Wow, what a week it’s been.  Since the last note I’ve gone from suburban Melbourne to super-rural northern Thailand, and visited everything from a glitzy cocktail bar to a squat toilet.  Hard to believe this whole adventure isn’t even a quarter done, and the craziest bits are yet to come…!

A few quick notes before I start.  New pictures should be up on Facebook (check my profile or the Photos [LINK] page), and my GPS device officially sucks.  So far I’ve managed to put down one successful marker during the past week in Thailand.  I’ll be manually adding a few markers, like I did in New Zealand, just so I have some record of where I was.

I’ll pick up where I left off, sitting in my friend’s apartment back in Sydney.  After a quick lunch at Google and an even quicker flight to Melbourne, I met up with Abdulla – good to see him in-person again!  Abdulla’s dad drove the two of us back to their house in Bundoora, a nice Melbourne suburb way north of the city.  Abdulla’s mom is a fantastic cook – we had a traditional Sri Lankan dinner with curries of all sorts, and had a good time chatting about the upcoming trip.  Abdulla and I watched a bit of TV after dinner, and went to bed full and happy.

The next day was a big one for Abdulla: he officially handed in his PhD thesis, freeing him to actually leave and go on this trip.  Talk about cutting it close!  We spent the day making trips to Melbourne University and downtown Melbourne, taking care of Abdulla’s last paperwork and shopping for various supplies he had yet to buy.  Although it wasn’t very exciting for me, it was exhausting – we were out and about the entire day, constantly bopping from store to office to store.  Running into Abdulla’s friend Tanya was a welcome relief – I had met Tanya when she came to visit Abdulla in Sydney last year, and that afternoon the three of us had a great time chatting and catching up.  That evening, another one of Abdulla’s friends who I’d met last summer, Ed Hooper, organized a “welcome function” for me at a local Vietnamese restaurant.  How nice!  I was pretty surprised, given that I’d only met Ed for a couple of hours last year, but apparently he loves planning things like this.  Ed, Abdulla, Tanya, and I, plus a handful of others I didn’t know, met at the restaurant and got to experience the “bring it on” special.  Apparently Ed knows the owner of the restaurant, and if you tell him to “bring it on”, they’ll make you an endless stream of dishes out of whatever kitchen surplus they have.  The food just kept coming and coming.  I had mentioned to the owner that I was gluten-free, and he brought out three additional gluten-free mains and an appetizer just for me!  It was excessive, but delicious.  Ed surprised Abdulla with a “birthday” dessert courtesy of the owner, to celebrate his turning in his PhD thesis (not his birthday… which is in January).  All in all a really fun evening, with yet another gut-busting dinner.

Friday was decidedly more low-key – a welcome relief after the day of endless shopping and puttering.  Abdulla needed time to pack, so I sat at home, used the internet, and did laundry.  That evening, after a quick dinner at home, Abdulla and I went into downtown Melbourne for his going-away party.  On the tram ride there we had an odd encounter with a drunk, high, hipster bum from Adelaide, who was so out of it that he dropped his beer on the ground twice.  He thought Abdulla looked like the drummer from some obscure band, and proceeded to blather at us for the next 20 minutes.  It was actually pretty funny, but I was relieved when he finally stumbled out the door.

We finally arrived at The Red Hummingbird, an incredibly classy and charming little bar, where we schmoozed the night away with Abdulla’s various friends from undergrad and his PhD office.  Tanya and I, along with a few of Abdulla’s other friends, shared a giant pitcher of mixed drink that was fruity and fun, overpriced and weak.  By midnight, it was time to go; I felt a bit like I was stealing Abdulla away from all his friends, and I could tell it was hard for him and all of them to say goodbye to each other.

By 11am the next morning, Abdulla and I were out the door on our way to the airport.  We checked in, said goodbye to his parents, and headed for customs.  The flight to Bangkok was actually really nice; we flew Thai Airways, which was pretty luxurious even in economy.  It was the first time my gluten-free meals on the plane (there were two of them) came with gluten-free bread; I had a restaurant-quality lamb curry, and OD-ed on episodes and soundtracks from Glee.  To top it off, Abdulla and I both had entire banks of three seats all to ourselves; the flight was pretty empty. 

