Wherein you can read about collapsing boats, monkey business at the level crossing, how not to reverse an elephant and about our diving in Thailand plus a bonus trip to Laos.
Some of you have e-mailed asking what's happened to the updates. Well, here is all of Thailand rolled into one. Hopefully it's a bit interesting...
We'd left China with mixed feelings. We'd seen a lot and had a good time, but it'd also been hard work. We were looking forward to a bit of well deserved peace and quiet... so we went to Bangkok!
This is not a peaceful city - nor is it quiet! In fact, the banshee wailing of unsilenced tuk-tuks (3-wheeled motorcycle taxis) reverberating off the overpasses is positively cacophonous. No peace to be had here it seemed. However, half an hour's slog in the heat and humidity from the wrong bus stop delivered us to what must be the quietest street in the whole of Bangkok. We found a small hotel called the White Lodge with the rustic and leafy Pisces restaurant next door. Just the thing to soothe rather frayed and tired nerves. A veritable oasis of tranquility in which to let our hair down. On our first night in Thailand, Steve discovered that the local beer (Singha) is a whopping 6% - but not until the next morning!
We spent a few days in Bangkok checking out the local sights. Mainly, this involved taking water taxis around the canals and visiting the Wats (temples). The water taxis make a fearsome racket, much like most other forms of public transport in the city. They also travel at phenomenal speeds down narrow winding canals seemingly oblivious to all potential hazards. The driver sits at the front with a massive steering wheel and a foot operated accelerator. About 60 people sit in rows 6 or 8 wide and a couple of dudes run up and down the gunwales collecting money. Some of the bridges are too low for the boat but this doesn't deter the driver who heads straight for them at full pelt. At the last minute, he pulls a string, all 60 people duck simultaneously and the roof lowers; just in time to slide under the bridge. Except, of course, one time when only 58 people ducked and two sat there like idiots wondering why the boat had turned into a concertina! Fortunately, no heads rolled.
Thai Wats are most impressive - a kind of cross between a 2nd World War German helmet (complete with spike) and a Kentish Ost house (the pointyness of the former and the size of the latter). Generally, they glisten with gold, although they are actually constructed of brick with a plaster coating then covered with gold leaf. They do shine magnificently though, especially the ones in the Royal Palace which is the most remarkable collection of temples and shrines. Opulence is not the word!
We visited Ko San Road purely out of curiosity. It's the old travellers'
hangout from way back, which was brought back into the limelight by the book
and film "Lord of the FliesThe Beach" by Alex
Garland, which opens there. It's funny that this should now strike us as a
tourist attraction in it's own right. There still seem to be many Western
"travellers" staying there, but there doesn't seem to be any good
reason to do so unless you can only exist on banana pancakes and Nescafe! The
locals seem to be exploiting it quite nicely though.
The wretched World Cup is still on as we write this bit and many Thais were firmly behind England until the inevitable happened. Now, with the final only a few days away, a local Thai shop keeper was firmly behind Germany as the Brazilians "have dark skin" and he didn't like that. Hmm!
After a few days "relaxing" in Bangkok, we set off up North. Third class on a Thai train is actually not a bad way to travel. For a start, it seems to cost approximately nothing to go any distance (we did about 500km for 80 Baht). Whilst the carriages only have slatted wooden benches with no padding, all the windows are wide open [as are the doors!] and a nice breeze circulates. You can go into the section between the carriages, sit on the steps and watch the greenery whipping past at about 25mph. Food vendors perpetually hawk their wares along the length of the train and there's some pretty appetising food alongside all the cold drinks, fruit and beer. It seems to be about 34 deg C now and pretty humid, so the vendors with liquids are rather popular!
On these third class trains, you get to stop pretty much at every lamppost. Stations along the way are often no more than a bench or small hut at the side of the track but they are all immaculately kept with topiaried bushes, hanging baskets and flower beds. A man in uniform comes out to meet the train at each station and he carries a red flag and a green flag during the day or a coloured torch at night. You can get off the train on either side and cross the tracks at will. Hordes of school kids take the local trains each day and they mill around on the tracks waiting for them to arrive. At these stations, the train seems to stop until there's no one getting on or off. As we don't know where the train is at any time, we have to wait until we're in the station to see its name. Only then do we don rucksacks and attempt to get off. Obviously we can't be at a perpetual state of readiness so there's some rather comical action as farang (foreigners) lean out of the window at each station; then either sit quietly back down or frantically yank rucksacks off the overhead shelves and bundle out the door, spilling onto the adjoining tracks.
