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Published: August 18th 2005
It has been a busy 2 weeks since my last update. Using a combination of train, bus, boat and songthaew (bench in the box of pickup truck), I did a huge loop from Bangkok to Sukhothai, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai in Northern Thailand, then in to Laos southward from Huay Xai through Pakbeng, Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng to Vientiane and finally back to Bangkok. If that sounds like alot, well it is!
NORTHERN THAILAND Watch my
Northern Thailand VideoBlog !
I'm not sure what I expected of Thailand but I was surprised. At the border between Cambodia and Thailand, the single lane, hole ridden dirt trail suddenly becomes a fully lit, 4 lane divided highway with 7-eleven stores at each service station. In the farm fields, automatic harvesters replace ox and water buffalo. 20-year-old trucks and motorcycles are quickly forgotten as we leave our rickety bus-like thing and step into a new air-conditioned coach.
But all is not like home, especially not in the Khaosan Rd. area of Bangkok (photo), the backpacker Mecca of Southeast Asia. Imagine thousands of foreign backpackers crowding the streets among Thai street vendors selling, well, anything you can imagine, for as much
Bangkok
Khaosan Rd.as they can possibly get. Each bar or guest-house tries to outdo its neighbour with louder western music or Hollywood movies. The incredible concentration of gullible farang (foreigners) keeps the scammers busy and makes it almost impossible to get a straight answer or to go where you want to go by tuk-tuk (as opposed where the driver wants to take you).
As I walk down the street....
Tuk-Tuk Driver: "Where you go?"
Me: "National Museum"
Tuk-Tuk Driver: "Oooh! very far!"
Me: "3 blocks"
Tuk-Tuk Driver: "but can't go that way, dangerous"
Me: "It's noon, I think I'll take my chances"
Tuk-Tuk Driver: "but today Wednesday, museum closed"
Me: "My book says it's open 7 days a week"
Tuk-Tuk Driver: "Today special Thai holiday, only massage and boom-boom open. I take you"
etc... The museum was nice.
Even if a Tuk-Tuk agrees to take you where you want to go, once you get in, there is a good chance he will take you somewhere else, suddenly forgetting English when you tell him he's going the wrong way.
After seeing Bangkok's major sights over a couple days, I moved North to Sukhothai, the first capital of Siam and home
Bangkok
Wat Pho (good question) of some ancient wats (photo). After Cambodia's Angkor Wat, I was bound to be disappointed with the relatively small and highly manicured Sukhothai Historical Park.
Still farther North are Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. In Chiang Mai, I hiked and camped on my own in a nearby national park, discovering jungle trails and beautiful waterfalls (photos), and visited a Hmong hill tribe village after the tour busses had left. In Chiang Rai, I did a 2-day guided trek with another backpacker and guide, riding elephants and sleeping in a remote hilltop village where our host dug up some beetle balls for breakfast (photos).
THE MAN WHO CRIED "SNAKE!" Once upon a time, there was a farang on a bus between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai when the farang noticed the baggage compartment door swing open as the bus went around a corner. Wanting to help, the farang ran to the front and tried to inform the perplexed driver, who then sent a helper to try to find out what the f..farang's problem was. With the bus now going straight, the helper saw nothing unusual out the window. When the farang pointed down toward the baggage compartment and all
Bangkok
Ants carry off gecko (in my bathroom) the passengers looked on the floor of the bus. In desperation, the farang tried to explain with hand signs that the door swings open as the bus goes around curves - curves. This was not well understood. Someone said "snake in the bus????" and the farang, now the center of attention, tried to deny seeing a snake. Some passengers got off the bus when it pulled over and they noticed that the baggage door was ajar. There must be a moral to this story somewhere...
OBSERVATIONS ON NORTHERN THAILAND - Thailand is modern, relatively prosperous (in a regional context) and tourist friendly
- It is very easy to get around using the well-organized transportation system.
- Despite the above, Thailand is NOT significantly more expensive than Vietnam or Cambodia, making it a great bargain
- Hill Tribes still exist in the North but probably not for long. Some seem to be maintained only for the benefit of tourists. The village where I stayed had a strange demographic: only adults and small children - all the teens had moved to the city.
LAOS Watch my
Laos VideoBlog !
People in Laos seem, in a word, happy.
