Travelog

Note: I have a backlog of pictures to upload, but the internet is just too slow to get them all up.

Getting Chianged out. Heading to my third Chiang city in the past week. Got up at 9 or so, and had breakfast with William and two older British guys who were also living in Thailand. Seems this guesthouse is big with expats for some reason. Only a travel day, so I didn’t get up to much, wandering to get some U.S money which I may or may not need in Laos (If I don’t use it in Laos, I’ll need it in Cambodia for sure).

Wanted to pawn off my watergun so I wandered around looking for a kid to give it to. Had trouble finding any kids at all, but finally managed to find one little boy who seemed very grateful to have it, and even waied me in thanks. I only wish I had filled it up with water for him, but he slung it around his neck and didn’t seem to mind that it wasn’t loaded.

Grabbed a tuk-tuk to then bus station and hopped on the bus for my two hour ride to Chiang Khong. Ride was okay, but apparently they’re still celebrating songkran here, as the streets were littered with people throwing water. I noticed the waterfighting on the bus, and put my pack covers on, before heading to Boom Guesthouse. Boom was booked, so I headed to a place called PJs which should do the job for the night. It wasn’t till the owner tried to open the wall next to the room door that I realized he was pretty close to blind.

Booking a slow boat to Luang Prabang in Laos for the morning – going to take a long time, so hopefully I’ve got enough reading material.

Note: I have a backlog of pictures to upload, but the internet is just too slow to get them all up.

Chiang Rai isn’t so big, that I figured I’d be fine sleeping in. Tried to check my email, but the wireless connection I was once getting for free had vanished. Made it till 8:30 or so, then got some breakfast at the guesthouse. Not the best muesli and fruit and yogurt I’ve had, but it did the job. An older gentleman by the name of William asked if he could join me, as tables were limited, so we chatted for quite a while. He’s from Hong Kong, but lives in Thailand most of the time now. He was just visiting Chiang Rai, though.

After breakfast, I headed to the Wats near the day market. The original wat that held the Emerald Buddha now in Bangkok,Wat Phra Kaew, was my first destination. There’s a new Buddha in its place now (made from Canadian Jade, no less), which is pretty nice as well. There was a turtle pond there too, and some nice grounds, but the newer style wats get a little repetitive after a while. Checked out Wat Phra Singha as well, but it wasn’t as nice. Most importantly, all the waterfighters seemed to be off visiting family or something.

Had a wander through Chiang Rai, and then headed back to the guesthouse – happy to still be dry. Took a nap, as I was a tad tired, then wanted to hit the internet cafe. Unfortunately, the waterfighters had returned from wherever they were, so getting to the cafe dry was going to be tough. I opted for some lunch instead, and on the way back to the guesthouse got a tad wet again. William was eating lunch, so I sat with him for a bit.

Made a second attempt at the internet after, and managed ok. A little slower than I would have liked, but I got a few photos up. I was going to stay a little longer, but the weather turned for the worse, and the cafe owner essentially kicked me out before the storm started.

I had told William I’d meet him at 8 to check out the night festival for dinner, but with the rain we decided to check out another spot closer to the guesthouse, as the night festival would most likely be closed. A Thai guy William knew, Kenui, joined us as well.

Patpong is the red light district in Bangkok. Chiang Rai has “Little Patpong”, which seemed pretty tame as we walked through it on the way back to the guesthouse after dinner. I watched a movie (The Heartbreak Kid – not recommended) before finally getting to bed. In the morning I creep a little closer to Laos.

Note: I have a backlog of pictures to upload, but the internet is just too slow to get them all up.

A travel day. Got up and headed to the bus station. Managed to make it there dry, which was nice. Couldn’t get a bus for 4 hours, but figured it was better than nothing, so I read in the concourse, and tried to stay cool.

Bus ride was fairly uneventful. Nice hilly scenery, and we got stopped for a police check, but that’s pretty standard I think. They were just checking random people’s I.D, from what I could tell. In Chiang Rai I found a place in he guidebook I figured might be good to stay at, and asked the tuk tuk driver to get me there. Got a little wet en route, but it could have been worse.

Wandered to the day market to get some food (just pineapple as the selection was weak), then back to the guesthouse for a bit and to escape the onslaught of water throwers.

At night I headed to the night market for cheap and tasty food – mostly skewered seafood, then back to the guesthouse to relax for the night.

Note: I have a backlog of pictures to upload, but the internet is just too slow to get them all up.

Pennie and Wiki are gone, so I’m on my own once again. Got some breakfast, and relaxed during the morning, then headed to Julie’s Guesthouse to meet up with Good and some people from the tour. I was strapped with my new gun, and had some fun shooting people, and getting very soaked myself. My watergun is pretty useless against a bucket of water, sadly.

