Things wot we did in Chiang Mai

I'm aware that some of my posts have been very much 'this is where we are and this is how we got here' in content. This is partly because those are some of the most memorable moments, and in some ways most interesting to read (who needs to know when I had a particularly nice/bad cup of coffee? Incidently, I've had both in Chiang Mai - fantastic local coffee, and nescafe).

However, it struck me that we spent a week in Chiang Mai - surely someone must be wondering what the hell we were doing [other than using the pool on our last day]? In short, other than the activity filled day, not a lot really. We did a walking tour of the city, going to all the 'must see' wats, and took a taxi out to doi suthep (a wat on a hill) and out to the one in the forest ( name escapes me), we also went to the night bazaar (market) twice, and the sunday walking street once (for obvious reasons). We ate well, and explored the city...we also had two Thai massages. These might be of some note as I can imagine people having had bad, or good experiences of these. My suspicion is that depends on the masseur (and the day, and how achey you are anyway, etc.) but I'm sure some people's views are tainted. In my opinion they're quite a nice experience. The first one was at a place round the corner from ou first guesthouse, in a very nice room with dimmed light, and raised beds. They get you to put on fisherman pants (loose fitting trousers) and give you free tea (iced thai tea in this case...imagine tea with icing sugarr and ice in and that gives you a fair idea of it) and there was meditation style music playing (although, at the second place this was interupted at one point bizzarely by Leann (is it pretentious to put [sic] next to what a parent has called their child?) Rimes. Although at certain points they press too hard - I do after all have a lot of tendons with little fat covering them on my forearm, and pushing will feel a touch unpleasant, and despite my thought at one point of 'hmm, if her elbow slips now I'm going home without my testicles' I can say it was a very nice experience.

Of the second one I can generally report the same. Carried out/done by a man who looked to be recently out of the monastry it was harder than the first one, and included some different stretches but was generally a very pleasant experience. Perhaps importantly - depending on which moral you wish to take from this story - no fear was induced for my testicles this time, althouhg there was one stretch where I was leaning in to his lap and somewhat feared for his. Oh the life of a masseuse.

Now I'll update the previous post about the journey :p.

Airport

So! Last night we caught the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. In Chiang Mai we'd had to move from one guesthouse (Julie's, about $7 a night) to Supreme (the same but not as social, BUT with a large DVD collection, including Envy with Jack Black inventing va-poo-rize [you can guess its function] - it is not a good film), and then for our last night to SK's at $13ish a night BUT with a large swimming pool. After days of fantastic thai food and good markets we decided on our last day to take it a bit easy, go out to a forest wat and eat western food (at least for brunch).

HEALTH UPDATE - all fine, doxycycline still having no side effects, and no dengue fever (woot woot).

Our train was at 6pm so after an early dinner (4ish) we headed out to the station. The train was on time so we boarded straight away and found our set of 4 seats. At night these are folded together to create a (large but shortish) single bed at the bottom, and a narrow single bed is lowered from the wall above. Along these beds curtains are placed to give some privacy (because there are no berths as such) and to block light. This was more effective for the lower bunk (mine) than teh upper (kirsty's) so I had a fantastic 6 or 7 hours sleep...kirsty did not. Many Thai's seemed to put their bunks down (or have them expertly put down by a nice woman sitting at the end of the carriage) very early (from 7.30 on really). We waited till 9.30 before doing so. Arriving one hour late at 8am (not much shorter than the bus but MUCH more comfortable) we decided to head to Silom - our recent local street - for breakfast. This proved an expensive move but nevermind - the French pastries were delicious.

Heading back to the train station after lunch we caught a taxi to where we wanted to stay - or at least we tried to. There was some confusion over where we wanted to go. And I may have pissed off the tuktuk drivers when I laughed long and hard at a quote of 600 baht (10 pound) to get there - this would be enough to go about 40km or something...I think to Ayuthia anyway, cheeky fuck. We got a taxi with some assistance from the Railyway Police. Nice guy took us out on the road this place was off, and headed too far up it, so we had to loop back (expressway, so that meant taking a turn off) to get back to our soi - which it then turned out didn't exist. Drove to another place - no hotel. Woman there suggested some other place which she claimed was nicknamed 54 hotel (we wanted 54 hostel). We decided to give it a go and were a bit concerened to see a semi-posh looking hotel, and pondering sleeping at the airport instead (as the taxi was at 250 already and cash running v. low - so low that today we only just had enough to get to the airport). Fortunately I have a credit card and the hotel had rooms for 600baht (about 10 pound) which we thouht quite acceptable, especially as we'd get a nice room and nice shower. A day with a lot of faff in anyway...

