We’re home :-(

Hi all,

We’ve still got a couple of postings to catch up on, but we’re back in the UK, busy unpacking and getting our lives back in order.  Now we’ve got internet access again, we’ll update the blog to the end of the trip…

 

Still doing nothing in Phuket

We’re continuing to achieve remarkably little here in Phuket, and it’s great! Dawn has enjoyed a lengthy spa treatment – everything from the severe pummelling of a Thai massage to a full body wrap – as well as swimming in the ‘Busakorn‘ pool, and getting her nails done, of course. Gavin has taken the opportunity to relax at the poolside, making friends with a number of different adult beverages, and spending some quality time with the laptop.

The advice in the hotel, as elsewhere, is not to drink the water, so we’ve been knocking back quite a lot of beer instead – for health reasons. Chang – elephant beer – is the cheapest, but tastes a bit rough, and is apparently so packed full of congeners that even locals talk about the dreaded ‘Chang-over’ the morning after. Singha is plentiful, though, and at around US$1.50 for a large bottle in the local shops, it’s pretty good value. It’s about the same price in the hotel, too, as they have an enlightened policy of leaving the mini-bar empty, and letting you buy your choice of stuff in a shop near reception, at market prices. Back to the Singha… it’s brewed somewhere in Bangkok, so we’ve been having fun checking the bottles for freshness by reading the bottling date on the label. In Phuket and Chiang Mai, a lot of the stock is a month or so old, but in Bangkok we were sipping beer that’s been bottled less than a week!

We should probably have done more sightseeing while we’ve been here, but have spent so much time loafing around, that our excursions have been limited to the local beach (Patong) and a few nearby coves, the Phuket museum, and a sanctuary where abused Gibbons are rehabilitated and returned to the wild. We’ve caught up with our souvenir shopping at the local stores and markets, but lack the killer instincts to be good hagglers, so we’ve probably made several shopkeepers very happy!

Our Priority Club status scored us another bonus, as we got invited to the hotel’s weekly cocktail party, which we think is mostly for repeat visitors. Cocktails, wine, finger-food and a chance to meet the hotel management and other guests, all for free – a very nice idea!

 

Relaxing in Phuket

It seems that around ten weeks of non-stop, high octane touristing is about as much as we can manage, so we headed to the Southern Thai island of Phuket with the intention of doing as little as possible, and preparing ourselves inwardly for the return home.

Our lack of planning counted against us, as we ended up taking an early Thai Airways flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, then hanging around the airport for a couple of hours to take Bangkok Airways down to Phuket. Bangkok Airways are a relaxed bunch, and our flight was delayed for a little over an hour, thanks to a delay in tracking down a plane for us to use. We did get access to their lounge, though, with free snacks, drinks and internet access, so the time passed pretty quickly.

We should probably also have booked a transfer from Phuket airport to the hotel, as the beaches are a 45 minute drive away (we really didn’t research this bit at all well ). A representative of the hotel was on hand to help us out, so a little while and 650 Baht later, we arrived at Phuket’s Holiday Inn Resort. We’ve spent enough nights in Holiday Inns on this trip, that we’re Gold Priority Club members, accumulating points for free nights later on. They must have us marked down as high rollers, as our check-in information was held in the VIP file, and we got personally escorted to our room, and presented with orchid garlands. Which was nice.

Class-consciousness is alive and well here, as the Holiday Inn complex comprises three parts, due to expansion combined with tsunami rebuilding. The main building is moderately high rise and has some nice amenities including a couple of bars and restaurants, together with a pool that leads down to the road separating all the hotels and such from the beach. Residents of the new ‘Busakorn‘ wing (that’s us) get access to all of that, plus our own ’special’ pool (featuring ‘cute’, according to Dawn, spouting elephant statues), bar, restaurant and lobby/entertainment area that links to our suite-like rooms. The rooms are super-spacious and have a balcony, seating area, desk, dresser and so on. The hoi-polloi from the main wing aren’t allowed in to clutter up the place. Likewise, we’re not allowed into the ‘Busakorn Suites’ area, where the top-end rooms are, with their own exclusive pool and other hidden delights. We might have to sneak in at some point, just to see what’s there!

