Love, War, and Wet Socks

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Bangkok was the next stop after my island-hopping and I wasn't too pleased to be back. The sun, sand and sea of my previous month was now replaced with noise, smog and rain.

Already familiar with the city, I found a very basic room for about 2GBP a night. Central location, quiet, shared bathroom and nothing but a bed, small fan and four close walls. Perfect. It wasn't long before I'd spoken to Fern, the Thai girl that I had met a month previously. We'd stayed in touch while I was away from Bangkok and we agreed to meet up and go out. It was to be the start of something special.

We had a lot of fun together on our first day out. We started off by going to the top of 'Thailand's highest hotel' and getting an overhead view of Bangkok. It's almost customary now for me to go to an observation point in every place that I visit! After the views, we went to a sports bar to watch some of the Ashes (selfish, moi?) and then we took a stroll along the infamous Soi Patpong. The street is lined with 'go-go bars', which are basically bars that people go to to pick up prostitutes. I guess that the strength of the show varies, but the bar that we went to was quite tame considering its purpose. It was a fairly small room with a small stage in the middle that was adorned with girls who were all wearing matching white bikinis, although each one had a different number badge attached to their tops. The customers sat in seats around this stage and they can choose to take a girl home, should he (or she) wish. It would be quite funny if you were phoning for a Chinese delivery and you accidentally misdialled and got through to a go-go bar. You'd innocently place your order, and then half an hour later you'd have eight working girls standing on your doorstep!! Anyway, Fern and I were 'just browsing', in case you wondered!

We spent a lot of time together after that and she accompanied me on a day trip to the nearby town of Kanchanaburi a few days later. Those who have read the book or seen the oscar-winning 1950s film The Bridge on the River Kwai will know why the town is historically important (although the film weaves some fiction into the plot). To summarise, the occupying Japanese forces used captured prisoner of wars (mostly British) and Asian labourers to construst a railway supply line from Burma into Thailand during WWII. It was estimated that the 415km of tracks would take five years to construct, but it was completed in just sixteen months. Many prisoners died under such fierce working conditions and the railway became known as the 'Death Railway.' The bridge over the River Kwai was a very small portion of the line, although (I assume) it had such strategic significance because it would take time to rebuild if it were destroyed. Indeed, destroying the bridge was the Allied fighter planes' mission when they attacked in 1945. The Japanese, warned of the imminent airstrike, tied hundreds of petrified British POWs to the bridge in an attempt to dissuade the bombers from attacking. It did not work, and stories say that the river ran red with the blood of the dead.

Our day trip started with a visit to a cemetry where over 5,000 POWs were buried. The majority of graves were for British soldiers, although there were also a large number of Dutch and Americans buried there too. The next stop was a war museum close to the bridge itself. Having not seen the film, it was there that I learnt the full story of what had happened sixty years before. We then walked onto the bridge that was swarming with tourists like ourselves - the bridge having been fully rebuilt by the Japanese as part of their surrender terms. It was difficult to imagine how it must have felt to have been there all of those years ago.

We went out on the river on a bamboo raft after lunch and then took an elephant ride shortly afterwards. On the elephant, I mentioned to Fern how lucky we'd been with the weather and, of course, within two minues the heavens had opened on us! The day finished with a visit to a waterfall and then half an hour chugging along a stretch of the Death Railway. Most of the railway line had been disassembled years ago, but this section was still intact. One part of the journey was through an area where the track is built into the side of a mountain face, and although the views are lovely, it looked and felt far too rickety for my liking!

We were back in Bangkok together for a couple of weeks before setting off again. In chronological order, some of the most memorable things from that time were:

* Taking a walk in Lumpini Park and seeing everybody stop and stand to attention when the National Anthem was played at 6pm. People love the Royal Family here, although it was odd to see joggers just stop dead and then start off again when the music finished.
* Logging on to the internet one morning and seeing that West Ham had thrashed Villa 4-0 and that England had won The Ashes.
* Watching two Thai films at the cinema (with English subtitles). Production values were surprisingly high and I think that both would go down well with a foreign audience. Once again, everybody stood when the National Anthem was played before the films.
* Finding out that Fern could get two months off of work and accompany me on my travels around South East Asia.
* Going to the Dreamworld amusement park. Fern puked after riding the viking ship!
* Watching West Ham win 2-1 at Craven Cottage.
* Eating creepy crawlies. Crickets, flies, ants and giant winged-things were on the menu. Typically, I didn't have my camera, so you'll have to take my word on this one!


