Siem Reap / Angkor Wat (Cambodia)

Siem Reap airport

So to save time, and to be at Angkor Wat to celebrate Becky’s birthday, we flew down to Siem Reap.  We got visas on arrival for US$20 without any problems and the hostel we stayed at organised a tuk tuk to pick us up (for free).  It was a bit of a squeeze for the three of us and our luggage in the small motorcycle tuk tuk but we managed, with Becky having to hang onto my rucksack for dear life!

By some kind of random luck there were some other people staying long-term at the hostel and it was one of their birthdays too so they were having a BBQ that evening, and they invited us to join them.  We went on a quick trip to the market to pick up some food and a secret birthday cake before heading off to Angkor Wat for sunset.  It didn’t quite work as planned (we didn’t make it to the temple that is the best place to see the sunset) but we walked amongst the ruins and found a nice spot by the moat to sing happy birthday to Becky, blow up balloons and eat birthday cake.  I think everyone thought we were mad but how many people get to say they celebrated their 35th birthday at the 8th wonder of the world!  I’m quite sure I won’t be doing anything quite as interesting on my 35th birthday.

Making a birthday wish

I think none of us had quite realised just how big Angkor Wat is, or rather how the temples are spread out over such a large area.  We decided to go back the next day to see the highlights and then the following day for sunrise and to visit the actual temple called Angkor Wat.  We were already feeling a bit templed out by this stage of the trip and it was also boiling hot, so we wanted to enjoy ourselves rather than just trudging around in the blazing heat because we felt we had to.

The temples are amazing and in varying states of repair.  You can still see piles of bricks waiting to be sorted and restored, and we also saw lots of conservation projects in progress.  Many of these seemed to be in collaboration with the Indian government.  What amazed me (as someone who works in a museum) is that we were allowed to actually walk over the ruins in many parts, which gives you an amazing sense of how the temples would have been used in the past but this can’t be good for the long-term preservation of the site.  One of the temples was used for filming Tomb Raider but as none of us had seen the film, we couldn’t set about pretending to be Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft!

Although we spent most of our time visiting Angkor Wat we did also find time to potter about Siem Reap, checking out the markets, eating food and drinking cheap beer and cocktails.  Becky was particularly taken with the sales pitches in the market “you look, you buy”… err, no thanks… especially when all the stalls sold the same, same (but not different).  I did pick up a recycled purse and a typical Cambodian cotton scarf/wrap.  The stall holders were much more persistent with their sales pitches here compared with other places we’d been to.

Tomb raider was filmed at this temple

There were also lots of small children around selling postcards, bracelets etc at the Angkor Wat sites and in Siem Reap.  Most of them should be in school and when you ask them why they are not in school they all tell you it is the school holidays (we knew it wasn’t).  Most of these children have learnt quite a bit of English in order to sell goods to tourists and they amazed us with memorized facts about the UK (one small boy could reel off every British Prime Minister from the last 50 years or so).  Anushca was met with mainly blank stares when she old them she was from Jamaica.  This was the first place in Asia (on this trip) that I really noticed a lot of young children working/selling things.

We had a night out on Beer Street drinking, you guessed it, cheap beer ($0.50 a glass) and cheap cocktails ($1.50 each) and had fun despite hearing the same songs that I’ve been hearing in every bar and club since the beginning of my trip (Danza Kuduro, Moves Like Jagger etc etc).  We also treated ourselves to a cheap manicure and pedicure.  This was Becky’s first so she went to town with bright pink fingernails and toes!

The gang at Angkor Wat

Even though we were only in Cambodia, and only in Siem Reap, for a few days we did eventually get our heads around the dual currency system.  You can pay for anything in dollars or riels (the local currency) and you get change either in dollars or riels, depending on what type of place it is.  Cash machines also only dispense dollars (when they are plugged in and working that is).  As things are generally cheap in Cambodia, we found it useful to have $1 bills to pay for most things.

As Becky was flying home very soon from Bangkok we bought bus tickets to go straight back.  More about our cramped ride in a mini-bus in my next post.

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

A piglet enjoying sunrise at Angkor Wat

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

Becky getting her first manicure and pedicure

Local beer

Vientiane

More than 2,000 or 10,000 buddhas?

We opted for the mini-bus from Vang Vieng to Vientiane, even though all the min-bus drivers think they are Michael Schumacher!  Fortunately this was only a short drive of about 3 – 4 hours and included time for us to blow a tyre and get it fixed.  For some reason the tyre blew right next to a tyre repair place – how convenient!  While we waited for the tyre to be fixed we used their toilet and I took pictures of their excellent darts board.

