Chiang Mai to Sukothai to Bangkok to Cambodia to Ko Chang to Shanghai

Hi all,

Currently I'm sitting at my desk in the office of Shanghai Talk, the lifestyle magazine I'll be working for for the next three months. It seems rather relaxed here - I haven't exactly been given a brief or a job description, and despite the fact that I turned up at 10am on my second day, I was still in a clear hour earlier than anybody else on the editorial team (including the boss). Also, they don't seem to mind if I just play around on the internet all day - come to think of it, playing around on the internet seems to be what my job consists of.

Despite the relaxed nature of the job, it seems to be going ok so far. I have a few responsibilities e.g. finding trivia for the quiz page and other little things like that, and I'll soon have a couple of articles on the go for the June issue. They have recently started an environment page so I'm thinking of focussing on that and e.g. profiling some green businesses here. To that end I went to an Eco Design Fair on Saturday to network a bit.

Shanghai itself is rather a bewildering place. You would of thought that after growing up in London, one big city would be rather like another, but that doesn't seem to be true here where every other building is a skyscraper or apartment block. London's skyline (and I imagine also New York's) have nothing on it for sheer grandiose overstatement.

There are over 20 million people living in Shanghai (unlike London's measly 12 mill) and on my first day when I woke up in my flat on the 14th floor of a hi-rise apartment building, I swear I could hear the low hum of several million of them talking below me, along with numerous carhorns and intermittent firecrackers; apparently these are good luck for e.g. when someone is moving house. Also, not sure I'll get a haircut here as most hairdressers seem to be thinly disguised fronts for brothels.

I had a really great time with Mum and Lucy while they were over and managed to top up my tan to a healthy glow that I will undoubtedly lose in the next week or two because it has been a rather miserable, cold, early spring here in Shanghai. (Although actually it's warmer today and will soon be hitting highs of 40 degrees so I should take as much advantage of cool breezes as I can while they're still around).

I think last time I wrote, I was in Chiang Mai preparing to go to Sukothai the next day. The bus there (compared to others I've taken) was relatively painless. I met a retired couple while I was waiting who were travelling round Asia for a month. The woman and I got talking after we both couldn't help laughing at a bus company employee who was trying to put hundreds of empty water bottles into the luggage hold. He had slotted the containers holding these in sideways, but then needed to fit in another item and so pulled them out which inevitably sent cascades of empty bottles onto the floor. This process was repeated several times, much to our amusement, and I'm almost certain we left at least one bottle behind that had rolled under the bus.

For the first half hour I was sitting next to a young Thai man who had just left university and was on the way to look for a job. He told me how brave I was to go off to another country and travel on my own, and seemed to wish he could do the same. Unfortunately for him, Thai culture not only seems to infantilise young people and make them scared to go out into the world alone, but also makes them tied to the older generation in a way that is both positive and negative. This young man explained to me that even if he could earn enough money to travel, he would have to look after his parents instead of following his dreams. He also asked me lots of questions about England, like "Do you have all kinds of weather in one day just like in films?" and seemed particularly fascinated to know if the real world beyond Thailand's borders matched up to the imaginary one he'd seen portrayed on the screen.

After half an hour he got off the bus, and since he was a stereotypically smiley Thai person, I was glad of the chance to relax my facial muscles. The unaccustomed effort of relentlessly smiling back got to me after a while.

Sukothai itself was very interesting - full of the remains of ancient city temples. I got splendidly sunburnt and dehydrated however, because the only way around the site is to cycle from temple to temple - no mean feat in the heat of the day.

The next day I got on yet another bus to Bangkok, again not to bad. I treated myself to the more expensive bus with the toilet for the 6 hour journey and was literally just in time - the bus actually started moving as I was leaping onto it.

In Bangkok mum and Lucy and I all went to the Grand Palace again which was slightly less sparkly due to cloudier weather, but still mighty impressive. We also popped into Wat Pho and saw the huge, gold, reclining Buddha there. We then went to the enormous Chatuchak market where Lucy could fulfil some of her urge to shop (and incidentally Mum and I also managed to obtain a couple of items).

Monday was an early start as we flew to Siem Reap and relaxed in our hotel for a while before checking out sunset at a temple on a hill with a great view of different temples around Angkor Wat. This was very nice but even towards sunset it was very warm indeed - not sure how people make it round lots of temples in one day.

The next day was mine and Lucy's birthday (yay) and we got up at 5 am to go see sunrise at Angkor Wat itself. Lucy generously conceded that we should probably wait until later in the day to exchange presents - not sure I would really have appreciated mine that early in the morning. When the sun was up, we walked round the temple and took in the amazing reliefs there. Next, we went to Angkor Thom where we were pretty gobsmacked by the Bayon, a ramshackle collection of blue-grey towers with almost Mayan looking faces on them. This building, although compact, was certainly a highlight of the trip. We then walked by another couple of temples in Angkor Thom that I forget the names of, before having a wander along and around the Leper King's Terrace and the Elephant Terrace. The former was carved with lots of images of people, and the latter (unsurprisingly) featured quite a few elephants. Katie would've loved it - in fact Katie, from an elephant-themed point of view, you'd like quite a lot of southeast Asia.

