Another two trees in the ground!

Once again we are planting two in one country – one for Cambodia and one for Thailand.
Why not Cambodia in Cambodia? Well you see, we only stayed in Cambodia for about 48 hours, barely enough to see the Siem Reap complex and have a good night’s sleep.
But we entered the country so we can’t really cop out on planting a tree can we?

Location: *L* Koh Lanta Island. About 100 miles South of Phuket in the Andaman Sea, Koh Lanta is – as we found out – a real jewel where time runs slow and days are spent enjoying the subtler things in life: resting, eating, drinking, swimming and watching beautiful sunsets.

After nearly three weeks in Thailand we found a little nursery here and decided it’s time to get our hands dirty again. As far as we could gather from the staff at the nursery, we bought a Muang tree and a Lucky Plant or Pusetii which has white flowers. Well as far as I’m concerned, as long as it grows it can be called what it likes!

On our hired scooter, we set off on a reconnaissance around the island, two trees and a large digging implement in hand, search of planting ground.

Tree number one was planted on the South East of the island, on the road side about twenty metres before the Panorama Restaurant. This is a nice isolated little place where people stop by on their scooters to come relax and dine whilst taking in the beautiful view of “Homer Simpson?!” Island and the stretch of sea between them.

Jack the owner is a really friendly chap who believes in making people feel really at ease in his little place and he was even kind enough to offer to take care of our tree for us and put up a little plaque by it so it can be identified when we return in years to come. Thank you Jack!

The second tree found a home a few minutes drive further South. Where the road ends there is a school named Sang Ga U School, where we found a lonely looking patch in need of some vegetation.

There were a few children around, playing in the school grounds, but it must have been a holiday because there didn’t seem to be any other activity at the school.

Once we started planting however, more of them started appearing and soon enough we had a proper little audience. The ground was hard and as I struggled to dig up the ground it started raining, which the children found very funny indeed. However despite getting me soaking wet, it was helpful in softening the ground for me.

Tree firmly in the ground, we waved our goodbyes and set off to a small beach-side bar for a refresher. Ebru, walking in with a large pick-like tool in her hand, looked like she’d just walked off a murder scene. LOL

That’s Six and Seven done! How many more to go? I wonder…

Grow little ones, grow!

Planting Around the World Mission, Koh Lanta Island – Ağaç dikme operasyonu, Koh Lanta Adası

SEE MORE PHOTOS… – DAHA FAZLA FOTO BURADA…

Word on the street is that Koh Lanta dances to a different tune, that things are more quiet and laid back there. Personally I feel I’ve heard this all before and as far as I’m concerned, if it’s in Thailand and you’ve heard of it, consider it crowded and expensive. I’m considering not renewing our Thai visas and heading straight to Indonesia in search of pastures greener. None the less, Lanta is a natural stop on our way and we go to check it out.

The place immediately radiates a calmer feel and as we head down south to Khlong Nin beach, vegetation mass exceeds building mass and crowds are nowhere to be seen. After examining every beach-front accommodation in the area without satisfaction, we find a lovely, clean, spacious room at the Lanta Ala guest house in the village centre, just two minutes walk from the beach for 600THB. There’s a fridge, a TV with DVD player but no antenna and an AC in the room. The family running the place is really nice, very smiley and cheerful. They offer to lend us DVDs as well but we spend so little time indoors we don’t take advantage. They have a little baby which is really cute but cries every time it sees me – I wonder why…

Over on the beach front we find our comfort zone at Jai Dee Home (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jai-dee-home/184037684996020?sk=wall), a guest house / restaurant / chill out pad run by an Irish chap, James, and his Thai wife. James is a drum roadie, who tunes drum kits for bands on tour and he’s worked with some pretty impressive names – Prodigy and Faithless to name a couple –  there’s event passes and signed drumsticks littering the bar area. The food here is lush: lovely big breakfasts and the tastiest burgers

(did I mention I’m going through a little western food phase?)

They’ve got WIFI and we’ve got laptops (one each) and we settle in in the morning, eat breakfast, work on our overdue blog/email updates, and go for refreshing dips in the sea.

The island is pretty large so there are many other beaches to explore (which we intend to do) and here and there there’s posters announcing one or another party taking place in the jungle or elsewhere, so it’s unlikely to get boring anytime soon. Ok, it’s not the stunning brochure-island with white powder beaches and limestone cliffs jutting out of the turquoise sea; but the beach is large and though most accommodations here are near full, there is plenty of space for everyone. (Besides, when I see those powder beaches littered with beer bottles and plastic cups I’d sooner just visit them only in my mind).

