The Brownshoe Travel Emporium: March 2008

Monday, 24 March 2008

Bangkok to Kanchanaburi to Bangkok to Nong Khai to Vientiane to Luang Prabang

I've had a really rather brilliant time of it since I left south Thailand. First on Sunday 16th March I flew to Bangkok and spent 3 nights there (2 of those with Catha, another volunteer). On the first evening I had a wander down Khao San road and the local area. It's a pretty cool place, full of flashing lights, and people pedalling clothing and cheap tasty food. The vibe reminded me quite a bit of Camden. Here I met 2 Irish girls who offered me a salted bug that looked suspiciously like a cockroach. I declined. Then they tried to offer it to an older woman who was eating a rather dull looking pad thai (noodle dish). She explained that she didn't eat egg, soya, msg, or fish (because apparently the fisherman here put formaldehyde on their catch). I might have taken some notice of her, but as I mentioned before, this left her with a very dull dinner indeed, basically plain noodles and vegetables.

The next day I got a tuk-tuk to the Chinese embassy, and made the mistake of getting in the first tuk-tuk I saw. Big mistake, since the rather elderly gentleman driving it, though he insisted he knew where he was going, had to stop and ask directions from a friend at the side of the road. There then followed an hour and 20 minutes of traffic jams interspersed with teeth-clenching spurts of speed that made me feel exactly as though someone was juggling with my spine when we went over the numerous bumps and potholes in the road.

When we got to the embassy, he still didn't know where to go, although to be fair, the embassy didn't have any signs on it at all, not even in Chinese as far as I could tell. Eventually some kindly locals pointed us in the right direction and from there things got much easier. For an extra fee, I got to pick up my visa the same afternoon, and although this meant I had to spend way to many hourse mooching around the nearby Tesco-Lotus and wasting time in an internet cafe (since there was nothing more interesting to do nearby), it was definitely preferable to making the journey across town more times than was necessary. The journey back was much nicer, since I took a metre taxi and he even turned on his metre (which they refuse to do in the more touristy parts of town, since they can rinse you for more money that way).

I got back and met Catha at the hotel, and spent a pleasant evening with her. The next day, we visited the Grand Palace and adjoining temples which was amazing. I will definitely encourage Mum and Lucy to come with me again. It consists of row after row of bejewelled, gold-leaf encrusted temples and palace buildings which all gleamed magnificently in the hot Bangkok sun. We then walked through the amulet market, which like so many markets is a rabbit warren of a place full of interest even to those that don't wish to buy anything. It was however, a little difficult to negotiate (as many tight spaces are here) because we kept coming across monks. Women aren't allowed to touch Buddhist monks here, so when in a confined space, it's quite tricky to get past them. I just dread the thought of being the one stupid Western tourist who cheerfully bowls into a monk and sends him spreadeagled on the floor, his orange robes flying about him.

The next morning (Thursday) I got a taxi to the southern bus terminal (at an exorbitant rate, but it's hard to haggle when you have a huge backpack) and a very comfortable efficient bus to Kanchanaburi, the site of the Bridge over the River Kwai. My room was a little basic and dingy, but it was on the river itself (i.e. actually constructing on the river with little walkways leading out to the rooms). It was a very pretty location, full of insect and birdlife and lots of bats in the evening.

I walked to the bridge (which didn't look so far on the map) and this turned out to be a mistake, because though it was only 20 minutes or so, it was in the heat of the day. Once there the bridge was much as you'd expect it to be, quite touristy with not all that much going for it apart from it's history. I then got a taxi to the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, a museum recommended in the guidebook. This was excellent and made my visit to Kanchanaburi well worth the journey. The museum detailed the history of the Japanese prisoners of war and enforced Asian labourers who built the Death Railway and the bridge itself. It is a very modern, well-put together museum, and contains lots of personal details and memorabilia of the prisoners of war as well as information on the engineering of the railway and its history through and after the war. It was all rather emotional, and next door there is a large Allied cemetery which is just beautifully kept with small flowers and shrubs in between the stone grave-markers.