Vientiane is the capital of Laos, even though you don’t feel like you are in a big capital city when you are there.  It’s quite small and easy to get around and after visiting the market and a few temples, there isn’t much to do except eat yummy food and drink Beer Lao – so that’s pretty much what we did!

 

 

We went to Wat Si Saket, which is the oldest temple in Vientiane and the cloister walls are full of little niches containing pair of buddhas.  We heard one guide tell a group there are more than 10,000 (Wikipedia says more than 2,000) which I can totally believe.  We also found a fascinating pile of broken buddhas.

We also went to Pha That Luang, which is the most important religious monument in Laos.  It is also giant and golden!  A small group of Laos tourists asked us to have our photo taken with them at the monument and we tried to add to our collection of ‘monk with a…’ photos.  This time we captured monks with a mobile phone (taking photos) and monks with umbrellas.  The star prize of our collection would be monk with an iPhone 4 (seen but not yet photographed).  Rebecca adopted a stunning building next door as her new house and I took photos of its beautifully painted ceiling.  On our way back into town we found n old London taxi.  Unfortunately our budget only stretched to a ride in a tuk tuk.

As if we hadn’t had enough of temples and buddhas by this time, we headed out the next day to the Buddha Park, which is a bizarre outdoor collection of huge concrete sculptures of Buddhist and Hindu gods with a particularly large reclining buddha.  As it’s not a temple, you can have a lot of fun taking silly pictures with all the statues.  Once again Rebecca got her photo taken with some local tourists.

Me and Rebecca at the temple of bling

Becky's new pad and the painted ceiling that I loved

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bus ride to the park was particularly memorable.  We took a local bus and we were packed in like sardines, even being told where to stand to even out the weight on the bus!  The bus also had a sophisticated door system, which consisted of a folding door rigged up to a piece of string.  As the bus driver put his fut on the accelerator (he also thought he was Michael Schumacher) the string would pull the door shut by the force of the bus moving.  To open the door the driver simply braked heard enough for the door to slide open again on the string – genius!

COPE Visitor Center

Two of the most memorable things about visiting Vientiane (apart from the giant breakfasts I ate each morning) were visiting the MAG information stand at the night market and visiting the COPE Visitor Centre.

MAG (Mines Advisory Group) is a is a not-for-profit organisation clearing landmines, unexploded ordnance ( UXO) and other remnants of conflict for the benefit of communities worldwide.  More than 2 million tonnes of ordnance was dropped over Laos during the Second Indo-China War and Laos is the most bombed country in the world per capita.  An estimated 30% of the ordnance did not explode on impact and UXO still affects more that 25% of villages in Laos and remains a key cause of poverty.  As in other South East Asia countries such as Cambodia and Vietnam, collecting scrap metal is a major cause of UXO accidents.  Forced into the trade by poverty, people risk their lives using primitive detectors to hunt for scrap: normally what they find is harmless, but there’s always the risk it could be a deadly bomb.  Organisations like MAG are working to help clear the UXO but people are still killed and injured – since 1964  more than 50,000 people have been killed or injured as a result of UXO accidents.

COPE Visitor Center (Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise) is an organisation in Laos that works with the National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) run by the Laos Ministry of Health.  COPE has five rehabilitation centres across the country to provide access to orthotic/prosthetic devices and physiotherapy and occupational therapy.  People affected by UXO, traffic accidents, polio, leprosy, club foot and children with disabilities are just some of the reasons why people might need access to COPE’s services.

The COPE Visitor Center has a series of really excellent and engaging displays about the UXO problem in Laos and how people are still affected today.  There were some particularly moving displays about children that had been injured or killed when playing with UXO they had discovered in their villages, or how a woman was killed when the heat from her fire stove heated the ground too much and a UXO under her house exploded.  We also watched an interesting and moving documentary about COPE’s work in Laos and they had a whole list of films and documentaries to watch (but we got there late and didn’t have time to watch more than one).  There was also a shop where you could buy gifts or make a donation to support their work.

Visiting the MAG stall and COPE Visitor Center made me realise how little information we get about Laos in the UK press, whether good or bad, and I was glad we were able to find out more about the history of the country and support the work of these two excellent organisations in even a small way.

Buddha Park

Of course, we found time to eat more yummy food and drink a few Beer Lao.  We also bought our flight tickets to Siem Reap (Cambodia) as we were running out of time and didn’t have 34 hours to spend on the bus to get there as we planned to celebrate Becky’s birthday at Angkor Wat!

Taking silly photos at the Buddha Park (one of too many)

Monks with mobiles

Monks with colour coordinated umbrellas

Catching a black cab in Vientiane

How far from Vientiane to......?