We rent a scooter for a few days (160THB/day) and scoot around. There’s a really interesting guest house right on the South side, completely secluded, with a little beach all to itself and rooms in tree houses high up in the trees. Also on the SouthEast side there’s the Panorama cafe, which is a relaxing little place with a view of the sea and islands, where you can kick back and enjoy some good food or drink.

It’s run by a guy named Jack who, I gather, used to work in the IT industry in Bangkok and then decided to make an exit from the fast lane and live island style down here. This is also the location where we plant some TREES for our Planting Around the World mission!

On Christmas day we have a BBQ feast on the beach at the place next door to Jai Dee’s, called Richies: for 240THB I get a meaty rack of pork ribs with a baked potato and for 290THB Ebru feasts herself on a large Red Snapper with the same side. Bamboo table on the beach, paraffin candle – how romantic! After that we settle in at Jai Dee for some whiskies and conversation with James as we watch fireworks and sky lanterns rising up into dark space.

Easy to feel at home here; and we decide that, since our most convenient VISA sun will be South to Malaysia anyway, we’ll head straight back here after the visa run to Malaysia and live in the slow lane until after new year. RESULT!

The lazy days go on and we’re loving it.

We pay the Blue Moon Bar a visit. A couple of English chaps we met on Phi Phi actually recommended it to us. Gang, the owner, started this bar in another location on this beach about 20 years ago when it was still a mere bamboo hut with hippy visitors coming around from far flung places carrying guitars, bushy beards and such. Gang is a pro and knows exactly how to run a chill-out bar. The music is excellent and plays non stop – sometimes quieter, never too loud. Nothing is ever a problem (as long it generates good vibes). And nothing is associated with a time limit – not the time you spend lounging at Blue Moon nor the time it takes to get a drink. Gang acknowledges orders and gets to them when he is ready; or when he remembers maybe… but in a place where time is not of any consequence this matters little.

As host he blends in with the atmosphere like well camouflaged commando trouper. And he’s always doing something: either clearing tables or preparing drinks, taking orders, engaging with guests, combing the beach or adding to the decor around the place to make it more functional or pleasant. Another welcome highlight here is that he has a pizza oven and he and his kitchen staff make a good pizza with freshly made dough – always a winner – and not extortionately priced!

New year’s eve arrives!

We decide on the BBQ ribs & fish option at Richie’s, where we share a large table with a few Germans. They, like us, have planned ahead and brought a stash of SangSom with them, so along with what we order we’re sipping away at the rum with great delight and soon enough are merry as can be. After dinner we move on to Otto’s, one of the larger beach-front venues down here. Otto’s is having a beach party tonight and they seem to be the only ones as that’s the place where the crowd and the loud music are. Otto must be a wealthy man, I think. There’s this bar/restaurant/guesthouse and there’s a travel agent and I’m sure I saw one or two other businesses on the island, all bearing this name. The travel agency is good, we book our Visa Run and Hat Yai trips through them and the staff is very reliable.

The party goes on, the clock strikes twelve (I wonder who decided that though as I don’t recall speaking to anyone with a reliable source of time), fireworks explode and hundreds of sky lanterns rise up into the air, drawing new constellations across the night sky with their yellow shimmer. Beautiful! At some point I go to the bar to get a drink and I meet Otto – or at least so I’m told by the Kiwi next to me. He’s a long-haired Thai, probably in his forties, sitting (seemingly alone) in the corner, the last stool at the bar, drinking away as the crowd heaves back and forth around the bar to the music. Not many words are exchanged – we’re both drunk enough to be able to rely on understanding rather than communication I guess.

Eventually we leave for home via the Blue Moon Bar, Gang is still there with one or two others at the bar but there’s little going on otherwise. Ebru’s not up for it, so I drop her off at the guest house and go back to show my support. Ebru loves me greatly for this. When I get back there it’s only me and Gang, so we kick back for one final beer and have a good chat about this and that. He prepares a good Pizza, we play a round of drunken Ping Pong and we decide to call it a night.

Happy new year 2012 everybody!

Lanta has turned out to be Thailand’s paradise island for us, no doubt about it. Even in the main season we found escape from the crowds and a beautiful environment to just kick back and take it easy. Lanta and all its excellent hosts we will miss you!