Despite the newness of the place, internet access is limited here, too, with a pay-as-you-go dial-up service available in the rooms, or a WiFi broadband in the lobby area at 100 Baht (about $3) an hour. The reading room is generally home to a small cluster of folks hunched over laptops, clattering away at keyboards!

Apart from that inconvenience, it’s all very nice, and a great oasis to relax in before facing the pressures of home. Once outside the gates, though, Phuket is all rather different, and a bit disappointing. [18 Jan edit: That was unfair, as Jamie points out in his comment. Patong was really disappointing, the rest of Phuket was much nicer. The rest of this paragraph refers only to the tourist haven of Patong. For more information on Phuket and recommendations for accommodation, sightseeing and dining, take a look at Jamie's excellent Blog at http://jamie-monk.blogspot.com] There doesn’t seem to be a significant tourist threat here, but each gate is manned by a security guard, and incoming vehicles are given a mirror-under-the-car check. All the lifts and lobby areas have guards, too, but we think that’s more to keep the packs of local hawkers out. They’re everywhere, and you can’t walk more than a couple of paces before being offered a taxi, tuk-tuk (three-wheeled motorised death-trap), made-to-measure suit, massage or inspection of a souvenir stall. The most common way to suck people in is a friendly greeting, a ‘where are you from’, and/or an outstretched hand to shake. Stop for any one of these, and it’s hard to get going again without seeming rude, which is the whole point, of course. We’ve settled on the marginally rude approach of striding by with our ‘game faces’ on, ignoring outstretched hands, and responding with a smile and a shake of the head to everything else.

Even the Europeans are at it, riding around on motorbikes, offering competitions and giveaways, the prizes of which appear to be timeshare-related. Between them and the trucks driving by loudly advertising discos, radio stations and Thai Boxing (“Tonight! Tonight! Tonight!…”) it’s pretty tiring just walking over to the beach!

 

Chiang Mai – Part 4, Cooking up a Storm

The noble Thai folk quickly sprang to recover their good name after our dismal driving experience around Chiang Rai. The following day we attended a Thai cookery class, with the Chiang Mai Organic Farm Cooking School. Several outfits run cooking classes in the city, buying ingredients in one of the local markets, but this one was recommended to us – by the same lady who sold us the previous day’s experience – for its out of town, farm location.

Our 09:30 pickup was prompt, and after picking up some more aspiring chefs, our group of ten was bussed to a local market for a brief introduction to Thai vegetables and herbs while one of our teachers bought some of the ingredients not grown on the farm. We got to wander around for a few minutes, marvelling at the smells and gagging at the sight of fried insects and grubs on sale, before taking the half-hour drive out to our farm school. More instruction and show-and-tell followed in our kitchen; an outdoor covered pavilion with individual cooking stations and gas burners, as the place lacks electricity.

For our menu, we prepared either a red or green curry paste from scratch, a Tom Yam soup, and a stir-fry dish, with chicken, shrimp or tofu, depending on the inclination of the student. Any one of those dishes would make a satisfying lunch, but we got to eat all of our creations, accompanied by a combination of steamed and sticky rice. After that, a nap in the shade would have been very pleasant, but we were taken around the farm area to look at, prod and taste the various fruits, vegetables and herbs being grown, to reinforce what we’d learned at the stove.

Still no siesta, as we were put back to work, each preparing four vegetarian spring rolls, which we were allowed to pack home with some dipping sauce for tea, and a dessert of bananas in coconut milk. All in all, the instruction was excellent and presented in very good, easy to follow, English, with an emphasis on fun. Despite usually being exiled from the kitchen, Dawn enjoyed the experience, and produced some delicious dishes, though was less impressed with having to wash up her utensils. Gavin learned a lot, and knocked out a pretty nice red curry, but will need to practice to get better looking spring rolls, as Dawn’s handicraft techniques enabled her to produce far better results.

We were allowed a brief sit down to digest dessert, then driven back to our hotels, arriving back in town at around 4:30. At 900 baht per person (though we think it may be only 800 if booked direct), we rate this the best value for money excursion yet – we’d happily have paid 800 baht to eat all that food in a restaurant, after all! Two thumbs way up for this one, and it’s restored our faith in Thai tourism.

