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blog by Dave From our luxury surroundings in the heart of
Bangkok's business centre, we moved on to meet our
Gap Year project group at the fabled backpackers centre of
Kao San Road. The hotel
'Thai Cozy House' was not quite five star this time, being located above a variety of food and clothing shops, but it was comfortable enough with most of the desired ameneties.
The
Gap Year - Work & Travel Company (www.gapyearforgrownups.co.uk) is an organisation that we found last year through an internet search when we were doing our research for the world trip. They are a UK based company that specialise in offering all sorts of programmes from 2wks to several months working, volunteering and travelling in various countries around the world. They are perfect for university students wanting to spend a 'gap year' doing something different before buckling down to study and also for those 30-something's who have taken a career break or an extended holiday and want to do something different. We would fall into the latter category!
With
Gap Year - Work & Travel Company you can do everything from teach english to children in countries such as India, China and
all over Latin America, rebuilding homes after the tsunami, clean up environmental waste & study lake waters to teaching sports to children (i.e. cricket to children in Sri Lanka).
The programme we chose was: Learn about the culture and environment of Thailand for 4wks + 1 week working with rescued elephants + 1 week working with Dusky Langur monkeys.
(Note: we have also booked another programme with Gap Year Programme in Nov '06 to work with Giant Tortoises on the Galapagos islands) After introductions with our
Gap Year Volunteer group - 10 people in all; Nikki, Clare, Sally, Anita, Dean, Simon, Andy & Rachel, all from the UK - we all went out for a meal and then split up to enjoy the evening to ourselves.
On our first afternoon here we had stumbled across the hotel where some other UK friends that we met in Feb '06 in
Dharamsala, India Kerry and Sid were staying, so we arranged to meet them for a drink. It was great to see them again and we enjoyed a smashing evening of catching up and exploration of
Bangkok (during which we encountered some of
Bangkok's seedier secrets), after which
we decided to possibly rendez-vouz with them again when we move on to Laos.
The first official day of our project started with breakfast in the hotel and a trip to the
Grand Palace. This attraction consists of a large group of spectacular royal temples and pagodas inside a huge compound right in the heart of
Bangkok. The only way to truly convey the majesty and breathtaking detail of this place is via the photos attached.
During the afternoon we moved onto a large park containing scaled down reproductions of every famous building from the length and breadth of
Thailand. This was actually very impressive and well worth a visit.
The following day, setting off from
Bangkok, we took a drive to the ancient city of
Ayuthaya. This sprawling collection of ruined temples and stupas used to be the capital of
Thailand and still portrays the majesty of that time. The wonderful museum also provided us with a great insight into the artifacts and treasures recovered from this amazing site.
The next scheduled stop was
Chang Rai, right in the north of the country, and we had to catch a plane here as part of our
programme. With the flight being late afternoon we chose to use our free morning in
Bangkok by visiting the newly constructed aquarium in
Siam Discovery Centre - a huge shopping mall. This was one of the best aquariums either of us had ever seen and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It even managed to boast a glass bottomed boat as one of the features here, which goes to show how large some of the exhibits were.
After the afternoon flight to
Chang Rai and the hotel check-in, our guides
"Lucky" and
"Apple" - every Thai has a 'nickname' and a 'real' name and so 'Lucky' & 'Apple' were their nicknames - showed us round a large night market in the centre of
Chang Rai where we had dinner local Thai style. This entailed selecting the appropriate dish(es) from one of the many stalls surrounding an area crowded with plastic chairs and tables. The food is then brought to you when it has been prepared and cooked. The entertainment is provided in the format of a stage in front of the diners, on which there is an 'open mike', and luckily we enjoyed some quite talented guitarists.
Our guide brought
a dish of fried crickets for her entree, and offered them round. Dave decided
'when in Rome' and promptly chomped on one of the critters! This started the ball rolling and pretty soon most of our friends were trying this 'delicacy'. Bronia refrained especially when the taste was described as an
"airy pop and crunch with a weird chicken prawn flavour and a funny aftertaste" From
Chang Rai we moved to the very northern tip of the country into the
'Golden Triangle' where the borders of
Myanmar (Burma), Laos and
Thailand converge at the
Mekong River. It became known as the Golden Triangle due to the trade in Gold that used to occur here, gold being the only currency that all three countries would recognise in international trade at the time. Here we took a long-tailed boat downstream and over to browse in a market town just on the
Laos side of the river. It was here that Dave sampled another local delight - 'cobra' whisky; literally whisky with a dead cobra immersed in it (see pics). Later we also travelled to the
Myanmar/Burma border nearby to browse another market town and view the bridge built between the two
countries as an immigration control point.