Nothing to it! To avoid the hassle of arranging transport ourselves and changing at various waypoints, we paid the extra (total 1200THB/pp return) for a travel agent in Koh Lanta (Otto’s was pretty professional) to arrange a direct minibus for the exercise.

Literally, we got picked up at the  guest house at 7AM, drove for about 5 hours to the Thai-Malay border and did the exit and re-entry there.

No fees were involved. We had our departure card in our passports from when we arrived, got our exit stamp. Then we walked over to the Malaysia border post, filled out an arrival/departure card, got our entry visa and stamp, did a U-turn to the other side of the building, got the exit stamp and walked back to the Thai side. On the Thai side we prepared another Thai arrival/departure card, got the entry stamp and walked back to the bus to return to Koh Lanta.

Driving aside, the whole procedure took about an hour and a half, but this was mostly because of waiting in a queue of about 30 people at the Malay entry point.

Happy visa running!

We get off the Koh Tao – Surat Thani night ferry and get tuk-tuk-ed away to a travel agency where we wait for a minivan to Krabi. I expect the main Raylei or Au Nang beaches to be pretty overrun, but we hope to find a beach further North, not too main-stream, where we can take it easy. While we wait we chat to another English chap we met on the tuk tuk on KohTao, and according to what he tells us, it sounds like Koh Phi Phi is the place we want to be: beautiful, remote, cheap and not too overrun. We scrap the idea of Krabi’s mainland beaches and are soon on the West coast, boarding a ferry to Phi Phi Don island.

The journey there is beautiful, the sea is blue, we see big fish jumping out of the water in the distance. Phi Phi itself looks spectacular as we approach it. Palm jungle topped cliffs, smooth yellow beaches; however minutes after we disembark and start our search for accommodation our hearts begin to sink: the place is like a termite mound, full of termites from Sweden, South Africa, England, Germany, Russia – it’s heaving! Most of the accommodation is full. The vast majority of budget accommodation (we have a look at just about every place in the backpacker area and a few in the town centre) is shabby, unclean, yet quite expensive (700THB+) and anything on the decent side of the scale sets you back 1500THB or more. The attitude of the guest house- and market stall owners is pushy and grumpy. Screw this for a holiday…

Aside from some luxury resorts scattered around the island (accessible by boat), saddled between the two rocky mounds there is one low-lying, inhabited strip of land, probably about 1km long, 100m wide, with a beach and bay on either side: Long beach on the South, Party beach on the North. Long beach is not too impressive but more quiet, although the entire bay is littered with boats. Party beach is beautiful but come 6PM you need ear muffs if you don’t want to damage your hearing. The music from these beach-front clubs is turned so loud that you cannot escape it. Even on the furthest opposite side of the strip where we stay, shielded by buildings and trees, we hear the booming through the night – like camping at Glastonbury festival.

We stay in the best location on the island as far as we’re concerned. It’s as far away from the commotion as you can get, behind the staff housing. A lady named Deng rents out a few bamboo bungalows there, clean and we get it at only 600THB per night (though we know prices went up to 800THB closer to Xmas). You do still hear the noise from Party Beach and the generator house is nearby, so you hear that running all night, but I think it’s the best you can get for the budget. Also Deng is really helpful and she lets us padlock our valuables in a rucksack and store it at her house for safekeeping during the day.

50 metres down the path at the beach front there’s a guy named Suleiman – he says he is Muslim but you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s perhaps Muslim-Rastafarian. He runs a little beach-bar-restaurant, very simple and away from it all. He originates from Phi Phi, from a fisherman family and he prepares set menus from the daily catch, authentic island style. Also he rents kayaks at a very reasonable rate (600THB/day), does fishing trips and is very helpful and accommodating.

We find what looks to us to be the most professional PADI dive centre (named Barakkuda) and enroll for our AOW (Advanced Open Water). We get new manuals and everything and they go about the knowledge reviews quite diligently. Our first day entails the deep- and navigation dives. Deep dive goes fine, we do some exercises at 30m and I find I am getting narc’ed at about 25m, which is quite an interesting experience. After that back to the boat for lunch (included) and off we go to the next dive site for the navigation dive. The navigation dive goes down the pan because we end up in a current which sweeps us way off course and we have to can the exercises and just treat it as a fun dive.

