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Published: March 7th 2010
Khao Lak
Khao Lak was badly damaged by the tsunami in 2004, and although it’s been rebuild, it feels that it has lost a little bit of its own identity, as there are many fancy new resorts all over the place. For once I think that the Tuk Tuk drivers are outnumbered, but only by the number of ATM's that are around. Why you might ask? Well that is to pay for the second most popular thing to do in Khao Lak - Diving.
We stayed in Banana bungalows (www.khaolakbanana.com) and they were really great to be honest. Smallish rooms, but with all of the facilities that you need, and a great pool. It might not have been on the beach, but it’s only about a 5 to 10 min walk, depending if Brendon is walking or Hannah.
So after a bit of thinking we decided that we will be doing some scuba diving, but will only be doing a 1 day trip to the Similan Islands and not a live onboard. We looked up some diving companies and decided on Wicked Divers, and worked out pretty reasonable at 5,400 baht each (and it was also just around the corner
from us)
We get up nice and early and gobble down some free breakfast (well toast and tea) and head out to the boat. Our boat is an impressive 40 foot speed boat with 2 x 350bhp v8 Yamaha engines. One and a half hours, and a couple of vomiting children later we arrive at the Similian Islands. These are a collection of about 12 islands about 70 km off the west coast.
We arrive at the Island Number 7, and realise that Brendon (because Hannah is not responsible for anything of value, ie passports electronics and money) has forgotten the camera. Doh! Well we will have to just tell you the beach is amazing. The sand it almost pure white, and feels like powder, and the whole place just has an awesome feel about it. After we drop off the snorkeling passengers we head out to our first dive. The dive site is called East of Eden, and it’s great. Huge boulders create the dive wall and it stretches all the way into the deep blue. We see sting rays, frog fish, sea snakes and loads of other tropical fish. Both Hannah and Brendon chew through the
air in our tanks quickly and surface about 45 mins later. Our guide on the other hand has 70% of his air left. He was barely 5 feet tall and probably had the lung capacity of a 6 year old
So we time out and spend lunch on the beach and enjoy the waves lapping at our feet. Pretty amazing, you do truly feel a million miles away from home, because the Islands are a national heritage site, there is no civilisation or buildings at all.
Our second dive is East of Eden, and we hope to see some turtles and sharks but we are not that lucky, but it’s a nice dive anyway. Unfortunately we have to head back to civilisation in Khao Lak.
After a long day at sea, we are exhausted, so we grab a quick dinner and finish off with banana and nutella pancakes. Best snack ever! The Little lady making them had a big queue of customers waiting. They were so good we returned the following evening.
The next day we hire a motorbike and do some exploring of the area (yes moms we are wearing helmets). We found a very
nice waterfall Sia Rung, and trekked up to the top, it was truly beautiful. We hop back on the bikes and drive the opposite way to the busy tourist area of Khao Lak, after what seemed like ages we decide to take a random turn off from the main road.
We pull into a little beach area, with some benches and chairs on the beach and as far as you can see, its just beach and beautiful turquoise water.
We brought a couple of drinks from a really local restaurant, and sat on the beach.
The restaurant, was quiet when we arrived, but more and more locals turned up by lunchtime. We always try and look out for spots with not too many westerners and mainly locals, because we know the food must be good.
So a young girl was the only one in the family restaurant who could speak English, and was very helpful. We asked her what the favourite local dish is and she recommended the soft shell crab. She points them out to us, and whilst they don't look too yummy as they are, we go ahead and order them anyway. The dish arrived,
and it not only smelt delicious it tasted it too. They deep fry it and add garlic and onion that's all. We haven't found this dish anywhere since :-( We let a big tip and gave a donation to the family who were hugely effected by the tsunami and judging by the shrine and photographs they had lost family members to this disaster.
We're sitting in the afternoon sun feeling like we were cooking, so we head back to the bungalows and chill out in the pool and later get to enjoy another amazing sunset (we can’t seem to get bored of these yet). After a crap Italian (food that is) we got 50% off the meal (not bad) and this is when we got to enjoy our second batch banana and nutella pancakes, although sharing them instead of scuffing one each!
We really enjoyed khao Lak and decided to stay an extra night.
The following day we caught the government bus down to Phuket (only 90 baht what a bargain) as our flight to Chiang Mai was from there. Whilst waiting for the bus we start chatting to an American couple and tell them of our
amazing deep fried crab.... the girl goes quiet and says.... “That means they were baby crabs, and their shells haven't yet developed!! That is why we are vegetarians!!” oops! But we researched and that is not the case at all, she must also be a Capricorn like Brendon and my father, because she managed to pull that fact out her backside.