Met up with Shane, Shawn, Good, Lucy, Amy, Freyja and Volker, as well as one of Good’s friends, Tong. Chiang Mai’s old town centre is surrounded by a moat, so we headed there. Trucks filled with garbage pails of water circle the moat, soaking people who line up along the moat, and get their firepower from the moat itself. It was chaos on a very wet scale.

The evil ones use ice water, which is akin to chemical warfare, if you ask me. Otherwise it wasn’t so bad (although the water is very dirty, and I imagine I’ve caught a disease or two). After a couple of hours of walking through snarled traffic, getting soaking wet, we got some food. Good bought us some bugs, and bamboo worms, which were okay. Bamboo worms were pretty tasteless, and I’m not sure I’d eat the beetles again, but it was worth trying once.

We wandered around a bit more after that, but it was getting a little tedious, so we headed to a bar and hung out there for a bit. I dismissed myself after a while and headed back to the guesthouse to read and relax. In the morning I’m hoping to get up early and grab a bus north to Chiang Rai.

Note: I have a backlog of pictures to upload, but the internet is just too slow to get them all up.

Cooking class pickup was at 9. We ended up passing the hostel a few more times as we picked up other people, and eventually got to the market. Big group of us: Coleen & Tracey (Portland, Oregon); Stephanie and Katie (u.s); Ioan (Ireland), Volker and Lucy (from the hiking trip, obviously following Amy and Freyja’s advice too), Etgar and Atna (Israel), Sybille (Switzerland ), Miriam (Germany), Tako (Japan), and Fay (England). Learned about the various vegetables at the market, then back in the songthaew and headed to the cooking school.

School was a lot of fun, and the food was deceivingly simple and tasty. They gave us a recipe book, so hopefully I can reproduce some of the items when I get home. We got to make some big flames, which was fun and maybe a little dangerous.

After school, I bought a watergun. Got soaked by a local girl twice en route, but managed to fill up my watergun and exact my revenge on the way back. Went for a swim after that, finally making use of the pool, then back to the night market for food.

Note: I have a backlog of pictures to upload, but the internet is just too slow to get them all up.

My earplugs were powerless against the rooster’s crow, so I was up a few times once they got going at about 4am. Lay around under the mosquito net, which created a nice earthly glow around the cabin, before finally getting up.

Breakfast was what Good called red mango (but was really watermelon), an egg, and some toast and jam. When we were all finished, the local children, who watched us eat most of the time swarmed the leftovers. Pretty cute. Or sad, I’m not sure which.

The walk down the hill was a lot easier, obviously. We came across a group of Japanese tourists who were resting, and told me I looked like Jesus, then asked if I believed in him (“I hope that you do.”). As we continued down the hill we could hear them singing Christian hymns from higher up the mountain. At the base of the mountain was a nice waterfall, where we stopped to wade (too shallow to swim) and to stand under the waterfall. From there we walked a bit further, stopping to use a slingshot en route, and then eventually reaching the river. At the river, we got a quick lesson on white water rafting, and got on a boat. I was with Volker, Bill, and Moon, with our rafting guide, Jack (“as in Sparrow”). It’s essentially the dry season, so there wasn’t much to the rafting – pretty shallow, and not so rapid. We got out and floated for a bit, and got stuck more often than not. Probably much better in the rainy season.

Following the lousy rafting was some lousy bamboo rafting, or as Good put it, “bamboo submarine”, as we were half submerged most of the time. At the end of the rafting we had some much desired lunch. Pad thai. Took some group photos, and passed on the rafting and elephant ride photos they tried to sell us. Or at least I passed on them. It was Wiki’s birthday, so Good fashioned a birthday cake out of some watermelon (sorry, red mango) for her.

The way home we were bombarded with water from the kids by the side of the road. I sat at the front of the truck and called out their positions, as we had water of our own to retaliate with. Once again, I think I managed to remain the most dry, but still got pretty soaked.

Back at the guesthouse, Pennie, Wiki and myself did some laundry, and I booked a cooking course for the next day. After some gentle prodding I managed to convince Pennie and Wiki to join me. We’ll be doing one that Amy and Freyja recommended.

Headed to the night market for food, and to celebrate Wiki’s birthday. Wiki was getting a massage, so Pennie and I waited for her, but eventually ended up getting one ourselves. I had planned on having a number of massages in Thailand, but this was the first, and probably the last. I may get a foot massage before I leave for home, but I’m not too sure. The massage place smelled of tiger balm, which was pretty nice.

I have a backlog of pictures to upload, but the internet is just too slow to get them all up.

We were the first of the group picked up. Our tour guide, Good, told us that there were going to be 12 in the back of the songthaew, but we figured/hoped he was joking.