Back at the ranch, we arrange with the instructor to complete the exercises in shallow water in the afternoon as we’ve missed out and off we go to get some rest. At this point I start feeling really exhausted. I take a nap in the shade but don’t feel any better thereafter so we go back to the dive shop to tell the instructor we can’t do the afternoon and ask his advice about my condition. His response is to the effect, “if you’re not feeling itchy or numb you’re fine… so do you want to dive tomorrow?” If you talk to someone about lice your head will feel itchy thinking about it, and as I was examining myself it was pretty hard to tell, so I waited a bit longer, resting in our bungalow and soon I was vomiting like a fire hydrant. Off we go to the island hospital!

We’re obviously concerned about the possibility of decompression illness from the dives, but soon enough the doctor and nurse establish that I have a bacterial infection (I think from the chicken sandwich) and a fever of about 38 degrees, and I spend the rest of the night on a saline and antibiotic drip. This I have to repeat the next two days, followed by four days of tablets. A bit of a bummer, but it’s better than DCI (DeCompression Illness) and the nurse and doctor at the hospital are really excellent.

The dive instructor seemed a bit of a numpty because despite the symptoms I was describing, all he appeared to be interested in was whether we’d be diving the next day. The owner, at least, is professional enough to show some concern about my condition and gives us a discount on the dives we’ve done and sorts out the paperwork needed to let these count toward our certification, to be completed at another PADI centre at a later date. Choose your dive centres carefully kids!

Our best experience on Phi Phi is on our last two days: We arrange with a local boatsman named Ren to pick us up at 6AM and whisk us off to Phi Phi Leh island, the little one further to the South of Phi Phi Don.

It’s only beginning to dawn when we set off and we watch the sun rise over the sea on our way. At Phi Phi Leh, we are the first to arrive at Maya Bay (now famous for featuring in the movie The Beach).

This place is an absolute dream! Our boat runs ashore amongst dense schools of baby fish which we at first mistake for oil slick, but as you walk through them they separate like a blob around you. We spend an hour snorkeling there in crystal clear indigo waters, among beautiful reef fish and even a few back tip sharks. It is absolutely gorgeous!

If you don’t go really early in the morning though, the place is overrun by dozens of tour boats coming from Phuket and all over the place.

Ren also shows us a few other bays and lagoons around the island, where we swim some more and we return home around 10AM. (The whole thing costs us 1300THB).

We then pick up supplies and bait at the market and rent a kayak from Suleiman for a couple of days. He includes a cooler box and dry bag free of charge and gives us loads of advice about where we can go, camp and find food or help if we need it.

We set off paddling around the island, swimming and fishing. It’s great. Unfortunately I only catch one reef fish of edible size though.

At sunset we paddle to the deserted Lana Bay beach and set up our tent and a fire for cooking. Although we set up tent well away from the water, we later realize the tide is incoming and we have to move the thing further up-beach in the dark! Just what we need in our fatigued state!

We were exhausted, but the roasted vegetables and fish go down a treat, washed down with a couple of Leo beers. Then we sit on the beach for a while, no one else in sight, nothing to hear but jungle noises and the splashing up of the sea. Glowing green Phosphorus is visible in the waves and lays washed up on the white sand and glow worms flicker in the bushes and trees behind us. How romantic! Just too bad we’re so exhausted!

The next morning we get up early, I get the fire going and as we start cooking breakfast the first tour boats arrive. By the time food is ready, tourists are pouring off, setting up on the beach for their hour of paradise and everyone is surprised to see us there… two hobos with camping gear eating eggs and drinking hot coffee.

A funny thing is when we’re leaving Phi Phi, we notice that a few places are all decorated with Xmas tinsel and things, and for the first time we realize that it’s Christmas TOMORROW! and have to laugh at the fact that we completely by-passed the at-least-month’s worth of Xmas advertising that we’d have been surrounded by back home.

In conclusion, it must be said that the Phi Phi islands are without a doubt some of the most beautiful islands off Thailand and there are a fair few activities there (climbing, fishing, walking, diving, kayaking etc). If you’ve got an ample budget and are up for a few days of party with some interesting excursions in-between this is probably a good place to go. However if you’re looking to avoid large [drunken] crowds and want to enjoy a place of natural beauty and be able to get away from the fray, Phi Phi is not it – UNLESS maybe you have the budget to put yourself up in one of the secluded luxury resorts on the other sides of the island.

