Two nights in Bangkok...

"Time flies - doesn't seem a minute
Since Luang Prabang had a Kiwi boy in it
All change -- don't you know that when you
Stay with my hosts there's no ordinary venue"

I flew from Luang Prabang back to Bangkok. I was about to use the phrase "my kind hosts" again, but by this point in proceedings I need a stronger phrase.

Okay, so my benevolent guardian angels invited me to stay on the 23rd floor of a skyscraper with a balcony overlooking the river. With a view a bit like this:

View from the bathroom window

In the evening, lightning would flash around the horizon.

They took me to see the flower market. We went at night, because the market runs 24/7. It's a legitimate market - not a tourist event - so there are very few farangs (foreigners) around.

Bag of flowers

No idea. Fruit, veg, alien?

Chili peppers

Flowers in a row

If you're a photography fan, go to the Bangkok flower market at night. The colours are fantastic. And take an overloaded tuk-tuk through the traffic at night. That's good fun right there.

So, that was about it for South-East Asia. I don't know if it was the best holiday of my life, but it was pretty close. Magic.

Sukhothai (vs Ayuthaya)

(This blog is starting to adopt the chronological flow of the movie Memento. I know I mentioned Sukhothai already, but I wanted to expand on it a bit.)

Shortly after I arrived in Chiang Mai, my kind hosts drove me down to Sukhothai, to stay for a night. Sukhothai is about 5 hours south of Chiang Mai. I was impressed by the roads - they were almost entirely dual lanes in both directions, and considerably better than we would get in New Zealand.

On my previous trip to Thailand, I visited Ayuthaya, which is an hour north of Bangkok by train. There are strong similarities. Both are ruined former capitals, with buildings that date back centuries. Both span quite large areas. And the ruins look similar.

So, which is better? I can't really say - they're both a good visit. The grounds at Sukhothai are prettier, but Ayuthaya has elephant rides. I think I got better photos of actual ruins at Ayuthaya, but more pleasing photos overall at Sukhothai. Basically, either one is worth a visit.

We hired a tuk-tuk, which took (took) us around the various sites. It rained a bit, but it doesn't matter much in Thailand. You may get wet, but you don't get cold.

A ruin across a lake

Buddhist statue in an alcove

Another ruin

Old pillars in silhouette

The path up to a shrine on a hill. Why do they all have to be on hills?

A cow (from the tuk-tuk). Moooove it!


Child with umbrella (also from tuk-tuk)

My hosts showed their usual canniness at finding a good place to stay. The little boutique accomodation that they found had circular holes in the ceiling where there were large paper umbrellas with lights behind them.

Backlit umbrella recessed into hotel ceiling

Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is the second city in Laos. The capital is Vientiane, but all reports are that it's not as nice as LP. In addition, parts of Vientiane were underwater due to the flooding, so LP definitely seemed like the right choice.

When I arrived, the power was out across the city, but after having experienced a prolonged blackout the previous night in Pak Bang, I gave the raised eyebrow of the knowing world traveller, and then sat in the gloom waiting for it to come back on. Because it's hard to look purposeful when it's 30 degrees and darkish.

Incidentally, if anyone is reading this because they're going to Laos, I stayed at the Sala Prabang, which I recommend. Great service and a very nice room.

I really liked LP. I repeatedly ate spicey papaya salads, spring rolls, and delicious banana or pineapple smoothies. I don't care where in the world you are - that's a tough combo to beat.

There are prominent tourist attractions that everyone sees in LP: Giving alms to the monks at dawn, the temple on the hill, the waterfall. I left the waterfall until too late in the day, and the drivers wanted too much money. And I guess the monks didn't want the alms badly enough to wait until early afternoon. I mostly just roamed around with my camera.

I continued my practice of scaring the crap out of myself by walking across a wooden bridge, only to have one of the boards pivot away underfoot to show the water below, like Indiana Jones crossing the old bridge in Temple of Doom.