Vang Vieng

Amazing view on the bus ride from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng

Our next stop in Laos was a famous little riverside town called Vang Vieng.  Ok so maybe it’s only famous on the travellers/backpackers trail but I’d heard enough about it in advance to wonder if I actually wanted to go there.  The town is known for travellers arriving en mass, getting drunk and stoned and then floating down the river on tyre inner tubes (and sometimes dying because they are so drunk and/or stoned).  You can read a Guardian article about Vang Vieng here, which pretty much sums up what has happened and continues to happen in this once beautiful riverside town.

We had been promised an air-con bus for the supposedly 4-5 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng.  Our complimentary transfer tuk tuk picked us up at the ungodly hour of 6am and took us to the bus station for our 7am bus.  We quickly realised that we were taking the local bus rather than the tourist bus (we’d decided not to take the VIP bus so it was probably our own fault…) and the air con turned out to be windows that opened!  As all good local buses do, the bus stopped at every opportunity to pick up people and their luggage/goods.  I was actually quite glad that we caught the local bus because it felt like the first time we got a closer look at how people in Laos live.  The road was winding, of course, and with spectacular views (especially as we narrowly avoided oncoming traffic or skirted too close to the edge of a bend with a sheer drop) as we travelled through rural Laos.  About 7.5 hours later we were dropped at the side of the road with our dusty luggage as the only other tourists on the bus (three older women who seemed well-travelled) declared loudly “who would want to get off here?!”.

Vang Vieng (it looks very different during the day compared with at night)

We found ourselves a nice little guest house but quickly decided that going tubing after that bus ride was too much, especially as Anoushca wasn’t feeling well.  Becky and I wandered about town that night marvelling at the bars which were ALL showing episodes of Friends or Family Guy (though we did see one showing South Park).  Vang Vieng is full of bars and restaurants catering for western backpackers (that’s if you like watching old TV series while stoned/hung over or getting super wasted every night on cheap alcohol).  It’s totally bizarre, not very nice (or maybe just not my cup of tea) and I found it actually quite sad that this beautiful little town had been ruined just so western tourists could have some fun.

Reading for tubing at 8.30am!

So we went against the grain and decided to go tubing at 8.30am the next morning.  This was partly because we had no choice (the bus to Vientiane left at 1.30pm and we didn’t want to stay any longer than necessary in Vang Vieng) and partly because we thought it might be a bit quieter.

Well, we were the first and only people on the river that morning as all the bars were pretty much shut.  We stopped at the Big Slide Bar about 10am (as they seemed to be open) and had a go on their big slide (obviously) and their zip-line.  I can’t imagine doing either of these things drunk but we had a lot of fun as it was only us and a couple of tourists from Vietnam who were travelling down the river in a canoe.

 

 

Kids playing on the river

As it was dry season the river was very low with hardly any current at all.  This meant that in order to catch our bus we pretty much had to paddle with our hands ALL the way down the river and at times even get out and walk on the river bed.  It took us about 3.5 hours to get down the river and at the end me and Becky had chafed inner arms from rubbing our arms on the inner tube as we paddled!  We were all creamy crackered at the end.

Having the river to ourselves though was amazing!  It was so peaceful and the scenery was beautiful (once past the bars) with lush green mountains rising up alongside the river.  We saw lots of children playing and families going about their business at the side of the river, something which we wouldn’t have seen if we gone when the bars were open.  We also saw lots of water buffalo casually hanging out at the side of the river.

We bought one of those disposable waterproof cameras to capture our adventure.  It was lots of fun taking photos but actually quite hard to work out what would appear in the photos when looking through the view finder – we’re all so used to digital cameras these days!  We got the photos developed and put onto a CD when we got to Vientiane.  They all look like they have been Instagramed!

My view as a floated down the river

Taking a short break from paddling

River view

Me dropping (not very elegantly) off the Big Slide - it hurt a lot when I hit the water!

Zip-line on the river at the Big Slide Bar

Our breakfast view

Luang Prabang

Local market

So Luang Prabang was our first stop in Laos and what a lovely place to stay for a few days. We ended up staying at the guest house that lured us in on the night the boat arrived with promises of a cheap room and free coffee, bananas and wifi (we’re easily pleased) and by this time we also had Ivan (from Argentina) in tow who we’re met on the boat.

First stop was the night market (same, same but slightly different from Thailand and a bit cheaper) where we also found the famous vegetarian street buffet. Here you can fill a bowl with food, have it re-heated in the wok in front of you, add a fresh spring roll if you wish, and then eat it at the side of the market at a low table – all for the princely sum of 80p!

