More lovely Thailand

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Thailand 7/5/09-20/5/09
M writes: Apprehensively we board the Lao Airlines propeller plane to Chiang Mai (every traveller knows about the safety record of LA...and I am still a nervous flyer), excited about seeing more of the huge amount there is to see in Thailand and regretful leaving Laos, where we were happy. An empty, friendly bus takes us into town and after an hour of L searching for something decent we settle on a basic hostel run by annoying American guy who repeatedly winks and calls his Thai clerk "Manuel" (thereby negating coolness of being an American who knows Fawlty Towers by being offensive). Town is very quiet tonight: where are the tourists? Curry up here is spicey! Wash it down with beer in a jazz bar: good little nightspots, all dead.

Day 1 is another hot one. Earlyish we walk out and visit Wat Chedi Luang: a tall stupa, buzzing with monks; Wat Phra Singh: a complex with lots of stupas, including one with a clever pulley to sprinkle holy water from the top! Nice shadey park filled with signs of wise buddhist mottos. Then we cheat and enter a posh A/C Italian restaurant (yum!) and shopping complex before a visit to the Night Bazaar where we pick up some stuff for Chantal. We find ourselves in the Seafood Plaza and must choose the most pricey place coz the meal costs about 3 nights accomodation. Fantastic though. Proper heavy rain means some people have to move further under the tarp, and M persuades L to fork out even more for a tuk-tuk which gets lost down the tiny alleys of Chiang Mai.

Next day, off to Pai - north of CM and rural. Wed seen a lovely boutique guesthouse in CM and booked a trip with someone there: all a bit random and vague but her husband does turn up in a pick-up. Fortunately he drops us at a minibus for the 3.5hr drive (once we get past the colourful local street parade taking place) - last 2 hours hair-raisingly tortuous and mountainous. Hungry, hot and very thirsty as usual, we are happy to find Pai is full of buzzy bars and cafes and motorbikes to hire for £2 per day! Settle for a bungalow in the hippyish Sun House, with gorgeous gardens, a stream a views of the stunning, lush Pai countryside. We are joined by a huge lizard & kingfishers but feel we really should get out so we have an hour at the local pool - good tunes and busy - then hit the village! Get chatting to a Belgian who is travelling for 3 years! But decide to give his party a miss: sounds a bit 1-man-and-his-guitar-at-hostel to me.

Next day we have an epiphany: we are going to Malaysia instead of China! We have discovered M can enter China (not enough passport pages)= stumbling block! So we take a book off the shelf and get excited about Borneo! Then moped out to Mo Paeng Waterfall, 10km north: bike breeze gorgeous but little kids skidding about alone at the falls a bit alarming! On our return we see the "Chinese Village" and stop but literally can communicate or eat as everything is in Chinese. A good omen for the Malaysia plans then! Then we pass a "Highland Minority Village" (sorry, thats what the Thais call it!): women in velvet dresses in this heat, whilst the men get to wear sarongs. Driving past lychee groves, we visit and climb up Pai Canyon for fantastic views, before a cold shower and hammock session on the Balcony of Bliss! Theres some major weather in the evening which means we don get the food we order (2-hr power cut) so we just people (and stray dog and bat) -watch and decide to avoid yet another "Chang-over" by going back. Find the room in disarray due to high winds, and then the torrential storm comes and we can listen to the full river all night.

Its a return journey to get our bags and us to town on the motorbike next day, and then a sick-inducing 2 hours to the journey break. Back in Chiang Mai we rush into train station and get the only 2 tickets left on tomorrows sleeper to Bangkok. After 10 hot mins walking around with our Sangthaew driver trying to find our guesthouse (which is gorgeous!) we have more very spicey northern food at a local place, then visit the "Sunday Walking Street" market. Even L loves this market: enormous, arty, lots of cheap and unique stuff. We are so hot we buy some cool clothes and L gets changed! Lots of music - mainly disabled people busking, some good, some truly dire: sad.

Have a lovely breakfast next door to guesthouse and firmly say no about 15 times to the warm, lovely owners who want to take us to a nearby village. We are back to Bangkok today anyway. Then the driver actually knocks at our door to take us: unbelievable tenacity! They are all smiles and let us leave eventually: bourgeois hawkers! Instead we visit the beautiful teak temple Chang Man and then M imbibes the hottest possible (surely?!) chilli in local place, and is quite pleased to be leaving N Thailand really. Loads of food stalls at the station so we get on the sleeper well-prepared, except the conductor keeps changing the carriage numbers so we end up blocked on the wrong one by a huge German tour group, and mightily confused! Why is our sleeper carriage only armchairs? However, at 8pm these are made into comfy little beds and an upper bed is pulled out above - clever! Waitress service and decent sleep til beds revert at 5am.

On arrival we go straight to the ticket desk to book the sleeper to Malaysia (Chumpon to Butterworth) - get the last 2 again. Its weird in Bangkok this time. No sense of the buzzy-ness we encountered before, thanks to the rainy, cooler weather and the resurgence of the Red-Shirt protests & State of Emergency which first hit end-2008. Funny how this cheap country now seems expensive after our SE Asia travels! Spend an age locating wrapping paper for Rachel & Justins wedding gift, then chaos at Post Office where you have to have goods checked (you
e not allowed to mail buddhist images) and wrapped first. Note: Thai women don queue so elbows have to be implemented!