The river, taken from the rickety bridge

Woman with baskets

Faded communist insignia on a building

Statue heads in a fountain

I love the orange robes of the monks. They're so vivid. I really wanted a good photo of a monk, maybe carrying a sun umbrella, but I was nervous about being offensive. There were signs on the streets warning you to keep your head below those of the monks and to keep your distance from them. I'm no fan of religion, but it's their culture, so I'll play along.

I thought this was a general rule, so whenever a monk walked past me I would kind-of stoop down so I was lower. But nobody else was doing that, and I got confused about whether that was correct or not. Eventually, I settled on a policy of pretending to do up my shoelace whenever a monk went past. But then I came to a street that was just crawling with monks - it must've been monk lunch hour or something. I eventually turned off that street because I was having to pretend to do up my laces every few paces. Anyway, through trying not to offend, I never got a really pleasing photo.

Monks walking down the street (I bought the red shirt at left)

LP has a night market that goes on for miles. It was interesting as an experience, but the problem is, the stalls all sell the same things. If you don't want a strip of woven cloth from one of them, you probably don't want it from the next 49 stalls either.

However, there were a couple of occasions where I saw products for sale that were unique. On the climb up to the temple on the hill, women were selling sparrows in basket cages. I think the idea is that you release them to get karmic points, but doesn't that merely offset the karmic debt you owe from causing a sparrow to be stuff into a small box? This was another stall on the street:

Exotic fish for sale in bottles

On the flight from Luang Prabang back to Bangkok, I sat next to a Canadian woman who had been in LP for 5 weeks. I don't know how you'd fill in that much time, but LP was great and I'd like to see more of Laos. Recommended.

Laos vs Thailand

(I know I'm lagging on the entries here, but I promise I won't do anything interesting in the UK until the blog's caught up. Just hold your horses.)

A quick quiz:
Is the currency of Laos:
A) the Glob
B) the Kip
C) the Bag

The difference between Thai and Lao culture is surprisingly profound.

Rubbish bin in Luang Prabang

This is a picture of a public rubbish bin - Lao style. Laos is a former French colony, so everything is tinged with a Western flavour. In LP there are rubbish bins, but (as shown) they're made of woven flax and bamboo poles. Western infrastructure, but with a south-east asian slant. This extends to the food (restaurants selling schnitzel, crepes, etc), most people speak English, and life moves at a slow pace.

Laotians play boules (or petanque) on the waterfront

Thailand, by contrast, has always been more or less independent. There don't seem to be any rubbish bins at all, dented vehicles fly around at insane speeds, no one speaks much English; it's a country where frantic chaos reigns. If you travel to Thailand and find it too much, try a jump to Laos. It's much easier for a Westerner to cope with.

The Thai currency, the baht, is pretty low. You get about 25 baht for a single NZ dollar. It can make you feel rich. Well, for the Lao Kip (correct answer) you get about 6000 to an NZ dollar. For my 2000 baht, I got about half a million Kip. I suspect that if you have $100 US, they just give you the whole country. I offered a beggar 2000 kip, and he said "No. 5000".

When you have that quantity of currency, it's easy to go a little silly. I don't normally believe in buying souvenirs, but I was buying all sorts of stupid stuff. 50,000 kip for a bracelet from some cute kid? Sure, why not. I'm a gajillionaire!

My wrist. From right: Buddhist bracelet, string bracelet, woven bracelet, sandelwood bracelet, septic mozzie bite. Absent: Clean skin.

Landslides in Laos

A piece of advice. If you're:
1) Standing face to face with a Lao porter, and
2) He is holding out his hand for money, and
3) You have your wallet out
- if he then suddenly turns and runs for his life, that is not the time to say "Um... what?" or to turn around and see what is going on. That is the time to run like shit. Let me explain how I know this.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Mekong was flooded. The Chinese had drained water out of their series of dams upriver, which caused flooding in Laos. One of the locals said it was the worst flood since 1965.

It wasn't too bad on the water. The river was wider than normal and it was a swirling morrass the colour of chocolate milk, but the boat handled it fine. We sailed down the river for about 6 hours. I was surprised at the lack of variance. There weren't many villages, and the terrain didn't change much. Mostly, I read a couple of novels.