It’s straight off the overnight train from Bangkok to Chumpon, on to a bus that takes us to the 7AM ferry leaving for Koh Tao island. We’ve been told along the way that Koh Tao is a great and also very cheap place for diving, so we have to check it out. We still want to complete our PADI Advanced Open Water certificate so we can experience deep dive sites as well, and if we can save ourselves a few bucks on that it means more diving for us along the way.

The ferry trip is great; it’s a huge high speed catamaran and the humungous engines churn out a jaw-dropping mush of bubbling water at the back. Occasionally you can see those little flying fish flap out of the waves behind us. The whole vessel is bouncing up and down as we get further out into sea; jokingly I look at Ebru and act a vomiting motion.

Ten minutes later she’s vomiting – along with about twenty other people on the boat. It’s quite strange, sitting on this huge machine, gaping at its awesome power cutting through the sea, and around you there’s a load of walking corpses hanging around. Like something from a zombie film.

Unfortunately our visions of tropical islands have been heavily rose-tinted from our amazing time at Boracay and there’s not many places that’ll compare favourably to that. Koh Tao definitely does not! We only look at the main area (after sitting down at a cafe for an hour to get Ebru back on her land-legs) and there’s plenty of dive shops but only about 45cm of beach… during low tide! There are plenty of pateos  built to overcome this problem but it’s not what we’re looking for.

Accommodation is not cheap! Most of the places are dive resorts where you buy a dive package with your room included but we want to check the place out first and decide on the right dive centre for us first. Most of the places are renting out their rooms for 1500THB upward! The cheapest place we find – the only cheap place – offers us a less than hygienic bungalow for 700THB. We meet an American couple and they tell us more affordable accommodation is available about 2km out of town, but even there we’re looking at around 700THB.

Diving courses are definitely comparatively cheap: The A.O.W. course here will cost between 8- and 9000THB, compared to the average 12000THB on Koh Phi Phi and 14000THB on Phuket. However when we speak to some dive centres we’re not inspired with confidence. They all boast good teacher-student ratios of 4:1 and promise varying degrees of felxibility around the schedule. However, the sheer numbers of divers they process per day (at one school it was about 150 according their instructor) is slightly worrying. The clientelle were mostly young travellers, probably gap year students and not too worried about the safety aspect.

Though the equipment in general did look well maintained and was taken to and from boats in tog-bags, I saw one of the long-boats returning to shore packed like a tin of sardines with divers and equipment. I had to wonder how, had anything gone wrong, would they have managed to lay down the casualty on that boat without leaving people behind – or would he/she have laid on people’s laps? I don’t know but unfortunately this doesn’t look like the kind of place I want to learn diving; perhaps I’m too paranoid but if the shit hits the fan down there I want to be as capable as I can.

Also a bit shady was the whole arrangement with PADI books and tables which you (in my experience) normally get as part of the course. Here it was a case of lending you the books and tables for the duration or watching the DVDs… sorry, but if I’m paying to do a PADI certificate I want to walk away with the book and all the dive tables I need to plan my future dives.

We spend the following day WIFI-ing for a new destination and decide to leave Koh Tao the same evening on the Surat Thani night ferry, destined for Krabi and it’s renowned Au Nang beach.

The night ferry from Koh Tao to Surat Thani is an experience of note! It leaves at about 9PM and arrives at 6AM so you spend all night at sea. The inside of the boat has two decks the upper barely tall enough to stand up in and the lower more suitable to crawling. There are no compartments; there is a gangway down the centre of each deck, to the left and right of which there are camping mattresses with “bed” numbers painted above the – one big bedroom for everybody!

I get talking to a couple of English chaps next to me, we play a few hands of cards and one of them goes to sleep. Then I pull out my secret formula (cannot believe no one else on the boat thought of this): a small bottle of Sang Som (Thai rum) and a litre of Coke. We head outside and sit near the bow of the ship, just Ebru, the Englishman and I, surrounded by a calm sea and a crisp, starry sky above us. While the rest of the boat is sleeping we’re chatting, drinking Rum-Coke and smoking cigarettes outside – absolutely beautiful! The only other commotion around is music and laughter from the roof of the boat, where the crew are apparently also travelling in style. I decide to sleep out there on the open deck that night and it’s a restful sleep – just like sleeping in the garden in Reading back ‘home’ (but not in winter).

A good sleep on the comfi overnight train from Chiang Mai and we wake up in Bangkok. Just in case anyone out there is thinking of taking this route, here’s a word of warning from the train company.

