Wednesday, April 18, 2007
![This trip will remain burned in my mind for the rest of my life, as will this entire Asian experience. Here is the rundown of the three “parts” of this trip:
Part 1 - 29-March thru 4-April: Traveled with Norwegian girls (Sigrid, Jenny, and Hege) to Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) for a three day two night trek.
Part 2 - 5-April thru 11-April: Parted with the Norsk gals and joined up with Koen, Matt, and Can (we picked up a 5th in Bangkok as well) to travel through Cambodia.
Part 3 - 12-April thru 15-April: Back to Bangkok for Songkran (Thai New Year) and some of the mandatory sightseeing.
Part 1 - Chiang Mai
THE BEGINNING - 29-March-07
Hopped a ferry to Macau because the flights are a bit cheaper from there... sort of a long trip to save a few bucks. Flew from Macau arriving in Bangkok at about 2300. The ‘plan’ was to meet up with the Norks gals at the airport...thats it. If you have ever been to the new Bangkok airport you may realize that this is not how things work. No, instead I walked up and down between the three terminal exits for over an hour before I finally stumbled upon them. Next time I will have the flight number. We jumped in a cab and headed to Soi 1 guest house where we promptly went to sleep.
30-March-07
We woke up 20 minutes before checkout and rushed to the train station to get tickets to Chiang Mai. The cab driver told us that he would take us to a TAT travel agent for tickets because we couldn’t get them at the train station...SCAM. The TAT agent tried to set us up with some trips and accommodations and I started to smell fish. He told us that he had reserved us tickets at the train station after we refused to buy any of his product and we soon found out that reserving tickets is not within the realm of things done by the train station... they did sell them however, and luckily we were able to get the exact seats we were hoping for. Maybe that TAT agent didn’t realize that I have a website! NEVER GO TO TAT LICENSE NUMBER: 12/749 just West of the Hua Lamp Pong Train Station in Bangkok, Thailand. He also didn’t realize that trying to screw tourists is not in his best long-term interests...sucker.
Anyways, we proceeded to frolic around the city looking for some decent hiking clothes for the girls. After running all around the city we eventually found some and headed back to the train station where we hopped the overnight train to Chiang Mai.
31-March-07
We rode in style in our 2nd class A/C sleeper car through the night and arrived in Chiang Mai early in the morning. As is usual at the end of these long journeys in this part of the world, we were met by a hoard of people waiting to sell us things, trying to get us to stay at their guest houses and to take their tours. We took an obligation-free ride into town and looked at one of the guest houses (Royal Guest House) that we eventually stayed at after we spent lunch exploring our options. We ended up taking the convenient route and just booked our trek/guide/Bangkok bus through the guesthouse, which I normally would have avoided, but I was fighting a pretty bad cold and headache for the part 1 of this trip and didn’t really want to deal with any logistics.
So we booked a room with them for the night and jumped in the pool. I took a nap while the girls did a little tour of Chiang Mai. They eventually came to get me and we explored a bit more and got some wonderful Thai grub. We went back to the guest house and met with our tour guide (Yut) for a quick rundown of the trek. After all of this we settled down, had a few pints with a couple of Irish blokes, watched my first full [real] football match (Liverpool vs. Arsenal), and went to bed.
1-April-07
This was the most upsetting day to be ill. Normally I would have kicked things off with some ridiculous April Fools joke... but I just wasn’t up for it. We met Yut and went via pickup truck to pick up the only other person going with us on this particular trek; Skjalg...from Norway... so now it is me and FOUR Norwegians, and it turned out to be good fun. We stopped again at the market to get some food for the journey. After this we stopped for a swim at the Mork-Fa waterfall right around mid-day. We toweled off, headed to a roadside shanty for lunch, and then took the truck for a bit longer until we finally got our feet on the trail.
We soon found out that while Yut was quite a character, he wasn’t in the best of shape (not that any of us had been training for this hike). He was usually behind us and would catch up when we had stopped at a fork in the trail not knowing which way to go. After a few hours of hiking we arrived at the Karin village that we would spend the first night in, Mea Jork. It was just a small hill-tribe village that relies mostly on farming and maybe some trade. I could describe it in more detail, but I took enough pictures for you to get a good idea of what it was like.
