Thailand - 24th Nov to 17th December

---

BANGKOK
As you may have read - luck was on our side and we made it into Bangkok airport the day before the airport was shut down by the PAD protests. We spent a couple of days living it up and relaxing by our hotel pool, and then Ben's pal Simon, his wife Aul and their son, JR, took us in for a few days. We visited the local food markets and selected our dinner - which was delicious. Ben particularly enjoyed feasting on multiple duck beaks! In Thailand they eat everything but the Quack! Another night Si invited his western mates over and ordered in a pre-lit barbeque, meat, fish, soup and veg delivered direct to our door. If only England would allow that! :-) Simon told us story after story after story of his tour leading experiences in South East Asia over the last few years. He's quite the wit and a bit of a writer, so look out for the The Tales of Simon Sweet.

We quite enjoyed the mayhem of Koh San Road and it's bars, live music and side street restaurants. We sampled the local beverages of Sang Son rum, and Chang Beer! A few foggy heads later we learnt that both of these local drinks are renowned for giving the worst of hangovers! There's also an urban myth that Sang Som is laced with amphetamin for that feel good factor. Well, who knows, but we certainly had a few jolly nights.

Everything in Bangkok has grown so much since both Ben and I last visited, in our recent early 20s! I'm not sure it's all for the better but it was a fun few days.

The Pat Pong market had shrunk and there were lots more girlie bars, a good few scary looking lady boys and an even larger menu of things the local gals can do with their nether regions! Simon explained there's hierarchy of dancing bars to go to - next step up from Pat Pong being a multi-storey style girlie bar with different music and different types of girls on each floor!! We found that quite amusing that it even exists.

Time to move on ... no temple visits here. We've done them before and were feeling a little templed out from India and Nepal (already!). We were advised to get out of Bangkok and avoid travelling north until the airport was opened fully again.

KO SAMET
So we headed for Ko Samet - a beautiful, largely unspoilt island south of Bangkok! After a few hours bus ride we took a speed boat to the island and were dropped off on the beach front right in front of our hostel. We'd arrived and I was in my element! It was a perfect week on the beach, eating fresh fruit, shrimp, scallops, red snapper, shark ... and we finally got to add some colour to our still very white bodies. We took up the offers of beachside (safe) massage several times during the week and spent one day walking the length of the island over the rocks by the waters edge to find cove after cove with a scattering of restaurants and huts along the way. We'd certainly go back here! (Unfortunately we lost a chunk of our pics including those from Ko Samet so we've just posted a couple from the internet to give you an idea).

There was a good mix of locals and travellers in Ko Samet. We got chatting to a fair few travellers here and were convinced that we must go to Pai in Northern Thailand and that we really must spend longer than we'd first planned in both South-East Asia and Indonesia. The idea of island hopping through Indonesia all the way to Darwin does sound rather appealing. Watch this space!

CHANG MAI
A week later we got word that the locals had got their act together and cleared the remaining protestors in Bangkok so we returned to the city and headed on up to Chang Mai. It's a nice city, great day-time market but otherwise, just the little sister of Bangkok - all the same stuff but on a smaller and less extreme scale.

PAI
From here, we took a minibus to Pai, land of smokers and bums. Or at least that's what the western tourists have turned it into. It's a charming little town with a really chilled out way of life that's apparently getting a few too many thai tourists for the locals liking, since Pai featured in a thai film or two. We decided to follow the Pai motto, When In Pai Do Nothing - not least because of the amount of time it took to get through the many thai toursits stopping right in front of us to taking photographs of just about anything - menus, signs and themselves, mostly pretending to be a film star!

We'd lived it up far more than we'd intended in Bangkok, so by the time we reached Pai, the budget really needed some consideration! I left Ben in a cafe and disappeared into the outskirts of town and found this wicked little paddy field with a handful of huts around a pond. We took our palatial sized hut, forgot about our hunger pangs and watched the sun set over the hills! What a result.

The next day we hired a couple of mopeds and Ben wobbled his way up the high street using his feet as the brakes, much to the locals amusement. Only I got the full glory of him turning too sharply and throwing himself off the side of his bike as it sped off ahead of him! ... Thankfully there were no more injuries!! We spent the week reading our books on our balcony, sleeping until lunchtime, lazing by the pool and riding our now more familiar bikes out to the beautiful countryside for the remaining sunny hours of the day.

We spent about 3 minutes in the incredibly hot 'hot springs' - and the rest of the time in the apparently 'cold' pool. We also went on a elephant, walking in the country and swimming in the river ... that was great! Nelly was a little nervous about entering the water to start with and then with a sharp prod by her trainer walked into the river with gusto, sprayed us with water and sand from the bed of the stream and then sat down unexpectedly and sent us flying backwards into the water. A few goes of this had us in hysterics. No matter how hard we tried to stay on her, we certainly were not going to win.

Back at our home: The english owner of our residence looked the part for Pai - trousers held up by rope belt, partly braided hair (by lack of brushing as opposed to an intended look) and a moustache he'd grown that covered almost his entire top lip. He smoked until he giggled most nights and by breakfast was going through a regular routine of lifting seat cushions, opening cupboards and generally walking around in circles willing his brain to remember the miraculous hiding place he'd found the night before for his stash!

We experienced one night of unrest in Pai. Feeling really quite chilled out here we decided to book ourselves on a thai cooking course. It was a reasonably early start compared to our recent midday wake-ups, so we planned on a quiet night in watching the next episode of The Wire. Ben wasn't feeling too hot either - and in fact proceeded to 'drive the bus' for the next 5 hours. Ugh. Just as we were falling asleep some of our fellow campers arrived home after a big night out, not quite ready to stop partying. Pai, and in particular our home, isn't really the place for party animals so by 5am and repeated requests by fellow campers to keep the noise down, tempers were beginning to frey. To our joy, we learned the thai way dealing with disrespectful party animals, when a thai man from the house in the neighbouring field arrived brandishing a machette! The noise stopped. I guess the guy had asked nicely several times only to be told 'what you gonna do about it' by one of those types you wish had never been issued a passport! Oh we did enjoy breakfast watching the evictions and walks of shame.

Ben finally got to sleep in Pai hospital on a drip. Hopefully that will be third and final round of Ben's Gastro Enturitus.

And, we did eventually get to do our cooking course so we're looking forward to cooking you steamed fish and green curry one of these days - thankfully we know it wasn't our own cooking that poisoned Ben!

Ready to continue our adventure we set off to the slow boat to Laung Prabang in Laos.

---

Comments

[matthwe]

hi
hi hills and ben hope you are well and having a good time just reading your blog at grandmas looks good. Even saw you fall of a elaphant (ha ha)what has the weather been like out there so far love from matthew alex dan and jane xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx :)