Thailand - the rest of our trip

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As I mentioned in my last post - it's taken 14 months to get back to this. So, I'm going to shorten the rest, and try to get the rest of our trip onto one post.

Friday, day 4

- Today was our day for more modern Thai history. We spent the morning at the Vimanmek Mansion, and the Royal Carriage Museum and Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall in Dusit Park. The mansion was lovely, as was the Throne Hall. However, the most amazing part was the display of a collection of fabulous artifacts, in gold, silver, precious stones, needlepoint, and many other traditional handicrafts, that were created by local craftspeople.

"In 1992, on the occasion of Her Majesty the Queen's sixtieth birthday anniversary, His Majesty the King gave his permission for the renovation of the Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall and its conversion into a museum where the handicrafts of the highest order created by members of the SUPPORT Foundation of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit would be exclusively displayed. The exquisite artifacts exhibited at the Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall represent the splendors and variety of local handicrafts of Thailand. Among the memorable exhibits are some articles belonging to the personal collection of Her Majesty, who graciously gave permission for a special display at the museum.
The museum features a variety of artifact masterpieces: silver and gold nielloware, silverware and goldwork, damascene ware, beetle-wing decorations, bamboo and yan lipao basketry, artificial flowers, wood carving, mudmee silk weaving, chok weaving, mother-of-pearl inlay, and ceramics. The Museum at the Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall is therefore the first permanent SUPPORT Museum in Thailand."

It was a real shame that we weren't allowed to take pictures - some of the displays were huge, and the intricate work on them was really fantastic. Definitely worth a visit.
Note that although many websites say that there is traditional dancing a couple of times a day, there isn't - it stopped quite a few years ago.

From the Mansion we took a taxi to Khao San Road, to browse around the shops and stalls, and to visit my husband's cousin who had a small shop there, selling wooden jewelery (sorry, but we weren't impressed ...). Lastly, we walked back to our hotel, to see whether we could find the way back, as we were going to be attending Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) prayers and communal meals at the Chabad House in the street parallel to Khao San road. After a short rest and shower, we picked up a tuk-tuk to take us back to Chabad for the evening prayers.

Shabbat in Bangkok - Israeli and Jewish travelers the world over have heard about the Friday evening dinners at Chabad house. However, you have to see it to believe it. On friday evening (at least when we were there), there were about 500 people at the dinner. On the top floor is a huge room, with rows and rows of tables laid out. Israelis and Jewish travelers from all over the world congregate here on Friday evenings, and everyone is welcome. The meal is traditional, and a little spartan, but most people aren't there for the food, rather for the atmostphere. The meals on Shabbat are free, but of course if you can give a donation (either before or after Shabbat), it is much appreciated.
After dinner, about 100 people were invited to a 2nd dinner, in the more cosy home of the Chabad Rabbi and his wife. Everyone around the table is expected to tell an interesting story about his/her travels, or to sing a song from the Chabad songbook. We got to meet so many interesting people, and hear so many interesting stories. We had a wonderful time, and walked back to our hotel somewhere around midnight.

Saturday, day 5

- Shabbat, our day of rest, meant that although services began at 10am, hubby rolled up at Chabad house around 11am, and I got there about 12 noon, just in time for lunch. We were rather exhausted, having not really given ourselves enough time to recover from the long trip to Thailand. For lunch, there were only about 150 or so people !! It was a relatively short affair, but still fun and tasty. Around 3pm we made our way back to the hotel for our afternoon nap.
Saturday evening, after nightfall, was a "regular" day again. So, off we went to the Patpong Night Market - couldn't miss out on that. For a first time visit to Thailand, it was more "risque" than we had expected, but not too much so. A couple of hours was all we needed to get the picture.

