village life

---

Firstly - all photos are up on - http://s60.photobucket.com/albums/h14/jonnyglewington/
seeing as this site has stingy upload limits!

After the 24 hour traffic jam that was bangkok - I decided it was time to see something a bit more rural. So on tuesday I made it my mission to stay somewhere as remote and none touristy as I could find!

I left bangkok on an express train to sawankhalok, accompanied by an Icelandic guy that I met in bangkok who also couldn't stomach the noise. On the train we sat near to a monk, who showed us some small wooden figures he had carved (mostly of penises!). We spent the night in sawankhalok - a small town in which we were the only foreigners. It had a small night market specialising in rotting vegetables and fish, and no one spoke more than a few words of english (the case from there to chiang mai, with a few small exceptions).

The next day I finally managed to find some countryside. I took a tuk tuk 20km to the little visited si-santchanalai historical park and stopped in a village about 2km away. The park was once part of the first capital of Thailand - although all that remains is a few temple and city ruins. It made interesting exploring, and produced a few good photos! I rented a bike for the day from the park entrance to get around the area and sweated it out (it was pretty hot!) cycling round the paddy fields and banana plantations. There was one small village that was full of women working looms and producing strips of decorative fabrics - presumably to be sent somewhere more touristy and sold on stalls. I bought some directly from them after snapping a few photos and went to find a guesthouse to avoid the oncoming monsoon. I managed to ask a taxi driver to take me somewhere (massacring the thai language in the process) and ended up in what can only have been someones home! They only had one room in the house, which had their clothes in the wardrobe and stuff in the bathroom. Still, they offered the room (which was very nice) for 100 baht and I readily accepted. I spent the night wondering round the village, and cycled the 2km back to the entrance of the historical park where there was a small restaurant for dinner. A young Chinese couple from beijing who had been to see the park that day were there too, and we sat and drank together for a few hours.

The next morning, before heading on to Chang Mai, I had a coffee at the stall opposite. The old lady and her husband running it were extremely friendly; she taught me some thai (reading from the back of the lonely planet language pages) and he roared with laughter every time I said something! Through various signs, signals and pointing to a few maps and photos in the lonely planet, she managed to communicate that she was brought up in Um Phang, that her father was killed in the fighting there and that she moved east when she was twenty. She likes Buddhists, apparently, because they are pacifist and loves the king (like all thais seem too!). I was amazed at how much we were able to talk to each other when neither of us knew a sentence of the others language - thank god for the lonely planet! The locals, I observed, are nothing if not lazy - they seem to spend all day sleeping on benches and such. I decided to join in and spent until 1 p.m. (from about 6 a.m.) lying on the bench behind the coffee stall drinking coke and occasionally chatting to the owner.

It was awesome - exactly what I came here to do! But, I decided that it wouldn't be worth missing out on other places so I moved on, catching the local bus to sukhothai station and straight on to the northern capital of chiang mai, on which I spent the whole journey chatting to two german girls on there gap year travel. It was nice to have a fluent conversation again! We got to chiang mai about 10 and after checking in to a guesthouse we found a rather quiet bar with a screen showing Wimbledon (live - due to time difference!) to finish the night in. Thats pretty much it until now - am planning some jungle / mountain treks in the next few days and I guess the next entry will be about his time next week.

---