Last Thai-me in Southeast Asia
Trip Start
Jul 26, 2004
1
19
23
Trip End
May 31, 2005
Bangkok,
Thailand
Friday, March 4, 2005
With a return to Thailand we are marking the end of our southeast Asia leg of the 'Royetsky' International Tour, otherwise known as 'Power to the Short and Curlies'. From here on in it will be wild animals and Germans in speedos. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
When we last left off we were taxi-bound to Chiang Rai Thailand with our Canadian friends Myrna and Eric. One uneventful night in the humdrum city motivated us to move onto Chiang Mai, another city in the North of Thailand. We boarded our bus and noted that something was different. The company did not pull a 'bait and switch' and drive us in a beat-up mini van with no A/C (Laos) instead of the beautiful bus in the brochure, the bus did not race with other vehicles up and down mountains, blindly passing on the hairpin curves (Vietnam), nor did it blare ridiculous karaoke videos and movies at the decibel level of a jet preparing for take-off (Cambodia)
Fabulous concert
. Instead we were treated to what we had paid for: comfortable seats, a smooth, air conditioned ride, with an accurate arrival time. We even had a bus attendant who handed out cordial drinks (gross, but a nice thought) and this wasn't even the VIP bus! Welcome to Thailand.With our visit here we marked yet another favourite city in these parts. Chiang Mai is quite large, but still contains some of the charm of Luang Prabang. The city contains an old quarter, where we stayed, that is surrounded by a moat and a brick wall and gates on 4 sides. Although there are over a million people who live in Chiang Mai, you do not get the same big city feel that other large Asian cities have. It is very relaxed.
While there we visited the day market, the night bazaar and the Sunday market, which covered most of the old quarter. Following that we needed to ship home a huge box with our purchases. It's been great buying stuff for a home that we don't have and don't have a clue if it will make it through customs or even leave the post office. But it wasn't all retail therapy, we also visited a Buddhist university for Monk Chat. All of the Buddhist monks who have enrolled in the university's English program partake in the sessions where they meet with travelers three times a week
Heavy Load
. These sessions allow them to practice their conversational English and we get to learn about their lives. We were each given our own monks, young students who were on scholarship from Laos. They talked about growing up, their plans after their studies are completed, why they shave their heads, what their coloured robes mean and why meditation was so important to them. It was an absolutely facinating experience!The north of Thailand is also known for its trekking and its elephants. Elephants are very important to them and can be found everywhere on t-shirts, posters, and postcards. With Eric and Myrna, we decided to take a local bus out of town to the Elephant Conservation Centre. Here we saw a show where they demonstrated how elephants were involved in the logging industry and could do other natural elephant things like raising flags, making music with xylophone-type instruments, and painting using their trunks. The centre also had an area where they transformed elephant dung into paper (watch out for any post cards!), a hospital for abused and injured elephants, and a training centre where you could learn to be a mahoot, an elephant trainer. We had the opportunity to feed and pet baby elephants, which were surprisingly smaller than Lara.
We decided that we would head further north to a town called Pai, known for its unique hippy culture and proximity to more trekking. We had thought about heading south for some island visits, but the logisitics were too difficult, and we had heard many great things about Pai, and Soppong, our final stop in northern Thailand before heading back to Bangkok.
Many of you have written to us asking us who writes these travelogues
Hoovering
. We can tell you they are truly a collaboration: one of us often starts it and then the other one takes over. For the first time however we are going to break with our routine and separate the next bit. First Chris will tell you his impressions of Pai, and then Lara will tell you hers. Chris' impression of Pai:
Pai was a quaint, sleepy little town that had a lazy river flowing through it. You could hire inner tubes, grab a couple of beers and float merrily downstream. There also seemed to be a lot of hippies there. Due to its proximity to the Burmese border some of these long haired grubby people (what's up with poeple like that?) would do the trip every 3 months to renew their visas and live life cheaply and without hassles in Pai. There were elephants camps to visit where you could ride and bathe them. Or you could relax in the sun, renting a scooter to see the nearby hills. Low key if you wanted it to be or you could party at the bars if you wanted.
