Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Just a quick note to tell you about our last four days.

We arrived in Chiang Mai after a pleasant night train ride, but we both started coming down with colds while we were waiting for the train and by the time we arrived in Chiang Mai, we were both sick. Our first choice guest house was there with a sign at the train station, so we got a ride back and were promptly solicited to go on a trek to see the hill tribes. To make a long story shortish, we read the book full of glowing praise and decided to go for it.

We left the next morning with 10 Germans, one English girl and our Thai guide, Chan. We rode in the back of a truck for a couple of hours until we got to the point in the mountains where the road ran out and we began walking. We walked for about two hours in the mountains, which were somewhat muddy and steep, until we got to the village of the Karen people. Chan speaks fluent Karen or Karenese or whatever one would call it. We were staying in a family’s home. When tourists are there, they clear out one big room and lay down mats on the floor and hang up mosquito nets. The village is very small and was just what you’d expect — chickens and pigs and oxen and lots of dogs and cats. There was one small squat toilet hut with a single water tap in it. We hung out there on the porch and got to see what it was like before electricity when people had no radio or television entertainment in the evening. Chan is a great cook and he made us a good Thai dinner and even made a special pot of the non-meat variety for me.

The next day we hiked three hours to an elephant camp where we waited around for the elephants to get back from the trip previous to ours. Once they returned we got on the elephants in pairs with an elephant guy on each elephant. Our guy spoke no English, but kept trying to speak some hill tribe language to us with little success. The elephants took us through the river and along the river bank. All the while, they dropped elephant cannonball turds in the river that our compatriots had just been swimming in!

The elephants took us to the village that we stayed in last night, that of the Lahu people. There, our accommodations were similar, but they provided a mat with very thin padding that helped with sleeping. Our evening was also similar, but after dinner, the woman of the house that we were staying in came up to me and asked me if I wanted a massage (clearly pretty much the only English word she knows except numbers). With some trepidation, I accepted. She laid out a quilt next to the fire on their uncovered, reed-floored deck along the river and gave me a massage. It was late enough to be absolutely dark. It wasn’t quite as good as the massages in Bangkok, but the setting couldn’t be beat. All the while, her little four year-old daughter (name pronounced nah-OO) was running all around and lying all over me. This girl had absolutely no fear of strangers.

This morning, we got up and had a little tour around the village. Chan showed us the school for the 3-7 year olds. It was built with a 30,000 baht donation from a Japanese tourist. That’s about $800. The teacher makes about $12 per month. We donated a month’s salary to the school, which at the time seemed like a lot and was received as such, but now that I write it, a 12 buck donation doesn’t pack the same punch as a 500 baht donation. Oh well. While we were up the hill seeing the school, we saw the villages cleaning a pig that they had just killed for a feast. We had all heard the prolonged sqealing earlier, but hadn’t been sure exactly what it was. Now we saw. It was pretty awful. The little kids swarmed all around us and we swung them while we walked and did all the standard three year-old things.

After the tour, we got our stuff and went down to the river for our bamboo raft trip down the river to the spot where the guy with the truck would pick us up again. We had a rather exciting ride, unlike what we expected. We had seen a couple of other rafts floating by and it looked pretty tame. They’re long rafts made of about 12 bamboo poles lashed together with bits of palm or something. six or seven people can fit on one (standing), so our group had two. We were on the one that Chan guided. The others had a guy from the village. Our boat kept tilting to the side so that one leg was up to mid-thigh in water and the other was to just the ankle. Our bags were in big plastic bags (thanks to our hero, Sarah, who has many many plastic bags on this trip) and hung on this X of bamboo sticking up and one point for things to hang on. Some of the other bags got half wet because they were uncovered. So anyway, we got used to the tilting and stopped squealing every time rapids approached, but then we had two little accidents. One involved us getting stuck in some stuff growing up from the water so our raft turned sideways and was in the way of the other raft, which was coming through the rapids right behind us. We got out of that one after turning backwards and having some confusion between left and right (Chan kept yelling “links!” (left) and “rechts” (right) while he was facing backwards and the Germans with the other poles were still facing forwards). Then we had our real accident, in which we very unexpectedly hit a submerged rock after coming through some rapids and all wiped out. Chan was at the front of the boat, so he actually fell off. We were guideless for a while and not pleased about it. Our boat started to come apart a bit. Anyway, Chan swam to the other bank and ran upstream and then swam back down and joined us. It was a bit hairy, but we have the good stories. The other raft’s journey was more uneventful.

Now we’re back in Chiang Mai. We’ve just had dinner with our whole trek group and then gone out for drinks with a subset. Now we’ll head back to our guesthouse to pack to get ready for our trip to Laos tomorrow. We’ll head to Chiang Khong on the Thailand side of the border and get a ferry across to Huay Xai. Then we’ll try to secure passage on a slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang. That will take two days, so we’ll hopefully be back on-line on Wednesday.

I hope Ian hasn’t just written all the same stuff. We couldn’t agree about who should write this time, so you’re all getting two messages.

Here’s your latest, thrilling installment in the mini-series known as ‘Sarah and Ian Really Need A Shower’.