Remembering my dehydrating walk earlier in the day, I decided from here to get a bicycle-taxi (like a rickshaw) back to the guesthouse, only to discover that it was actually just around the corner, which just goes to show that you can never win.

The next day I got an early bus back to Bangkok and booked my ticket on the night train north to Nong Khai on the Thailand-Laos border. I left my bag in the station and hopped on the Bangkok subway/skytrain network, which is impressively modern, clean and aggressively air-conditioned (i.e. great for an overheated tourist). This took me to Jim Thompson's house. Jim Thompson was an american architect who came to Thailand after the war and made Thai silk famous by exporting it all over the world, using patterns borrowed mainly from Chinese porcelains. Jim had a thing for Southeast Asian and Chinese antiques and built himself a house from several traditional Thai houses brought from where they were falling into a delapidated state all over central Thailand. The house itself is very attractive and is full of interesting antiques - a lot of china and porcelain, and stone Buddha statues. If I sound like an advert for the place, it's because we were ferried around the house by a Thai tour guide who efficiently pumped us full of all sorts of information.

From here I walked down past Siam Square - the big shopping district and cool teen hangout - and had a wander through Lumphini park, which is a nice open space full of joggers and people doing tai chi. There were loudspeakers blaring all over the park and just as I was leaving a whistle blew and everyone in the whole park stood stock still and silent while the national anthem played (a very strange experience). When it was finished loud music started for communal aerobics, rather like the dancing/aerobics the children do at school, only slightly more coordinated.

I then had a very nice dinner of seafood and dipping sauces and got on the train. Unfortunately it was delayed and after an hour or so a nice employee came and told us poor farangs (foreigners) what was going on. Apparently a train (I later heard a freight train) had crashed at the next station and our train was therefore delayed for 5 hours. We could apparently go and get a refund, but I didn't fancy going and paying for a hotel and then having to find an alternative mode of transportation the following day, which (however long the train was delayed) would probably have taken longer.

So, I tried to sleep in my actually decent-sized cot in the train. This was rather difficult because (since the train wasn't moving, and since I wasn't in an air-conditioned carriage) it was rather stuffy. Also, even in the middle of the night train stations are rather noisy places and every announcement, bump or bang, seemed to me to herald our finally getting started, so I would awake triumphant, only to find we hadn't actually gone anywhere. The train was delayed almost 9 hours in total, meaning that we didn't get going until 5.30 am and didn't arrive in Nong Khai until 6pm. Since I'd got on the train early to make sure I found my seat and everything ok, this meant I was on that train for a total of 22 hours, not a situation I would like to repeat.

Still, it could have been worse and the solidarity of fellow cabin-fevered travellers found me a traveling companion for the next couple of days - Jenny an American woman spending a month in Southeast Asia.

We found a nice guest house in Nong Khai and it was only when I saw a mirror above the desk of the guesthouse that I realised I had been bitten by some unfriendly mosquito 6 times on my face. I did look a site. The next morning we cycled an only slightly-terrifying route along a main road to a nearby sculpture park made by a dedicated (for dedicated read crazy) shaman. This was filled to bursting with enormous concrete sculptures of Hindhu and Buddhist gods. It was really an astonishing place, everywhere you looked there was another snake-headed/elephant-headed/monkey-headed marvel. Apparently there is another park built by the same man at Vientiane over the border.

We then bused it across the Thai-Laos Friendship bridge, through customs and on to Vientiane. Here - mainly thanks to Jenny - we cunningly ignored the official looking price-list of the taxi/bus etc. drivers nearby the bridge who wanted us to pay 250B for a ride into town. Instead we walked a little further and got on a public bus (full of uproariously laughing Laos women) for 20B. We had a little trouble finding a guesthouse, but found an ok one in the end. They were all busy because - unbeknownst to us - there was a French music festival right on the river. So, after wandering around Vientiane and eating dinner, we went and listened to some very good French music on the Mekong, which (despite the sweaty, insect-filled) atmosphere was a wonderful way to spend an evening.