Becky on a bike

The next day we hired some old but functioning bicycles (again for 80p per day) and headed off to the local market (Phousi Market) for a nosey around. This local market (we were the only tourists there that day) sells all sorts of things from food to clothes, shoes and mobile phones. We bought a giant, fresh coconut each which the lady tipped into a plastic bag each (with a straw) and added some fresh coconut flesh to each one – supper yummy but super filling because the coconuts were the biggest I’d ever seen. Between us we also bought some textiles, cooking utensils, some natural cotton thread and some stationery.

We also cycled to Wat Xieng Thong temple, which is one of the most important in Laos. When we visited many monks were working to replace the gold leaf that decorates the exterior of the main temple.

Monk applying gold leaf to the temple

After a coffee and cake stop (the coffee in Loas in amazing) we headed up to Wat Chom Si, which is another important temple that sits upon a hill (Phou Si) in the centre of town so you get an amazing view from the top, especially as the sun starts to set. We also saw something that was supposed to be Buddha’s footprint (it was a big gold blob), more golden Buddha’s and a creepy temple inside a small cave.

Throughout our stay we had lots of yummy local food (mainly noodle soup), lots of Laos iced coffee, lots of fresh fruit shakes (with varying amounts of sugar), I had a peanut butter and nutella shake one night and we also consumed our fair share of the famous Beer Lao (the national beer, which is good and cheap).

On top of the world in Luang Prabang

We also checked out the typical travellers bar called Utopia (which has a lovely riverside setting and chilled atmosphere) and also ended up going to the famous bowling alley, which is the only place to go if you want to drink after 11pm. Basically, everyone piles into overcrowded tuk tuks outside Utopia and then you are driven to an american style bowling alley a few kilometres out of town. This place is completely surreal because it’s only full of travellers and it looks like any bowling alley in the world. Of course the main attraction is that bowling is cheap and you can buy drinks until late. As it was nearly Beck’s birthday (and going bowling on her birthday is a bit of a tradition) it seemed only fair that Becky beat all of us at bowling, including a cocky American guy who was trying to give Maria bowling tips. Go Becky! Getting back from bowling was easy because the tuk tuk drivers wait outside for you and we shared one back with a bunch of British teenagers (the least fun part of the evening).

Supposedly Buddha's footprint...

Scary temple in a cave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our other main trip was to the beautiful Kuang Si waterfalls about 30km out of town. We hired a tuk tuk to take us there and back and the journey took us through some amazing landscape and winding roads. The waterfalls were in a beautiful forest setting where you could swim in several pools. Someone had even set up a rope swing that I think Becky might regret not jumping from for the rest of her life!

Also in the grounds of the forest was a small bear sanctuary where they cared for bears that had been rescued from people who kept them as pets of mistreated them. As it was the middle of the day, the bears were quite sleepy and mainly lounging around.

Anoushca jumping into the waterfall pool

After a lovely few days in Luang Prabang we booked what we thought was an A/C bus to Vang Vieng that turned out to be the local bus… more about that in the next post. As the bus left early, we were up early enough to see the monks walking the streets to collect their alms from the locals. This was a real treat because we saw the monks away from the touristy part of town (it’s a tourist attraction to get up early to see the monks each morning).

Monks collecting alms

Monks collecting alms

Late night bowling

Rebecca was a millionaire for a day

Beer Lao

 

Pai (Thailand) to Luang Prabang (Laos) by road and the slow boat

Putting our luggage on the tuk tuk to go to the boat office

Funny sign in a shop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, I thought that travelling in Bolivia by bus was a bit of an adventure but I hadn’t reckoned on the roads in northern Thailand and Laos!  Our adventure to Laos started with the 8pm mini-bus from Pai that basically took us almost back to Chiang Mai (where we’d been before Pai) via the road with a million curves up and down mountains.  Even in an AC min-van it was impossible to sleep as our driver drove Michael Schumacher style around each corner (I was sat behind him and I saw him physically lean into every bend!).  We had a couple of toilet/snack stops at some 7/11 in the middle of nowhere before finally arriving at the guest house in Chiang Khong at 3.30am (instead of 2am).  The thought of having to get up again at 7am was not appealing but we needed to do that to cross the border to Laos and catch the slow boat to Luang Prabang.

Slow boat - day 1

We’d booked the bus and boat separately, rather than booking a bus and boat package from Pai.  Turned out this didn’t actually save us any money as planned and worked out exactly the same cost, oh well.  After exiting Thai immigration we crossed the river (which I guess is the Mekong?) to Laos immigration.  We filled in a couple of forms, attached a passport photo, paid our US$35 and had our Laos visas within 15 minutes (a proper full-page sticker visa, not just a stamp).  Then there was lots of hanging around for the boat to leave.  This gave us time to buy sandwiches (for some reason they sell baguette style sandwiches everywhere in Laos – probably for tourists but also a lasting influence from French colonial times) and marvel at the snake whisky on sale – yes, bottle os whisky with a snake and some herbs inside which is supposed to make men strong (whatever??!!).

