Fix Up Look Sharp.

Trip Start Feb 17, 2005
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Trip End Ongoing


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Saturday, January 7, 2006

New years celebrations were spent at a 'hippy' place called 'the rooftop bar' needless to say this was where all the hip young kids were spending the evening. We had quite a few of us there that had got together at the guest house and got quite drunk, the bar itself was on the fourth story of a building and with the amount of people up there was hardly safe, the fireman we were with commented on its lack of safety features as well. Not that we particularly cared though, the view out on to the main square was good and there was loads of lanterns being let off into the sky and you could see the ones being let off miles away. Fireworks went off after the countdown as well, so it was a really good night (my first new year outside of Pickering i think), i did raise my glass in a gesture to those who would be dancing around the roundabout 7 hours later though. After that we went to some clubs and was quite surprised when one of them played some Dizzee Rascal.

The next day though was a complete nightmare, i woke up and immediately went to the toilet to throw up and thought 'ah well, the usual' but then i lay in bed for the next 5 hours not being able to move because every time i did i vomited or wretched, in the end just producing bile (any of you who would like more details on my sickness are welcome to e-mail me about them). I eventually made my way to the common area and people commented on how terrible i looked, but i could barely walk i felt so weak and light headed, it took a while for me to convince the guys i thought i had food poisoning though and almost got them to call me an ambulance i was that bad. But they got me some medicine and i improved but felt bad for the next 3 days or so, it wasn't nice at all. I think it stemmed from eating some eyeballs the previous night as the safety conscious fireman had got drunk and decided to give some poor Thai guys loads of money to buy beer and food and then made the rest of the lads eat with them. But it could also have come from eating a pizza with seafood on it that was free at the guest house, several people have said since 'how far from the sea was it?' a fair point when i have never seen any chiller trucks in Thailand and Chiang Mai is the furthest point from the sea anywhere in the country.

On the 2nd we headed up to Chang Khong to cross the border into Laos, we'd paid for transport up there and the slow boat down the river for two days and also our Laos visa. This is where the Thai tourist board failed us again, we got there with just a receipt for the visa and were told we had to give it to the bus driver, he knew nothing about it and we eventually found that the woman at the guesthouse we were staying at had to sort it out but as the previous guest house had not correctly filled our details in then she said we hadn't paid for the visa. arrrrghhhhhhhh. It was so frustrating so we had to get this woman to ring the travel agency who then had to ring the previous guest house and hope that someone was there that could verify our payment for the visas which luckily they did, but it's fair to say the relationship we had with the woman who we had to harass to sort it out, deteriorated as a result of the situation. It turns out the whole incident had sprung from the fact that the travel section of our Chiang Mai guest house had failed to write '+ visa' on a slip of paper. Having found this out i could appreciate how this complex system could sometimes fail.............. It wasn't done to do us out of money though, they were just incompetent.

So next installment will be from the slow boat and Laos.............
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