Advertisement
Published: January 29th 2007
Edit Blog Post
For the next 6 hours Mike and I will be on a bus with air conditioning that doesn't work. We are traveling to Mae Sot. As we slink down the aisle to our seats we notice that the bus was full of Westerners (AKA white people). That's no good; we are trying to get away from those damn Westerners.
The front section of the bus has a group of twenty something mormons on a missionary trip of some sort. Someone in the church group hands the bus driver a CD. The bus driver puts it on. To our horror "YMCA" starts booming over the speakers and the entire church group begins to sway to the music as well as doing the ever popular spelling of Y-M-C-A with their arms. At that moment a silent prayer is made by myself and Mike that the speakers blow out. Silence would be better than this.
The guy to my left (who is probably 25 years old) is sucking his thumb and smelling it, over and over and over. GROSS! The monk sitting in front of Mike reclines his seat back. The monk's head might as well be in Mike's crotch. Mike looks
Orchid Fair
We checked out an Orchid Fair in Sukothai. Very cool! over at me and laughs.
Then, just when we thought things couldn't get much worse, one of the worlds most annoying songs starts to play. "I like to move it - move it, I like to move it - move it", is the oh so catchy chorus. What have we done to deserve such torture?
The mormons are once again dancing in their seats. The thumb sucker guy is sucking and smelling. The monk is napping.
This is going to be a long bus ride. A really long one.
When we arrived in Mae Sot we were shocked to see that the bus stop wasn't swarming with cab drivers asking us, "Whereyougos". Then we realized that we weren't even in Mae Sot; Mae Sot was a half mile up the road. We declined rides offered to us on the back of motor bikes because the the thought of riding on the back of a motor bike with our massive 35 pound back packs just didn't sound like a good idea.
As we were tossing around our options the thumb sucker guy and his girlfriend came over and introduced themselves. The thumb sucker guy's name was
Dave and his girlfriend's name was Naomi. They were on holiday from London. They were very nice (although we did not offer to shake his or her hands). They didn't want to motorbike into town either so we decided to head off walking toward town together.
So, there we were the four of us walking along the main road. Heavy bags getting heavier with each step. Sweat dripping off our brows. We chatted about our trips and about our lives back home. We didn't see a single cab though (bummer). The walk didn't seem as bad though because we were chatting away.
As we stood on the out skirts of Mae Sot with Naomi's travel book open in front of a street sign trying to figure out where we were a truck pulled up beside us. We must have been quite the sight; four white people looking confused, tired, and very, well, touristy. A Thai man offered us a ride in the back of his truck to our guest house. When we arrived to our destination Mike and Dave each offered the nice Thai man money as a "thank you" but he refused saying he didn't need it.
What a genuine nice person he was.
The next morning Mike and I headed to Um Phang to get out into the jungle and see Thailand's country side. The only way to get to Um Phang was by a 4 hour taxi ride. Taxi's in Thailand are trucks. These trucks have a cover and two benches where the truck bed is. Luggage is strapped on the top. Not the ideal 4 hour travel experience but it will work.
As we arrived at our taxi we were prepared for the worst. All we could do was laugh as we saw in addition to the 17 adults riding with us we also would be sharing the ride with a baby, a 5 year old very car sick little girl, and 4 chickens. PERFECT!
The ride to Um Phang was long and windy. People were sitting on top of the truck with the luggage. People were also standing on the tailgate. It was the craziest way we've traveled so far.
Um Pang was a sleepy little town. Not much going on other than the very entertaining lizards crawling on our window screens. The grand plans of trekking through the
jungle were quickly cut down to one day trip to Thailand's most spectacular waterfall: The Tee Lo Su. Plans were nixed due to both Mike and I getting sick. Mike had a nasty cold. I was suffering from Traveler Diarrhea (which Mike renamed "Funk In The Trunk"). Not fun at all (I will spare you the details)!
Once Mike was feeling better and I could be away from the toilet we took a truck ride (four wheeling, baby) to Um Phang's national park. A quick 30 minute hike lead us to the most beautiful place each of us had ever laid our eyes upon. Tee Lo Su is 300 meters high and after the rainy season it's 200 - 300 meter wide. We had a woderful time swimming in the pools and relaxing in the jungle. It was so cool!
The next day we took another 4 hour adventurous taxi ride back to Mae Sot. This time we had 21 adults plus one small baby sharing the ride with us. We then took a bus from Mae Sot to Sukothai. We spent the entire day traveling (about 9 hours total) so when we arrived in Sukothai were were
Our Backyard Pond
We had a nice little pond outside of our room in Um Phang. exhausted to say the least.
We slept in Saturday morning before we headed out by motorbike to Sukothai's National Park to explore ruins. Sukothai was really cool. Mike and I were both in awe of our surrondings. Sukothai dates back to 1238 and was the first capital of Thailand. It used to be a thriving religious center. We took so many pictures that the battery died on us mid sunset. We had an amazing time exploring such an amazing place. The Wat Si Chum was our favorite site of the day. WOW, was it breath taking!
We also got a huge kick out of the fact that Mike and I are sort of celebrities in Sukothai. Every where we went we had young girls asking to take their pictures with us. It was hysterical. We were quite popular all day. Entire tour groups on double decker buses would drive by us and wave and take our pictures. Mike even caught people taking my picture when I wasn't looking. It was nuts but funny.
Sunday afternoon we took a 7 hour bus to Khon Kaen. Khon Kaen is where I am writing this blog from. We stayed the
night here last night and today we are heading up to Nong Khai by train. Nong Khai is right on the boarder of Thailand; Vientiane, Laos is our next destination.
We have to hop the boarder before our Visa's expire (they expire 30 days after entry into Thailand). Next we are going to cut back through Thailand to get to Cambodia; we are going to go explore Cambodia's Angkor Wat in Siam Reap for a couple days. Then we are heading back to Bangkok to catch a flight to Krabi to start the last leg or our trip: Island fun in the sun.
Expect more blogs between then. We just wanted to give you a rough itinerary to put everyone's worries at ease as to where we may be and what we may be doing (for the folks primarily).
We love you all so much and hope our blog finds you happy and well!
xoxoxoxoxoxo
Erin & Mike
P.S. The email system is down on this site so the last blog didn't send out notifications correctly. Be sure to read about our Chiang Mai experience and we're sorry for any worries we caused.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.137s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 13; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0975s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Sarah Tyra
non-member comment
I'm so proud...
Erin, I have to say I'm very proud and impressed with your non-girliness about some of the nitty gritty that international travel on a budget comes along with. I think you get a better view of the place you're in when you do it that way. I love all your pictures, people passing by my desk at work have commented on how beautiful they are. I love you, have fun you two!