The excitement happened when we reached Pak Bang, which is the stop for the night. As they brought the nose of our boat in among the other boats, the wake brought down some of the bank and a house collapsed into the water at the front of the boat. This created a wave that washed all the boats sideways. They were all wedged together, and we were on quite a lean. The locals ran around screaming, trying to dislodge the boats. We were trapped in ours. The sides are open, but with boats wedged in around us, there was no actual way to escape if we tipped over. It was all fairly dramatic.

Houses in the water at Pak Bang

The town is built on a road that rises along the shore from the boat dock. Because the river was so high, the first part of the road was under water and the locals were ferrying us across it in narrow, unstable canoes. With 30 kgs strapped to my torso and mud everywhere, it was precarious to say the least.

I got out of my canoe, only to have my porter -who was demanding money- disappear up the road. The second slow boat had arrived, and the wake from it had caused another house to collapse, again causing a large wave. People went flying from the canoes. I legged it up the hill with all my gear, not much ahead of the wave.

I got a room at a guest house, where I sat in the dark for 15 minutes trying to un-freak out. Of course, there wouldn't have been any power even if I had wanted it, because they didn't fire up the generator until more guests arrived. They shut it off again at about 10 pm, meaning no fan, lights, or warm water.

I had dinner with two interesting Americans. After an uneventful day, it was a pretty exciting evening.

Pak Bang township (rush hour)

Day 2 on the boat was a test of endurance. We were packed onto the boat like sardines, and the seats were hard wooden benches. Even with the cushion I bought, it was unpleasant. I was seated on the left side of the boat, so I got burnt down the left side of my face. I ended up looking like Twoface from the Batman movie. It was quite a relief to finally reach Luang Prabang. Overall, I can't say that I would recommend that boat trip. The scenery didn't change for two days, and it was quite physically punishing.

The highwater mark (the yellow flowers are juvenile teak trees)

Boats moored along the river

Another Wat


One of the few changes of scene

Slow boat to Laos

My time in Chiang Mai was fantastic. I was taken to the best restaurants, chauffeured around, helped with Thai language and bargaining - generally treated like a king. It couldn't have been better. But living the life of Riley isn't entirely what this is all about. I needed to challenge myself to cope alone. Let's try a several-day boat trip along the Mekong River to Luang Prabang in Laos. And throw in a ropey tum on the morning of departure and a flood to make it interesting. Deal with that, independence boy.

On the first day, we spent 5 hours in a minivan travelling to the Thai/Laos border. It was crammed, and fairly unpleasant. The town where we stayed was pretty rough. After dinner, I went to a pub with an Italian lady and a British guy. I must say, there was a good international mix on the trip.

First view of Mekong river, at dusk

You can travel up the river by slow boat or fast boat. The slow boat takes 2 days. The fast boat is a small speed boat. On it, you crouch down wearing a crash helmet, because they have a record of frequently flipping and killing tourists. I opted for the slow boat.

The next morning, we were ferried across the river to Laos, and went through immigration. This took hours. They then gave us the hard sell about how much better it would be to take the bus than the boat. It would only take 10 hours, and then we would be in Luang Prabang by midnight. It turned out that they had sold too many tickets and there were too many people for one boat. They kept hounding us to take the bus until one of the Americans got angry and shouted at them. Then they backed down. This was excellent, because they squished nearly everyone onto the first boat, and those of us on the second boat had heaps of space to ourselves.

A Wat along the river

A riverside village

The other slow boat

The other slow boat again

A small boat

Incidentally, two guys from our group chose to take the bus, to get to Luang Prabang quicker. Instead of taking 10 hours, it took them 24 hours and was reportedly "torture".

A couple of pics

Hi.

I don't have long here, but here are a couple of pictures from Chiang Mai.

The pandas turned out to be one of the best things I've ever seen.

http://www.jamesmcl.Thailand.PhotoShare.co.nz

More soon...

Note: I moved to Picasa for photo storage, so that link no longer works.
- JM, 4-12-12.