The next day we changed some money which given the huge inflation they have here means I'm now a millionaire, (for the first and hopefully not last time in my life). This is because there are over 16,000 kip to the pound meaning that the modest sum of 600B (i.e. 100 pounds) yielded me over 1.6 million kip. Unfortunately since a room for the night costs in the region of 80,000 kip I don't think my millionaire status will last for long. We then walked to and through Talat Sao (the morning market) which was full of colour and noise and mud, because there had been a torrential downpouring of rain early that morning. From here we got a tuk-tuk (at a rather exorbitant rate) to Pha That Luang, the national monument of Laos, a rather showy gold stupa surrounded by four equally showy temples. We then came back to town and had a wander across the dry sandy bed of the mekong river which seems to function as a local mountain biking park in the dry season. We then had a brief look at a local history museum which was not exactly in pristine condition, but which was interesting from the point of view of learning about French colonialism, the rise of communism and the utter incomprehensibility of US actions in the Vietnam war which led Laos to take on the not-exactly envious title of most bombed nation on earth.

We had a goodbye cake at a bakery in town (the french colonial influence here is felt strongly in patisseries etc.) and I got a tuk-tuk to the local bus station and a night-bus to Luang Prabang. I had decided on the local bus, because the tourist buses are incredibly overpriced in comparison, and only go during the day, which means you have to pay for a room either end and do nothing productive all day. I ended up on a bus that left at 6pm, the only white person apart from a Swiss couple. The journey wasn't exactly conducive to sleep. For a start, Laos has some difficult terrain so you couldn't sleep half the time because you had to cling onto your seat to stop yourself falling out into the aisle as the bus negotiated twisty mountainous roads, which probably would have been quite vertiginous if it wasn't pitch black outside. Secondly, they kept turning the light on and off at random intervals, and thirdly, there was loud Thai music blaring out for the entire journey from a speaker just behind my head. This rather gave the impression that they didn't want us to sleep.

The journey didn't exactly give me an appetite for the bags of rice and dried fish available as a roadside dinner on the way. Especially as five minutes before we stopped for dinner, the woman sitting next to me, presumably travel-sick from the bumpy ride, threw up into a container she appeared to have brought for the purpose. Or, which would be nicely circular I suppose, used to contain her dinner. She was very discreet about it, and frankly deserves points for not making more fuss over the whole thing, but still, it didn't exactly put me in the mood for trying some local cuisine. In fact, what with the jerky movement, the loud music and the young woman spewing her guts out, it was more like a bad disco than a bus ride. Oh, and because (I assume) of the changes in altitude and temperature, my legs and feet became rather swollen with water retention. I felt like an old woman, but at least this didn't last long - they are now back to their usual size and shape.

We (i.e. me and the Swiss couple) got into the Luang Prabang bus station at 4.30am and got a tuk-tuk to town, then had to wait until 6am for a bakery to open so we could down large amounts off coffee, and finally made it into a guesthouse a little while later.

So now here I am, after sleeping a while and wandering the streets of Luang Prabang which is just ludicrously picturesque - filled with French colonial architecture and beautifully carved and painted Buddhist wats. It's also a bit cooler here, partly because it's quite cloudly with a romantic mist hanging over the mekong, and presumably also because of the altitude and because it's a lot further north. It's good to get a burst of lower temperatures before I head back south into the heat of the Thai summer (which apparently tops 45-50 degrees...)