Not much time spent in Bangkok, only a few days, but what can I say? It’s a big city – impressively so! Be prepared for all the things that come part and parcel with traveling thru a big city. Pollution, traffic. Getting around takes time and money, tuk tuk and taxi drivers will attempt to charge three times the proper rate, and accommodation and food are relatively expensive too.

Though I must say that at no time day or night do I feel in any danger of being mugged or whatnot. (I think credit has to go to the Super Police.)

In the tourist district around Khaosan Road and that area there’s plenty to eat / drink / shop. Plenty of lights, night life and noise. 

If you want to do something nice, go to the river and hop on the ferry down to China Town. In the streets here you’ll be able to bargain on anything from fishing line to hair clips, sunglasses to the latest porn titles (sadly my laptop has no DVD drive so I can’t tell you much about that).

However the real hit is on one of the main roads called Thanon Yaowarat, a little further on from the White Orchid hotel. Here you’ll find several pavement restaurants, and one in particular we frequented was Lek & Rut Seafood – an absolute extravaganza for seafood lovers! 

Tom Yum shrimp soup (150THB): 

And last but not least, grilled shrimp straight off the charcoal BBQ only meters away (5 pieces 300THB !!!):  (I refrain from telling them what we’d call these “shrimps” back home as it might tempt them to hike their prices up a notch!)

A visit to the Emerald Buddha temple is a great day out.

Of course this story would not be complete without briefly discussing the question of the Ping Pong Effect: 

One night we ask some waiters for advice on where the action is and they recommend the Silom district, a few kilometres SouthEast of Khaosan. A lively place, full of bars and eateries, but mostly gogo bars, massage parlours and sex shows. Not knowing the best course of action Ebru steers us smack-bang into the middle of the gay district and we sit down at some bars for some beers. Good fun here I must say! Bit strange having the waiter blow kisses at me while I’m chatting to my wife but otherwise really good fun, and it seems the only place where they play a good variety of music and bars have a relaxed BAR atmosphere, unlike the more “lady-orientated” places. 

After that we move on and pop into a Ping Pong show – got to do it while we’re here no? Besides, I love Ping Pong! The tout outside the door tells us free entry and 150THB a beer; we confirm this with the mean mama at the counter inside and she agrees, so we order a couple of beers and sit down for the show. 

It’s not sexy, it’s not glamorous, it’s dark and seedy and the ladies aren’t exactly the pick of the crop either (skills aside) – those of them who are ladies, as half of them are clearly men with tits. Straight away some gals come over to greet us and move off again, leaving their rum-coke glasses on our table. Clearly suspicious so we move signal for the lady to take them away as we don’t want them. For the next half hour it’s all lubricated paint brushes and Ping Pong balls; nothing I could ever train my fella to do, so we get bored and decide to leave.

Mean mama at the payment counter has been tallying up and hands us the bill: 

2 x Beer 300THB
2 x Ping Pong Show 800THB
3 x Rum-Coke 2700THB
——————————
TOTAL: 3800THB! 

Of course we refuse to pay and as she threatens to call the mafia her girlfriend is straight on the cell phone appearing to make a call. How intimidating… We wave the 300 Baht in her face, turning for the door and she decides to snatch it before we head out and weave our way swiftly through the streets back to – you guessed it – the safe harbour of the gay district! Be assured that I’m not that way inclined, but if it’s going to be nights out in the smutty areas of Bangkok, this is the place for me (of course with my wife as a human shield). 

Aside from that what else to tell?

Worth mentioning is that we have managed to settle our ongoing shared-laptop woes with a day trip to Pantip Plaza, a massive PC / technology market on Petchaburi road. Now that I’m the proud owner of a little ASUS 1218, we argue less, we talk less and life is a bowl of cherries.
As Confuscius’ famously said: “Key to a happy marriage – make sure each have own laptop.” 

We have to leave Thailand in order to do a Visa Run to Cambodia, but then we return to Thailand and move Bangkok to the Southern islands. The night prior to our visa run we bump into Mikko, a Finn we met in Boracay a couple of months earlier. It’s a good excuse to celebrate and to Ebru’s dismay I don’t go to bed early but head out with Mikko and Bruno from Germany for a few drinks around Khaosan Road. Well, an innocent conversation over an innocent beer later and we’re off to a bar to do Tequila Suicides as a parting ritual…. two tequila suicides and a shared bucket of rum&coke later the Mexicans have firmly taken over the party and ensure that I have a nice, deep sleep all the way to Cambodia  the next day.
PS: Mikko if you’re reading this, we have to hook up so I can send you those videos somehow!  

