Land of Smiles ha! only when there is money involved

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Arriving into Bangkok's prestgious new Suviboomboom airport, we were impressed with the external appearance. Inside though, its a big concrete and steel mess, reminiscent of the old Don Muang airport. Combine this with the recent news that the freshly laid runway tarmac is cracking up and they are having to re-open Don Muang once again, you get a taste of the Thai government's slap-dash approach to its infrasctructure. Immigration Officers were by far the most unfriendliest we have ever met. Thailand recently changed its entry rules for tourists and since October 2006 it now heavily restricts the number of days that tourists can stay in the Kingdom. What a difference 2 years has made when around the time of the tsunami Thai people were pleading for people to visit. This was the first indication that business must be booming for Thailand, especially seeing as the Immigration Officer marked on our passports how many days we could enter the Kingdom for and spelt out that after that time we would not be allowed to re-enter for 3 months. The new harsh restrictions have made us and several other backpackers have to change our plans on visiting Thailand and we now will have to spend much less time in Thailand than we wanted. This may not be a bad thing however as Thailand seems so much more expensive than other South-East Asian countries. This may be a bit of a rant but the Thai people are increasingly becoming snotty, arrogant and pi**ing us off and asking people from the surrounding countries....they tend to agree with us! We got the airport bus to our accomodatioon in the centre of Bangkok, this was an expensive 300 baht for a journey which took 90 minutes. Walking around Bangkok it was immediately apparant that since our visit last year that tourist numbers have shot up and we were frustrated to find we couldn't buy a bottle of Singha for under 100 baht (apart from 7-eleven which was still a steep 55 baht).

One unexpected bonus with the increase in tourist numbers was that the market and shop people were less bothered about over-inflating prices as they have been in the past and some vendors were even displaying their prices up front (and they were quite reasonable too!). However, this didn't stop a stupid Eastern European woman in Patpong market from buying a fake Omega watch for 90 euros! When will package tourists ever learn! We spent 4 days in Bangkok and managed to rack up purchases of 4 pairs of Diesel jeans (genuine fakes), a diesel hat, a bag and 2 pairs of sunglasses. This made our luggage well overweight for our Air Asia flight to Chiang Mai which only allows 15 kg weight limit each. We found that an inventive way to reduce our baggage weight was to wear 5 layers of clothing (not easy when it's 40 degrees!) and carry 4 plastic bags and 2 rucksacks with our heavier items onto the plane as hand luggage. Arriving into Chiang Mai we breathed a sigh of relief due to the pleasant nature of this great city.

Thankfully little had changed in Chiang Mai since our last visit 4 years ago and we began our 5 day massage course we learnt how to perform a 90 minute, full body Nuad Bo-Ran Northern Thai style massage. This was a government accredited, internationally recognised course which we have to certificate to prove. Neil got into it so much he now proudly wears his massage school t-shirt, matching bag and he even bought the book! The massage course run by a Mr Miyagi (of the film 'The Karate Kid') - like guru of Nuad Bo-Ran who made us begin each day with 1 hour of very strenuous yoga strecthing exercises and a cult-like chant to the great father of Nuad Bo-Ran, Dr Shivago! We didn't join in this chanting as we felt it was a little creepy and the more experienced massage students (some who had been there for 24 weeks and were mainly composed of the...a-hem...'tourists on a spiritual journey') frowned condescendingly at us. Halfway through the course, half of the students including ourselves came down with a bad case of the squits, sickness and fever. This made for some interesting situations in the class as the course involved pulling and stretching different parts of the body and abdomen massage. The final day of the course involved us having to perform 65 positions of Thai massage which was approximately 5 hours of massaging a complete stranger. Whilst Donna got the sweet young Brazilian girl to massage, Neil got a Ukranian guy called Roman who modelled himself on Jean Claude Van Damme and had the worst personal hygiene of all the subjects. Neil likened having to massage Roman to the equivalent of trying to launch Sputnik and we both muddled through. Mr Miyagi, having been catching flies with his chopsticks and trimming bonsais all week, actually managed a smile when presenting our certificates.

Rattling through our sickness we met up with some nice people of our massage course to celebrate Donna's 30th birthday and enjoyed walking around the Sunday night market. This market was superb for cheap eats and drinks and we were soon addicted to the very cheap strawberry shakes and corn on the cobs. We had the unexpected news that week that sadly Neil's nanna had died and although our time in Chiang Mai was tinged with sadness, Chiang Mai is a very spiritual place of relaxation and contemplation anyway, so we decided to stay an extra few days and also spend a few hours one-on-two tuition to expand our Thai vocabulary. We would soon see in North Eastern Thailand (where English isn't widely spoken) if this was money well spent.

For the next leg of our journey we had the option of flying to Luang Prabang in Laos by either a $90, 40 minute flight or a 3 day bus-boat combo journey for $40 each. We opted for the 3 day journey, hoping we would get to see more of the real Laos. Was this a mistake we wondered?....

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Photos

Chiang Mai Wat
There were many of these buddhist temples in Chiang Mai. Very pretty too!

Biscuits
Lots of em!

Donna and Mr Miyagi at Massage School
proudly receiving certificate

Neil and Mr Miyagi at Massage School
proudly receiving certificate