The Travellers Curse

Tom and I arrived in Bangkok - back in good ole Rambuttri and were greeted with the ever happy Ellen and the fact that my sister was still in bed at 3pm! Realising I was going to be arriving in Bangkok the day after Sam was due in I got a bit worried, thinking she'd be angry, but I knew a Dutch bombshell who'd be in Bangkok at the same time and make sure her trip got off to a good (drunken!) start. So Sam was so hungover she still wasn't out of bed to greet us after our crazy 2 day journey - well done Ellen! I have been incredibly lucky with my trips to Bangkok; alot of people seem to dislike it and yes Khao San is crazy and ful of backpackers, but sometimes it's actually fun to be surrounded by people like that - it's just easy, in small doses! I have actually really enjoyed my time in BAngkok because I was always with good people already, I can imagine if you arrive on your own it will be much more difficult. This time round I had Tom, Ellen, my sister Sam, one

play fighting

Hope is on the left!

of my best friends from Uni Emily, Nora (who I travelled with for the beginning of China) and Matt and Emily were joining us the next day. All fun and games!

The day after we arrived Sam and Ellen wanted to get out and see the city a bit, even though this was my second time in Bangkok I still hadn't seen any of the sights so we wondered off to see the Palace and left Tom being manly, drinking alone in a pub! The Palace didn't go all too well, we had arrived late in the afternoon after a lazy morning and some shopping on Khao San Road and so they were trying to hurry us in and then told us we had to get changed because even though our shorts went past our knees that rule only applies to skirts, What?! Then we found out it was 300Baht and wouldn't really have any time so rerouted to Wat Po. Wat Po is a lovely way to spend some time; it is famous for the huge reclining Buddha (for descriptions of the splendor, just refer to the photos!) which it houses and so we made our way round

Reclining Buddha - Wat Po

there and that is actually the only thing we 'did' in bangkok! Opps, I know that there are many more things to see and do but we always intended to come back so was sure we'd get other things done then. But for now it was Matt and Tom's last night travelling and Sam was finally over her first night so we had to head over to the petrol station! Love this place, it still has the pumps in the forcourt and that is where they have all the chairs and tables, it's like they just found any space they could and shoved a bar there, would've been much cooler if the bar was actually in the shop or drinks came from the pumps (surely a health hazard, but hey this is Asia!) but I really loved this place ever since this is where I experienced my first "bucket". This drink is famous all around Thailand, basically for those that don't know (and i've actually found a few) think of a childs beach bucket full of ice, a whole bottle of spirit, a can of soft drink and a small bottle of Asian redbull, all for about 3 pounds -

flower soaps carved by hand

sunday walking streets

so wrong yet so right! (PLease don't think that I have spent my whole time drunk and partying, I just go though stages. Sometimes I need to let my hair down and sometimes I need to feel like i'm really travelling and seeing lots of things, I just like to have a mixture of everything and the hardcore travelling can actually be quite difficult and tiring at points so the periods of chilling and just have fun are needed to recharge)

We had a fantastic night but the next day the boys were leaving to go home and the girls a couple of days later, which was actually quite difficult for me (for them also, at least I was carrying on, I know they didn't want to have to go home) This is what I can only describe as the travellers curse; to spend time with people and to have so much fun and then to have to go your seperate ways can sometimes be heartbreaking. I had spent the last 5 fantastic weeks in Matt and Tom's company and and the girlies at different times during that, which actaully becomes a long time to be with the same

Pretty Feet

Reclining Buddha - Wat Po

people when you're travelling. Sam and I got on a train up to Chiang Mai that night so that we didn't have to spend any time more time in Bangkok, I just wanted to get on with the trip.

Retracing my steps

It was interesting coming back to a place I had been before, somewhere I knew how much to pay for a tuktuk, where to stay adn whats good to eat. I took Sam back to Spicy Thai and at first I think she was a little confused, she had been travelling in Oz and NZ before, so when we entered the little residential village and I told her there wasn't a bar at the hostel she didn't know where I was taking her. It was a little weird to begin with because alot of people were in the process of moving on and so we spent the day eating Kao Soi (my Favorite dish!), walking around the temples and hanging out at the Sunday Walking Streets Market. The hostel was fairly dead and I was wondering if last time I was there it was a fluke, I remembered meeting Matt, Tom and Ellen and the

Reclining Buddha - Wat Po

Bangkok

rest of the wicked group we had there and missed it.

