I'm back in Bangkok again - for the third time now - and finding ways to while away the time before I (hopefully) manage to fly out of Bangkok tomorrow. I've managed to find somewhere to stay (always a good start) and it's costing me less than 4 pounds for the night, which is even better. I've eaten yet more street food, which is a habit I desperately need to get out of before I return home or my staple diet is going to consist of hotdogs and candyfloss. And I've wandered around Th Khao San getting some last minute souvenirs because I've seen basically all the sights already! So, in an effort to keep me amused for another hour or so, here's what I got up to after Luang Prabang in Laos:
Our transport along the Mekong was a wooden long boat, open along the sides and with a removable section of roof for sunbathing - we had a little dining area and bathroom, and car seats attached to planks of wood for us to sit on. At that time in the morning you couldn't see the other side of the river as it was covered with a freezing mist, making the boats we were anchored next to seem like they were floating in the middle of grey nothing-ness. After a few hours of struggling to keep warm the sun came out, and we stopped at a set of caves along the river side - for hundreds of years they've been used as special places of Buddhist worship, for the royal family and people of that sort of standing, and the two caves we visited were full of hundreds of Buddha images - all different materials, styles and sizes - stored on shelves that had been carved out of the rock. There were also strange things like live moles being sold by villagers who sat outside the cave entrances (apparently the Lao people eat them...). And after that it was a pretty uneventful day - we cruised along the river with it's stunning but unchanging scenery, ate, read & slept. These sorts of boats are referred to as 'slow boats', and 11 hours later when we finally made it to the little river village we were staying at we could see why - the speed boats do the same journey in 4 hours. We were met at the shore by virtually every man and boy in the village (still only about 30 people), offering to carry our bags, and with incredibly sore bottoms after almost a full half day of sitting, we staggered up the sand to our hotel. As it was our last night in Laos we headed out for our final Beer Lao and a curry to say goodbye to it, but had our farewell party cut fairly short due to the village generator being turned off at half 10, and the entire place being plunged in to darkness for the night!
We had another early start to ensure we made the Thai border in time, after quickly running to the local bakery to pick up breakfast and lunch for later - the only reason I'm bothering to mention this is because I was so incredibly impressed with the bargain I managed to get at 7 in the morning; the bakery had a free book exchange for customers, and due to the amount we were buying I got exchange my fake photocopied Laos lonely planet guide (which cost me $5) for the most up-to-date, perfect condition genuine lonely planet Thailand guide (which according to the sticker on the back, cost it's original purchasers $30) - stuff like that never happens to me! So I got on the boat feeling very pleased with myself, and not yet aware of quite how useful a book exchange it would turn out to be. A few hours later and I couldn't have hated the boat more - aside from the odd moment when we went past kids and we all wave at each other I was now sick of the sight of the Mekong and on the verge of developing pressure sores on my bum. It didn't help that the boat made the engineering equivalent of death rattles the entire way there, and the even stopped completely on two occasions. We made it to the border in time to get through, but only just - we had to bribe the Cambodian passport authorities again due to our tardiness, then got a little boat across the river and went through an old Chinese-style wooden gate (which informed me it was the 'gateway to Indochina') before being stamped in to Thailand again. The town we stayed in was completely deserted by the time we'd dropped our bags and headed out to dinner, but we found a small restaurant open and I had my first pad thai because I finally found somewhere that would make it for me without peanuts - it was absolutely delicious, and I can see why everyone's been raving on about it for the last month now! As it was our last night together as a group we stayed up as late as the restaurant would let us (at the point all the staff had their coats on and had finished tidying, we figured it was probably time to go) - now drinking Chang beer, as we were back in Thailand - before heading back for the night. Unfortunately rather than having a nice restful night in a room that still had electricity past 10.30pm as planned, I turned my phone on for the first time in weeks (it only works in Thailand, non of the other countries) to find out that the little spot of bother the news had been reporting when we last had access to it, before we got stuck on the Mekong and in tiny local villages, had now turned in to a full-blown blockade of both Bangkok airports by anti-government protesters. So after a slightly frantic phone call with my Mom to find out that her original flight to Bangkok had been cancelled, but that she'd been moved to a flight the day after, I ran out of phone credit and was cut off from the western world yet again!
The next day we headed to Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city based in the north of the country - I finally had access to BBC news and could catch up with what had been happening a little, although obviously events in Thailand were rather shadowed by the far worse going's on in Mumbai (which we'd also completely missed). I sat glued to it for a good few hours and then discovered when I finally left my room and decided to do something that HSBC, clearly sensing that this was a stressful time for me and wishing to help all they could (... or not) then blocked my card, which took another day to sort out. In the evening I said goodbye to all but one of the group I'd been travelling with - the tour only planned to stay in Chiang Mai for one afternoon but as myself and another guy wanted to stay and spend time doing elephant-themed things (which is what Chiang Mai is famed for) we signed ourselves off the tour and stayed the night. So after the others left we headed out for a walk about town, to another night market which I also can't talk about, due to the things I bought for other people there.
