Ayutthaya and beyond

The day I decided to leave Kanchanaburi, I sent the last message to everyone. It took me so damn long to set up this travel blog and now I'm having a nightmare downloading pictures to it.... so that is why it's taken me so long to add any more entries. It looks like I'm going to have to post this one without pics. I have created a google photo album so maybe I can connect you guys to that.... Not knowing how to operate a computer efficiently really blows!

I wanna monkey!!!!!!!

So much has happened since I've last written everyone.... let's see if I can give a quick summary!

From Kanchanaburi, I traveled by bus to Ayutthaya which took about 5 or six hours. I stayed there for a few nights and visited some of the city's ruins. The city was once the capital of Thailand but a war with the Burmese in the 1700's left the city in ruins. Some of the ruins were absolutely amazing to see with statues of Buddha's everywhere half destroyed from the war. One of the Buddha heads is surrounded by the vines of a tree that's grown around it through the centuries.

I met a girl named Katrin from Germany and we hung out for a day. She introduced me to the real Thai local food that can only be found off the main streets in local food stalls. Man, the food here is excellent! You never know exactly what you're eating so you look at what the locals order and then point to it and gesture "1" with your finger. I've had some really great things but occasionally.... you order badly. One dinner the locals were eating chicken feet soup. I passed on that one but I have eaten some really interesting insects, some really bad seafood soup and some really bad "meat" balls on sticks. Sometimes, you just don't know what the hell you're getting.

I was invited into a local Thai guys party. It was at their place of business and I listened to them sing Thai songs and play the guitar. They gave me some shots of their "local brew" which looked like beer with some sort of brownish powder added to it. It kind of looked like cumin that was added but who knows? We hung out for about an hour and a half trying to talk about music. They invited me into their home but I politely declined because it was getting really late. I thought that it would've been a really cool experience to see a local Thai's home and hang out but I had to get to bed.

From Ayutthaya I took the 12 hour night train to Chiang Mai with a stop in Lopburi. Lopburi was a city that some traveler's had told me to visit. So I booked a day-trip there. After the hour and a half train ride, I arrived and as warned... the town was crawling with mischievious monkeys. They run up to you and try to steal your crap so many of the local shopkeeper's carry slingshots.

Inside one of the temple ruins are the majority of the culprits. There you can buy sunflower seeds for $1 to feed them. I purchased some and with much reservation walked in with a beating stick in hand. The baby monkeys were adorable. They climb up onto you and take the seeds so gently with their cute little hands. The bigger ones scared the crap out of me. I eventually fed them too...  mostly out of necessity, because they'd chase after the littler ones that I was playing with and beat them for my seeds. They'd show their teeth, screech and chase each other and fight. It's was really quite cool to see.

I left the monkeys to head for a bar where I could grab a beer and wash some of the monkey stink off of me since I had to sit on a train for 12 hours. I found a cool place and made friends with three ex-pats. One older Brit and one American who taught English at the Lopburi University. The Irish ex-pat was a recovering methadone addict whose wife was in rehab with the monks up the road. Pretty awesome conversations! I actually tried to reschedule my train ticket to stay the evening because they were all so cool. Alas, the $10 fee to change was more than I could bare.

While hanging out with the guys waiting for my evening train, I was told about the Thai military skydiving competition up the road. Sure enough... above my head was a whole bunch of parachutes. So I ran over to where they were landing to make some cheap skydive talk with the military dudes. They were having an accuracy competition but I only got there in time to see the last guy miss the target by 100 yards. It was like being at home!

I took the night train to Chiang Mai and met up with Katrin from Germany again. Chiang Mai is a city surrounded by a moat and the ancient city walls are still partly standing. Basically, you're living in a city like you see in the movies that is an old fortress to defend against attackers. I found a really great backpacker's guesthouse where I stayed for two nights and met about 10 friends to travel with. From Chiang Mai, I had originally decided to head straight to Laos, the neighboring country but the morning I decided to leave, I changed my mind. Many of my new friends were heading to Pai which is the little hippie town 4 hours in the opposite direction of my intended way. So within 2 minutes, I decided to stay in Thailand for another 5 days.

Pai is in the mountain tops of Thailand. It's right near the border of Myanmar. Basically, it's as far North in Thailand that you can go by car. Four of us rented motor scooters and road around the hills of Pai to waterfalls and canyons. I was offered more opium and marijuana in 5 hours of bike riding than I'd ever been offered in my life. I assume that's partly why the town is such a relaxed and fun town. Everyone's always stoned on Opium. Don't worry all; the drug thing is not my scene.

We spent the following day swimming by the pool, doing absolutely nothing. I met up with a guy named Ilan. Ilan is from Isreal. He was a tank commander in the war in Isreal and had a roadside bomb blow up next to his tank. Shrapnel hit his face and damaged the muscles in his eye. He was discharged and is now traveling for 10 months. He and I decided to head to Laos together the following morning. We took 12 hours of busses to the border of Laos and have been traveling together now for about 5 days. We're sharing guesthouse rooms to save money which has been a real blessing. Now rooms are only costing me about $3 per night versus $6. That doesn't sound like much but I have been having a real hard time staying on my budget of $20/day. Currently, I'm spending about $30 a day and at times more because of things like visa's and partying.

Once in Laos, we decided to take the slow boat down the Mekong River. The slow boat takes two days to travel a relatively short distance. Here in Laos, things move quite slowly. It's called "Lao Time." When you order food, it comes when it comes. Bus rides that should take 3-4 hours take 6. It is a country that is full of really kind people that live a communal lifestyle. The average Lao person earns about $40 a month. Yup, that's right.... $40. One beer Lao costs more than they make in 1 day and I'm struggling to live on $20. That's really sad! The local Lao may share their living quarters with up to 10 other people. Showering is done in the yard and the toilet is a box up the road that is shared by the community. The people are very generous and share everything. So far, this place is really great.

The two days down the Mekong was quite nice. We actually hired a private boat between 12 people and split the cost of $600. The public slowboats can pack upwards of 100 people on boats for meant for 80 and the hard wooden benches can be quite brutal. So we splurged and spent about $20 more per person than we should have. The boat stopped overnight in a river town called Pak Beng. Ilan and I met up with some girls we knew from Pai who took the public slow boat the same morning as us. We wanted to grab some food before the town's electricity went out. The town only has electricity from 7:30pm until 10:30pm so during those 3 hours, life is booming. Afterwards, it's absolutely pitch black. We walked the girls back to their guesthouse and had a really hard time finding ours. You can't see a damn thing!

We arrived in Luang Prabang the next evening. It's a bustling little city in the Northern Center of Laos. Internet access is quite abundant albeit slow. The night markets are super cheap and the beer even cheaper. The money in Laos is super confusing because it all looks the same. One dollar equates to 8,600 kip. Our guesthouse costs 50,000 kip a night which is just about $6. I bought two tee-shirts at the night market for 40,000 kip ($5).

Tomorrow, I'm heading to see some waterfalls that everyone here in Luang Prabang is talking about. Then I'm heading north to a few more cities with no electricity or running water. It will be my time to spend by myself and reflect on life. The plan is to then head south, do some tubing down the river, somehow get to Cambodia to see my friend Megan who lives there and then somehow head into Vietnam. So far, the way things have been working, I make my travel plans based on input from other travelers that I meet. So I never really quite know where I'm going the next day but that has been really great for me.... it's quite a free feeling.