Of course the boat didn’t actually leave at 10.30 and I think we actually got on our way about 12.30 but not before the boat was overloaded with tourists and local people.  We were all supposed to have allocated seats but this turned out to be a bit of a joke as people who paid the same as us for a seat ended up in the back engine room with one small window, sat on top of their bags and whatever else.  As you might imagine, these were the people who got off the boat after two days saying it was the worst two days of their lives.  We were lucky enough to bag a car seat each (yes, they literally had pairs of car seat placed in rows down each side of the boat that were not even fixed in) and our big bags were stowed in the hull of the boat.

Village by the river

The trip down the Mekong River was pretty amazing, even with all the smog you could make out the hills and mountains as we passed by.  We also passed by lots of small villages and picked up people and their luggage (including their motorbikes) and saw people going about their daily lives in and along the river – washing, fishing, sifting stuff (still don’t know what) and zipping up and down in little motorized boats.  It was obvious that people lived a subsistence life and the villages we passed looked pretty basic in terms of housing and facilities.

 

 

 

 

So how did we pass two days on the boat?  Well it was a combination of sleeping, watching the scenery, eating snacks, drinking beer, chatting with fellow passengers, braiding each others hair (apart from mine), making hemp bracelets and hair wraps (yes, I’ve become a handicraft hippie), taking silly photos, reading, listening to music and generally watching the world go by.

Beautiful sunset - day 1

The boat stopped for the night in Pakbeng where we were enthusiastically greeted by the guest house touts.  We accepted a lift on the back of a truck to one guest house and after a quick look around, agreed to take two twin rooms for 100 baht pp/pn, after all we were only here for one night.  After a delicious Indian meal (although Rebecca was a bit taken aback by the fact her curry had banana in it) we crashed early after not getting much sleep the night before.

Everyone learnt their lesson from the first day and got to the boat much earlier than the 9am departure time to grab a decent seat.  I felt sorry for the guy who’s girlfriend had slept in because they got their late and had to sit in the engine room again for the whole day (the second day is longer with a journey time of about 9 hours).  We got the last seats at the back of the open part of the boat, next to the toilets, engine and snack bar (selling crisps and beer).  I was very glad to have my ear plugs!

We passed another day much the same as the last and with more stunning scenery.  It was made slightly more eventful though when the boat started to leak (or something) and the boat lady (she seemed to be in charge) ran up to the boat driver and we had to turn of the engine and float to the shore and wait a bit.  With the water levels so low at this time of year it was easy to see how the boat could get damaged scraping on the rocks of the river.  Becky said they fixed the problem with a rag and a couple of knives and we were soon on our way again.

Enjoying the best things in life - Beer Laos and seaweed flavoured crisps

We were very grateful to eventually get off the boat in Luang Prabang.  Again we were greeted by a bunch of guest house touts and by luck more than anything we ended up in a nice little guest house about 15 minutes walk to the night market in a nice and quiet part of town.  Obviously we were lucky with our experience because we heard so many bad stories about the boat and the people who paid the same as us and had to sit in the engine room obviously got a bad deal.  That said, it was a great adventure and a wonderful way to reach a new country where the local beer (Beer Laos) is better and cheaper than Chang beer in Thailand.

Anoushka braiding Rebecca's hair

Snake whisky

Maria (with new hair braid), Ivan (from Argentine who we met at Laos immigration) and Anoushka

Beautiful sunset - day 2

Pai

Beautiful view across the river in Pai (you can't really see the mountains because of the smog from the burning of the rice fields)

Typical Pai art

Well, what to say about Pai?  It’s a small town in the Mae Hong Son Province in northern Thailand near the Myanmar (Burma) border.  It’s about 80km north of Chiang Mai and the road has more than 700 curves on it.  The Lonely Planet calls it the Khao San Road of northern Thailand and in terms of the number of backpackers and hippies you can see how it got that name.  Pai is a super chilled out place that is like a mini-paradise (if you are a backpacker or hippie or just want to chill out for a few days).  You can rent a riverside bungalow for £3 a night, there are lots of bars and chilled out places to go at night, cheap and delicious food, and a night street market.  There are also hardly any cars so everyone zips around on mopeds or bicycles, or you can walk around the town centre because it is really small.

We spent the weekend here doing a little bit of sightseeing and chilling out before our epic bus and boat journey to Laos.  As there were four of us (me, Rebecca, Maria (from Peru) and Josephina (from Chile)) going sightseeing so it worked out cheaper to hire a taxi for half a day to visit the Chinese village, temple and waterfall that are all just outside of town.  We thought our driver was quite funny until he asked us if we liked whisky and asked Maria if she wanted to go for a walk around Pai for 10-20 minutes that night.  When he asked how old I was I said that I was an old woman and he replied ‘I know’ – thanks very much!

