to our stairs. This mottled cot contrasted strangely with the fresh flowers we found strewn along the stone path from our room the next morning. Unfortunately, the flowers weren’t enough to help Helaine forget the flying roach that landed on her right after the electricity went out the night before. Needless to say, she spent the night in her sleeping sheet, a.k.a., the “bed condom”.
We spent a day and night in Mae Hong Son, only a few miles from the Myanmar (Burma) border. It was one of the main border crossings for international aid heading to the cyclone victims. We passed several checkpoints intended to prevent illegal immigration from Myanmar into Thailand. After settling in, we wandered around the small town of Mae Hong Son, completely deserted of tourists at this time of year. We also took a boat trip to the Padong village a few miles down river from town. The Padong
women are refugees from Burma and are also known as the long-neck women. Their distinctive appearance is marked by numerous gold rings that reach from their chins down to their shoulders; as they grow, more rings are added to increase and emphasize the length of their necks. In fact it is not their necks that expand, and they are actually the same size as anyone else’s; the rings push their shoulders and collarbone down, giving the impression of elongated necks. They also wear these rings from their knees down to their ankles. We wandered through the thatched huts of the village and met a couple of the elaborately dressed women. The visit required a boat trip a few miles downstream, and the boat ride itself was one of the most enjoyable parts of visiting Mae Hong Son.
Before leaving departing on our flight the next morning, we visited a couple of the Buddhist stupas above town, and watched young novices circling these Burmese-style temples. We also saw the Mae Hong Son version of the reclining Buddha. We flew from Mae Hong Son back to Chiang Mai, where we spent a night at The Chedi before leaving for Bangkok en
route to Cambodia.
After our visit to the ruins of Angkor and Tonle Sap lake, we returned to Thailand and headed south to a couple of amazing beaches on the Andaman Sea before our trip to China. We spent a few days in Railay, framed by dramatic limestone cliffs, which make it a well-known rock climbing destination. We spent some time climbing and kayaking there and saw one of the most incredible sunsets I’ve ever witnessed. I spent an hour with my camera and tripod out in the edge of the water trying to capture it as the longboats bobbed in the distance.
From Railay we took the ferry to Ko Phi Phi, and spent a few days lounging on the beach there and doing a little kayaking. We had to take a speedboat from the island back to Railay to catch an early flight en route to Beijing, where we planned to meet up with Anne and McCall for a few weeks in China.
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