At Lop Buri, farang weren't the only ones stumbling around on the tracks. The town is host to a large troop of monkeys which lives in the old Wats. They seem to recognise the sound of the level-crossing barrier going down and use this opportunity to cross the tracks. The monkeys have been known to bite people in the search for food but they seemed to pretty much ignore us. It's strange to see monkeys in an urban environment. It seems the council has had to cover all the telephone wires with plastic tubing as they are a favourite play thing of our simian counterparts. Apparently, it's not unknown for an over-inquisitive monkey to get electrocuted on the power lines. It's a Buddhist tradition that they can't be eradicated so the locals have resorted to feeding them presumably to prevent them foraging too much. However, there's two giant plaster monkeys on the station platform, so the real motive for keeping the critters on could be more pecuniary than Buddhist!
Having tried the 3rd class trains and found them to be good, if a little basic; we thought it only fair to try a 1st class "sprinter". This turned out to come complete with air conditioning and train-hostess who served us an excellent "in-flight" meal and tea and cakes all the way from Phitsanulok to Lampang. Megan commented that the whole experience was very colonial as we watched the countryside roll by and overtook all the 3rd class trains as they sat in the stations waiting to let us past. It was a very pleasant journey but, at 290 Baht (£4.40), a little expensive for a mere 210km, 4 hour journey!!
All this train-related information is all very well except for one salient fact - Thai trains run late! Very late. In fact, they seem almost as bad as English trains, which is harsh to say the least. As there are so few train lines and they all seem to radiate from Bangkok, all you can rely on is the time a train will depart from it's starting point. All other published times along the way seem to be merely optimism. Alternatively, they could be running on "Thai Time". You can convert from Thai time to UK time by multiplying by anything greater than 2. It's a nuisance at best, but when you've lashed out nearly £5 for air-con first class, to have to sit in the sweltering heat with the hoi-poloi waiting for the dam thing to arrive is a bit rich. Particularly as there's no information about when the train will turn up.
The reason for stopping in Lampang was to pay a visit to the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre. Megan had always, always, always (unquote!) wanted to know more about elephants and we'd heard that this centre did good work with the elephants; with tourists able to visit as a sideline rather than the Chiang Mai based places which were for-profit tourist traps. Anyway, at the centre, you can tour the stables where the elephants live in the mornings, see them wash in the lake and see a show, which involves the elephants and their trainer who's called a Mahout practising the logging manoeuvres (and not kicking a football and standing on their heads). Apparently an elephant is normally trained by a young and an old Mahout because the elephant can live to be 80 or 100 years old and once they've bonded with a Mahout they stay together for life.
The point of all this? It turns out that the centre runs a 3 day program where you can train to be an amateur Mahout. Guess who wanted to do this - both of us actually! In reality, of course, what really happens is you donate a reasonable sum to the centre and they let you ride the elephants "bareback" and alone, unlike the touristy treks elsewhere where you sit in a basket and get driven round by a Mahout. Over a period of 3 days you learn how to command your own personal elephant and then you pack up your belongings and head off into the forest where you camp for the night and return the next day. It's not really possible to describe the experience but the elephant really does seem to understand what you want it to do - and it does it. Megan reversed hers into a tree!
Sitting alone up on top of a huge creature like this is amazing. For example, you crouch on the back of the neck with your knees on top of the ears. Some of the commands involve jabbing the back of the ears with your feet which seems cruel but probably isn't. All you can see is the top of the forehead and the huge ears flapping around your calves. Occasionally you'll see the trunk as your mount takes a delicate pluck - at a whole bamboo tree! Going down steep, muddy tracks or through water is an exercise in faith - you can't even see the legs and feet let alone influence them much. Still, it's very easy to trust these massive beasts. They need to trust you too as they can't see behind them [you're supposed to look behind for them when reversing Megan!] and, when carrying wide loads, they need to be steered around trees in the forest so as not to snag. The team works very well.