Sunday, day 6

- David (hubby) loves markets. Did I say markets? Well, the absolute mamoth of a market is the weekend market at Chatuchak. Never have we seen so many stalls in such a huge area before. It was fantastic - we spent about 6 hours there, walking up and down, buying all sorts of little bits and pieces (like tiny plastic fruits, vegetables, cakes etc. for my sister-in-law, who is a miniatures freak, lovely hand-made paper, glass animals for my collection, a couple of miniature carriages for David's collection, and a pile of other stuff. Everything was really cheap, but we bought so much, I'm sure we left a few hundred $ there all told. We would have stayed longer, but had to get back to the hotel to pick up our bags, and get to the airport for our flight to Chiang Mai.
We picked up a taxi outside the market, and had a rather hair-raising trip back to the hotel, as there were quite a few demonstrations going on, with closed streets and the like. We had the same thing on our way to the airport, and had to backtrack a few times, but managed to get there in time for our flight.
Not much more than an hour later, we landed in Chiang Mai, to be met by Young (as he told us to call him), through whom I'd organized our 5-day jeep tour through northern Thailand. David was in a rush to get to the night market, and was a bit upset that Young wanted to finish off all the details of our trip beforehand, but we still managed to get to the market before it closed. Young had booked us into the Empress Hotel, which for our one night was very nice. The beds were huge and soft, and the bathroom had all the amenities necessary.
If you want to find Young on the internet, his real name is Nuntaratt Kongsamai (http://www.flickr.com/photos/29611657@N08/). He works exclusively with Israelis, and gets most of his work through word of mouth - I would be more than happy to recommend him. Young had also booked another Israeli couple at the same time, who he drove, and we had his friend Chico (from Red brick tours). In the beginning we weren't so pleased about this, but Chico was such fun, we absolutely loved him. He had Israeli music tapes on in the car, and his Hebrew was amazing. Unfortunately we only had him for the first 2 days, and then moved back to Young (but we liked him too, so all round it was great).

Monday, day 7 - Friday, day 11

- On monday morning, we walked the 5 minutes to Chiang Mai Chabad house to pick up our Kosher meals for the duration of the jeep trip. We had ordered meat dishes for lunch and dinner for the 5 days we would be away, and they were all packed up in an ice-filled polystyrene box, ready for us to take with. It is such a great idea - each meal comes packed separately, and they get heated up in the microwave (or can be eaten cold) at the hotels we stayed at. In the evenings, all the meals were stacked into the refrigerator at the hotel, and each morning we picked up fresh ice to fill the box. Highly recommended.

Our trip in the north included the following (although not in quite the same order):
Tuesday - Wachiratharn water fall , Doi Inthanon National Park , take drive pass Mae Cheam to Mae Hong Son , over night at Golden Pai Suite Resort with Breakfast.
Wednesday - Visit Doi Kong Moo Temple , Long Neck , Big Ears village , Fish Cave, Lod Cave , Lisu market , and to Pai over night at Pai Baan Thai Spa & Resort.
Thursday - Mae Yen Temple , drive to Mae Taeng Elephants Camp , See show & Ride , Ox-Cart ride , Bamboo Rafting , Monkey show orchid & Butter Fly farm and over night at Baan Suan River side resort .
Friday - Drive to visit Tha Ton Temple , King's Mother Royal Garden, Monkey Cave , Mae Sai Thai-Burma border , Golden Triangle , Opium Museum , speed boat to Laos market , drive to White Temple , Cashew Nut Farm , hot spring, some of the Chiang Mai famous temples, Silk Shop (our request - Young did not take us to any shops unless we asked. We really appreciated this).

What we loved about this tour:
1. The guides
2. All of the sites that we visited on Wednesday-Friday. In particular, we found the White Temple, Tha Ton Temple, hill tribes and Golden Triangle to be fascinating. We loved the markets in Mae Hong Son and Chiang Rai.
3. We weren't pressured into going to any shops (as some guides in other parts of the world are).
What was ok:
The hotels were pretty reasonable, considering that we were pretty much in the middle of no-where sometimes. Our favourite hotel was the Laluna hotel in Chiang Rai - very nice.
What we could have done without:
1. The drive to Mae Hong Son was very windy, and sine the park was not particularly interesting for us, we didn't enjoy it much (felt nautious quite a lot of the time). Next time I would fly directly to Chiang Rai, and visit Mae Hong Son from there.
2. Pai in the evening. It's pretty dead, and if you aren't a biker, there isn't much to do there.
3. Just missing Renate and Alex, who were in Chiang Mai on our first evening, but had moved hotels, and we couldn't find them :-(

One of the evenings (I think it was in Pai) I had a Thai massage in my room - the massage was wonderful, but it was a shame there was nowhere in the hotel that I could have the massage, as the lights in the main part of the hotel were already out, and hubby didn't really feel like staying in the room during the massage, so he had to sit outside in the dark for an hour. Not a lot of fun ...