We were required to take a shower under the “bamboo shower” (see pictures) before Yut would let us eat. So we took our showers, explored the village, and got our dinner. We topped off the evening with some guitar and song, but I retired early due, again, to my aliments. However, it was great to fall asleep to live acoustic guitar music!
2-April-07
We woke up to breakfast and a small swarm of locals that wanted to sell us ‘their’ ‘handicrafts’ at prices that were questionable even in my western mind, but we got a few small things non-the-less and went on our merry way.
A hot three hour hike got us to the elephant camp where we were fed, watched the elephants get washed, fed the little one a few bananas, and mounted up for hour 1-2 hour elephant journey. Along the way I found out several interesting things about elephants all of which indicate to me that they are fairly intelligent creatures, or at least that they can communicate pretty well.... oh, and they don’t like fire... not one bit. I was also a bit surprised that it takes a bit of effort to stay on one of these beasts whilst it is strolling along. There isn’t much to hold you in the seat, and every step they take lurches the seat a few feet.
When we finally dismounted the elephants we hiked a few more minutes into the next Karin village called ‘Pakhawlam’ where we jumped into the river to bathe ourselves after a hot day...this was the definition of refreshing. We proceeded to spend the evening exploring the village, writing post cards, getting fed yet again by Yut, and then off to bed.
3-April-07
It was damn cold this morning! Thank god I borrowed a few extra blankets last night! We got up and I put on my fleece, for the first and last time of the entire trip, to go eat breakfast, which Yut almost had to drag us out of bed to eat. We loaded up our gear into plastic bags and headed down to the ‘Cucumber’ river where a bamboo raft was waiting for us, but not before being barraged by local handicrafts again. The raft was pretty much what you would expect, several long pieces of bamboo with some shorter perpendicular pieces to hold it all together, and an upright to hang our bags on. It took us lots of winding through jungle and forest, a few sets of rapids, and about four and a half hours to get down to our pickup point... and the ride was beautiful!(see pictures)
We had lunch and were again swarmed by indigenous sellers of goods at the pick up point before we saddled up in the back of the pickup for the two hour ride back to Chiang Mai. On the way we found out that some of the locals were already celebrating Songkran when they splashed us with buckets of water as we passed by.
When we got back to Chiang Mai we parted with Skjalg at his hotel and went back to the guesthouse to shower up and eat before our overnight bus ride back to Bangkok.
4-April-07
The bus stopped only once and I took this opportunity to talk with some other travelers; Miri & Sandra from Israel and Sweden respectively. It is always easy and interesting to meet obvious travelers and talk with them about nearly anything. I figure that being in the same place at the same time in a completely foreign country is enough to filter out people that don’t have anything in common. There aren’t too many jerks out traveling... they all get eaten by cannibals you see.
We got into Bangkok early, about 0630, and headed to the Norsk gals hostel where they checked in and dropped their stuff off. We got some breakfast, hopped on the SkyTrain to the river where we got ripped off by a water taxi that took us up to the Grand Palace. While we were looking for the entrance to the Grand Palace a local told us that it was closed until 1300, SCAM. These guys want to take you in their tuk tuks to shops that pay them a commission. We ended up at Wat Po and spent some time there looking around and on the way out found out that the Grand Palace was not really closed until 1300. No harm done since we had other stuff to do, but this was the second person that tried to take advantage of us in Bangkok within hours of being there. I would not say this is a reason to stay away from Bangkok, it isn’t like it is a violent crime. You just have to have your facts straight and be careful who you listen to.
So we went to the Grand Palace and after realizing that I had to pay to get in, and that I would be back again with Matt, Koen, and Can, I said goodbye to Sigrid, Jenny, and Hege and set off to find ‘Big John’s Backpackers Guesthouse’ off of Sukhumvit Road. It was fairly easy to find and I took this opportunity to do some laundry and relax for a bit while waiting for Matt, Koen, and Can (pronounced ‘Jon’ or ‘Chan’) to arrive.
On to Part 2...
Pictures: ThailandCambodia(1)
Sigrid,Hege,Skjalg'sPics(1.5)](F37D4682-502E-4871-8C00-DED1322CE8BF_files/shapeimage_2.png)