We booked one thing which I was so desperate to see, it's expensive but so completely worth it. The Elephant Nature Foundation is something that I actually found out about while reading someone's blog on this site (pretty sure it was thanks to SoulCultivator, but can't quite remember!) Lek is a Thai lady who started the foundation to rescue elephants that are badly treated and to teach the Thai people to look after their elephants, which are their national heritage, better. The way that elephants in Thailand are treated and, almost worse, trained is horrific. (one of the elephants had her eyes gouged out by her Mahout in order to get her to do what he wanted!) As a card carrying animal lover I had a huge problem when we were shown the video which shows in graffic detail the way they are trained, I wanted to cry. I have seen these animals in the wild bush of Africa where they are doing everything they can to protect them and seeing a 4 yr old elephant being taken away from his mother so that they can put him

Ornate walls and a golden hand

Wat Po, Bangkok

in 'the crush' was really upsetting. They call it that because it literally crushes their bodies and because they hope it will crush their spirit. The trained elephants are basically livestock here and since they can no longer be used for logging etc they are put to work on the streets of Bangkok, little more than beggers or in shows where they are made to paint pictures or play football or run tourists round all day. Lek realises there isn't enough space in Thailand to release all these elephants and they do have to be used in some way because they are many peoples livelihoods but she is trying to teach a form of positive reenforcement training and better treatment in general.

Que Hope. Hoep is an elephant that Lek was able to bring to the Park at a very early age and has used this form of training on him. When we arrived at the park, they were just setting up for feeding time and the cheeky little Hope had come running up and our guide asked if anyone wanted a kiss. Of course I did! He came up to me and stuck his big snout end of

Head and Pillow

Wat Po, Bangkok

his trunk into my face! It was the sweetest thing in the world, especially knowing that he wasn't trained with the traditional Thai methods. We spent the day feeding them and going down to the river to wash them. Getting right in there, under the water and scrubbing them with a brush, they were rolling around and we were literally tripping over their huge feet. while we were having a Q&A in a hut by the river the youngest fanily member came down and had a wee wash with her mummy and aunty. It was so great watching these elephants roaming around with their own space and being so well looked after; the elephants that Lek owns won't have to work another day.

Elephant Nature Foundation

At Spicy, if there is something you fancy doing you can just tell Noom and he will write it up on the board so everyone can join in. So I said I wanted to go to the Thai BBQ we'd been to before and so a big ole group of us headed down to the Thai BBQ, it was brilliant, a huge warehouse with cheesy live music, pretty much locals only and all you

Wat Po

Bangkok

can eat food to cook yourself on your little thai style BBQ set! The next morning, slightly worse for wear we got up at riddick o'clock to try and get out to Luang Prabang, taking buses and not the slow boat option. All buses to the thai/laos border being booked up for days we realised we have to do some chopping and changing and basically the same route I'd down to get here first tiem round. Booked a ticket to Chiang Rai for the next day and headed back to Spicy just 2 hours later. (in 4 months this has never happend to me, i've always been able to move on in some way, so it was really annoying!)We ended up having a great day though. I hadn't seen Doi Suthep temple even though I'd been in CM twice so when I couple of guys asked if we wanted to head that way we thought we'd better get to it and as is the Spicy way we ended up being a group of twelve! Including the swiss girl that we rescued at the bus stop, she's been waiting ages for enough people to get a bus up there with (the

Wat Po, Bangkok

red buses in CM only go when full!) and the driver guys were tryign to say she couldn't come with us because we'd already agreed a price and she wasn't part of the group - this caused me to grab her and tell him in no uncertain terms she was with our group now, which everyone seconded! I get so protective now when I see people alone because I know how it feels to be in their situation- include the lone traveller in your group people! (if they want to be included of course, no kiddnapping allowed!)

So brill day at a beautiful temple and afterwards going to Chiang Mai Zoo to finally see the Pandas that I had failed to see in Chendu, China because of the quake. The pandas looked very happy with their surroundings just muching away on their bamboo but I hated seeing the othe animals in such small areas with nothing to do but pace around and the poor little leopard who had the guy standing outside his cage with big lumps of food on sticks all day so people can buy it and feed him. That night had a Spicy birthday so all

Temple Orchids

wat Po

out again and ended up in the reggae bar which included an awesome Thai band doing crazy reggae songs - think Steve had a great 21st!

The next day we tried again to get into Laos, so sure we could get to LP in one day, left the hostel for the 6am bus which was all luxury and fine and then had to change into the local bus for the rest of the ride to Chiang Kong (border). It was so funny to encounter what I had been like a few months before when I saw Sam look at the bus we were meant to get. there was one waiting but all the seats were full, of course this is asia and that doesn't actually mean it's full, they would've happily taken us on the padded lump next to the drivers seat or in the door stairwell but Sam and the guy we were travelling with at the time thought it best to wait for the next bus hehehe! I know she wouldn't be worried abotu doing it now! Got on the next bus (that left with people basically hanging out the door even though we had seats!), squelched

Last night in Bangkok

Sam, Emily, Me, Tom, Dan and Ellen

our way down to the dinky, inch above the water boats that took you across the river to Laos and arrived in Houyxai after another fun little trip across the Mekong.

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