From the
Golden Triangle we headed southwest to a town called
Tha Ton which was based in a nature reserve. To get here we had to again took to the water in a canoe with canopy and a bottom numbing 4-hour ride ended with us disembarking at a lovely riverside restaurant for traditional Thai food. En route to our destination we visited a hill tribe village. Here the women wear brass rings around their necks. They are given this burden from the age of seven and over the years, as the weight of these rings causes the shoulders to permanently drop, new rings are added. The villagers, called
'Karen villagers', are actually refugees from neighbouring
Myanmar, who have crossed the border over the last 30yrs to flee from persecution at the hands of the Burmese government. The Thai government tolerates these people but provides no assistance other than the land on which they stay. To exist they must be self-sufficient and the tourists that visit play a huge part in their survival. We bought a couple of crafts they made, took some photos (see pics) and left feeling that these people were trapped
in a no-man's land. Very sad.
When we arrived at out hotel by the river in
Tha Ton that night, we were treated to a spectacular medley of insect and amphibian noises, the like of which none of us have ever experienced. These noises ranged from dentists drills to chainsaws and bizarre screams.
When we sat down to dinner in the open air hotel restaurant - we were subjected first to an aerial onslaught of six-legged nuisances of varying size (some as large as your hand), and then a procession of geckos (also of varying size) who were scurrying about hoping to profit from this avalanche of insect life. In the midst of this mayhem, the hotel cook was scurrying about trying to capture the larger of the bugs (the hand-sized ones) and jam them into a plastic bottle, for later consumption.
After a mercifully quiet and surprise free night, we headed towards
Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city. Our first stop along the way was an elephant camp. Here we got our first taste of the role of these fabulous creatures in Asian life. Each animal has a
'mahout' - its rider and carer who, barring
disaster, will be with the elephant for a lifetime. The bond between them becomes unshakeable and many elephants will only tolerate others when their mahout is present. We were taken on a short ride in a double chair strapped on top of one of these awesome beasts.
We were then treated to a ride downstream on a bamboo raft from the elephant camp to meet our vans who then took us to a workshop which manufactures paper from the elephant dung. This ingenious idea is providing yet more income for the elephants and their mahouts in the camp.
We then made our way to the impressive botanical gardens at
Chiang Mai. The scale of this place was mind-blowing. We only had time to see a fraction of the exhibits which required driving in between them. We probably saw a total of twenty large hot-houses containing various species of plant life, all beautifully maintained and lovingly presented.
Our final stop, just on the outskirts of the city was a butterfly and orchid farm. The process by which a unique orchid is created is incredibly intricate and time-consuming, so we were fascinated by this place too.
Our hotel
in
Chiang Mai was situated right in the centre of the towns famous night market, which we thoroughly explored, enjoyed and shopped in.
The most noteable temple in the area is called
'Doi Suthep' and is situated on top of a hill reached by 300 steps. We decided the climb was worthwhile and were proved right as some spectacular sculptures and carvings awaited us at the summit, as did incredible views of the town below. Another temple of note we visited was
'Wadi Chedi Luang' - which is one of the oldest stupas in the entire country (700yrs), and which was damaged in an ancient earthquake before being partially restored.
Chiang Mai is also home to many arts and crafts, and we went to see how the traditional Thai umbrellas were made at a craft village called
Bo Sang. Not far from here we also saw how silver jewellery is made. These visitor centres are designed for people to gain an appreciation of the craftmanship and skill involved in the manufacture of the goods, as well as the historical significance and the traditional values attached to these professions.
As part of our 'cultural' experience in
Chiang Mai,
our guides took us out one evening to a local nightclub. What started as a dark empty bare room, soon turned into a writhing mass of people from tourists and foreign workers, through to the local Thai folk and the famous ladyboys. The live band was excellent and it was a fabulous night of entertainment all round.