Camping out in the jungle was quite weird. Especially for Steve who chose to come down with some kind of flu. When you're running a fever, there's no place to hide in the wet season in the forest and no air-con! Feeling pretty strange, Steve thought it was like "Apocalypse Now" or "Predator". You park your elephant some way off in the forest and as you sit around the camp fire, you can hear it snapping off bamboo which sounds like gun fire. It's good to know your beast is out there. They wake at 4 and when you go to fetch them at 6, you trudge off into the trees and eventually see your elephant standing there waiting and watching for you. It's pretty magical actually. Of course, the real Mahouts came along and there's no way the elephant would have trusted us without their presence but it was as authentic an experience as we're likely to get. And we're certified as amateur Mahouts now too!
Elephants duly returned and parked, we spent a few days in Chiang Mai (as you're supposed to) mainly to let the mosquito bites die down a bit. Then we hired a car for a few days and headed off East through the mountains towards Udon Thani. This is Thai territory which few farang ever get to. It seems most tourists come to Thailand for the beaches and make a quick foray up North to Chiang Mai to buy some hippy jewellery. Out here, we hiked up a mountain in the Phu Reua National Park. From the top, we had spectacular views out over the Mekong River into Laos. We'd wanted to see this as we were planning to be in Laos in a few day's time.
The rain forest in this part of the country is unspoiled and unexplored. We found some waterfalls which seem popular with local Thais who don't get the chance to go to the coast. They're not particularly impressive to us who are used to water cascading off virtually everything but the locals seem to love pottering about in the water. Local recreation here includes barbecues and floating down-river on a rubber ring. We stayed overnight in a place called the Rainforest Resort which seems to be well known in Thailand. We had a rustic cabin in the forest overlooking a river, just a stroll through the trees from the vine draped restaurant. Not a bit like the tent we'd had to live in when trekking with the elephants!
Finally, we drove into Udon Thani in the far North East of Thailand. Not many foreigners here. They make perfume from orchids here (only place in the World apparently) and there's a weird dancing orchid here too. You sing and it gyrates. It's genuine too. We sang and it waggled its leaves. We chatted with the crazy owner dude who confided to us that he'll be releasing a new perfume next month made from forest bugs! We had a quick sniff and it actually seemed quite good although neither of us is an olfactory expert.
Our 30 day visa for Thailand would be running out soon so we had to leave the country and re-enter to renew it. So, we drove on up to Nong Khai on the Laos border and spent a day in Laos.
Back in Thailand and we thought we'd earned a break after moving relentlessly around Asia for 17 weeks. So, overnight train from Udon Thani to Bangkok (noisy, bumpy and late!) followed by flight from Bangkok to Krabi (noisy, bumpy and on time!). Krabi is home to some beautiful beaches and limestone cliffs - as seen in "The Man With The Golden Gun", that Bounty advert with the woman by the waterfall and the aforementioned Hollywood epic "The Beach". Mangrove swamps line the estuaries and tropical, jungle-like flora cascade down the cliffs into the azure waters. Well, that's according to the brochures anyway...
There's some debate on the minibus from Krabi airport as to whether we've come in high season or low, but the general look of desolation as the tropical wind flattens the palm trees and the monsoon lashes the beach-front tends to indicate the latter. We take a mini bus to Ao Nang beach which is supposed to be paradise but is actually a building site. Even as building sites go, it's pretty grotty and unpleasant. Eventually we find a hotel in Krabi town which is a pleasant place with hardly any tourists (they're all sitting it out in the howling monsoon over in paradise building site).
In actual fact, we quite warmed to the place after a day trip to Rai Leh to stroll along the beach and watch the farang learning to rock climb on the vertical limestone which towers majestically straight out of the sea and which forms that familiar image of Thai beaches. Megan observes that the scenery is very much like Yangshuo (Guilin) by the sea. And, after a day's kayaking around the mangrove swamps and lagoons of Ao Thalin, we were convinced. We paddled up narrow waterways between the mangrove trees, all the while observed by inquisitive (and hungry) monkeys. We entered secluded lagoons which must seldom see people. And we laughed at our French companions who couldn't paddle a kayak to save their lives and who capsized - twice; quelle horreux. There's a lot that's wrong with this area - mainly due to rampant Thai exploitation (but who can blame them?). Some areas are filthy and some so developed, it's hard to see what's left of the beach (parts of Rai Leh is like this - it must once have been an idyllic paradise; now it's just a holiday camp}. Never the less, parts of the coastline are spectacular and postcard perfect. It just takes a bit of effort to find them.