Anyway, we had a wonderful time in the trip, and would go back again in a flash (if we weren't so busy visiting other places in SE Asia !!).

Friday afternoon, we got back to Chiang Mai. I had booked us into the Yaang Come Village for 2 nights - it was not cheap, but I wasn't sure what types of hotels we would have during the jeep trip, so wanted something nice for our last weekend.
Well, the hotel was wonderful. We had a fabulous room, great bathroom and shower, and really luxurious. Breakfast was very good, in an open sided room right next to the pool. All in all, we were sorry to not be able to stay longer. Little did we know that our plans were about to go awry!

Friday evening, we had a five-minute walk to the Chiang Mai Chabad house. We arrived for prayer services and dinner, only to hear for the first time about some of the news that had been going on over the past few days. We heard about the terrorist attack in Mumbai, and of course about the attack on the Chabad house there. There was no news of the situation with the hostages, so someone had put up a big sign asking everyone to pray for good news, which of course we all did. We also heard about the problems that had been going on in Thailand itself, with the airports being closed, and the rioting etc. We had actually heard a bit about that during the week, as one of our friends from Israel had heard about it on the evening news, and immediately called us to find out if we were ok - not realizing that it was 4am for us when she called!!
Anyway, it all made for a rather subdued evening, although the Rabbi tried to keep all our spirits up with the regular story telling and singing as on all other friday evenings. We met some very interesting people there, and since there were many less than in Bangkok (about 100), we spoke to quite a lot of the other guests. There was an older couple from Tel Aviv who have packed up their home and come to Chiang Mai for the winter every year for the past 8 years (I can understand why!), and the retired Air France captain who was fed up with the anti-semitism in France, and decided to make Chiang Mai his home (on a whim!), and a group of youngsters that we had met on the day we left Chiang Mai.

Saturday, day 12

- We arrived at Chabad house at around 11am, only to hear the tragic news that the Mumbai Chabad Rabbi and his wife had been killed in the terrorist attack, and that their baby son had been rescued by the Indian nanny. It turns out that all of the Chabad emmissaries to the far east are good friends, and this case was no different. Lunch was pretty quiet, of course, and everyone left immediately afterwards.
Saturday evening, and I spent about 5 hours trying to get hold of AirAsia to find out what was happening with our flight to Bangkok on Sunday morning. Our plan had been to spend the last 2 days in Kanchanabury, but with the airports on strike, we needed first to find out whether we could even get back to Bangkok! We had already found out that almost no airlines were flying into and out of Thailand, but that ElAl were in fact flying out of Pataya, if we could just get back to Bangkok and reach the hotel that was the contact point for the buses to Pataya...
Eventually, I managed to get hold of AirAsia, and they confirmed that our flight was cancelled - they offered to send us a refund (I didn't expect it to arrive, but 3 months later it actually did - good for them).

Sunday, day 13

- OK, so now we had 2 days left, and we needed to find a way to get back to Bangkok. All of the trains were already fully booked, and it turned out that there is a tourist night bus, which we decided to take - not having much other choice. We went to one of the travel agents in Chiang Mai, to book our seat, and paid a really ludicrously low amount for the 10-hour drive. We were shown a picture of a beautiful bus, with nice reclining seats, and were happy to have got that. The bus was going to leave at about 7pm, so we had most of the day to spare. At the same tourist office, we managed to book a half-day trip to Doi Suthep and the Hmong village. We had wanted to see this the previous week, but there wasn't enough time, so at least we managed to tick off a couple more places!
6pm, back at the hotel, and we were picked up by a small open-backed truck, that took us to the bus. It took us on a very round-about route, picking up people along the way. There was one decent seat, next to the driver (I had that!), and the rest of the travelers were basically squashed in the back on pull-down seats, with their baggage in between them. We eventually got to the bus, only to discover why it had been so cheap - it certainly wasn't the nice plush tourist bus from the pictures we had been shown. True - everyone on the bus was a tourist, but we were squashed into very tight seats that hardly reclined, and if they did recline, they did so onto the legs of the person behind. The toilet on the bus was pretty disgusting, as was the sink, and some of the seats had torn upholstery ... it was the most uncomfortable trip I have ever made.