After that, it was back to the hotel for a relaxing afternoon and a nice meal out in a restaurant/bar unappetisingly named Deadfish. This was actually a pretty cool place, with tables on platforms at different levels, performers demonstrating traditional dance, nice food and crocodiles. Yes, that's right. Crocodiles.

The next day (Wednesday) we satisfied Mum's desire to see an overgrown jungle ruin and visited Ta Prom, where huge blocks of stone intermingle with enormous trees, their roots twisting around and through the structure, holding it together. It was great. Then it was onto a LonelyPlanet recommended Butterfly Garden restaurant for a tasty lunch surrounded by butterflies which (as is usual for such occasions) refused to sit still and pose for photographs.

Thursday saw us heading back to Bangkok, and falling into the trap of searching for a better deal on a longtail boat when we should have just gone with the first one. Once we eventually made it onto a longtail, though, we had a lovely time gliding through the Thonburi canals, and provided entertainment (in the form of something to wave at) to locals as we passed. We then had a short wander through Chinatown and headed back to the hotel.

Friday was another early start as we flew down to Trat and were chauffered from there to our hotel on the island of Ko Chang. This hotel (the Dewa) was my first 5* experience and I sincerely hope not my last. It was a stylish and relaxing place, although it was marred slightly by the occasional smell of drains. However, it's not so surprising that Thai drains are unable to cope especially at the hottest time of year, and it didn't detract from the experience.

There followed several days of relaxing, eating, swimming (in the sea and the funky pool), watching films, and drinking cocktails. You could even swim over to a pool height bar to order your cocktails and drink them in the water. What will these crazy kids think of next.

As well as not doing much, we also managed to go elephant trekking, which was just as good the second time around, although extremely terrifying as I spent half the time riding on the elephant's neck, feeling like I was going to be flung to the ground and trampled. With my limited Thai, I could tell that Lucy and I were the main topic of conversation among the mahouts for practically the whole journey. This may have been mainly the fault of my Laos beer t-shirt.

The journey to and from the elephant trekking was invigorating, because we were in the middle of Songkran festival - the Thai New Year. This involves several days of locals (and tourists), children, drunken teenagers, and grown adults who should know better, throwing water and occasionally talcum powder at passing pedestrians and vehicles. Our driver cooperated by slowing down and honking his horn every time we passed a group of people with a tank full of water so that they would wake up and splash us. This was quite fun at first, but I soon began to worry for my camera (whose predecessor you will remember had already been overloaded with moisture). Also, some of the water was icy cold, which even in the middle of the Thai summer is an unpleasant shock.

This mostly made us glad that we weren't in Bangkok for the festival, especially because our hotel there was right next to Khao San road, the centre of much drunken revelry even without water-throwing festivals as an excuse. I don't think it would have been as relaxing an experience as Ko Chang turned out to be.

We also went snorkelling which was wonderful, although Mum managed to stand on a spiky black sea urchin and bring even more attention our way than we already received as the only white family on a very full boat. Mum also declined to marry us off to one of the men working on the boat. This, I feel, is probably for the best.

Unfortunately the time came when we had to leave our idyllic island, and we were driven back to the tiny Trat airport, where we got to take of in one mother of a storm (which I thought was quite thrilling, but on which Lucy, who is scared of flying, wasn't so mad keen). Back in Bangkok, we had a last shop on Khao San Road and our last evening together, before Lucy and Mum left the next day to fly home.

I still had another day in Bangkok so I went to visit the Vivanmek Teak Mansion, a palace built by the great grandfather (or similar) of the present king in the early 20th century. This is the largest teak mansion in the world and would have been impressive, only they'd taken all that lovely, hard wood, with it's beautiful grain that would tell the tales of centuries, and painted over it in various baby-puke shades of pastel.

My goodbye taxi through Bangkok to the airport on Sat 19th April was a little sad. This would be the last time I would see Thailand for (presumably) a very long time, and I realised I was very fond of it as a country, for all its flaws. How could you not love a place where, even while they're ripping you off, they smile at you affectionately?

I wished the Thai Airways plane journey to Shanghai would take longer than the 4 or so hours it lasted, because I was on a swish new plane with a personal entertainment system instead of the group screen I'd had on the way over from England all those weeks ago. It had everything - dozens of films, tv programmes, music, games. You could even learn a language while you were ferried from one country to another. I was genuinely disappointed that we landed so soon.