Nine comfortable hours later, we landed and stepped out into the sweltering humid heat of Thailand.  We hopped on the free shuttle to our airport hotel for a quick, one-night stay before continuing on to northern Thailand.  The next morning we had a bit of free time before our flight; we used it up by watching some quality Thai TV, like Thai PBS, The Mall Channel, and an episode of Maid Detective… yep, a show where a girl in a suggestive maid’s outfit solves crimes, and vanquishes bad guys who whip their prisoners.  Talk about a kinky male fantasy.

Later that morning we caught the quick flight to Chiang Mai, where we were picked up at the airport and taken to our hotel courtesy of Udomporn Tours (great name, huh).  Our trek through northern Thailand, run by Udomporn Tours, would begin the next day.  In the mean time, Abdulla and I spent the afternoon wandering the markets outside our hotel, next to the old city of Chiang Mai.  That night, Udomporn picked us up at our hotel and took us to their headquarters for a briefing about the trek.  We got to meet our fellow trekkers: Jodie and Holly, two sisters from Gloucester, England; Christin and Stefanie, two friends from southern Germany; Andrew and Rachel, a couple from Sydney; and Yaniv, a Dutch-Israeli living in London.  We also got to meet Nan (pronounced like the Indian bread), our charming, soft-spoken, jokingly-serious trekking guide.  After the meeting, Abdulla and I went and ate dinner at a restaurant in the night markets.  I browsed around a bit, but ultimately didn’t buy anything.  We took our first tuk tuk (a three-wheeled tricycle/motorcycle hybrid with a roof and a small bench seat) back to the hotel, prepared our backpacks for the trek, and went to bed.

Nan and the company driver picked us up at 9am the next morning.  We met up with the other trekkers, plus one who had missed the earlier meeting: another German girl named Christin (I’ll refer to her as blonde Christin).  The ten of us squeezed into the back of a songtaew (a converted truck with a roof and two bench seats fitted onto the back), which barely fit all of us and our backpacks.  Our first stop was a butterfly and orchid garden, where we got a half hour to take a look around.  Next, we cruised north to the small town of Mae Malai.  Here, Nan informed us, we should buy toilet paper – there wouldn’t be another opportunity to get some for the rest of the trip, so we’d better stock up.

I have to say, the market at Mae Malai is the smelliest place I’ve ever visited.  They seem to primarily sell meat and seafood, which is all out on display for the world to smell and the bugs to feast on.  There was a point where both Jodie and I thought we might vomit from the smell of rancid seafood.  Once we found the little stall selling toilet paper, we got the hell out of there.

Heading west from Mae Malai, our next stop was the Mork-Fa waterfall.  The ten of us had a nice swim and had fun getting our pictures taken next to the falls.  After another little drive, we stopped for lunch at a small restaurant outpost by the side of the road.  That’s when it started to rain; the clouds had been building throughout the afternoon, and by the time lunch was over it was coming down strong.  We drove a bit further down the road, got out of the songtaew, and started our hike in the rain.

The first 20 minutes were difficult.  The incline was pretty steep and muddy, which got us all pretty tired and sweaty; coupled with the plastic-y rain coats and the 85-degree heat, we were all ready to drop after hardly any walking.  At this point I managed to put down what has ended up being the only successful GPS marker so far in Thailand – darn GPS.  That aside, the hike started to get a bit easier after that initial climb.  The rain subsided a bit, and we all took off our rain coats and cooled down.  Aside from some muddy slippery downhill bits, the next two hours weren’t too challenging.  By about 6pm we arrived at a Karen village, where we spent the night.  The Karen are a “hill tribe”: they aren’t Thai or Burmese, just a small separate sect that live in these small rural villages.  Oddly enough, the Karen are Christian, having been proselytized a while back.  The only crosses I’ve seen so far in Thailand have been in these small, remote villages.

