Songkran

Songkran is a water festival to celebrate the new year in Thailand. It’s basically where the whole country stops and has a full on water fight for 4 or so days. In Chiang Mai it’s apparently celebrated with more gusto than anywhere else in the country – so although there’s 4 big days of water fighting you can expect to get soaked for a few days leading up to that too.

Chiang Mai has an old moat around the inner part of the city that’s still got water in it. There are main roads on both sides of it. A typical day runs like this: People line either side of the the moat and the main streets armed with water pistols, super soakers, buckets and water else they can get their hands on. Then they proceed to drench anyone that walks, rides or drives past. No one is spared. Those on the moat side of the road If you aren’t on the side of the road use the moat to refill their ammunition, those on the other side have hoses coming out of shops, restaurants and bars constantly filling up large drums to give them ample water supplies.

Meanwhile those that are driving around in traffic aren’t to be out done. Pickup trucks are the main type of car on the road in these parts and these will usually have 5-12 people in the back along with a full drum of water and the necessary arms to dish out their own attacks.

Traffic crawls around the moat while everyone blasts each other with water – all with a smile and good spirits. The bars open early and pump music out onto the street and Thais and tourists dance, drink and get soaked together having a great time of it. It’s not just for kids either. There were entire families getting into it and plenty of people over 50 giving as good as they got. The more enterprising people were buying huge blocks of ice off the street and putting them in their drums. This made the water ice cold. I gotta tell you I’d prefer to be blasted with manky but warm moat water over a bucket of iced tap water any day. Especially when it was flying out of the back of a pickup and smacking into your back – that bloody hurts! Brrrr!

The water fights aren’t confined to the main streets. It doesn’t matter where you go you’re bound to get soaked from head to toe and stay that way until you go home to change. We were staying just inside the moated area about 100m from the main road. Kids lay in ambush all around. I was always soaked within seconds of leaving the guesthouse. The only time it’s safe to walk the streets is before 10am or after 6pm when the sun starts going down. Any other time and you’re a target. As a result I’ve got no photos since the camera would have been wrecked. Some brave souls had their cameras out anyway. Check their photos here.

If you can’t beat them join them. I stocked up with a 1.8 litre super soaker, a half litre hand gun and a small bucket and hit the streets. One of my favourite moments was when we were standing out the front of a nice hotel having a war with the people across the road next to the moat. This part of the street was blocked to traffic but a bus load of people had to get through to drop people at the hotel. At first we formed a blockade and soaked the bus. Then we let it through. It parked out the front of the hotel entrance and the poor bastards inside had a 20 metre dash from the bus door to the inside of the hotel where staff were waiting for them with fresh towels. Ha Ha!! We formed a guard of honour that the tourists could dash along. Those that couldn’t get right up close were perched in readiness wherever they could position them selves to get a good shot. Turns out the bus was full of westerners in their 50s and 60s. They had no idea what they’d gotten themselves into. As each one took it in turns to leave the bus the hundred or so people taking aim would unload on them so that they were absolutely drenched by the time they got inside. It was gold!

I wasn’t always on the attacking side though. One day Peach and I took a large tuk-tuk up a mountain nearby to check out a temple there. The one we got was lucky enough to have closed sides but unfortunately it had an open back. The traffic was a nightmare so we’d often be in gridlock when someone would run out behind the tuk-tuk and throw a bucket of water in at us. My attempts at defense with my super soaker where hopeless under such incursions. After artfully dodging a couple of buckets with minimal impact one got me front on. As expected I got soaked. From then on it was a no fear situation and I regularly hung out the back of the vehicle and unloaded on anyone within range.

Long live Songkran!

Thai Feast

The cooking course we signed up in Chiang Mai was heaps of fun. As was often the case we met some really cool people. The conversations were as good as the food. The food was frightfully quick to cook (admittedly some of it was pre-chopped for us) and it tasted awesome. I’m a curry man from way back but only cook Thai curry’s once it a while. Indian’s more my game. But I had a ball cooking up Thai food all day. Part of it was that the food was just so good, part of it was that I was happy to be out and about again after being sick on my arse for 3 days and the other part of it was that I hadn’t cooked since leaving Australia and I was bursting to get back into a kitchen.

First thing we did was head down to the local market and buy the ingredients.

There were two menus, of 5 courses each, that you could choose to cook. We chose one each – that way we got to sample everything on offer

I liked Peach’s panang curry and chicken with cashew nuts best so I’ve already started hinting that she’s welcome to take on more of the cooking duties. We’ll see on that one. In fact writing this reminds me to bring her up on it.

Here’s a pics of some of the dishes. Despite the threat of bird flu breaking out every dish we cooked had chicken in it. Bird flu? What bird flu?