Saturday, 15 March 2008

It's now time to...

move onto the next adventure. I had my last day of teaching yesterday which was pretty fun. The kids suddenly became very attached to me and didn't want me to go (although knowing children this probably has a lot to do with the balloons and sweets I gave them). The kids from P2 especially love me (they are 7-8), because they were supposed to have a test but I went up to get them for English, and the teacher let them come because it was my last lesson with them. They were pretty hyper after that.

I also have far too many photos of all the children, because every time they see a camera they point at it and say "one, one" meaning "take one picture", and then proceed to all crowd around the camera and pull funny poses/give each other rabbit ears etc. When the picture is taken they then launch themselves at you all desperate to see themselves on the tiny screen.

On Thursday the nursery finished for the year (the 2 month summer holiday for Thai schools is coming up) and they children who were leaving the nursery to move into P1 had a whole little graduation ceremony and show which lasted all morning. Some of the girls did dances (or rather a 5 year old's version of a dance) and they were all dressed up in matching costumes and makeup. Then the director made us get up on stage to introduce ourselves to the parents (with Suwat, our host Dad doing the translating), and I got a certificate in English for volunteering there, which only has 1 spelling mistake - pretty good going really. This wasn't much of a surprise because I had to write down my name for them.

Yesterday at school P5 went on a trip to a local fishery/aquarium with children from another school (and a couple of the other volunteers) and the director of my school took me and the Swiss family (who turned up to volunteer for the last week) along as well. It was really cool, there were lots of fish including some huge ones as big as a very large person which looked like they might be catfish or something similar. There were also several turtles, sharks, and lots of glowing neon fish. I got to see some of these in their natural habitat today as well. We teachers decided to join the conservation volunteers for the day on the boat and when they went diving we got to snorkel. Apart from the prodigious amount of sea water I managed to swallow, this was really cool. I saw hundreds of fish and some coral (albeit pretty ugly coral).

Outside of school, I've had a nice week apart from the horrid cold that has finally got to me after going around everyone else in the house first. Last Sunday, all the teaching volunteers went kayaking which was really good. We drove for ages and got to this bay called Ao Thalane. Then we kayaked out into the see and round the coast, by some dizzying limestone cliffs and through this beautiful canyon, before going through a mangrove forest which in a 2-person kayak is a little bit tricky, because if you're not bashing into the trees, you're losing your paddle in the branches. The scenery was amazing and it's really nice to do something active when you've been cooped up in a classroom all week. We stopped to have freshly cut pineapple (which out here is absolutely delicious, as are bananas) and a couple of monkeys turned up for the leftovers.

We also went out on Thursday for my leaving meal. We went to a bar/barbecue restaurant at the end of Ao Nang beach called The Last Fisherman. It's a nice, relaxing place and the food was really good, if extremely filling. We also get to have a another barbecue at the house this evening. They have one every month or so for all the volunteers to get together and somehow it's worked out that I get to go to 3 in 2 months which doesn't quite make sense but I'm entirely not complaining.

Oh and for all those people who are wondering, no I haven't managed to lose/break any electrical equipment this week. My shiny new camera is decidedly not going to go for a swim like the last one.

Friday, 7 March 2008

Life here continues to surprise...

I was preparing for my lesson this morning when in walk the children and the Director of the school chanting, "Singapore. Singapore is here!" This bemused me rather, but when I went outside I realised that they meant some GCSE-age children from a school in Singapore, plus their teachers. The teachers came and talked to me (in pretty damn good English - apparently in Singapore they use English as their official language). They started by asking me if I could give a speech to their students about the history of the school. Surprisingly enough I said no on the grounds that, as a clueless volunteer I didn't know anything about the school at all.

The Thai children then showed off their aerobics/dancing before the Singaporeans (if this is the correct term), split up the school into boys and girls. The boys went up onto the field to play football/what appeared to be netball without an actual net. The girls did some colouring in. It's very strange (or perhaps not so strange at all) that everything in schools here is so divided along gender lines. It's a really good thing that this isn't the same at English schools.

