Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Our man in...
Hello,
Another long one for lunchtime. But well, i'm waiting for a bus and it helps me remember and hopeful gives a bit of a picture of what I do when you're all asleep. Hmmm.
It is true what is said about travelling. As the structure and routine of weeks fade so it becomes ever more difficult to know what the day is. Monday becomes Wednesday, Saturday becomes Tuesday and Thursday becomes Thursday.
In a back of a postcard style this is what I have been up to in the last week and a half. I completed the 8 day tour I was on and got around...some ancient ruins, some more temples, swam in a waterfall rock pool, stayed the night in a Thia village house and visited the bridge over the river Kwai and hellfire pass. The tour finished and I have spent the last four days in the northern city of Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai bills itself as the "cultural and bohemian capital of Thailand", which sounds like setting yourself up for a fall. But there's a good old quota of temples and old city walls but its biggest selling point is its markets. In Thailand it is more expensive to eat and make things at home so everyone shops out. Colourful and smelly stuff. What helps the "bohemian" part is that in one of the bigger temples I stumbled accross a sign inviting you to stop a moment and go for a "Monk Chat". This had to be done if only because it sounded like an idea for TV show that Alan Partridge would suggest. Me and the monks chewed the fat for 15 mins on zebra crossings and the virtues of Cameron Diaz (only one of those is true).
While we're on alleged moments of commedy you will be glad to hear that the other morning I sat down for breakfast in a haze of sleep deprivation. I got up to get the menu. Sat down again. Read it. Looked up and told Mark it all looked rubbish. Realised I had sat down at a completely different table and was talking to a stranger (who was laughing at me). Good stuff.
So, ah, yes, the Thai homestay. All serious now. This was a real surpirse. It was a village in the real back end of nowhere. Rice fields and mossies accessible by boat down the creek (called Crocidile Creek). The pictures tell the story (on the travel journal site now). But I don't think out of the ordinary experiences will get much beyond this. Staying with a rural Thai family, eating strange fish, explaing (for the 100th time) that Reading FC will be famous next year, giving alms to a monk at the crack of dawn....
On the flip side is the bridge over the river Kwai. Not because the bridge is unrecognisable to the film but because the whole thing is like a very tacky theme park. Tourists are parachuted in to treat this unpleasent thing like Tower Bridge. I learnt that apprently it is famous amongst the s.east asian tourists as an engineering feat rather than the testament to mans ability to inflict suffering on fellow man. Cue a hundred Kodak moments. There we go, rightcheous indignation valve well and truly released. Took a trip to hellfire pass (no track anymore) and the atmosphere is unique for the right reasons. The currious thing is with its mix of rolling green hills, pastel blue skyes and bamboo forests this spot of Thai/Burmese jungle is absolutely stunning.
I think i'm getting a handle on this travelling business two weeks in. Thailand itself is a real challenge. When I catch glimpses of how people really live their lives here you're chuffed. It's difficult because a naieve pasty white western man is a walking dollar bill. Tourism is the largest industry here. A novel new way to relieve me of my luca recently went along the lines of a bit of cultural bonding. I sat down at a hostel to check in. The man says straight away "where you from". I say "London, England". He says "Ah, you diamond geezer. I have good tour you should go on". Cheers sunshine.
I was going to write about Thailand itself but i've gone on long enough as it is and each day I learn a bit more so maybe best to leave it now. But it is a rich and diverse country with an amusing side line in mis-translations in to English.
Better finish as this PC is needed as the kid next to me is playing a PC game and has fallen asleep at the controls, head on keyboard!
New pictures are on the STA travel journal website and in a fit of stunning originality are called "North Thailand" (look out for Monks on buses).
Paul.
THERE IS NO CHEESE IN THAILAND.
- comments