Lara's impression of Pai:
My impression can pretty much be summed up in 2 words: puke and crap.
Other than our first night there, I saw nothing of the town, other than the bathroom and the hotel room
Leonardo d'Elephant
. Actually, I saw 2 hotel rooms, as our first place was pretty dodgy, and not where I wanted to spend my time holed up, especially since it didn't have a flush toilet. I'll let you imagine what that was like. Anyway, after 5 days and little improvement we decided that we had better skip our trip to Soppong and get to a hospital. A private car took us there, and fortunately Lara was treated with antibiotics. A few more days of being sick, and Chris getting sick too ( 1 bathroom, 2 sickies- another logisitcs problem) and we sadly contemplated an early end to our trip. It had been a fantastic journey so far, and although we would have been really sad to miss out on Africa and our visits with family and friends in Europe, we knew that we had been lucky to have done so much thus far. Very fortunately, with drugs and some rest we both made a full recovery and were ready to continue on with renewed spirits and 10 pounds less of flesh.
Our time in Thailand was very close to the end, and we returned to the scene where it all began months ago: Bangkok. We headed there a few days before our flight to Kenya as we had problems with our around the world tickets that needed to be straightened out right away. We won't bore you with the details, but after much hassle, and a little cash, we were able to sort them out, and then had 3 days to enjoy ourselves
Sunday Market
. Our first order of business (a reward after settling the ticket issue) was to see a movie, as it had been a while and we had missed out on most Oscar movies. We were able to catch the Aviator on a big screen -a real treat for us. Before the movie they have the same commercials and movie previews but at one point everyone stood and removed their hats as we had a tribute to the king. Would we do so for Paul Martin?
Another sojourn to Khao San Road, backpacker hangout, and we were ready for a big change. After seeing what some of the rest of Thailand was about, the crassness of the Backpacker scene with the bars and vendors can get to you. Lucky for us, we had friends who lived in BKK, and they generously offered us a place to stay in their 'Melrose Place' compound. Lisa and Matt were incredible hosts, and after a stay with them we were tempted to change our tickets and stay even longer. We had a real blast with them, reliving old times ( Lara and Lisa went to school together) and swapping stories. Both Lisa and Matt are international teachers in Bangkok and live on a compound where the school, a pool, tennis courts, the residents, the teachers, a massage studio, grocery store, and yes, even Starbucks reside. We had incredible 2 hour massages, that cost us just $15 each, although Lara's masseuse got pretty "familiar" with her chest. Apparently, that's quite common here, although it had never happened to Lisa. Hmmmm.....
Our last night in Thailand we went out for Thai food - go figure. The restaurant was fabulous, although the menus were in Thai and no one in the place spoke English. We ordered using sign language and a little Thai, and the gamble paid off.
A couple of interesting things about Thailand:
1. They love using letters and different tones in their language. We had a bit of a harder time picking up phrases here as our tongues would stumble on the consonants and when we got that right, we weren't using the correct tone. (Eg. Us: "We'd like to go to BanglamPhu, please." Taxi driver with confused look "Huh?" Us: BangLAMpoo?" Taxi driver: "???" Us: "BANGlamphU?" Taxi driver, smiling nervously "Huh?" Us: "BanGLamphu!" Taxi driver with look of sudden comprehension: " Oh, BanGLamphu.") Another example the name of the University we visited in Chiang mai for Monk Chat was Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University. No joke. That's quite a mouthful and we didn't see many poeple wearing it on college sweaters.
2. The whole "ladyboy" experience. In Thailand there was a history of being androgenous. Nowadays you can never be too sure if you are speaking to a man or a woman. With all of the cheap plastic surgery it is common to see women serving you in restaurants with Adam's Apples and deep voices. They are so common that we never went a day without passing someone and wondering what gender they were. It is an accepted way of life in Thailand, but we always wondered which washroom do they use?
Finally it was time to leave our friends and Asia. 7 months and more than 10 countries later we were on our way to another continent, very different from what we had experienced so far. The journey continues next time in Kenya...