We bade Bangkok a fond farewell this morning and headed for the former Thai capital of Ayutthaya, where we visited the ruins of what once were very grand temples. Very impressive, but the sun was scorching hot and our rucksacks seemed to be getting heavier by the minute.

From there, we continued north on the train to Lop Buri, where hundreds of monkeys roam free, hang from the power lines, shit on car windscreens, and basically have free reign of the town. These anarchic simian terrorists are very entertaining, until they decide to mob you and you’re suddenly spinning around in circles, trying to throw several monkeys off your back! A local guy followed us around with a catapult (slingshot), as a visual deterrent, which seemed to do the trick nicely.

It’s now 20:10 and we’ve just had dinner, which consisted of several soft drinks, bottles of water, two main dishes and two desserts, all for the knock down price of just under $4. And to think that Laos will make all of this seem expensive!

We have a couple of hours to kill before our night train to Chiang Mai in the north of the country. We’re grimy and sweaty, but it’ll be tomorrow before we can wash away today’s grit.

Yesterday, we took a really cool river boat up to Bang Yai, on the outskirts of Bangkok. This was real picture postcard stuff, complete with images of ramshackle waterlogged teak houses (more like huts), naked toddlers bathing in brown river water and ancient ladies wearing straw hats and paddling along in low-lying boats full of vegetables (more how I expected Vietnam to look than Thailand, but there you go).

Other things we did yesterday were a visit to Lumphini Park, two more massages (one more traditional Thai at the Wat Pho School of Massage, and an oriental foot massage in the evening — these places are great; you can get a massage at midnight if you want; Bangkok, more than any other place I’ve ever been, simply never sleeps). Oh yes, by the way, the total price of the four hours of massage we’ve each had so far? A mere $20. Yes, $5 per hour is all it costs here. Even Google can’t beat that with its subsidised massages for the staff.

To finish up the day, we went to the district that’s famous for cheap guest-houses and foreign back-packers. It was worth a look, but we have no desire to hang out with a bunch of Brits and eat Western food, so we didn’t hang around for long.

We’ve already crammed so much into our few days over here that it feels like we’ve been here a week. It’s hard to imagine that it’s only Tuesday.

The weather is a little on the hot side (and this is the ‘cool’ season, but it will be cooler in the north of the country), the food is fantastic (although even I had to pass up the salted snake heads today), and the feeling of adventure is only getting greater, now that we’re leaving the best-known city in the area behind and entering into less well-trodden territory. The real adventure will begin when we cross into Laos several days from now.

That’s all for this time. We need to go and stock up on mineral water and catch our train. Hopefully, we’ll get a good night’s sleep in our berths and awake tomorrow, ten hours later in Chiang Mai.

We’re coming to the end of our second day in Bangkok. Here’s what we’ve done so far.

Yesterday:

We took the Skytrain (very modern, like the DC/Amsterdam metro) to the river to get the Chao Phraya River Express, a boat service that runs up and down the river. We planned to take it all the way (40 minutes, 20 baht = about 45 cents) and to incorporate another boat ride, but we just ran out of time so we got off the boat and followed the Chinatown walking tour in our Lonely Planet guide. It was a bit much for me, but Ian liked it. It was extremely crowded and smelly and the polution is really bad. We were going down these little alleyways that were crowded with vendors selling everything under the sun, especially stinky unidentifiable food. A highlight for both of us was the dried, shrunken pig’s face (we took a picture, so you can look forward to seeing it, too).

Shockingly, we were both not terribly jet-lagged. I started falling asleep at dinner, but that’s not bad considering the very long flight and early arrival time that we had (no nap). This morning, we woke up at a normal time and have absolutely no jet-lag. Maybe our homeopathic jet-lag medicine actually worked.

Today we went to the big temples in Bangkok, Wat Phra Kaew and Wat Pho. They’re really beautiful and full of Buddha statues, including one very large one, the reclining Buddha. We both had an hour-long traditional Thai massage, with herbs. We didn’t know what that meant beforehand. Basically, they just steam a bag of herb and then rub it all over you. At the end, if you’re white, you’re now yellow. We still are. We had an interesting tuk-tuk driver on the way, who tried to get us to stop everywhere and said “just look! You look 5 minute, I get petrol coupon. Just one more shop, Papa, just one more!”

Ian had lunch on the street. It was very authentic. He had one bit of something that looked like a shrimp with roach-like legs. He says that the legs were hard. I had to look away for fear of gagging. Now we’ve just had a more palatable dinner and are on our way to who knows where. We haven’t decided yet.

It’s very very hot here. Chiang Mai (leaving on Tuesday night) should be more bearable.

There are little Thai kids next to us here playing internet video games.

That’s all for now.

Well, we’ve made it as far as Hong Kong. We’re currently at the airport, awaiting our onward flight to Bangkok. It’s almost 08:00 on Saturday here. It’s hard to believe it’s still Friday afternoon in California.

The first part of the flight lasted 13+ hours, so this is going to be a long day. After checking into the hotel, the plan is to take a couple of canal taxis around Bangkok, then head over to Chinatown to see what’s on offer there. That’ll be part of a walking tour we’re going to do this afternoon.

Anyway, we have another 2.75 hour flight ahead of us, so I’m going to go and rest at the gate.

We’ll write more some other time.