 

Chiang Mai – Part 3, Ripped off in Chiang Rai

We’ve had a good run of sightseeing activities and tours, so we were bound to come unstuck at some point. That point came with a trip up-country with Northland Tours, ostensibly to Chiang Rai and the Golden Triangle. Unfortunately for us, this long road trip was essentially a thinly-veiled driving tour of shopping opportunities.

After a pick-up at 07:45, we drove north in the company of three Germans, two Brits and an American (no Aussies, which is a bit unusual ) for around three and a half hours, with a brief bathroom / snack stop en route. Then, off the main road on a short but bumpy dirt track, we came to an authentic hill tribe village, apparently only consisting of virtually identical handicraft stalls. It was obviously authentic, as at least a dozen other tour vans were also parked there. To be fair, the little we learned about the different tribes was indeed interesting, and the various ladies with brass-elongated necks, extended earlobes and betel-blackened teeth were happy to be photographed, but all had wares on sale that we half-heartedly bargained over to get some souvenirs.

After that, things went a little downhill. Our next stop was to the local hot springs, which turned out to be a metal pipe jutting out of the ground, spouting a jet of hot, sulphurous water, and leading over to a heat exchanger plant. The highlight of the stop was the opportunity to buy a small wicker basket of eggs and wait five minutes for them to cook in this outflow. We passed, as did most of the others. Only one German decided that ‘eggy’ eggs would be worth a try.

We stopped in what may have been Chiang Rai – we were never told – for a lunch buffet conveniently located right next to a gem store. The buffet was actually very good, as long as you liked pork, as it was in all but one of the hot dishes on offer, though to be fair, there was one vegetarian option available. As the minibus pulled away, we noticed that the building sported a sign reading “Buffet lunch for tour groups, 49 Baht” – bargain!

Next stop: a Thai / Myanmar border crossing, situated on a narrow, muddy trickle of a river, where we could pay US$10 to walk across the bridge, get a passport stamp and walk back. As none of the group were interested in doing so, we were given half an hour to wander the souvenir stalls and dodge small urchins begging. We found an open stretch of pavement outside a goldsmith, so sat down to wait out the time, and were soon joined by our Brit travelling companions. As far as we could make out, Thailand’s northernmost town of Mae Sai is utterly devoid of charm, and is best avoided, unless you’re an avid country-collector.

Back in the bus again, we drove along to the Golden Triangle at Sop Ruak, where Thailand, Mynmar and Laos meet. More souvenir stands, of course, and dozens of pairs of grubby Akha girls, in tribal outfits, who latched on to anyone with a camera and chorused “Hello, take photo, two people, 5 baht.” while trying to look winsome. We didn’t get much chance to take photos, as our guide herded us to a longtail boat dock where we were to take a fast ride on the Mekong River and over to part of Laos, where tourists with open wallets are welcomed with open arms, without passport or customs controls. This sounded dodgy to us, but as the guide was one of the first onto the boats, we had little choice but to follow him, for another 400 baht each, return, that no-one had previously mentioned. On arrival, our guide expertly directed us to the Laotion official who needed 20 baht from each person as a landing fee. We were, apparently, on a mid-river island comprising a few shacks and a lot of – surprise – souvenir stands. Not wanting to buy knock-off Marlborough cigarettes, or bottles of cobras and scorpions pickled in local whisky, we mooched around a bit and hovered grumpily by the dock for our return ride.

Back in Thailand, we snatched a few moments to photograph a beautiful, modern Buddhist shrine (we’re not sure what it’s called, as our guide had disappeared) and watching other tour groups getting mobbed by Akha girls once they chummed the waters with a five-baht donation, before being summoned to the minibus for a drive to the mostly-ruined Wat Jadeeloung temple and souvenir complex, followed by a four hour night drive back to Chiang Mai broken by a fuel stop at a garage with attached food and souvenir market, returning to our hotel at around 9:30 pm.

There, I feel better having got that off my chest. We’re giving this excursion the thumbs-down because the tour was bloody awful, and not worth the 3000 baht we payed (the sums we paid are pretty trivial, it was the fact of getting fleeced that was irksome). On the other hand, the scenery in the far north is spectacular, and there is much of interest to visit. If you fancy seeing the area, our recommendation is to negotiate a price (probably 1000 to 1500 baht) with a licensed Chiang Mai taxi driver for a day’s travel, and let him/her and the Lonely Planet book navigate you around to places of interest.