One of the teachers kept asking me strange questions such as, "Do the children live here at the school?" and eventually it turned out that they had been told by the tour company that brought them that they were visiting an orphanage. Now, considering that 3 of the pupils at the school live with me and most decidedly do have parents, I had to disabuse them of this notion and tell them that this is just a plain old government school. I think someone had taken them for a bit of a ride...

Anyway, they were all extremely nice and friendly, offering to show me around if I was ever in Singapore and asking lots of questions about my life and what I was doing. One teacher praised me highly for being so wonderful and kind as to volunteer and work here without a thought to money etc. He kept saying things like I must have a "very generous heart". It was most embarrassing and most un-English, but very nice of them.

As they were leaving, one cheeky girl in P4 said "Bye-bye Amy, go Singapore," and tried to pack me off with them. Not sure why she wants to get rid of me exactly but she and her friends seemed to find it very funny.

The other interesting thing that has happened recently was my trip with Lucie, Julia and Jane (other volunteers) to Khao Phanom Bencha National Park, just 20km north of Krabi. It was very beautiful and quite tiring - but not as much so as trekking up Tiger Temple. We walked for about 4 hrs through the rainforest, up to a not very exciting viewpoint and a couple of waterfalls and back again trying to cling onto trees to stop ourselves falling down the very steep slope. Notable things on this trip included:

the biggest tree I've ever seen ever, Lucie was just a dot in front of it when we took pictures;

the noise of the insects which was so loud it was almost deafening, it sounded like a really huge computer trying to dial the internet or the soundtrack from an avant garde horror film;

the biggest spider I've ever seen ever in the biggest spider web I've ever seen ever, which I just walked under not realising it was there, until I turned back and saw the others cowering in fear;

and the huge waterfall I looked down into, and more specifically the rockpool above which I fell into holding my camera.

The walk back down the dizzying slope in soaking wet clothes was interesting too. So, tomorrow's task is to buy a new camera. Strangely enough I wasn't even too upset about the whole thing. I think being in a predominantly Buddhist country (albeit in a Muslim area) must be rubbing off on me. I felt rather zen about it all. I might not have been so calm, I suppose, if I hadn't put all my photos on CD the day before. As it was, it was actually quite funny. I fell onto my front and then immediately thrust the camera out of the water shouting, "My camera, my camera." Lucie then pointed out that I should probably actually check I hadn't hurt myself before worrying about electrical equipment. On the way home in the bus, we kept shouting "My camera" and then dissolving into giggles.

I actually only have one week left at the school now, which I'm really happy about because although I've enjoyed it here, and I'll miss the children and the other volunteers, I'm really looking forward to traveling. I'm ging to start in Bangkok (where I have to go to get my visa for China) before going west to Kanchanaburi to see the Bridge on the River Kwai and the Death Railway. After that I'll return to Bangkok and get a night train/bus up to Nong Khai on the Laos border, before crossing over into Laos and visiting Vientiane for a few days, then Luang Prabang, for a few more. I wanted to go and see the Plain of Jars at Phonsavan, where there are these fields of probably 2000 yr old jars put there by some mystery civilization. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have time for this, because I've heard that transport in Laos is pretty slow. I figured it's probably best to go to a couple of the main cities and see what day-trips I can do from there because of time constraints.

After Luang Prabang, I'm going to take a 2 day boat trip along the Mekong to Huay Xai on the Thai border, cross into Chiang Khong and bus it to Chiang Mai. I'll stay there a few days and then go south back to Thailand, stopping at Sukothai and possibly Ayuthaya on the way if I'm not sick to death of temples/if I have enough time. This should get me to Bangkok just in time to meet my lovely Mum and sister when they fly in and together we're going to go to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, before traveling down to Ko Chang, an island National Park with lovely beaches, forests etc.

Hope this itinerary makes you all insanely jealous - I plan to have a very good time indeed.
(Can't wait to see you Mum and Lucy. Twill be great.)