At first sight, this Karen village looked like it came out of a storybook; the forests gave way to stepped rice fields and little wooden huts, perched on the side of a mountain.  Combined with the loosely hanging fog and cloud cover, there was even something mysterious or other-worldly about it.  Up close, however, the reality of the village was a lot more apparent.  The 40 – 50 families that live there are decidedly poor, and the buildings and farm animals make that fact clear.  Nothing is tight or sealed; the walls and floors have plenty of holes, and it was pretty easy to see right into some of their houses.  The kitchen is an old metal pot over a wood fire, and the beds are thin mattresses laid out on the floor.  The Karen perch most of their buildings up on stilts, presumably to avoid rain damage.  Underneath the house, it was pretty common to see a pig or two tied to a stilt, hanging out in the mud.  Chicken roam the town freely.  The cows were unfortunately skinny.

That day happened to coincide with a wedding – a man from the village was marrying a woman from a different Karen village a few hours away.  Because the Karen villages are so small and the risk of inbreeding is so high, most Karen have to travel to distant villages to find their mates.  We were invited to come see the wedding party, so we all walked up to an area with about 30 people mingling and eating.  Most of the villagers kept to themselves, but one guy was very intent on talking to us.  The only problem was that he seemed drunk, or high, or both – we weren’t sure.  His English was actually half-way decent, but he was so incoherent and persistent that talking to him was impossible.  One of the local women gestured to Jodie and Andrew, indicating that the guy was actually crazy.  After a couple minutes, we left and headed down to our home for the evening.

Out on the east edge of the village was a building clearly designed for the batch of trekkers that show up twice a week.  The main room had about 10 different double beds (thin mattresses on the floor with damp, solid-feeling pillows) and mosquito nets.  In front of the building was a covered eating area with a single fluorescent bulb, and adjacent to that was a smaller room that served as the kitchen and Nan’s bedroom.  Outside behind our bedroom was a separate little bathroom building with three stalls; one shower (a water pipe tipped with a fabric cap, perhaps to filter out sediment) and two squat toilets.  Each of the toilet stalls had a big tub of water and a little plastic bucket – to flush, you ladled out some water and poured it into the toilet until the contents flushed away.  There were bugs of all kinds, everywhere.

A side-note about electricity; the town has a handful of solar panels, which are used to power an occasional electric device (like the one fluorescent bulb by our eating area).  Our building, and the buildings of a few of the town’s more important people, are the only ones with any power.  As far as I could tell, there are no wires of any kind running in or out of the village. 

Once we settled into our bedroom, Nan started preparing dinner.  He made a red pork curry, a Thai soup with pork, steamed vegetables, and rice.  I wasn’t about to complain, or just eat steamed vegetables for dinner, so I went ahead and ate the pork.  After dinner we all sat around and chatted for a while.  The rain started to pour down worse than before, making a constant din against the tin roof.  It quickly got dark, and the single fluorescent light was the only light in sight.  The bugs loved the light, and Nan loved the bugs – he grossed us out (and thoroughly entertained us) by picking bugs off the wall and saying, “This one?  Edible” and eating them.  One of them, Nan told us, was not edible unless cooked – he went into the kitchen, cooked it, and ate it.  Apparently Nan grew up in a village somewhat like this one, so this wasn’t his first bug snack.

Nan woke us up the next morning at 7:30, made us breakfast, and by 9:00 we were out the door for another day of hiking.  Luckily the rain had stopped overnight and the paths had somewhat dried, which made things that much easier.  After an hour and a half we stopped at a hut next to some stepped rice fields, had some water, and rested for a few minutes.  Then came the most difficult part of the hike.  Nan had warned us – he said “20 minutes, like this” and held his hand at a steep angle.  Just as he’d said, we started a pretty serious uphill climb that drained us all.  Abdulla and Rachel got especially tired, and we ended up stopping 3 or 4 times along the way.  Once we were finally at the top, it started to rain.  We hiked for another two hours, the mud making things noticeably more difficult, until we finally arrived at an elephant base camp. 