The Chinese village was a bit odd because it is sort of in the middle of nowhere and kind of looks like a deserted Disney land version of some Chinese style buildings.  We played on the Chinese swing, walked around the castle/temple, ate some Chinese food before heading off to the waterfall.

As it’s the end of the dry season the waterfall was lovely but you could tell the water levels were low.  There were lots of Thai kids and teenagers splashing about and sliding down the rocks into the small pools at the bottom.  I’d read that Thai people are quite modest and go swimming in their clothes, and it’s true because everyone was swimming in shorts and t-shirts.  It was so refreshing to swim in the waterfall as it was such a hot day.  Of course I managed to slip on a slippery rock on the way out and fell flat on my bum and got my clothes all wet!

The castle/temple at the Chinese village

Crazy swing at the Chinese village

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ate lots of super yummy food including new types of curry, more fruit shakes, more roti (this time banana, cheese slice and nutella – yum!) and also tried traditional Thai iced coffee.    We had to take a photograph of the ingredients because it’s super delicious despite the inclusion of margarine!

At the waterfall (me and Rebecca doing our best to look as super-white as possible next to the South American chicas)

We also did a lot of hanging out at our riverside bungalow and in the bamboo common area.  Josephina was a newly trained yoga teacher so I took my first yoga class in Spanish on the riverbank – bliss!  Our other yoga spot was on the grass under the papaya tree next to our bungalow.

The night market had a lot of hand-made products by local artists and designers, and there’s definitely a ‘Pai aesthetic’ to the products and souvenirs on sale.  We met an artist/writer called Moon Tree who made the most beautiful hand illustrated postcards and sold them on a blanket at the side of the road.

On our last day we went to a swimming pool/bar to hang out (some more) and escape the heat for a bit before taking the evening bus to the border with Laos.

Recipe for traditional Thai iced coffee

Taking silly photos...

Funny beauty salon

Me and Anoushka on the rickety bride across the river

 

 

Chiang Mai

The best fruit salad and fruit smoothies in Chiang Mai

We all stayed at Little Bird Guesthouse in Chiang Mai, which was super chilled and cheap.  The bonus was that it was right next to a little food market that had several fruit smoothie and iced coffee stalls.  There was one very sweet lady that sold the best fruit salad with muesli and yoghurt and my favourite iced coffee made with fresh coconut milk and a dash of cinnamon.  It was also opposite a laundry service so you (and everyone else and their dog) could see your clothes and undies hanging out to dry.

On our first day me and Becky headed off to do a walking trail and visit the main temples but we only got as far as the Chiang Mai Arts and Cultural Centre down the road.  The museum gave a good overview of the history of Chiang Mai but all of the interactives didn’t work and there were some dodgy mannequins in the street scene you could walk through.  Just before leaving the museum we discovered they had a free Thai painting class where you could learn how to paint flowers, birds and butterflies that are typically painted in umbrellas and fans.  Despite 3 years at art school I have to say my efforts looked like a five-year old’s but my butterfly wasn’t too bad.  Becky’s paintings were much better so maybe that’s why she’s a silversmith and I work in a museum with other people’s artistic creations!  It was super relaxing and a lot of fun though and the lovely Thai teacher had a little girl who also painted with us.  We also met an Irish girl there who invited us to a St Patrick’s Day party at the Irish bar near our hostel.

Painting class

My painting efforts

I don’t think I’ve ever celebrated St Patrick’s Day before but it seemed like a fun thing to do when you’re not in your own country and we also met some great people.  After the Irish bar we gate crashed the end of karaoke at bar Loco Elvis and me and Maria belted out a bad version of Bohemian Rhapsody with some random people before we headed back to the hostel.

The next day we managed to visit the main temples in Chiang Mai and were lucky enough to see some apprentice monks chanting and also go to a Monk Chat.  Monk Chats have been set up at some temples in Thailand (mainly Bangkok and Chiang Mai) so that foreigners can ask the monks questions about their daily routines, Buddhism etc. and the monks get to practice speaking English, so it’s meant to be something of an exchange.  The monk we spoke to was a bit too cool for school but we did find out that you can be a monk for any length of time (not sure if this is actually true – could you be a monk for a couple of days?).  Another monk also started talking to us but he was a bit mad (talking about snakes) and a bit creepy, so we decided to leave.  Only afterwards did we think of more questions, such as ‘can monks have mobile phones?’ (I saw one visiting a temple with his iPhone 4!!!).