Bngkok to Chiang Mai

I won't mention owt about Ayuthia - we had a very nice time there, but I think the photos will do (When I get those up).  From there we caught a bus at 8 ('turn up at 7.30 please' bus actually scheduled for 8.30, arrived at 9) to Chiang Mai because the train lines were down as a result of protests in Bangkok.  This wasl es than ideal but at least cheap at 500 baht.  At about 1am we stopped for a break - and to use the loo (although there wa sone on the bus it didn't have running water, so there was a big tank of water next to it to flush it with, and the door didn't close so you had to hold it shut). Another hour of fast driving on and the bus started t o stutter - not a good sign.  From 2am until when we eventually arrived in Chiang Mai at 10.30 (supposed to be 7.30) the bus was going at most at 2mph.  The last 80km was done in taxis.  On our eventual arrival we caught a tuktuk from the guesthouse the taxi had dumped us at to Julie's guesthouse (recommended by lonely planet) and managed to check in.  VEry nice place, only a fan but that's all you need, and 220 baht ($7ish) for the room.  Night market here is fantastic - and as we're slightly worried about money (don't want to get more baht) as we overspent on some meals (lonely planet lied about cost of a dish) we imagine we'll eat there some more from now on!

Yesterday we went on a 1 day trek for 1100 baht (almost $40) which was expensive but included a trek to waterfall (verrryyy nice) to swim in (nicer), an elephant ride (surprisingly fun), white water rafting (too short but very good), and bamboo rafting (bamboo canes tied together...these do not take our weight well and the raft was near the river bed at some points with our knees below water standing up, but never mind.  The low point was a trip to a 'mountain village' which was the most pointless 'hey, you go spend money on these tourist stalls' trip ever.  The village didn't even have a good view really!  So, now we have a few more days in Chiang Mai in which to relax, maybe have a Thai Massage, buy our last bits at the markets before heading (by train this time) back to BAngkok for our flights.

Cambodia and back into Thailand

Much to my annoyance, a long blog I wrote yesterday seems to have been deleted.  I'll try and replace that at some point.  First, something I'd forgotten from before:

We had a fish massage in Siem Reap.  This involves putting your feet in a pool of water with fish in.  These fish then make a meal of the dead skin on your feet.  This obviously creates a very odd sensation - but is quite nice (if tickly) and made my feet slightly less gross.

So, after a pleasant if somewhat hassled time in Siem Reap, we were happy to move on to a small place north of there called Kompong Chnang ($6 bus ride).  We were slightly concverned we'd not know where to get off as the bus goes to Battambang eventually, but the guide highlighted some landmarks so we managed to find the right stop.  Landmarks might be a bit of an overstatement there - there was an independence monument...andf it was the only place we'd stopped that was 'town like' thus far, so we figured it was our stop.  The main attractions of Kompoing Chnang are that it is not Siem Reap...and it has potteries and a river to the North East.  For us another attraction was staying in a nicer guesthouse than we had in Siem Reap for the same price.  This place had functional a/c (the other did not), a nice bed (the other was foam with stained, poorly fitting sheets) and no mosquitos in the room (you guessed it, the other did).  The disadvantages of the place were 1) the electricity cut out a fair few times - leaving us rather hot in our rooms (and without cold beer!) and in the dark 2)the only 'restaurants' in town were not very nice dull places, although cheap.  We walked out to the river on our full day there, which was a very pleasant walk despite giving us the only hassling (you want ferry ride?  We take you, nice ride you see floating village) of our time there and despite the incredible heat (walking in to a restaurant two S.African blokes said 'you hot then' - it was only then I noticed my rather wet t-shirt.

From Kompong Chnang we went to Battambang - closer to the Thai border.  We were staying at the Royal hotel, and were somewhat surprised to find a cheap tuktuk affiliated with the Royal to take us there - normally these are the reserve of crap hotels trying to pull in trade.  For $10 a night we got a nice a/c ensuite room in this hotel complete with roof bar in central Battambang.  On our second day there we took a tour with a tuk tuk ($20 between 3 of us).  We decided to get a guide ($12 for him and moto, $10 for just him - we made a mistake there, especially given later he took Morritz (German guy we went with) to a spice shop and almost certainly took commission for the trip).  Anyawy, we had a very nice day going up a mountain to a Wat, and some caves known as 'killing caves' - used by the Khmer Rouge to kill people in by various means.  There are stil some bones there, although many have been removed and cremated as Buddhism requires.  The only other thing of note in Battambang was The Smokin' Pot restaurant which gave us $4 Amok (curry) with drinks - so cheap (and good) we felt compelled to buy their cookbook - which I will use when i get home.