Boy were we ever hungry and relieved when we got there.  Nan and the elephant guides made lunch, which looked to me like Top Ramen… wheat noodles… but I ate it anyway.  We were all starving and exhausted, and I wasn’t about to turn down food.  After having a little fun with the elephants, feeding them leftover watermelon rinds, we hopped on them and took a 40 minute ride out to a second Karen village – our home for the second night.  This village was decidedly bigger and noticeably nicer.  Many of the buildings were similar to those in the first village, but a good number of them looked sturdier and more sealed.  There was a primary school and a prayer house.  The village was adjacent to a river, and I even noticed a few paved roads.  In general things seemed a bit cleaner and more modern.

It wasn’t quite 4pm when we settled into our bedroom, and we all took turns using the single shower (just like the last place – one shower and two squat toilets).  The shower, however, was a big step up from the first Karen village: instead of a pipe with a fabric tip, it actually had a western shower head with a cord.  No hot water, of course, but this was still a big improvement.  That night Nan made a Mussaman curry with pork, vegetables in a sweet and sour sauce, rice, and spring rolls.  I ate it all and didn’t give it a second thought.  After dinner I brought out my deck of cards, and we all had fun playing Chase the Ace (taught to us by Jodie and Holly) and BS (which I taught to everyone).  Nan played BS with us and was hilarious as usual.  After cards he ate a few more bugs, and eventually we got tired and went to bed.

The next morning started as usual: up at 7:30, out the door at 9:00.  We walked down to the river and stepped onto two bamboo rafts.  The rafts were simple: about 15 long bamboo shoots, tied together and reinforced with a handful of shorter shoots running side to side.  They were essentially big bamboo rectangles.  At the front of each raft was a bamboo tripod, which we used to hang up our backpacks.  The two rafts split us into two groups: Nan piloted the first raft, with Abdulla, Yaniv, the Christins and Stefanie, and a different local guide piloted the second raft, with me, Andrew, Rachel, Jodie, and Holly.  The guides stood at the front of each raft holding a long bamboo shoot, which they used to steer.  The two male trekkers on each raft stood toward the back, each of us with another bamboo shoot that we used to paddle and steer the back of the raft.  The three women sat down in the middle.  Once we were all in our places, we started to drift down the river.

At first the steering was a bit difficult.  Our guide spoke no English, and would gesture to us when he wanted us to paddle on the left or right side; however, there wasn’t a clear gesture for when to stop.  Eventually Andrew and I figured out when it was and wasn’t necessary for us to paddle, which made things easier.  After an hour and a half we stopped at a very poor looking Karen village (similar to the first one) for a quick rest and water break.

Once we got back on the rafts, things got interesting.  We came across some rapids – small rapids by modern whitewater rafting standards, but serious rapids by bamboo raft standards.  At one point we scraped over a shallow rock, which loosened one of our long bamboo shoots.  Further down the river, we came around a sharp bend and the back of our raft started to crash and slide up onto a rock.  That’s when my survival instincts kicked in; I ducked down, grabbed the rock and pushed us away, and re-balanced the raft.  Andrew was standing behind me and saw the whole thing; in about three seconds I became the raft hero.  Overall our raft ended up having surprisingly good luck going down the river.  Aside from that one loosened bamboo shoot, nobody fell overboard.  The other raft wasn’t as lucky – both Nan and Yaniv fell overboard twice.

We finally reached a small resort-y enclave along the river, where we stopped and ate lunch.  The company driver and songtaew were there to meet us – after some Pad Thai we all crammed into the songtaew, smelly as ever, and took a two hour ride back to Chiang Mai and the luxury of a modern hotel. 

That night the ten of us met up again for dinner, having all had a thorough cleaning and a change of clothes.  We ate dinner at the food stalls in the night market, which Abdulla and I had somehow missed during out first night in town.  The food was delicious, and decidedly cheaper – Abdulla and I realized we’d been somewhat ripped off at that first restaurant.  Example: at the first restaurant we each got a curry, two orders of rice, and a water, for 210 baht each (~$7).  Seemed like a good deal.  At the food stalls, this same meal would have cost 60 baht (~$2).  Lesson learned: if you pay more than 100-120 baht for a meal, you’ve overpaid.