The next day was the best of my entire travelling experience so far. We were picked up early by our elephant guide, along with a young German couple who similarly had been in the jungle whilst the airport protests had been going on, and had rejoined the civilised world two days ago to find out that they couldn't fly to Bangkok and then the south of Thailand as they'd planned - they'd chosen to spend a few extra days in Chiang Mai before flying directly from there. Our first stop was the market to pick up bananas and sugar cane for the elephants, then we drove for about an hour out of town to get to the camp. There were seven elephants there, five of whom had been rescued from labouring jobs, and two of their babies who's been conceived whilst at the camp - it was set in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forest and with a huge river to bathe in; frankly I was a little jealous of the elephants. We got changed in to some highly attractive denim overalls, as not only do elephants have a habit of throwing dust on themselves to cool down and are thus usually pretty filthy, the hair on their skin is also quite coarse and you need something thick to protect your legs or you spend the next 3 days walking like John Wayne.
The morning was spent learning the different commands for left, right, forward, backward and stop, before meeting the elephants and feeding them the things we'd bought. Feeding an elephant is actually quite terrifying, as they try and steal whatever food they've seen you've got with their trunk anyway, and if you manage to dodge the pickpocket-like ability of that you then have to place the food directly into their mouth, centimetres away from the huge molars that are about to crush whatever's in there - and you always get covered in elephant saliva, no matter how hard you try to avoid it! After a short break where Fah (the youngest elephant - only 7 years old) insisted on giving us all hugs - where she puts her trunk around you neck - and also kisses with her trunk, we were taught how to get on to the elephant (as we would be riding them bareback) - a surprisingly difficult manouveur! You have to tap the back of their leg whilst shouting 'yoo ka!' to instruct them to raise their leg, then grab their ear and body, place one foot on the back of their ankle and one on their thigh, climbing up their leg, and then shout 'soong!' to get them to lift their leg even higher so you can jump on to their back - it took a while for me to get the hang of it, unsurprisingly! Then we put in to practice the other commands we'd learnt, using a blunt stick to guide the elephants head in the right direction whilst shouting the commands (you don't hit them or anything, just apply gentle pressure to move their head to the direction you want them to follow) - by then end of the morning we could follow a simple track around the feeding area on our own, so it felt like we made good progress!
After lunch we each got on our own elephants - James, the guy from my original tour group, got given Kristina, the elephant we'd been training on; I got Paileen, Kristina's friend who she insists on walking next to whenever she goes out, so we stuck together at the back! After riding for half an hour or so we stopped off at a pavilion, and as I got off my elephant i promptly stood in elephant poop - luckily it's surprisingly solid, but still.... ergh. We gave them a break for a bit and the mahouts (the elephants carers) who were helping us fed them, before we led them down to a well so they could have a drink, and they had a great time covering us all in water as well! After riding for another half hour or so we led them to the river where we got in and bathed them - Paileen wasn't great in the water so I bathed Fah instead, scrubbing her from top to bottom with the end of a broom whilst she lay around in the water; she was tiny compared to the others so I got a pretty easy job! After surviving that quite well we then ended up in a water fight with the elephants who seem to love nothing more than squirting water out of their trunks, or just using them as a huge paddle to propel water towards to you - it was great fun (I mean, how often do you have a water fight with an elephant?!) but I was absolutely soaked! I have some great photos though so hopefully they'll be up soon.
We couldn't get the train to Bangkok as originally planned, as it was already full of people who were having to take the train rather than fly, so we went on the night bus instead. We were picked up from our hotel in a little open truck, which has us scared for a moment that this was our transport for the next 10 hours... luckily after 5 minutes driving it dropped us off at the garage, to get on a very dilapidated but infinitely warmer looking coach from the mid 80's. The atmosphere was pretty funny, with most people on the bus there due to plans changed as a result of the continuing airport closures (we'd found out from our guide earlier that the army leader didn't support the prime minister, meaning that a military ousting of the protesters - the only option left after the police had tried and failed abysmally, to the extent that the protesters actually ended up taking over the police check points - wasn't going to happen, and the protests were going to continue until the government either gave in or were chucked out). Unfortunately the continuing situation meant my Mom's replacement flight was cancelled and it became clear she wasn't going to be able to get out here as planned - suddenly my newly acquired Thailand guide was seeming an even better swap than it had at the time! Although the one benefit of this drama was that as the majority of stranded tourists were from the UK, Canada, Us and Germany (who speak English better than I do most of the time) there were enough English-speakers on the bus to get an English movie for once, and after watching Iron Man, stopping at a random bus station at midnight and dozing on and off, I made it back to Bangkok for the second time that month.