 

Chiang Mai – Part 2, More Elephants

Our trip to the River Kwai hadn’t completely satisfied us elephant-wise, so we booked a half-day tour to visit the Maesa Elephant Camp outside Chiang Mai. Started in the 1970’s, the camp is now home to more than 70 elephants, with a successful breeding program seeing the numbers gradually increasing all the time (at nearly two years per pregnancy, it does take a while, though!)

As with the previous camp, the elephants are outnumbered by vendors selling bunches of bananas and sugar cane batons for 20 baht a time, and the elephants are constantly on the lookout for these tasty treats, with trunks waving at each passing tourist to see what they’re carrying. We saw several people getting mugged; distracted by some sight or other only to have their entire snack supply yanked away by a prehensile nose reaching around behind them.

The elephants looked healthy and well treated, and were split into several groups: long and short-haul trekking animals wearing well-padded saddles and two-person seats (with a safety bar, unlike those in the other camp!), animals being rested, and the extra-talented group who perform three tourist shows a day.

After a wash and brush up in the nearby river, the performing group marched into the stage area trunk-to-tail (cute), then displayed some very impressive skills. As well as mounting and dismounting the mahouts in many different ways, log hauling and stacking and so on, they showed off talents perhaps less useful in the wild. After removing and replacing the mahouts’ hats, they played football (soccer – throwing a pass might have been too much to ask ), and serenaded the audience with a harmonica chorus! To cap it off, eight of the troupe then ambled up to easels with paintbox in trunk, and produced remarkably good pictures. Each animal was probably trained to draw only one thing, and the mahout was selecting colours and holding out each paintbrush, but the elephant was producing the artwork without any other assistance. Between them, they produced images of flowers, trees, and even an elephant silhouette. This is the biggest money-spinner for the camp, as the art is put on sale for 2000 baht per picture, but like many other people, we decided it was worth the investment.

Our guide then took us off to see the nursery to coo at some junior elephants, including a very cute, and surprisingly hairy, 9 month old, who seemed to be in the process of adjusting to solid food, as he preferred his bananas peeled.

Not included in the basic tour price was an hour’s elephant ride, at 600 baht per person, so we signed up for that as we arrived – one and two-day jungle treks are also available. Securely locked into the seat, we strolled along a couple of kilometres of jungle path, up and down inclines we thought impassably steep, and across a couple of worryingly narrow cliff-edges. Having survived that, our elephant needed to cool off, so we walked down to the river and along its bed for a while, before getting back onto dry land and on the path back to the camp. This mahout was the strong, silent type, speaking elephant better than English, so we didn’t catch his name, but he seemed friendly enough, and his evil-looking bamboo cheroot did a good job of keeping insects at bay.

Overall, two thumbs up from us. If you only do one elephant trip in Thailand, we’d recommend it be this one. Other tourists have told us about less enjoyable experiences at other camps in the north, where the animals appear to be beaten into performing. We don’t have first-hand experience of that but, if true, would make them places to avoid.

The final part of the tour was a trip to a local orchid farm, since it’s on the way back into town from the camp. It was interesting enough, but since we’d seen so many plants at the floral expo, we didn’t spend too much time there – just long enough to see the flowers and browse the real-orchid jewellery.

 

Chiang Mai – Part 1

We’d originally planned an overnight train ride to Chiang Mai and back, but booking tickets seems to be extremely difficult outside of Thailand – at least according to the travel agents we asked about it – and close to impossible via the Thai Railways website. Once we got to Bangkok, we enlisted the help of a friendly concierge, but by then all the sleeper berths for our travel days had been booked, so we opted to fly, instead.

The new Suvarmabhumi airport, about 45k outside Bangkok, opened its doors in September, and has run into a few teething troubles, including misplaced luggage, extremely limited bathroom facilities, and steel seats that are uncomfortable to sit on, if you can find one free. It certainly isn’t the best designed airport that we’ve been to, but our short stay was trouble free, and we soon found ourselves boarding a 747-400 for the 50 minute flight up to Chiang Mai. We were a little surprised to have such a large plane for a short hop – this plane was larger than the one we took from Hawaii to New Zealand – but it was expected to return full of Bangkok residents who had spend the holiday weekend away from the city (some 5 million or so apparently spent New Year elsewhere).