The same temple had a garden filled with Buddhist(?) quotes fixed to trees.  Me and Rebecca got our fill of advice and took loads of photos.

Novice monks at the temple

 

Lots of advice...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We went to the women’s prison (twice) for a traditional Thai massage.  For anyone that hasn’t had a Thai massage you have the massage fully clothed (in nice Thai cotton clothes) and it’s kind of a mix between lazy man’s yoga and acupressure.  It can also hurt a bit but you feel amazing after all that stretching.  When I say we went to the prison, we actually went to the prison shop across the road where they have a space for massage as part of the prisoner’s occupational training programme.  You can see Karl Pilkington’s visit to the women’s prison here and find out more about the reasons behind the programme here.

Riding elephants

Walking in the National Park

We also did two days of trekking in the Doi Inthanon National Park close to Chiang Mai with Maria (from Peru), a couple from Canada, three girls from Argentina, a couple and a guy from France, a guy from Israel and a French woman who lived in London.  Our first stop was the elephant camp where we took a ride on an elephant.  Rebecca and I had serious reservations about this beforehand and quickly knew once we got on the elephant that we were not too happy about how the elephants were treated and vowed not to do any more animal related activities on this holiday.  In the afternoon we trekked to a waterfall where we could swim and then on to our village camp for the night.  The landscape of the national park is quite hilly and the landscape very dry because we are in Thailand at the end of the dry season.  We also saw where the fields and land has been burnt, supposedly to regenerate the land for new crops.  In reality though the burning of the land creates smoke and pollution that means, at this time of year, the sky around Chiang Mai and northern Thailand is always cloudy and you can really feel the pollution in the air.

We stayed in lovely traditional wooden hut next to a hillside village for the night.  The guides organised for the children from the village to come and sing songs for us around a camp fire and in exchange we each had to sing a song from our country.  Our combined effort with the Canadian couple was pretty poor (we sang In The Jungle) but we had fun.

The second day of our trek took us back through the hills of the national park to another waterfall for swimming before we went bamboo rafting.  This was similar in style to the rafting I did in Madidi National Park in Bolivia and of course we all fell in the river at one point.  I got to have another go at navigating and even managed to steer us safely through some small rapids.  As we got to the end of the river we passed lots of riverside bamboo huts, which were full of Thai people eating and drinking around small tables.  There was even a basket pulley system in place for sending food and beer across the river.  The Thai children had a lot of fun splashing water at us as we passed by.

Wat Doi Suthep

After we got back to Chiang Mai we headed out for some drinks at the bicycle cocktail bar (where Becky sat chatting to a lady-boy without realising, much to our amusement) before going on to some other bars to dance the night away to international backpacker hits such as Danza Kuduro and Super Bass.

Of course, we also filled our days eating yummy Thai street food, drinking fruit smoothies and iced coffees and visiting the day and night markets.  After some shopping I had to post a box home, which was much less eventful that posting anything from South America because the post office was calm and organised (and run by a lady-boy).

Once we’d had our fill in Chiang Mai we decided to head to Pai, which we’d heard was a nice chill-out place and was sort of on our route further north to the border with Laos.  We took a small air-conditioned mini bus that took us up and over the super windy and hilly roads.  I don’t get travel sick and even I was feeling a bit rough by the time we got out of the bus 4 hours later in Pai.

Cute little garden at Wat Doi Suthep

Unusual silver temple with gold interior (women were not allowed in)

Me airing my once dirty but now clean laundry in public

 

Bangkok (Thailand)

First street food - green papaya salad - yummy and spicy!

After my flight was delayed leaving Sydney I ended up arriving in Bangkok in the early hours of the morning.  Fortunately, getting a taxi wasn’t any hassle (or a rip-off) and I got to the Smile Society hostel ok (what a cute name for a hostel).

Rebecca also arrived without any trouble (and with a little help from a lovely Thai person) and it was so great to see a friendly and familiar face again.  I was immediately laughing at all of Rebecca’s jokes and sarcastic comments and I could tell we were going to have a fun time in Thailand!

Coolest bag ever!

The same day we met Anoushka (from Jamaica) in the same dorm room and all headed out to the weekend market.  Going shopping on the first day of the trip probably wasn’t the smartest idea but the market was a lot of fun!  It was HUGE sold everything but mainly clothes and accessories for ridiculously cheap prices.  I dived straight into eating some street food to test my stomach of steel and had a green papaya salad and vegetable spring rolls, later washed down with a fresh coconut – yum!  For dessert we shared a typical roti, which is a pancake with egg and banana in the middle with condensed milk poured over the top – also yum!