I still had mine & Mom's hotel reservation at the Bangkok Marriot, so I hopped in a taxi and headed there when we got in at 6am - it took a while, and quite a lot of confusing half-Thai/half-English conversations on my cabbie's mobile phone, but eventually he dropped me off there and relieved to have made it somewhere so I had a couple of days to sort myself out, I crashed out for the next few hours. After more avid BBC news watching I discovered that one of the many benefits of staying at the Marriott (besides the fancy toiletries and bathrobe) is that you get a free shuttle boat service to the centre of Bangkok, which I merrily took advantage of to head to the Skytrain - Bangkok's amazing monorail system, which gets you from one end of town to another in 15 minutes and only costs 80p; take note, London Underground - to go to Mo Chit and visit Chatuchak, the big weekend market. For anyone who's been to Portobello market in London, it's basically the Thai equivalent but at least 20 times bigger; I loved it! So some household items, new cords and vintage rock t-shirts (amongst other economically damaging things) later I decided that as it was nearly dark, I should probably leave... I dropped in to the victory monument and the cinema complex there on the way back, but as a film about a Playboy bunny at college - the only available option in English - wasn't really my thing, I decided to head back to Khao San, the tourist centre which I knew would at least be lively, if nothing else. Even that was pretty quiet (so many of the tourists here had already done everything before their flights were cancelled, and there hadn't been a new influx of tourists who hadn't due top the airport blockade) but I got to watch the Manchester derby on a big screen TV in the street with a bunch of Thai's, which was a novel experience!
On my last (planned) full day in Bangkok I though I'd better sort some travel plans out, as my flights to Ko Samui had now officially been cancelled - the lovely people at STA travel reassured me that I could just get a bus to Ban Phe (to the east of Bangkok, on the coast) in the morning and then a ferry to Ko Samet, which they said was a nice island to go to, so I decided to do that the next day and set about doing the last of Bangkok's big tourist attractions. I headed to Wat Pho first, which I had almost to myself for the first half an hour I was wandering, and saw the famous reclining Buddha; this things is HUGE. It's 45m long, and the building it's in is only just big enough to house it - it's gold and covered in mother of pearl statues, and I was really pretty impressed. Next I headed to the royal palace and Wat Saket, the home of the emerald Buddha (not actually emerald, but jade - it's very famous though because they didn't realise what it was for a long time, as the original Buddha had been covered in a plaster one). Here I had one of my odder experiences in Thailand, where I thought a woman had asked me to take a picture of her, her husband and her son (fair enough)... then she plonked her six month old child on my lap and I realised she wanted a picture of me WITH her son. And then she posed next to me for another photo, so a random Thai family now has pictures of a blonde English girl and their baby boy - very strange. The temple that the emerald Buddha was housed in is stunning - beautiful murals all around, and hundreds of little statues and gold ornaments all on a huge stand, at the top of which is the emerald Buddha wearing whichever outfit is currently fashionable (he has a summer, rainy season and winter outfit which are changed 3 time a year in a ceremony presided over by the king - he's wearing the winter one at the moment). Just to get my daily fill of Buddhism I also headed home via the amulet market - mostly commonly frequented by monks, and those with dangerous professions who presumably want to have racked up the most karma possible if they managed to get themselves killed before their time - and picked up a few old pendants, before heading back to the Marriott make the most of things like Sky, swimming pools and hot showers before heading off to live in a bamboo hut for the next few days.
Ko Samet has been absolutely lovely - a tiny island with diamond white beaches and clear turquoise water, where I've sunbathed and read and slept, and not much else (because there isn't much else to do!). I stayed at a lovely place run by an English lady who looked out for me and anyone else she knew was travelling alone, in my own little bamboo hut in stilts which was furnished with a mattress, pillows, mosquito net and fan, and absolutely nothing else; it's been a complete contrast to the Marriott but also been very nice to experience what it would have been like visiting as a backpacker 20 or 30 years ago! Yesterday was the King's 81st birthday which put the brakes on any sunbathing plans I had (everyone has the day off work, so the usually calm and quite beach 30seconds walk from my hut was overrun) but was amazing come night time - the beach was full of fire throwers, fireworks, people with sparklers and lit mini hot air balloons (like lanterns that propel themselves up and across the sea - they look amazing), amidst chants of "Long Live The King!". It's something I'm really glad I got to see, and I even played my part by wearing a yellow t-shirt (the King's colours).
So that's you all up-to-date with my adventures so far! I'm not going to apologise for the length because you've read enough of these to know what you're letting yourself in for now. I should, assuming no-one's going to start protesting and blocking airports overnight (the prime minister was ousted a few dys ago, so now the pro-government protestors aren't happy - but as they haven't got the military on their side they can't do much!), be heading to Munich tomorrow morning for a few days of European culture and (possibly more realistically) christkindlmarkts and gluhwein, but I'll keep you all posted on what I end up getting up to. Take care of yourselves and keep in touch.
Lots of Love,
Kat
xxx
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