The proportion of my photos that are from Laos will attest to how much I enjoyed that country and its people.
The first part of my journey was by boat descending the fast moving upper Mekong over 2 days from Huay Xai to Pakbeng and then Luang Prabang. The river is lined with black rocks and white sand and winds between misty green mountains (photos). I wished for a canoe as our large boat maneuvered the rapids.
Pakbeng is an isolated, tight-knit village on the banks of the Mekong. There is no electricity, but some guest houses run a generator for a few hours in the evening - others use candles. Children laugh and play everywhere, especially on the banks of the river where dozens swim, slide in mud and play soccer until dark (photos). During the evening I was chatting by candlelight with some other travelers when we were joined by a young Lao man with a guitar (popular instruments here). He played a bit and talked with us in limited English. At one point he asked why the Americans tried to kill them with bombs. I struggled for a simple answer that he might understand, but
in the end, I had to simply shrug my shoulders. He nodded and said "Laos small country. Good people. No can kill all Laos. Tell that in America". Then he said good night and left.
He was referring to the secret war the US waged on officially neutral Laos between 1964 and 1972, dumping an incredible 2 billion kg of bombs to make Laos the most heavily bombed country in history. Many of those bombs remain as yet unexploded booby traps. Then, the CIA secretly funded Hmong and Yao guerrillas to terrorize and destabilize the country. Those guerrillas continue to cause violence today, even though their American funding has dried up.
It took me about a half day to fall in love with the town of Luang Prabang, no doubt named for the sound the bus makes. I wandered the red dirt streets between meticulously kept bamboo huts and green ponds, beneath a canopy of palm trees with a backdrop of dark mountains (photos). Playful children abound. I was greeted with a cheerful "sabaydee!" from almost everyone I passed. Unlike Vietnam and Cambodia, there is no aggressive selling to foreigners. Attempts to bargain on price are usually met
Chang Mai
Shower while solo trekking with a disarming smile that removes any desire for a lower price. I was, however, offered free food and drink out of simple hospitality.
Vang Vieng is not on the Mekong, but on the much smaller Song River and is surrounded by spectacular limestone mountains riddled with caves. I went biking, swimming and caving with several other backpackers that I met there (photos). Cool caves! Big. Deep. Dark.
WHO YA GONNA CALL? I had heard the "slow boat" from Huay Xai to Pakbeng referred to as the "boat from hell", but the scenery was so beautiful that the cramped hard seats seemed a small price to pay. In fact the trip would have been almost perfect, but for an incident that lasted only a second and which still affects me.
I noticed a large object drifting by my side of the boat and I leaned over to see a not-so-fresh dead man looking up at me. Only a couple other passengers had the misfortune of seeing what I saw but no one said a word as we absorbed the shock and sailed past. The next day, rumours started circulating that there had been a body, and speculation
Chang Rai
Elephant Riding that it might have been from a recent shipwreck upstream, or perhaps a casualty of the very dangerous speed boats which scream up and down the river.
Unusually vivid dreams and even nightmares are well known side effects of the preventive malaria medication I am taking. My uninvited floating friend used this fact to visit me in my dreams for several nights last week. Fortunately, he must have been a good Buddhist because he seems to have already abandoned me for his next incarnation.
OBSERVATIONS ON LAOS * As some of the poorest people in the world (annual income US$ 385/person), they should be pitiful. But yet there is little about them that inspires pity. They are generally happy and proud of their close communities. It strikes me that they have some quality that we may have lost.
* All is far from rosy. Health care is scarce, education poor and unexploded bombs linger in the jungle.
* The Lao seem as laid-back as the Vietnamese are industrious
* I have never seen children with so much energy (and imagination) for play
* I met another Canadian in Vang Vieng and discovered we born in the same
Chang Rai Trekking
My bedroom in hill tribe village hospital - is this where you say "small world"?
NEXT I'll spend a few days this week on a secret island in Southern Thailand that some guy in Bangkok told me about but swore me to secrecy (sounds like a familiar plot). Then I'll make my way to Singapore by the weekend. From there I fly to Cairo with a brief stop in Paris "along the way". I guess my world map has not kept up with continental drift...
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Khaosan Rd.
i like Khaosan Rd. but not much, there're lots of silly foreigners but i dont mind lol! hmm..wanna say khaosan rd. is fun as fuck, wanna go back!! byeee..