Today we
e off to party/paradise island, Ko Pha Ngan but awake with a sense of dread - we have to visit Qantas on the way to airport, to sort out flights as all efforts to phone have failed. Qantas manage to explain to the taxi where the office is and we arrive after a nail-biting hour stuck in traffic. Disaster! No return flights available from Tokyo after 23 June (6 weeks time), scuppering our schedule. So much for the fully flexible ticket! We hurriedly come up with a new plan, book flights to Hong Kong and dash to airport. Touch down at tiny Surat Thani airport under black skies and good-old-Thailand: theres an agency there selling tickets to Ko Pha Ngan so 2 buses and an evening ferry later we
e there! Meet Frenchies Gaelle and Matthieu on the boat so all go together to Sunset Beach (Hat Rin Yai), Sea Breeze Bunglaows (basic but gorgeous view - sea & mountains are revealed in the morning) then Thai dinner. Afterwards, L and I stroll on the Full Moon Party Beach - depressingly full of bars with lewd slogans (no, really double-take type slogans!) & desperate vendors but few tourists (its 13 May..) so lots of hassle, almost a la Vietnam!

We decide to find better accomodation but its all expensive or horrid concrete blocks til we find CocoHut Resort at the top of the hill, and get a 1/2 price room, strangely full of cobwebs but quite posh with gorgeous pool and beach. Theres a duvet rather than the standard towel or sarong! We find internet (so expensive on this island, ditto withdrawing cash from an ATM - must only have satellite connections or something) and book Malaysia flights, eat at one of many middle eastern places (not sure why, lots of hebrew here) and wait for tumultuous downpour to stop before TV dinner: The Wrestler in a bar: disturbing but good.

Now its time to explore the island so we hire a moped and head up the NW road towards Thong Sala - less neon though lots of bars and coffeeshops, more lush and tropical. Beaches are stunning but too shallow to swim and it rains on-and-off: wet season is truly here. Not finding all the roads/tracks indicated on the map towards the East, we finally head back South; most of the east is roadless and treacherous on the moped. Then an obligatory stop for doorstep sarnies and beer at the hilarious Masons Arms - all mock tudor and English bitter. In the evening we have rubbish ketchupy Pad Thai in town watching The Beach but its a very friendly place where L ends up spending the evening making paper planes for the owners reverent toddler! We do have a G&T bucket on Full Moon Party Beach and see some amazing firedancing involving jumping a flaming rope but again its so quiet that the thumping R&B seems a little OTT. We head "home".

Off to little Ko Tao next morning: a sunny 1 1/2 hr boat trip, after waiting for an hour on the boat. On arrival at Mae Haad Town everywhere stipulates you leave your passport to hire a moped and we vowed not to leave our irreplaceable temporary ones, so have a struggle in the heat til we finally find an understanding French guy and hire a mountain motorbike from him. Roads are terrifyingly poor! Our booking, OK2 Bungalows (Taa Cha Bay, South) is grotty with no beach but fantastic seaview and swimming possible from the boulders in front. 2 more trips on the bike to get our stuff, but its closed when L gets there for his bag so he swims in undies before we find an idyllic beach bar just down the road then walk right along to the taxi-boat pier on Chalok Baan Kao, where there is a Thai restaurant, chilled bars & bungalows and....roads.

Kept awake most of the night by loud Americans we vow to move today and explore Sairee Town - either tourist blocks or expensive, then drive with extreme difficulty to Ho Win Wong on the Eastern side before deciding its really too remote. So its a bungalow on Chalok Baan (Taraporn!) on the beach with lots of papaya trees and butterflies. Successful evening in Sairee Town involving happy-hour G&Ts in a cool beach bar and good food. Sairee is strip-like and busy with divers and tourists. Its hard to believe the island was untouched in the 90s. Ma Haad Town is the same, so we
e pleased to get back to relatively unspoilt Chalok Baan Kao. Until we realise a/ there is some beastie living in the roof and scratching away and b/ theres a shack hidden in the forest next door, and lots of people are heading for it....

So now we know that the posh resport next door: ViewPoint, shove their Burmese workers in this shack. Hmmm. After usual horrid frothy Americano for brek we try to buy coffee but there are only 18 kinds of instant: we need our fix! L spends the day on a free dive course with 5 others, which is enjoyable and interesting but not all that challenging apart from the breathing (he spends the evening doing strange breathing exercises), and he learns he is not buoyant, duck-diving is easy and 12m free-dive is a cinch for him! Meanwhile, I snorkel from rocks at Shark Bay - sadly no sharks but good fish and coral, then the idyllic beach bar again for rehydration, where I chat to the Burmese waiter: brings tears to my eyes when he tells me about missing his wife and family and how he can work in Burma and what a sad place his country is :-(

Day 2 of Ls course M hikes west along the coastal/jungle path past some lovely resorts (dammit!) to June Juea: beautiful sandy cove and bears the heat and warm water for a while. L manages 20m free-dive today and meets some lovely Kiwis (Megan and Carlos, who we bizarrely meet again at the remote June Juea beach in the morning!) before collapsing into bed. Next day, after beach, we are off to Malaysia via Chumpon and are almost penniless so strike a deal with our moped agency to use the deposit to buy us boat tickets - a pleasant 2 1/2 hr crossing and free taxi to the station. Thais are so good at organising their tourists! Chumphon has a totally different feel to more Northern parts of Thailand weve been to, with its Muslim majority. Beer is prohibitively expensive and hard to find but food market is fantastic so we feed ourselves well on squid, mussels omelette, doughnuts, before waiting another 3 hours for our late train with no information at all. Once we get on the train its midnight and our beds are waiting. Fitful, bumpy sleep until 5.30 when our fellow passengers - a gaggle of shouting, laughing veiled women, get up. Something tells us Malaysians won be as chilled as Thais!

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Comments

[gemma]

so 1. well done for taking a photo of yourselves whilst in motion on a moped - good pic, and 2. "20m free0dive" ie with no breathing equipment? thats amazing loz! G x