Needless to say, we had some awkward silences and we were luckily saved by the bus arriving. (Note to self... ask if people are veggies before telling that story)
Phuket Town (20th Jan 2010)
Our hotel, Crystal Inn, is nice and cheap, as we are only staying for 1 night. After dropping our bags we head out to explore a little. We notice that we don't see too many tourists, because they are probably all on the beach!! The town is nice enough, but nothing special, but the street food market is nice and big. Han is tempted by the frog (pronounced fog) , but they got our drinks order wrong, and decide that if they don't know the difference between fanta and beer that we are better off with something simple from the menu.
Hannah manages to scold herself with a big crab hot pot thingamajig and Brendon gets his Tom Yum soup all over himself. Perhaps we need to stick to solids :-)
Obviously we were served by some lady boys and there was a couple of dirty old white men with their young “dates” for the night!
Head off to bed earlyish as we fly to Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand in the morning.
Chiang Mai
We get to Chiang Mai around 1 ish, and try and leave our backpacks with some posh trustworthy looking hotels, but they were having none of it, so after a while of lugging our backpacks around the town, we grab a train to Lumpang for about 100 baht. Lumpang is about 2 ½ hours from Chiang Mai by train, but only about 1 hour by car (go figure), but we are going the long way around to get to our destination which is the Thai Elephant Conservation Center.
At Lumpang, we get harassed by some dodgy looking taxi drivers, so we head off in the opposite direction and decide to stroll through the market to get rid of them.
We ask for some directions at a Jeweler shop, and after their 2 dogs had finished humping in front of us, some hand gestures and oohing and aahhing, the shop owner agrees to take us to the Center for a really reasonable price (seems like almost everything is possible in Thailand). We arrive quite late and it looks like the center is closed, but luckily we find one of the organisers and they direct us to the home-stay we will be spending the next 3 nights at.
Its pretty dark by the time we get shown our humble, and I mean really humble accommodation but we are knackered. After throwing down some fried rice the owner arranged for us, we settle down for a sleep looking forward to tomorrow.
The Thai Elephant Conservation Center is one of the 1st and largest elephant conservation center in this part of the world. They are one of the only few places that have an elephant hospital (yes the beds pans are quite big!) and are home to around 50 elephants and 6 of the Kings Royal Elephants. No one other than Royalty and the mahout assigned to the elephants are allowed
to see them.
So the 6 royal elephants on site are all male, and the king will not allow his males to make love with any elephants which are not of royal descent, and because these special elephants pretty much eat and sleep, and that's all they do, they have become very alpha male, and very strong. So to stop them becoming too aggressive they have to help a bro out, by relieving him. So 3 or 4 of the hospital staff have to get involved. In turn they slip a shoulder length glove on, cover it in olive oil and punch away at the elephants special spot in his bum. The whole process takes up to about an hour. Pretty graphic sorry! I do hope the king never reads this blog, as I think it is probably possible to be imprisoned for sharing this knowledge.
So anyway, why are we at an elephant center. Well we are going to be spending the next 3 days learning how to be a mahout, or elephant rider / trainer. After our registration we meet 6 other people that we will be training with. Mel and Vicky - an Australian mum
and daughter, 2 Dutch couples, Martin & Sabrina and Ed and Jamine. After some introductions and Brendon cracking the normal inappropriate jokes, we head off to meet our 4 ton animals.
Brendon's elephant is a 29yr old female (stubborn lazy old cow) and Hannah has a 9yr old male Siam (which is naughty as hell and probably going through puberty). But we love them even with their faults.
After spending a couple of hours learning some basic instructions (and laughing) we head to the bathing area to give them a bath. Han's mahout doesn't speak much English, but they all seem to be pointing at Hannah and having a good giggle to each other. We don’t really think much of it, as Hannah gets complimented ALL the time. (Brendon is thinking he might see how much he can get for her here in Asia to fund the rest of his travels).
So each day we did the same thing, but it was fun as we did it in the group. We would wake up super early, get the elephants from the jungle, bath them, and then the elephants would have some breakfast and we would head back
to our home-stay for breakfast and a shower and clean mahout clothing. After brekkie we find our elephants and jump on to head back down to the watering hole.