Chiang Mai’s international airport is fairly small, so having recovered our luggage from one of its two carousels, we attempted to figure out how to get to our hotel. Gavin made the mistake of popping out through the exit door to look for a hotel shuttle. There wasn’t one, and the nice soldier at the door explained, through hand and rifle gestures, that the exit was one way and the only way back in was through the baggage screening and metal detector on the other side of the building. Eventually we worked out how to get a taxi docket, and 20 minutes and 150 Baht later we arrived at the Novotel, a three star hotel located a few blocks north of the main city. The hotel is pleasant enough, but fails our first test by having four glass doors and only one part-time flunky to operate them. The room is large but unspectacular, with en-suite bathroom fixtures that are past their prime, but it does boast the largest bed that we’ve ever seen. It’s billed as a ‘King’, but comprises a single mattress spread over two queen bases. This bed could accommodate at least two more people, or a small elephant, in comfort!

Although the nearby mountain range still quickly fades into the haze of the thick atmosphere, the air is far easier to breathe than the choking smog of Bangkok, and the pace of life seems more relaxed, though crossing roads is still far from easy for ‘farangs’ like us. The central part of the city is enclosed by a square canal, with remnants of the original fortifying wall still on show, particularly around the main gates at each of the four compass points. Modern city planners have implemented a one-way system with clockwise traffic circulation outside the canal, and counter-clockwise within, enabling a continuous stream of cars, motorbikes and tuk-tuks to pick off pedestrians foolish enough to attempt a crossing. It’s interesting to see the motorised ballet in progress, with – to Western eyes – crazy driving on or near traffic lanes, cars heading at each other only to veer away the the last moment, but with hardly any accidents, and almost no sounding of horns or signs of road rage.

We spent a day walking in and around the city, admiring more temples, which abound here as much as they do in Bangkok. Yellow, orange and gold-robed monks wander the streets with shaven heads, but are more worldly than we anticipated, as we’ve seen many of them either talking into mobile phones, or haggling for a new one with a roadside vendor. Footsore after much sightseeing, we felt obliged to stop off at the Queen Victoria pub for a pint of beer and a check of the Premier League football results on their internet machine. We checked on the cricket too, and wished that we hadn’t. We propose a study of ‘English style’ pubs overseas, and how long a Brit has to be on the road before going into one changes from being slightly crass to a much-needed touch of the ‘old country’.

A special event has been set up out of town to celebrate the King’s 60 years on the throne: a Royal Floral Park, set in hundreds of acres of parkland, where civic groups have designed and planted gardens, tribal villages and exhibition halls in honour of the Royal Family. It’s rather like the Chelsea Flower Show on a grand scale, with the sightseeing route being over 7 Kilometres long. We spent around six hours walking through it, and still didn’t see everything. We did see orchids, though. Thousands of them. One of the exhibition’s boasts is that it holds twice as many orchids in one place as Singapore, it’s closest orchid-exhibiting rival. That really was something to see. Actually, we were fortunate to see it at all, as the exhibition is only open for three months, closing for good at the end of January.

Here, as in Bangkok, there are huge pictures of the King (and less often the Queen) all over the city, both for the jubilee and his upcoming 80th birthday. For every massive photograph of His Majesty in full regalia, there are several of him as an ordinary guy, dressed in a suit, looking more like a CEO than a monarch. In many of these, he has a trusty camera around his neck; always a Canon – the camera choice of royalty.

As well as the many markets within the city walls, there is a night market down by the river that kicks off at 7pm and runs until midnight every day. We took the hotel’s free shuttle bus down and spent a couple of hours wandering through the streets lined with stalls. We’re not naturally inclined to the business of negotiating prices, so were a bit wary of shopping there, and aren’t in the market for very cheap, ahem, designer label goods, so just browsed the souvenir goods. The market is huge, but after a while the stalls seemed to blur together, with half a dozen different kinds repeating infinitely in all directions. We escaped with wallets intact, but might try hunting for souvenirs again before we leave.