On the 21st September we set off together to Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand.

The overnight sleeper train pulled in to the station at about midday. We tried to get a tuk-tuk (small taxi) to our guesthouse but the tuk-tuk driver told us that it was impossible to get into that part of town because it was completely flooded. He was backed up by an old lady standing nearby who assured Fern that we would have to make other arrangements. Although Chiang Mai had suffered from bad floods a month earlier (and was prone to more given the temperate climate and it being smack in the middle of Thailand's wet season), I didn't believe a word they said. I'm far too cynical now, having had to listen to lies from people wherever I have been. In this case we eventually found another tuk-tuk after lots of aimless wandering and he took us to the guesthouse. It was bone dry, and had been for a long time. The con artists at the station were just trying to get us to use a different guesthouse that they either owned or received a commission from, as well as no doubt taking us round the houses to get us there, at our expense.

Chiang Mai, although not as visited as Bangkok, is a popular stop on the tourist trail. Thais have a special affinity for Chiang Mai and I can see why. There are over 300 temples in a relatively small area, a mountainous backdrop, different cuisine, a less stifling climate, and opportunites galore to use the city as a base for trekking activities.

Fern and I had a lot to squeeze in to our time on the road, so we spent just one day exploring Chiang Mai on a rented motorbike and then went on a 3 day/2 night trekking tour. The first day was the hardest, although it kicked off with a leisurely elephant ride. Suitably lulled into a false sense of comfort, we then embarked on a 9km trek, part of which involved staggering up a seemingly endless muddy slope. We crossed all sorts of terrain that day and it was a really good experience, although I wasn't feeling that way at the time! It was lashing down with rain most of the day and my only comfort came from the fact that my feet remained dry in my hiking boots, while everybody around me was squelching along in their trainers. I get great pleasure from donning my hiking boots as they're huge and heavy and take up loads of valuable space in my backpack. On the odd occasion that I have cause to wear them, I feel that carrying them around for so long has been justified... So you can imagine just how peeved I was when we had to cross a river in knee-high water! My shoes and socks were now just as soaked as the rest of me and they didn't dry out over the next few days!

We arrived at a hilltribe camp at about 4pm on the first day, although it got dark very quickly so we didn't get time to look around. The small settlement belongs to one of the Karen white tribes that live in small numbers in these remote areas. They have no Thai ID cards - in fact, I think their descendants are from Burma - and they are therefore on 'foreign' soil, but their existence is tolerated by the Thai government and they are allowed to stay there. I guess the vast majority of these tribespeople have no interest in accommodating the daily cycle of camera-pointing tourists, however, the settlement that we stayed at that night was profiting from these visits, although I saw little evidence of how the money was being spent. Maybe they were just being brought food? Of course, the authenticity of visiting a 'remote' hilltribe was diluted by the fact that our visit had been preceded by thousands of others. Nonetheless, we wandered around in the daylight of the next morning and we got a feel for how they lived.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I need to share the pleasures of the evening with you.

Our group of twelve were brought a meal of rice, meat and vegetables which we had no complaints with. We were then shown to our 'room': a raised wooden platform with thin sleeping mats and mosquito nets. It was cold, uncomfortable and smelt of damp, but we hadn't been promised comforts and we weren't expecting them. We were so exhausted that it would have been quite easy to doze off, however, we had to try and get to sleep while our guide was performing a one man 'comedy' routine directly below us. He'd gotten sozzled on the local whiskey and I'm told he finally finished up talking at about 2am. I can't remember what time we eventually managed to get to sleep, but I do remember lying there and ruing the decision to not book the shorter 2 days/1 night tour.