Via an overnight stay in a town called
Mae Sot, and a beautifully luxurious hotel, our next destination was a nature reserve called
Um Phang. This was to be our base for the following week or so in the Thai rainforests of the north west.
Some of the scenery on the drive to this part of
northern Thailand was literally stunning. It occured to us all that we were really heading into the wilderness as the villages and clusters of houses became ever more sparse. The hotel in
Um Phang that formed our starting point into the jungle was furnished with all the necessary amenities though, so we made ourselves comfortable albeit briefly.
The first leg of our exploration was taken by rubber raft (see pics). We cruised along the gently bubbling river at a sedate pace, all the while
soaking up breathtaking scenes of dense jungle, towering rock formations, deep river side caverns and tall hazy rainbow shrouded waterfalls. At one point we stopped to enjoy a phenomenal hot spring (see pic) that formed a pool in the forest.
We eventually ditched the boats just as the afternoon monsoon rain started, as did the hiking section of our day. We trudged through the relentless torrential rain, up and down muddy trails, crashing through greenery, splashing through puddles until finally we arrived at our campsite 3 hours later. It had only been about 10km but all of us were utterly saturated despite our rainclothes (the humid temperature was such that the condensation inside our jackets was at least equal to the rain outside), and it was a relief to find that our tents had been pitched inside a large barn. I don't think we would have endured the night directly in this downpour.
We were greeted in the morning by lovely blue sky which followed us as we set out to find
'Nam Tok Thilawsu' waterfall - the largest in Thailand at 400m in total. When we got there we took the chance to swim in the water
Buddhist temple at Ayuthaya
Ayuthaya is 86km from Bangkok, Thailandand jump off the falls (it was staggered into sections). We then returned to camp and packed the tents and then embarked on another 3 hour trek toward another Karen hill tribe village (Burmese refugees as mentioned above).
The village consisted of wooden huts and shacks, and was evidently not a wealthy part of the country, extremely isolated, simply constructed and poorly supplied. Here our accomodation was the local school building. Each of us claimed a piece of floorspace and a mosquito net.
The villagers were incredibly friendly and hospitable to us - despite these being refugees from
Myanmar and having very little in life to call their own. They even shared their shower which consisted of a nearby waterfall, where we also took the chance to bathe (see pic). It was another case of 'When in Rome etc.' and we took out shampoo and soap to clean.
We were evicted from our makeshift home the next morning at 08:00 by the arrival of the days students for their classes. The children were all beautifully behaved, not to mention turned out as they lined up for morning exercise, song, prayer, roll call and raising of the Thai
flag. As they filed into their classes peering at us shyly from dipped eyelashes we heard the trumpet of elephants.
A herd of seven elephants was waiting for us just outside the village boundary, and was to be the method of transport back to the main road. With backpacks & sleeping bags we climbed aboard (see pic) for a four hour ride up and down mountains with both of us developing muscle pains and bruises in places never before reached. It was incredible though how our huge elephant negotiated the slopes and twists of three mountain passes before we reached some flat ground where a 4x4 completed our journey to the hotel.
Before we left this fabulous region, we rose at 5:30am to view the renowned mists that cover the rainforests from a mountain called
Hua-Mod. This soon evaporates and we just about caught it in time. It was almost supernatural in its beauty and hopefully the pictures below do it justice.
We also visited some deep caves here that run for about 2km before emerging back at the surface. Our guides through this dark labyrinth were two local boys who weren't older than seven, and they
just skipped through the tunnels like gymnasts with flip-flops on whilst we all cursed and stumbled our way along.
Then it was off again in trucks to the relative hustle of
Mae Sot where we had time to shop before catching a bus to
Bangkok again for the next part of our programme.
The jungles of Thailand, the wildlife we have seen and the people we have met hold so many amazing memories for us, we'll never forget them. Hopefully we have provided a sense of how incredible it was.
Speak to you again soon .......
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Ann Hulbert
non-member comment
Wow!
THanks a million, I felt like I was here. We have just had 5 Thai visitors for a week, so your descriptions were perfect. Enjoy, and see you in Sept. Hopefully not after the 19th, am going to the UK.