 

Bangkok, Part 2

We returned to the Sofitel Silom and comprehensively confused the poor lady at check-in by simultaneously attempting to pay for a club-room upgrade for the two nights we’d pre-paid, and add an extra night before we fly – instead of ride the train – to Chiang Mai. That would have been tough enough without the hotel being just about fully booked for New Year, but it all seemed to work out in the end, with us getting a large room, but not just yet, as the occupants weren’t checking out until 8pm. Odd. Still, the hotel comped us a very nice dinner in one of the restaurants while we waited for the room, and were waiting with our stored luggage when our key cards were delivered.

We continue our gradual descent into ‘lazy holiday’ mode, achieving less sightseeing with each passing day, but probably enjoying the reduced pace rather more. For our first afternoon, we signed up for a tour of the Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha. The sightseeing reminded me of touring New Zealand; not for any similarity of architecture, but the fact that a more spectacular view seemed to be lurking around every corner. It’s hard to describe just how, well, awesome, the palace complex is, with the brightly coloured pagodas, stupas and tableaux surrounded by demon guardian statues and white-uniformed human palace guards. If we can figure out a more prosaic description, we’ll edit it in here later, and pretend it was there all along.

To glance at all the sights would take days, to study them weeks, and to understand all the texts and frescoes probably a lifetime, so our couple of hours wandering around just left us staring open-mouthed at the succession of wonders. We weren’t the only ones – being a holiday weekend, many Thais were here to look around and worship as well, and visiting monks added to the atmosphere with special song/chants that were broadcast over speakers near the various shrines. We have dozens of photographs of the architecture, but probably none of them will capture the aura of the place.

After a religious experience like that, there’s only one way to return to the mundane world: shopping. To help with that, the tour bus helpfully drops you at the largest gem factory/store in the world, which is, of course, entirely optional. Seduced through the door by the offer of a free drink, we were immediately greeted by a guide, who attached herself, like a chirpy limpet, to us to escort us through the demonstration room, where artisans toiled to produce exquisite jewels, to the inner temple. It looked like an upmarket Vegas casino, with the gaming tables replaced with glass cabinets of shiny extravagance. Starting with the hefty 18 karat pieces, we were walked along the rows, with each interested glance leading to a ring or bracelet being pulled out of the cabinet for a closer look.

Actually, the prices really weren’t that bad, so when we got to the cheap seats, Dawn treated herself to an amethyst and silver necklace, after which we assumed that our limpet would detach herself, but instead we were allowed to wait in the bar – and get our free drink at last – until she returned to escort us to a courtesy mini-van back to the hotel. Hopefully she didn’t get into trouble investing all that effort for a 2000 Baht necklace!

The New Years Eve festivities didn’t go entirely according to plan. We had arranged to meet up with our new Aussie friends at the Indra Regent hotel uptown, and head down to the Central World Plaza to see the bands and the fireworks. We found Roger, Margaret, Tan and Sophie, and waited for a while for Ross and Deb, while trying to reach them via roaming Australian mobile phones without success. Sophie had seen a news report about a bomb going off somewhere in Bangkok, but the staff and guests at the hotel all seemed unaware or unconcerned, so we assumed it was something minor, possibly a long way south where the Muslim insurgency periodically gets nasty.

Giving up on Ross and Deb, we wandered over to the plaza to find a large crew dismantling the screens, stages, lights and gantries at around 11pm. Odd things seem to happen in Bangkok, so we figured that the party was already over, until we found someone official who explained that there had been several explosions throughout the city and that all the midnight celebrations had been cancelled. Annoyed, and perhaps just slightly nervous, we returned to the Regent to ring in the New Year at the hotel bar, to the earnest but bizarrely mangled renditions of popular tunes by the bar’s regular band, the Moon Rock Trio. We had a much better time doing that, as a bomb did indeed go off in Centre World Plaza at midnight, injuring several people. So far, the military-installed government is blaming elements ousted in the recent coup, but it’s unlikely that we’ll even know for sure what all the fuss was about.