Sick

Chiang Mai has the best markets of anywhere else in China. There’s only one market full of dodgey crap. The rest of it is the sort of stuff that I could be bothered carrying in my backpack I would have spent up big on. I spent my first two nights in Chiang Mai after our return from the trek wondering around markets. There was heaps of interesting snack foods around. Half the time I didn’t know what I was eating. Usually I’d just get one word descriptions such as ‘chicken’, ‘pork’ or ‘vegetable’. I didn’t mind. I was loving it. I was like a kind in a candy store going from one food stall to another buying little deep fried balls of something, then heading over to another stall for a leaf filled with something else, then a skewer with something else on it. It was all gold as far as I was concerned. Even the bugs – yes, the bugs. I’d tried these in BKK on my first night there and they’re actually a delicious snack. I liked grasshoppers and little frogs best. I don’t know what they put in that seasoning but it was yum. I didn’t think much of cockroaches or beetles though – too messy since you have to pry open the shell and scoop the goop out with your teeth. You could get a mixed bag of fried bugs for about a dollar – just like getting a bag of mixed lollies from the milk bar when I was a kid

A couple of days later I woke up feeling really average. I was sick. Boo! I reckon it was from a curry I ate late one night on the way home from the Reggae bar that had become a regular hang out but there’s every chance I ate something dodgey at the market. Noooo!! I struggled out of bed for an hour or two in the morning in an bold defiant effort. No good though. Soon I was back in bed and that’s pretty much where I stayed for the next three days.

For the first day of being sick I lay in bed as the odd fever would come and go. Whenever the fever came I felt like vomitting but I hate puking and I’ve only done it once due to illness in my adult life and I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I’ve done so from being drunk. I prefer to let the room spin than have a chunder. But every time this fever came on I knew my body wanted me to hurl. When I was alone I was able to focus and fight it off but later on in the evening Peach and Tess were in the room chatting in the middle of a fever attack. The noise of them talking was making me feel even sicker and I couldn’t concentrate at all. Next thing I knew I was dashing for the bin by the door and up it all came. Bugger! The room must have stunk cuz there was loads of it coming out. Always putting others first I unlocked the door and flung it open. Tess bolted out of the room. Peach stay to lend support before heading off to get a new bag for the bin. I’ve gotta brag here. My aim was spot on. There may have been one tiny splash on the floor and that was it. Immediately I felt better for a little while before the crapness started again. After another hurl later on and plenty of trips to the loo I was well and truly over it.

After 3 days I was sick (pardon the pun) of being couped up in the room so Peach and I signed up for a cooking course. I still hadn’t really eaten a proper solid meal and when we booked it the night before I was still pretty rough but I ended up pulling through ok.

Trekkin’

The people I met on my first night in Chiang Mai had invited me to a lake they were going to the next day. In the morning I was feeling the effects of the last couple of days being constantly on the move so decided not to join them. Instead I strolled around and got my bearings.

I bumped into Tom, the travel agent from the night before, who took me to his office and pitched a variety of treks and other things to me. He was a really nice guy so I didn’t mind that he was doing a sell job on me. By the end of the day I’d tracked down the girls and signed us all up to a trek starting the next day. Whilst we were gone I got Tom to organise our Laos visas – after the mission surrounding getting the Myanmar visas I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle this time around.

The trek was a two night three day affair. We had a really cool group. Everyone got on well and we had heaps of interesting conversations. We ended up hanging out with two of the guys, Ben & James, for most of the rest of our time in Chiang Mai.

On the first day we did some bamboo rafting. I though it would be boring but it was gold – especially since I was up front trying to steer the thing with 3 others hangin’ tough behind me. It got pretty intense when we hit the rapids. At one stage I didn’t steer us away from a rock in time and I went flying A over T into the water. Luckily I got away with a slightly bruised hand – not bad since I landed on a bed of rocks. No wucken furries.

The rest of the trek consisted mostly of walking though jungle or rice fields for a couple of hours then swimming near waterfalls for an hour then repeating it all again. Good stuff.

On the first evening we stayed in a bamboo shelter on the bank of a river. The next night we stayed with a hill tribe in their village. They cooked up a storm for us. Yummo! After seeing the kitchen they had to work with I won’t be complaining about any kitchen I have to deal with again.

Got to hand it to these tribes people for their inventiveness. Check out the dish rack.

After three days of soaking up nature’s beauty we headed back to Chiang Mai.

Bangkok to Chiang Mai

We arrived at Bangkok Airport without a problem. Having spent so much time in Bangkok previously I wasn’t keen on double dipping so we proceeded with a plan to go to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. We caught a taxi to the appropriate bus terminal, which was massive, and found that the next available bus to Chiang Mai was in an hour and a half. Plenty of time to grab a decent feed and reflect on the previous 22-odd hours of being on the road. Since we’d be getting to our destination quite late in the evening Peach had the foresight to pick a guesthouse out of the LP guide and ring ahead to reserve a room and arrange a transfer from the bus station. It was the first time I’d booked accommodation since the very first night in Bangkok at the start of the trip.