Pursuant to this, we made the effort to go over to Ko Phi Phi which is situated about 40km out into the Andaman Sea from Krabi. We'd met some Australians in Rai Leh who'd recommended the island. Like everywhere else, there's a lot of development here but we found a really nice place with our own veranda looking out over Ao Lo Dalam bay. It's a glorious place with pure white sandy beaches, warm, calm, blue waters and it's surrounded by these crazy steep limestone cliffs coated in lush rainforest. With the prospect of such hardships stretching out for days ahead, we finally indulged in a bit of holiday-making.
Although we hadn't intended it [honest!], we checked out a few of the local dive shops and ended up doing four dives just for the hell of it. If you're interested, you can read the dive report. Otherwise, we spent most of our time just hanging out: sitting in beachside cafes, taking the occasional swim, strolling along in the surf admiring the sunset - that kind of thing. It's strange that this is the first time since we left Britain that we've actually relaxed and done nothing. We stayed here for five days which is also the longest we've stayed in any one place.
With five days' serious lounging under our belts, we thought it time to move on - to Ko Tao. This is a small island ringed by cliffs and idyllic, sandy beaches. It's rated as the best diving destination in the Gulf of Thailand [sounding familiar?]. Maybe we're turning into beach bums! This also has the advantage of putting us back within overnight sleeper train distance of Bangkok for our flight to Singapore in a weeks' time.
So we holed up in a hut on the beach. The Lonely Planet guide book says it can be difficult to get accommodation here unless you sign up to do a diving course [which we were not about to do!] but this turned out to be wrong - like many things we've read about this country. However, we did decide to dive and you can read about our exploits in the Thailand Dive Report. More strolling along beaches, sitting in restaurants on stilts and devouring pulpy novels - what a drag! Koh Tao appears to be very quiet to us. According to an expat Brit from Luton who learned to dive here and never left, the island has had bad press recently due to high prices and the presence of Dengue fever. Fortunately, we didn't witness either. We spent the best part of a week here before getting the ferry back to the mainland and the overnight sleeper back to Bangkok where we holed up on the same street we'd stayed in on our arrival - it felt strangely like coming home. We'd gone full circle round Thailand. A few administrative tasks were in order (like getting some clothes washed) before catching our flight to Singapore and then on to Australia.
That's what we did in Thailand. The time seemed to fly by and yet, at the same time, some of the things we did (like the elephant trekking) seem ages ago. It's an enjoyable country to travel around in once you come to terms with the "manyana" attitude to everything and the lamentably poor safety standards. We think we've seen a lot in the 6 weeks here and as we're not beach bums by nature (despite the above) we probably won't feel the urge to return unless it was to dive the Similan Islands. It was all much easier than our time in China and, on balance, more enjoyable. Cheap too. Something we suspect we'll, miss whilst in Aus.
It's worth listing a few of the ways Thais try to scam tourists; purely so as to not seem unjust to the Chinese. A favourite in Bangkok is to approach you and ask where you are going. This is quite clever as it preys on the Western reluctance to either ignore completely and appear rude, or lie! Once you volunteer the requested information, you are immediately informed that your chosen attraction is closed today, but that you are lucky in that another [fairly] local attraction is open. Even more fortunate for you is the fact that the person to whom you are talking has managed to secure a once only discounted entry fee if you will only accompany them. Hmm!
Another tuk-tuk driver favourite seems to be to find out where you want to go and then tell you there is a horrifically complicated one-way system which explains why it's so expensive to go there. Nice one!
Alternatively, you may be offered a ludicrously cheap fare to go from A to B only to find out that you are taken to a jewellery factory on the way where you are given the hard sell. Once in a lifetime bargains are available [honest!]. Of course, you can't just up and leave as your tuk-tuk driver has already done so.
Whilst visiting one Wat in Ayuttaya, we were approached by a security guard trying to sell us tickets which we apparently needed. Strange that we had not been sold them at the entrance! We refused to buy them, at which point the guard looked uncertain but insistent. It turned out that we didn't have any small notes to give him anyway and so he gave up. It seems that the "no small change" trick sorts out the legitimate ticket sellers from the opportunists!
As anywhere, it's a shame [but unsurprising] that tourists get scammed. It does not predispose you to trust any local even when they are genuinely trying to help, which is a shame. Still, when one bottle of beer costs more than half the minimum daily wage, it's unsurprising that we've become targets for the con' artist. Also, unlike in China, the Thais perform this art with good grace and a smile which makes the whole experience much more palatable.