To finish up our stay in Bangkok, we took a tour of the city and a handful of its many Buddhist temples. Once again, we joined a throng of Thais enjoying the long weekend, and queued to doff our shoes and admire huge golden, reclining and marble buddhas in profusion. Many locals were out of the city, visiting family and friends, but apart from the reduced traffic, the city appeared to be back to normal, with the bombings forgotten, or ignored. Some of the temple activities seemed very strange to a non-believer, including an interesting human perpetual motion machine where devotees queued to buy a bucket of special coins from a kiosk, which they deposited in small quantities in dozens of receptacles (different prayers, perhaps), being followed by an attendant who emptied the receptacles and returned the coins to the kiosk, accompanied by the rather tuneful metallic chinking, like a hall of manual slot machines where everyone is a winner.

Templed out, it was back to the gem store, but we slipped out from under our tour guide’s eye and dashed behind the coach straight to the line of waiting mini buses. Some free drinks just aren’t worth it!

 

The River Kwai

We took a break from bustling Bangkok to visit the River Kwai (actually, the two rivers Khwae Noi and Khwae Yai) a couple of hundred kilometers west of Bangkok in Kanchanaburi province. We would certainly recommend the elements of the trip, but not necessarily the tour company itself, which we christened ‘Haphazard Tours’.

After seeing many plush tour buses passing the hotel, we had high hopes as we waited in the lobby, so we were a little surprised at the clapped-out old jalopy that collected us, complete with cracked windows, rust patches and exterior panels apparently held together with glue. After finding a non-broken seat, we settled in for a rather bumpy ride to the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery and nearby museum, via a few additional collection stops. The museum was well laid out, but obviously a very sombre visit, and the cemetery, with British, Australian and Dutch graves, was deeply moving, and pleasingly well looked after. We found it very ironic that these memorials and sites of such misery, brutality and death have been turned into tourist attractions, but I suppose that the more people are reminded of what happened, the less the chance of such horror happening again. We hope.

From the cemetery, the coach took us to the bridge, famously but highly inaccurately represented in David Lean’s epic film. The bridge, and the rail line as far as the Nam Tok station are still in use, so we watched as a train slowly traversed the rickety structure. Then, it was back in the bus for a drive to overtake the train and board it for an hour’s ride to Nam Tok. The train ride was part of the tour payment, but our guide gave us the hard sell that we should ‘upgrade’ to the “Special Carriage” for a mere 150 Baht each. That would guarantee us a seat, and a free soft drink, as well as a cushion on the wooden bench. That was about the only upgrade, as the air conditioning was still provided by windows open to the diesel engine fumes. Being in the tourist section, we were also subject to the admirably persistent attentions of a lady selling hats, tee-shirts, postcards and the like.

As our guide’s English was a little fractured (though still far better than our non-existent Thai), we were never really sure exactly what was happening or coming next, but we muddled through, and found another bus to take us to the River Kwai Village Hotel for our night’s stay. In the three-ish star hotel, we were given a room with a balcony (nice), separate twin beds (not so nice) and a toilet that had a habit of gurgling, bubbling and occasionally overflowing (quite unpleasant). We were jealous of an Australian couple who had a king-size bed, until we discovered that they were to be woken at 4am by noise from the kitchens!

After settling in and eating lunch, we hopped into a long-tailed boat for a ride downriver to visit some limestone caves. The boats are an impressive combination of traditional canoe-like design, and a large car or truck engine, driving a propeller at the end of a long pole. Probably hideously unsafe, they bowl along the river at an impressive pace.

We spent the evening chatting to some Australian folks (Ross and Deb, Roger and Margaret and Tan and Sophie), then got a decent night’s sleep before heading off for the morning’s tours. The first stop was Hellfire Pass, a railway cutting manually dug through the mountainside over a period of twelve weeks by prisoners of war – an experience nightmarish even by the standards of the ‘Death Railway‘. It was uncomfortable viewing, but again moving, and we were glad to have been able to see it.

After that, we needed a lighter interlude, provided by a visit to an elephant camp, where we boarded our pachyderm steeds, and had an hour’s amble through the jungle. We were initially somewhat alarmed to discover that our mahout was a very small looking ten year old boy, but he and the elephant seemed to know what they were doing, and we had great fun. We’ll admit to being a little worried when the lad volunteered to take our photo, and hopped off the elephant with our camera. After a few snaps, the elephant hoisted him back aboard on his trunk, and we later discovered that he’d taken better photos than we had!