He wasn’t. The twelve for the trek were myself, Pennie, Wiki, Amy (England), Freyja(England), Mr. Kim (Korea), Shane(USA), Shawn (USA,but pretty much a full time traveller) who are brothers with very original parents, it seems, Volker (Austria, living in Spain), Lucy (England), Moon (Vietnam), and Bill (USA). Good’s assistant, Ecky was also along. Good warned us that we’d get a little wet, as the Songkran Festival starts a little earlier in the countryside.

Songkran is the Thai New Year, and they used to shower the Buddha statues with water, but now they shower everyone with water. As we were driving to the trek area, kids on the street with buckets of water threw them at the truck. I got a little wet, but my position was such that I managed to avoid most of the onslaught.

Our first stop on the trek was an elephant ride. First time on an elephant, and probably my last. I don’t think they really get treated well. I was on a baby elephant with Mr. Kim. For a baby, it was huge, but also (and this is never good when dealing with elephants) a little reckless. He tended to do what he wanted, which more often than not entailed getting as close to the cliff edge as he could so I could peer down at certain doom.

After the elephant ride, we started off our hike. Not too bad at first, then Good told us that we’d only experienced a warm up thus far and that the next bit was tough. He was difficult to read, so once again I thought he was joking, and once again I was quite wrong. Rest of the trek was mostly up hill, and pretty tough. I managed okay, but a few people looked pretty beat by the time we reached the hill tribe village.

The “hotel” was a bamboo cabin that was pretty decent. Blankets as a bed, and a mosquito net. We all showered, and rehydrated. There was a girl from the village trying to sell some jewellery. When we told her we weren’t interested, she started at us blankly. I asked her what her name was and she said she’d tell me if I bought something. Later, Good would tell us that they buy the jewellery from the city, so it wasn’t even authentic hill tribe handicrafts. The view from the village was decent, but they slash and burn the jungle, so the sky was a little smoky.

Later, after dinner, some elderly woman came and asked if we were interested in a massage. We all said no, and once again we got the stare down. Quite an interesting selling tactic. During the night we sat around by candlelight while Good played guitar. There were dogs in the village that barked madly whenever someone moved from one building to the next. At one point I took a picture, with flash, of the darkness and there was someone standing watching us. Creepy.

It was supposed to be an early breakfast, but Pennie and Wiki slept in, so we got started a tad later. I did some reading while I waited. Had some breakfast next to the guesthouse, then went to explore the city some more.

I had checked out a couple of the local wats the day before, and we headed back to what I thought was the best one. It’s got two rooms with monks encased in glass. One looked pretty real, the other not so much, but I was still fairly sure they were real. There was a a “Monk Chat” where you can sit and chat with a monk and ask any questions you want, so I asked if they were real, and it turns out their wax. A shame. Apparently one of the guys whose image is in use is still alive in the jungles of Thailand somewhere – so he’s probably happy it’s just wax.

We looked into some treks for the following day so, after waiting for Pennie and Wiki to get some of their Vietnam Tour details sorted, we booked the trip. It’s a private company so it should be good, we hope. Wiki says she’s pretty sure it’s the company she had recommended. It’s two days, so we get to sleep in a hill tribe village tomorrow night.

We hired a songthaew to take us to a few wats that were a little outside of town. Doi Suthep was the furthest, and sat atop a mountain in the National Park. Visibility was poor, so we couldn’t see much of Chiang Mai, but it is definitely bigger than it feels. It started to rain for the last two wats, so we ran about pretty quickly. The final wat was all white, which was pretty nice.

Thankfully the rain didn’t last long, and we were able to head to the night market. I made it through without buying anything other than a strawberry shake, which I thought was pretty good.

Not much sleep on the bus, as it was a bumpy ride, and not very roomy. A little tired, we were dropped off outside the city and transferred to songthaews, and taken closer to the city centre. Basically, they drop you off at a guesthouse where they try and get you to stay, and use their tours. A bit of a hindrance, but I imagine it works sometimes. I checked the map to see where I was, and used my handy compass to figure out where west was, and headed west and north till I reached my guesthouse. Easier to find than I thought it might be with my small hand drawn map on a post-it note.

Had a walk around to look into rock climbing and trekking and that sort of thing. A little more expensive than I’d like to pay, but I’m keeping my options open. Lack of sleep, plus the heat was making me tired, so I headed to the guesthouse and had a long nap followed by a shower.

Checked out some bookstores and killed some time by sipping on a banana shake before my yoga class at 5pm. The fact that I haven’t been to yoga in a few weeks was abundantly clear. I managed okay, but it was a pretty advanced class to begin with.  The heat didn’t help much either.

Had another much needed shower after yoga, then went and grabbed some food at the bar down the street. I hopped on the internet a little later, and ran into Pennie and Wiki who were checking into their room. They seem to be following me, which makes for some good company, so I shan’t complain.