After a fragmented sleep, our spirits were surprisingly high when we were woken early the next morning. Our guide's spirits were unsurprisingly low! We had some breakfast and took a wander around the settlement, finding the people to be friendly and evidently used to having nosy foreigners poking around outside their huts. We waved goodbye to nine of our group (who were just doing the two day tour) and then we were 'lucky' enough to be given the hungover guide for the remainder of our trek. I hadn't warmed to him, even before the thoughtlessness of the night before. He'd marched off ahead during the first day's trek and when he had stopped to point something out or explain something he had never waited for the people at the back to get close enough to hear. It felt like he was the one doing the tour and we were just following! My feelings towards him weren't improved on the second day as he spent most of it talking to Fern in Thai so that neither I, nor the other guy with us could understand. Fern didn't have the specialist vocabulary to translate so we spent the second day just walking, rather than walking and learning.

We trekked for about two hours that morning before we stopped at a small, but nice waterfall. We all donned our swimming gear and took a dip in the cold water before drying off and eating some more rice for lunch. Our guide told us that we wouldn't be setting off again for another two hours and he then left us there with nothing to do while he went off and slept in a hut nearby. Very professional!!!

Three hours of afternoon trekking brought us to a different settlement and this time we had enough daylight left to take a look around. Fern and I fed cows and buffalos, dodged scary spiders and took in the gorgeous view that we had before the dark finally set in. The other guy on the tour with us was resting, so Fern and I went into the hut of the hilltribe family that were preparing our dinner. It was a nice feeling, sitting in the warmth of this remote bamboo hut while a local family cooked over the coals. This was the type of experience that we had come for.

We slept quite well that night, and the pancakes that we had for breakfast were gorgeous. We were happy that it was our last day and we were dreaming of a soft bed, clean clothes and a hot shower by this time. We walked to a different waterfall, stopped a while and then carried on our trek into the afternoon. We spent a lot of time walking through rice fields and at one point our guide had to hack us a path throw high overgrown foliage. As the day drew to a close, Fern took a little tumble into the river when her top-heavy backpack caused her to lose her footing on a slippery rock. She was quickly dragged out of the water though and fortunately we were pretty much at the end of our tour as she (and her bag's contents) were soaked. Our tour finished with a trip down a fast river on a large bamboo raft where we all ended up getting drenched anyway, as the weight on the raft meant that it sat about six inches below the water! We were driven back to the centre of Chiang Mai afterwards and after we got off of the bus Fern overheard our guide complaining to his mates (in Thai) that he hadn't been given any tips. Hahaha, what a joke!

We booked in to a nice hotel when we got back and spent most of the afternoon and the next day resting and living the high life. Two days later and we had crossed the border into Laos.

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Photos

In the hills of Northen Thailand
A partial rainbow is the backdrop to a beautiful and expansive view

Tuk-Tuk?
One of the thousands of Bangkok tuk-tuk taxis drives through the rain-flooded streets

A giant reclining Buddha
In Wat Pho temple, Bangkok

Feeding the elephant
A big bunch of bananas was his reward

Rickety train tracks
The train had to slow right down in order to travel over the very old tracks built into the side of a mountain

Dreamworld amusement park
Fern comes a cropper

Getting some practice in for when she visits England
The temperature in this room was zero celsius and we even did some indoor sledding!

Xmas in September
The coldness of the room and the xmas music made me feel homesick. Ahhhhhh!

Trekking - day one
rain rain rain

Taking a break
We stopped to rest in a rice field and the sun came out

Karen hilltribe women
In traditional dress

Scared?
As big as my palm, this was one of the smaller spiders that we saw. It was also about one metre from where we slept!

Comments

[Sonia]

Wow!
Hi Chris This appears to be the 1st blog I have received from you, I have probably received them before, but didn't read the subject properly and just deleted them - sorry. Looks like your having a fabulous time. I am soooo jealous. Pictures are fab! not sure about that spider though :o( Anyway keep me updated xxx