So now here I am in Shanghai - so far, a far more expensive, alcohol-fuelled environment than Thailand. A modern, vibrant city (albeit with the odour of raw sewage never far away). Here I am surrounded by Chinese people with inconveniently small figures (so that no clothes here will fit me except for those from H&M) and absolutely no conception of personal space, queueing, or the notion that it's rude to stare at foreign people. It's great.

Luang Prabang to Pak Beng to Huay Xai to Chiang Khong to Chiang Mai

I think last time (if you managed to read to the end of my overly long post), we left off with me seeing in the early hours of the morning on a bench in Luang Prabang awaiting sunrise and the opening of cafes/guesthouses.

After this, I spent a few days just wandering Luang Prabang, visiting the odd Buddhist temple (of which there are many to choose from) and watching monks doing surprising things (e.g. smoking a cigarette, surfing the internet) and less surprising things (being dressed entirely in orange including orange umbrellas as sunshades, chanting, generally looking mystic and calm about life).

The "city" is really a tiny place. It wouldn't qualify as a town in England, just a large village. This is unsurprising as there are apparently only about 6 and a half million people in all of Laos. The centre of the town has quite a few tourists and tourist-orientated things, but not in an offensive in-your-face way like in the south of Thailand. In Luang Prabang, you can walk down the main streets surrounded by white faces, and then easily slip into a side street or lane and see nothing but local inhabitants or no one at all apart from the many wild dogs and cats that laze in the sun all day.

There you can see the positive impact of the money brought in by tourism, in the shiny paved roads, and booming businesses, but also the stark contrast between the sanitised front painted on for tourists, and the crumbling interior of the country behind this facade. Walk just behind the French colonial shopfronts and crowded in the back are bamboo shacks where many of the Laos people themselves live, with the charcoal burners they use for cooking cooling by the door.

Despite the obvious poverty and hardship that most people in Laos clearly face - especially compared with their more economically advanced neighbours in Thailand - it was also wonderful to see a country where tradition and culture was so important and alive. Although, having said this, Laos hasn't been a country for very long. In fact the French artificially created it when they colonised the area, and perhaps local "culture" seems so important here as a reaction against negative outside influence - first the French, and then the Americans who bombed Laos to oblivion during the Vietnam War. Also, there is a communist government in Laos, and although you'd hardly know this as a foreigner, except for the 11.30 curfew, I imagine the controlling influence of political power is more strongly felt by locals.

A lot of the women in Laos where tradition sarongs (long, beautifully patterned skirts) and as I mentioned, much of the home-cooking is still done on clay charcoal-burners. I learned something of Laos tradition when I enrolled for a day on a Laos cooking class. This was not so much about cooking as it was about Laos itself, since their culture seems to be firmly based around food, and much of the food is firmly based around sticky rice.

Laos people use this to eat with - rolling it into balls and scooping up curries etc. - and the leftovers are used for everything: rice noodles; rice paper for spring rolls; dried rice cakes eaten with a tamarind jam; mysterious rice powder used in cooking; laolao (rice whisky) and rice wine. Frankly I wouldn't have been surprised if our teacher had turned round and told us her clothes were made of sticky rice. As she kept reminding us "If not sticky rice, then not Laos people". This I suppose is hardly surprising in a country where they grow over 30 types of sticky rice in a whole rainbow of colours.

Much of Laos cuisine will be difficult to reproduce at home however, since about half the ingredients are sourced from the jungle and have no English equivalent, including a piece of tree called "chilli wood" which if you chew it (why anyone would do this to find out, I don't really know) tastes zingy and hot.

On my last day in Luang Prabang, I took a minibus to Kuangsi waterfall which is just stunning - a proper huge waterfall, with water crashing down a rocky cliff, and below a series of turquoise rock pools and smaller waterfalls in between them. Some of these were "Swimming pools" and others were "Don't swimming pools". I had a dip in a swimming pool, it was icy cold but lovely. Also it was home to the biggest pondskaters I've ever seen in my life, which were interesting water-borne companions. Oh and by the way, my camera survived the day intact. I managed to resist the urge to fling it into the water.

After Luang Prabang I took a 2 day boat trip along the Mekong to Huay Xai, with an overnight stopover at Pak Beng. I'm really glad I did this (despite the fact that it wasn't so fun with food poisoning), because it was a way to observe a little of Laos rural life without being intrusive. There are lots of treks organised from Luang Prabang and also from Chiang Mai here in Thailand, that purport to take you to visit hill tribes and observe their way of life. In fact you're hard pressed to find a tour that doesn't include this kind of anthropological tourism. This (along with the food poisoning) entirely put me off the idea of joining a trek. As someone I was talking to pointed out, it seems to make local people into animals in a zoo, with westerners wandering past and saying "ooh isn't it ethnic". I'm sure some of these tour companies do organize sensitive tours that are of benefit to both tourists and local hill tribes, but having no way of telling which ones, I decided to give the whole scene a miss.