After feeding our trusty mount with 20 Baht’s worth of bananas, and ourselves with a box lunch, we had a drift downriver on a bamboo (and steel pontoon) where the more brave (and probably Typhoid-innoculated) travellers had a swim, then we dashed back to the hotel to find our familiar rusty bus waiting to take us back to the smog of the city.

 

Bangkok, Part 1

[Sawatdee! Here's the first part of our catch-up. All seems quiet here this morning after last night's excitement, with hardly any traffic on the streets. Part of that might be people nervous of further trouble, but there are also likely to be a few sore heads after the night's celebrations.]

After a final driving tour of the north Perth suburbs, we headed off to the airport on Boxing Day afternoon, where we sat around for a while waiting for our flight’s check-in to open. It wasn’t that we were anxious to get out of Australia, but we’d not realised that our flight was due to leave an hour later than originally billed, thanks to Western Australia’s experimental adoption of daylight savings time (you’re a little late to that party, guys )

After a mostly painless flight, we arrived at Bangkok’s shiny new airport, opened in September, at around 11pm local time. The place is huge, and it felt like we’d walked a mile before we passed through immigration, collected our bags, and staggered out into the arrivals hall. Despite the hour, the airport was still busy, and we didn’t fancy lugging all our cases onto a shuttle bus, so were probably comprehensively ripped off by an 1100 Baht private taxi to the hotel (there are some 36 Baht to the dollar, or 70 to the pound at the moment). The Sofitel Silom is a pretty fancy place, with a French atmosphere and Thai charm, and meets our threshold for a classy joint: flunkies at the entrance doors to open them for you as you come and go. Though we’d pre-paid for our stay, we took advantage of a $35 a night upgrade to a king-size club room, with breakfast, as we were tired and creaky after the flight. It felt good to relax in a nice, comfy bed!

The culture shock set in as we opened the curtains the following morning to be faced with downtown Bangkok in daylight. The city is huge (some 10 million people), and so heavily polluted that the scenery starts to fade into the smog after only a few blocks. Coming from the pristine Western Australian air, this was probably the biggest shock for us. Not having anything planned for the day, we mooched around the local area taking in the sights, sounds, smells and smog, and learning not to make eye contact with the drivers of taxis or tuk-tuks, the three-wheeled transports that dash through the gridlocked traffic, spewing out raw two-stroke engine exhaust into the thick air. After a few hours, with red eyes and the city air catching at our throats, we retired to the hotel for a snooze, and went looking for our first authentic Thai dinner of the trip.

A few blocks down Silom Road, we found a little hole-in-the-wall diner that didn’t seem quite as touristy as the others, despite being opposite the local Holiday Inn. We ordered what seemed to be a reasonable number of dishes and a couple of beers, then boggled at the amount of food that appeared at our table. The green curry soup was at least as good as any we’d tasted before, but it turned out that smiling and nodding when our hostess asked if we wanted the meal spicy might have been a slight miscalculation. Some Bangkok locals at the next table were clearly finding our red-faced coughing fit very amusing, but we quickly got used to the fiery dishes and went at them with enthusiasm.

We were taught that to leave a clean plate is good manners, as leaving anything suggests that you didn’t like the food – a habit that helped us gain a few pounds in the US, thanks to the restaurant portion sizes there. We had far more dinner than we could eat, which turns out to be a good thing, as the local custom is to leave some food uneaten, to avoid implying that you host hasn’t fed you enough. The bill for our excesses? 420 Baht, about $12! I think we’re going to like eating out here.

Another day’s self-guided exploring convinced us that signing up for a couple of city tours would be a good idea: dodging through the heavy traffic looking for temples and threading through the incredibly narrow streets of Chinatown were interesting, but we seemed to be missing the best sights, and finding that the city didn’t look much like the tourist map layout at ground level. Our last attempt at a walking tour took us a few blocks down Silom road to the Pat Pong area, the rather notorious local red light district. Our aim is to keep the blog entirely family-friendly, so let’s just say that there were some interesting sights on the streets, and many hawkers trying to temp us in to see adult-themed shows. Many of them had what appeared to be laminated menus that they were showing to passers-by – on closer inspection we saw that it wasn’t food that was on offer!