After dinner we met up with Nan for drinks.  Yaniv and I had a good conversation, and we all just generally basked in our newfound cleanliness.  Eventually we all said goodbye and went back to our rooms for some well-deserved sleep.

Thursday was our last full day in Chiang Mai.  Abdulla and I slept in, ate lunch, and took a songtaew up to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep.  Doi Suthep is a Buddhist temple up in the mountains west of Chiang Mai and, arguably, one of the city’s main claims to fame.  The temple is beautiful, perched on the top of a mountain, and is most noted for the giant snakes that line the long staircase up to the top.  I had a great time there, just sitting and being present in the amazingly ornate shrine rooms.  Eventually it started to get cloudy and verge on rain, so we left and went back to Chiang Mai.  That evening we went back to the same food stalls at the night market, and actually bought some souvenirs.  Oddly enough, I actually had an altercation with one of the shop owners!  I was browsing through the shops and, after a lot of nagging, finally managed to walk away from her stall; later, apparently, I saw her and promptly turned around and walked the other way.  To be honest, I don’t even remember this happening.  But even if I did, it wouldn’t have been unjustified: she and all the other shopkeepers are horrible and chase you down if you initially show interest and then later walk away.  They’re desperate, and it’s hard to get away from them.  A couple minutes later I passed her again.  She essentially told me to fuck off, and accosted me for a few whole minutes.  I apologized and tried to ignore her.  At the time I wasn’t even sure what I’d done or why she was so mad – Abdulla later explained it to me.  Sigh.  It’s got to be a difficult life running these shops.

Today has been a relatively easy day.  Abdulla and I woke up early to catch a morning flight down to Bangkok.  We’ve been hanging out in our hotel room since 11am, only leaving to search out food and internet.  Tomorrow we’ll actually try and see Bangkok, but for now we’re doing a little well-needed R&R. 

Well, that was a long post!  If you actually read this far, thanks, and I hope you found it interesting =).  I’ll close with a few tidbits about Thailand:

Thailand has taught me how to haggle… at least somewhat.  Initially I was hesitant about bargaining with tuk tuk drivers, and got over-charged the first time we rode in one (70 baht).  I’ve gotten good at getting the fare down to 40 or 50 baht for the two of us.  This also came in handy when shopping at the night markets; I got a scarf down from 400 to 260, and a hat from 150 to 85.

Along those same lines – the salespeople in Thailand are incredibly persistent and annoying.  The worst are the women dressed in traditional garb – they’ll come right up to you with their baskets full of bracelets or whatever, rub them against you and stare at you until you walk far away.  Regular salespeople are especially aggressive if they sense that you’re actually willing to spend money – this kind of aggression led to the altercation with the shopkeeper.  Tuk tuk drivers are also bad.  They’ll camp out in front of the hotels, and when you leave they’ll shout “TUK TUK TUK TUK” over and over hoping you’ll ride with them.  Salespeople on the street are always trying to befriend you: “Hey friend, where you from?  Tailor suit 60 euro!”  The general rule: don’t make eye contact, and just walk away.

For whatever reason, a lot of Thai seem to draw out (essentially whine) the last syllable of a lot of words.  It makes the language sound really nasal and annoying, though in general I think Thai sounds pretty nice.  I love the Thai script too; something about it is almost hieroglyphic. 

Most Thai, or at least those in somewhat touristy areas, seem to speak enough English for us to get by without knowing a word of Thai.  It’s made everyday tasks a lot easier than they might have been otherwise.  We have learned a little bit of useful Thai: “kop khun krup” means “thank you”, and “sawadee krup” means both “hello” and “goodbye”.

The Thai don’t really care about street lines, or seat belts… or stop lights, or any traffic rules for that matter.  In that sense it’s similar to my experience in Costa Rica; I’d imagine it’s the same in every third world country.  It makes getting around in tuk tuks a little scary at times, but somehow everyone seems to get by without constant accidents. 

Pictures of the King of Thailand are displayed everywhere.  It’s almost a bit big-brother-like, there’s often a picture of the King looking at you in every place from restaurants to highways. 

Until next time!

-Izaak