After 3 nights in Battambang we had to catch a taxi to Poipet - Rough guides, again being rough, told us we could get a 3hr $3 bus in the morning.  This bus in fact left at 11.30 - meaning we'd have arrived in Bangkok about 8pm or there abouts.  So with Lucy (French girl we met there) we caught a taxi for $30 - a reasonable price judging from the signs up for shared taxis in Khmer, with prices set at about that for the whole taxi - lthough in those, there would be 7 people including the driver - tight fit!  We arrived at the border in 2 hours - the road was much improved in \the 23 weeks since we'd been there last, with the mud removed and much more tarmac than previously.  We sailed through both sets of immigration lines, jumped on a tuktuk, to the bus station, and then straight on to a 1st class bus to Bangkok.  On arrival there (5 hours later) we had a bit of a faff finding departures, but got there eventually and again jumped straight on to a bus to Ayuthia.

Bangkok to Siem Rep

The trip from bangkok to siem reap was one I was very thankful I had notes for. We got up at 3.45 in order to get a taxi at 4.30. Bidding our comfortable, but expensive, residence goodbye we got into the taxi to go to the bus station - wondering if he really understood where we wanted to go literally until the moment we arrived. Thanks to the advice i had we easily found the first class ticket booth for aranya prathet (known as aree (phonetic local abbreviation). The bus was comfortable with a toilet on board and a slice of coffee cake (how did they know?!) and a drink too. We arrived in 4.30 roughly. We then jumped into a tuk tuk to get to the actual border crossing. Although he tried to drop us at some place we didn't want to be ("We stop here, you get visa. Visa here 1000 baht, 1200 at border") we were insistent that we wanted to continue to the border. So he dropped us right at the end of the road to the border where some bloke with an official pass got us to fill in some visa documents, and asked for 1000 baht (which incidently is about $33). I refused (again) and we walked down the road with our forms. Got stamped out of Thailand (and were mildly scared by the sign reading "We no longer issue visas at the border") and then continued through to the Cambodian side. The Thai side had a TV and fairly official if formal guards. The Cambodian side was outside at portable tables. At the visa point the man was firm that he wanted 1000 baht. A Canadian who was with our group of people insisted it was $20 (which it is) and refused to pay. We were directed to the actual visa point where for $25 we got a visa each,. I had to pay an extra 100 baht (about 1.40 pounds) because I didn't have a passport picture. I think he just wnated to get rid of us in case other people twigged that they didn't have to pay 1000 baht despite the lies that the rules had changed and this was now required. Oh incidently, none of the forms the bloke with the official badge had given us up the road were of any use during any of this process.

Anyway, we left there and jumped on the free bus to the 'transport depot'. Others did not, believing this to be a scam - a suspicion i can well understand. After a bit of haggling we got the $80 first offer down to $60 - much closer to the government pre-assigned $40 that the poipet to bangkok trip should take, but still outrageous for the trip. We were somewhat concerned by the fact the taxi driver stopped at what I think was a shop - but when we realised he was opening his boot to put a bag in rather than to take ours out we were a bit happier. Similarly, we were pretty miffed when he stopped at his house to drop said bag off, although we were less annoyed when we saw how miffed he looked at his wife (we assume) getting him to put some boxes in the boot too). The rest of the journey is indescribable for two reasons - 1) I cannot convey how crap the road was. I believe mounds of money have been allocated to this road improvement, but much has been lost, allegedly linked to thai airs monopoly over the basngkok to siem reap air route, and thus their obvious intertest in keeping that as the most sensible route to travel. Secondly just because it was fairly uneventful. It was interesting to see very poor places and some clearly more wealthy places. It is evident that the average income would be round $400 (which it certainly was), and its interesting to see - but less to describe really.

So now I'm sat in our new guesthouse place in siem reap, abouty 30 min walk to town centre, or a tuk tuk ride. The place has a pool and our room is ensuite. And I have a beer... Tomorrow we go to angkor wat, and the day fter to the lake. Then we move on to phnom penh, cutting Kompong Cham and Kratie from our trip as a result of the awful transport links.