First fresh coconut with Anoushka and Becky

After the market we found a little street bar and enjoyed some beers and good music (mainly Belle & Sebastian) and made friends with a Thai lady called Jenny and her friend Wai.  To get out of the bar we had to climb over the market gates and then we went to the Saxophone Bar to see some live blues and jazz music.  It was a pretty fun and crazy start to our trip and it was great to meet some lovely Thai people, even though Jenny told us not to trust Thai people every five minutes (s0 why we trusted her is anyone’s guess?!).

We spent the next few days in Bangkok visiting temples, the grand palace, the famous Kao San road, getting a foot massage, going to more markets and taking a cooking class.

Me and Becky spent half a day at May Kaidee Vegetarian Cooking School learning how to make various typical Thai dishes.  First we went to the market to buy ingredients, to taste some street food and to see how the rice paper rolls are made.  Our cooking teacher Ms Om was super enthusiastic and energetic so we had a lot of fun singing, dancing and taking photos while we were cooking and eating.  The food was super delicious and I realised that the right, fresh ingredients are the key because the actual cooking part was quick and easy for each dish.

Miss On our cookery teacher

Cooking Thai food with Miss On

Me and Becky also went to Monk Bowl Village to see traditional alms bowls for the temples being made.  These bowls are typically machine spun these days and only a few families in this neighbourhood in Bangkok are making them by hand.  It was a treat to see the bowls being made but the families live in relative poverty, which is why the Bangkok municipality is trying to encourage tourists to visit this area and buy the handmade bowls.  We bought a couple of bowls but not after much hilarity when I tried to explain that I needed to use a toilet to get my money to pay (my money was in my money belt under my dress, so I couldn’t get to it without lifting up my dress to waist height).  They thought I needed to go to an ATM so a lady got some keys and indicated for me to hop on the back of the scooter with her (no helmet, of course) and it was only after we drove off and I asked again about the toilet that she realised the misunderstanding.  Of course, everyone thought this was hilarious, me included, so we all had a good laugh and I got to use the toilet inside someone’s home.

We visited a various temples and the grand palace and I’ve never seen so much gold, gold leaf and gold paint in my entire life!  At Wat Pho we made a donation and wrote a message on a tile that would be later placed on the new roof of the temple.  We also saw loads of buddhas (mainly gold but also some emerald) and enjoyed the peace and quiet as we sat in the main temple spaces, which are all still active temples today.

The bar in the market

Our next stop was Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand so we decided to catch the overnight train.  We  managed to get beds in the second class sleeper carriage (no air-con but fans and windows that opened).  It might have been the pale green interior but Becky decided that the train looked like a prison train and took the bottom bunk with the window and I got the top bunk.  I’ve never taken a sleeper train before but this one was pretty cool, I thought.  Miraculously the train left 5 minutes early but this gave us false hope because we arrived the next day in Chiang Mai about 3.5 hours later than schedule.  It didn’t matter though because we passed the time enjoying the view as the train passed through lush green scenery and little towns.

You can see more photos on my Flickr page here.

Street vendors on Kao San Road

Tuk tuk driver - for once not asking 'where you want to go?'

Giant reclining buddha

Lots of beautiful gold buddhas

Grand Palace Bangkok

Australia (Sydney and Melbourne)

Being in Australia was kind of my holiday from the holiday and because of that I did mainly ‘normal’ things (and having a routine) like going to yoga, cooking, hanging out with friends, going to gigs rather than sightseeing.  I also drank a LOT of coffee…

So I decide that I’ll do an Australia page for my blog that will mainly be recommendations of places to eat or drink in Melbourne plus a post about our Great Ocean Road road trip in the camper van.

That means I can then get on with writing about and posting picture of my adventures in South East Asia, which might be fractionally more interesting than where I drank coffee (though there will be no shortage of food and drink photos from Sout East Asia…).

Here’s Jackie’s blog entry for Cordoba with some lovely pictures of the Jesuit Block that I didn’t visit, and also some nicer photos (and info) about Alta Gracia…

Jackie's mid life crisis gap year

I took another very comfortable and well-catered night bus from Buenos Aires to Cordoba. When dinner was served, I declined the offered Coca Cola (on the grounds that to me it tastes like the Devil’s cough medicine) and was offered red wine instead – result! The journey was shorter than I expected and we arrived at 6am, which seemed a bit too early to be turning up at my booked hostel. So I dozed in the bus station for a couple of hours only to find that there was an hour-long queue for a taxi when I finally decided to make my move.

The Jesuit block is a group of late seventeenth century buildings comprising the church and brothers’ accommodation plus the teaching buildings that were central to the Jesuit’s mission – now a school and university. The church has terrific a Baroque pulpit and altar and a semi-circular vaulted wooden roof that…

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