At the watering hole, we would be greeted by up to 100 tourists who were here to watch the elephant show (us). All of us head in, and this is where all the well behaved elephants head into the water and gently splash themselves with water. Whereas Siam (Hannah's naughty elephant) would take a deep dive, with her on his back! Great fun when there is literally shit loads of poo floating around, and as Brendon said, some pieces are bigger than the average humans head. So I would have to clamber back on, trying to compose myself, as each time it happened I would be hysterically laughing. And for those tourists(and supposed 'friends') laughing at us on the side line, they got showered by my elephants squirting trunk! Once we had all learnt the command to make the elephant suck up water into its trunk and spit it back out wherever you point their trunk, we all got in a massive water fight. But on the last day, Hannah
decided she wasn't going to let her trainer get away with not getting wet, and making her the laughing stock everytime. So this time she was prepared for Siam to take a deep dive, and managed to stand on the elephants back for long enough to drag the mahout in with her. It was like a gladiators re-run but without the giant cotton buds!
So each day after the watering hole, all the elephants gather, and march to the show stadium, with 3 of the elephants playing a big drum, 2 holding it and the other beating. Then at the showground, we all had to perform our tricks with our elephants, they would change it slightly each day so we weren't always doing the same thing.
The mahouts make it look easy as they jump up and down the side, front and back of the elephants and then tell us to give it a try. Even though Brendon's elephant is the biggest one, he gets up and down quite easily, but almost wets himself laughing as he sees some of the other trainees (Hannah) being pushed up by their mahouts by their bums!! Hannah's elephants balances on a
log with her on his back walking along it then turning round at the end and heads back the otherway.
Then we get to find out which elephant is the most talented, in the elephant painting part of the show. Brendon's elephant finishes her painting within about 3 minutes, whereas Hannah's takes approx 10 mins. Brendon likes to say his was modern art, I like to say scribble, whereas Siam redeems himself by painting a perfect elephant and a tree. It is pretty amazing to be honest. However the trainers advised it is actually to do with the age of the elephant, as they get older they have less strength in their trunks then and cannot control the paintbrush as well.
The public get to feed the elephants bananas and sugarcane, they much prefer bananas and everytime someone gives them sugar cane, they would pass it back up to us to store for them for later. Funny things. They literally hoover the bananas up! Hannah's mahout peeled some sugar cane for her, and she chewed and spat it out like a local. Classy bird hey!
So after showing off our elephant command tricks and some further training
we take our elephants back to the jungle to “lock” them up for the night. It isn't as cruel as it sounds, they have chains around their feet, just in case they pull the tree they're attached to out of the ground, then they can't run away quite so fast. The journeys back to the jungle each night were always a giggle, normally involved Hannah being bullied by most of the mahouts. Brendon got on really well with his mahout as he spoke quite good English, and they tended to pick on Hannah as well even though Hannah's mahout wasn't good at English, she enjoyed a sing song on the back of Siam with him (Apple Bottom Jeans, boots with the fuuuurrr) and some gangster Thai music.
On our last day we met a couple called Kim and Ben from England, they had taken part in the VIP elephant tour for 3 days, which meant they went out trekking in the jungle, and got to stay in bungalows with beds instead of zed spreads. Kim and Ben joined us on our last show, and we noticed a big wet patch on Ben's elephants bum. He had gotten a bit
randy whilst they were in the forest, and they had to 'sort him out'. Hehe. We were all giggling when he recalled the story, as he had witnessed the whole event.
The 3 days are up and after saying our tearful goodbyes to our elephants, we managed to bum a lift from Mel’s minivan, which not only saves us time but some cash as well. We found a very nice, but basic accommodation in the old quarter of Chiang Mai for about 400 baht. Luckily, that night the weekly Sunday market was on, and they close off the 2 main dividing roads in the city and set up a MASSIVE market that runs the whole night. They sell just about everything but small babies, but I am sure you could find that if you tried. We stopped at one stall that had loads of insects (dead and hopefully cooked) on display and met a French couple that were also having thoughts about having some. We decide to split a bag and have a selection or crickets and worms. Well Hannah could get them down quick enough, she loved them. The crickets just tasted of some crunchy soya sauce, and the worms tasted slightly nutty.
Satisfied by our mini adventure we stroll the market, and when we arrived at another bug store 2 hours later, we bump into the same French couple and decide to share another bag. Sucker for punishment or what.
The next day Brendon heads off for a Thai cooking class and Hannah stayed in the room, because she picked up a “bug” or something hehehehe.
Next we do some activity stuff and sights around Chiang Mai but more of that later..................
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Elsie
non-member comment
Thanks for your lively and entaining comments. You are certainly having a good time and we envy you. Thanks for sharing it with us. (Dion says: Savour these wonderful experiences as they broaden your outlook on live and build character. You are extremely fortunate to be able to experience this, we love you lots) Miss you looking forward to the next blog.