So, it was really nice to see Laos people along the Mekong and how important this waterway clearly is to their lives. In the whole two-day boat trip we didn't pass under one bridge, and roads only connect with the river at Luang Prabang, Pak Beng and Huay Xai, nowhere in between, meaning many people are half a day or more by boat from the nearest towns. But despite this there are lots of tiny villages of bamboo/tin/wood houses, many on stilts, nestled in the steep hills that rise up alongside the river, and the people from these villages were using the river for all sorts of purposes aside from the obvious one of transport.

Lots of small children swam and frolicked in the water, and women bathed more demurely with their sarongs pulled around them, or washed clothes. I even spotted 2 teenage girls shaving their legs and applying face cream. There were also lots of people shaking shallow bowls in the water, who I can only assume were panning for gold. Away from the villages, boatmen set up bamboo poles and floats made out of plastic bottles (debris from passing boats like ours) indicating fishing nets. Several times I also saw racks of waterweed drying. They press this into flat sheets with tomatoes and spices, and then deep fry them for 1-2 seconds before loading them with freshly cut lemon grass and peanuts. We were given some to try on the cooking course. It was quite a tasty snack.

I also saw some wildlife - lots of Buffalo, goats, birds, abundant insects - and the view as a whole was just jaw-achingly beautiful all the way. The river itself shining and rippling, with craggy rocks and boulders jutting through it; strata of rock and sand and mud at the banks leading up to tree covered hills and misty, sloping mountains in the background. I've never journeyed through anywhere so consistently beautiful and remote in a long time so I'm very glad I made the trip this way instead of taking another bumpy (but considerably quicker) nightbus.

From Huay Xai, I crossed over the Mekong to Chiang Khong in Thailand on the other side and bought a ticket on a bus to Chiang Mai. Just as I was buying my ticket, the driver ran outside to the bus, so thinking it was time to leave I followed him. He then moved the bus forwards and after that there was a huge fuss with lots of Thai people milling around and a couple of policeman turning up on motorbikes and whisking the driver away. It turned out that the bus driver had backed up slightly before pulling forward and in his haste had driven his exhaust pipe right through the bumper of the car behind which had in turn been pushed into the car behind that. Still, all the people from the boat were on the bus, so I had familiar people to talk to while we waited for the woman in the ticket office to go and bail out the driver so we could get moving. And yes, I do mean she had to pay a fee so that he was able to leave the police station. This whole business didn't give me much faith in the driver's abilities, and my lack of faith was confirmed when he appeared to be in entirely the wrong gear as we were going up a not-all-that steep hill. The bus started juddering backwards and then he managed to brake and claw us forwards up the hill, the smell of burning clutch following us all the way. So all-in-all the seven hour journey was not much fun, especially since the bus appeared to have no suspension at all, meaning that my hair was full of static from my head bouncing against the back of the seat so much. Oh and I was given a seat right at the back with the toilets behind one ear and the noisy air-conditioning unit behind the other. Do I sound bitter at all? If I do it's only because I seem to have had such awful luck with public transport here, and after 2 days of feeling ill, sitting on a boat doing nothing, another day of feeling ill sitting on a bus doing nothing was not my idea of a good time.

But still, I made it to Chiang Mai in one piece and went with a couple of Australians to a groovy guesthouse one of them had stayed in before. This has a beautiful garden with hanging vines and flowers everywhere, and is populated by ageing hippies. If you ignored the smell emanating from the toilets it would be wonderful. Since I couldn't ignore this, I've now moved to a soulless block with better facilities. That night we went to this reggae roof-top bar and watched the rain fall down on the Sunday market below. This was populated by the same clientelle as our guesthouse.

The next day (yesterday) I did a Thai cooking course (yes I do love food) and that was just wonderful. We went to a local market which, unlike many markets I've seen, was very clean with lots of inviting produce, and then were driven out to the small farm where the cooking school takes place (the company is called the Thai Farm cooking school). Here we were given a tour of the garden where they grow everything we cook. This was so tranquil I could have stayed there all day, done no cooking and still have been happy. Then we went to the kitchen where all of us had our own little workstations with hob, chopping board, knives, ingredients etc. I made 5 different dishes and they all looked reasonably like the picture and tasted very nice, so I was pretty proud with the result.

Today I've been far less adventurous as I've been struck down with a horrid cold, so I just stayed in my soulless room watching crap and slightly fuzzy television. Tomorrow, I intend to see a bit more of Chiang Mai itself, and check out the night bazaar (a market spread out over several blocks) which is supposed to be fun. Then the next day I'll be off to Sukothai, before joining Mum and Lucy in Bangkok on Saturday.