Monday, day 14 (last day)

- At 5am the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere, and let us all off! I must admit that I was p**d off by the whole thing, but at least we were in Bangkok. A swarm of taxis arrived (surprise, surprise), and took us to Khao San road, which in the end turned out to be quite close. We were absolutely exhausted, and knew that we were in for a long night that evening, as we needed to get to the buses taking us to Pataya, and hope that our flight really was leaving. At the suggestion of one of our fellow travelers, we found a cheap guest house on Khao San road, with early checkin (from 4am). It was very cheap, and you could chose from rooms with a shower, or without, with private toilet or shared, etc.etc. We decided to splurge (I think it was about $15 for the day for a couple!) and get a room with a private toilet, shower and hot water, and managed to get some sleep for a few hours. We got up at lunch time, and walked over to Chabad to get a bite to eat. They have a great restaurant during the week, with a good choice of kosher food, and very cheap.
I forget what we did in the afternoon, but about 6pm we got a taxi to the hotel where the ElAl pickup was from. The traffic was so awful (the first time we actually had such bad traffic in Bangkok), that by 7pm - the bus deadline - we were still nowhere near the hotel. We managed to get hold of the ElAl office on the phone, and they said that it was OK, the first buses were leaving at 7pm, and the last would be leaving at 9pm. We eventually arrived at about 7:30, to find tens of buses, and hundreds of people milling around. We were sent up to one of the lounges in the hotel, and received a sticker with the number of our bus and our own number (David was thrilled to get a yellow sticker - remembering the last time Jews were given numbers and yellow badges to wear ....). On our way back down to the bus, we managed to stop off and buy a couple of HagenDaz icecreams for the journey :-)
OK, so now we are waiting on the bus, our bags underneath in the hold. At about 8:30, our bus was full, and off we went on the 2.5 hour drive to the Pataya air force base. What a "balagan" (mess!) as we say in Hebrew. There were thousands of people waiting outside the terminal, some sitting on their bags, some on chairs, on the floor, whatever. The place was full of booths selling all sorts of food and drinks, and there were some hospital tents for people who were feeling the stress!! There were hundreds more people inside - both travelers and airline staff. It turned out that only 4 airlines were flying, but anyone who had a ticket for the last couple of days, was there trying to get on a flight to somewhere.
We looked around, trying to find the ElAl staff, but there was no-one to be seen. I was then adopted by an English-speaking officer, who said that he would tell me when the ElAl flight was ready to start boarding, and to find somewhere to sit in the meantime. Of course, you can imagine that he was basically B.S.ing me .... Anyway, we gathered a few other Israeli waifs and strays, and set up a table in the cafeteria - everyone bringing out bags of food that they had brought with for the ride, and telling stories of how they had managed to get back to Bangkok. It was a real party atmostphere. After about an hour or so, we started to get the feeling that we had been duped, so off we went, with all our luggage, to try and find ElAl. We walked to the end of the terminal, and saw people running across a field - well, what do you know, that was where the ElAl checkin was! We crossed the field, and climbed through a hole in the wire fence, dragging all our stuff with us, and found ourselves in a big open barn, with a few tables of ElAl and Thai staff trying to check in everyone who was due to fly on that flight, and also find place for people who had been stranded, some even for a week or more. That was when we realized that it had been worthwhile to spend the extra money and buy an ElAl ticket !!! After we managed to give our passports over (being told that we would get them back with out boarding passes, later ...), we turned round to a surreal picture. Hundreds of Israelis sitting around on chairs, on luggage trolleys, etc., playing guitars, singing, and altogether having a great time. There was an air hostess handing out sandwiches "tuna or salami" (or both, for David!) and bottles of water. It was really amazing.
The flight was due to take off at 00:30, which of course it didn't. At about 2am we were herded onto buses, after having got rid of our baggage (all bags were searched by hand ...), and without a single empty seat on the flight, we left at about 3am. Who were we seated next to? A couple who we had been next to on the way out, and had met once along the way! David had stories to tell them for the whole flight :-)
About 11 hours later, we landed at Ben Gurion airport, and the clapping which you always get on ElAl flights was even louder than normal. But we were home, after a fabuous holiday, even with the hickups.

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