One night we were fortunate enough to witness a beautiful lunar eclipse over the city.

Another night we get to ride on Bangkok’s fastest tuk tuk.

On our final evening in Bangkok, which happens to be the same evening we arrive at Bangkok returning from Cambodia, we get dropped off at the main train station, stash our bags at the left luggage counter and race straight off to Chinatown for our final Bangkok Shrimp and Tom Yum feast!

Washed down with a couple of Singhas, we’re satisfied to the teeth and board our night train for the islands in the South.

Bye bye Bangkok! 

Chiang Mai is not at all what I expected: it’s a large town, all built up, with traffic jams and all that comes with it. Despite that, it’s a nice place to be. Plenty of Wats (temples) to check out, loads of outdoor activities you can book yourself on and plenty of places to visit. It’s not cheap (if you’ve come from Lao), so we don’t buy into any organized tours.

We get a reasonable room in a guest house on the east side of the city wall.

Breakfast at the adjoining Morning Glory Cafe is excellent and the shop is managed by Mew, a really smiley, friendly young lady with the most mesmerizing eyes.

Look at that! Guaranteed to put the sunshine in your day!

We explore the town from there by scooter (just inside the east side walls an older chap at a wooden desk on the pavement rents scooters for only 100Baht/day!).

A day trip to Wat Doi Suthep is a worthwhile experience and comes with a lovely view over the whole city. We happen to be here just at the time of the King’s birthday so it’s a hive of activity, worshipers everywhere, children playing instruments, flowers all over the place – beautiful!

Also we bike about 20km North of town and visit an orchid nursery and an elephant show. Now there’s lots of comment out there about whether this elephant training is ethical or not (you’ll have to do your own research) and to be honest I don’t know, but the fact remains that we went there and it’s just amazing how well these animals are trained to do what they do (football, painting, darts etc), so I’m glad I went. At some point I turn my head and little Ebru’s standing in the arena playing darts with this huge elephant and it’s totally kicking her arse.

Nights are spent eating Thai food and drinking beer in nice little bars, my favourite being a reggae bar on the south side. And on the King’s birthday we happen to attend a Thai music concert in the centre square, which is nice, with lots of singers I’m sure Cherry would have loved to see and song she’d have understood.

There are a lot of meditation retreats in Chiang Mai. Ebru suggests that I go on one because I’m always so stressed out. Anyway one day we go and visit a few of the places and find out that Wat Suan Dok (http://www.monkchat.net) they do a two day meditation workshop every week and we book ourselves on it. It takes place at a camp about an hour out of town. We get there and everybody changes into the compulsory white clothes, and for the next 24 hours there’s no talking, only meditation exercises and some food/drink breaks. Initially when everybody comes out in their new pyjamas you have to laugh to yourself because it’s like you just stepped into a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The workshop is really interesting: informative about Buddhism and a good way to get started on Buddhist meditation techniques. The monk who’s running the classes is a great fellow; he just oozes calm and has a really nice way of explaining things. It’s barely enough to get a feel for the techniques and unless you’re already a meditator don’t expect to reach any deep states of rest. However as a taster it’s excellent and gives some idea of what you may expect when enrolling for a proper 10+ day Vipassana retreat.

On our final night, Steve at the reggae bar lets us in that there’s a festival – the “Smile Party” – going on at the lake outside town tonight and we snap up two tickets for ourselves. Glad we did! Free taxi shuttles there and back all night; it’s a small affair, only one stage, all reggae bands except one Thai lady who does the most fantastic Spanish/Latin music, and the music and vibe are awesome! We stay there, dancing and drinking til about 1AM, when the final live acts complete and the DJ takes over. I can’t wipe the smile off my face all night. Thank you Smile Party crew!

The following evening we’re on the night train to Bangkok, a wholly enjoyable and recommendable journey! The cost is around 500THB per person and it takes about12 hours. The facilities are simple but comfi enough. And the highlight is dinner and drinks in the buffet carriage, where some Thai ladies run a restaurant reminiscent of a strip club-cross-discotheque – all dim red haze with colourful blinky christmas lights all across the ceiling and various music playing on the jukebox. The food is good and we have a blast!