The bus trip was 10 hours. It was a pleasure to be on Thai buses and roads after the amusement ride-esque ones in Myanmar. There’s essentially one long straight highway from Bangers to Chiang Mai so it’s a lovely smoothe ride. On long-haul buses in Thailand are ace. The seats recline a mile, you get a foot rest, there’s a hostess who hands out treats, the air-con is pumping (too much), you get your own blanket, there’s a toilet on board and it’s pretty easy to get some sleep. Rancho Relaxo.

Unfortunately since it was about 1:30pm by the time the bus left my body clock had me wide awake, despite my lack of sleep the night before. Sleeping on the bus wasn’t an immediate option. Instead there was a Hollywood film dubbed in Thai on the onboard TV. Even though I can’t speak Thai I could still follow the story line. That either says a lot about my perception skills or a lot about Hollywood films. Hmmm. Anyway it was a Ray Liotta film. He was a bad arse who got sent to a tropical island that was actually a prison. The feds just dump you there and leave you to your own devices. They monitor the island around the clock and if any escape attempts are made they send in the choppers and blow up whatever shelter the prisoners have managed to build. Anyhow it was quite enjoyable – I’ll have to watch it again one day in English and see how it compares.

In the end I did manage to squeeze a couple of hours sleep in on the bus and by the time we rolled into Chiang Mai at 11:30pm I was feeling quite refreshed. Unfortunately we told our guesthouse the wrong arrival time so they weren’t at the bus station to pick us up. So we caught a tuk-tuk instead. The guesthouse was all closed up when we arrived. We banged on the door and someone woke up. At first they tried to tell us they were full and then we convinced them that we’d booked a room so they couldn’t be and they let us in.

There was some reggae music blaring near our guesthouse and since I didn’t feel like sleeping I headed out to see where it was. I found it was a cool little bar with a mix of locals and backpackers. I met a local called Tom who rang a travel agent business. I also got talking to several Brits. It was a good night shooting the breeze and I didn’t end up in bed until about 2:30am. It’d been a long couple of days!

The Bagan Temples and The Race Against the Clock

We were up around 5am for the second day in a row. This morning we were off to see the sunrise from one of the temples in Bagan. Awesome. This was going to be a great day.

The sun set wasn’t that spectacular but the views from the top of the temple certainly were. After a while hanging out there and taking photos we headed back to the hotel for a quick breaky. Despite charging my camera the night before it was nearly flat. This may have been just the first time I’d had to charge it all trip so it gives a good innings but this sucked. I don’t know why but this seems to happen every time I charge it. It’s like one charge flattens it and screws me then the next time it’s ok. It also has a knack for going flat at big ticket items. I recall a couple of years previous it died while I was at the temple of Anchor in Cambodia. Luckily Peach had her camera so I took charge of it once my camera finally gave up.

Starting so early we were able to get lots done before it got really hot around 11am. I was full of energy though. The temples were so amazing that I couldn’t get enough of them. After a long day checking we got back at our hotel around 2:30pm. That probably doesn’t seem like a long day but when you get up before dawn and are on the go virtually the whole time it is.

Peach and I collected our bags from the hotel staff and waited for Tess. She wasn’t around. The bus was due to leave at 3:30pm and if we weren’t on it we’d miss our flight. We were supposed to get to the bus stop half an hour before departure. As was customary Peach started peaking out – ranting that Tess was inconsiderate and putting at at risk of missing the flight. As expected (by me at least) Tess showed up with a few minutes before 3pm and we made it to the bus stop just in time. But the fun was only just beginning.

The heat was beating down and the coolest place to wait was on the bus which was idling at the stop. Although our tickets were for the fold out middle seats we were told we could sit in normal seats for the first hour until some more people got on at another stop. You beauty!

Just as the bus was pulling out of the station the engine died. Uh oh.

We all jumped off and watched the local men jump into action. They pulled a panel off the side of the bus to reveal a massive stash of spare parts and tools. Obviously they were prepared. As scripted Peach started cursing the world and everything in it. I tried all sorts of methods of getting her to chill out – but to no avail. After I suggested that perhaps she should try some relaxation exercises I was told to “stop fucking preaching”. So I did. I found it all very amusing. For the best part of an hour the blokes toiled away at the back of the bus then we were finally on our way. Our estimates now put our arrival time in Yangon at sometime between 6-6:30am. Our flight left at about 8:30 – so it was going to be tight. We had no idea it was from the bus station to the airport once we arrived in Yangon.

After an hour we stopped in another town and picked up more passengers. We had to switch seats but Peach and I were lucky enough to get a couple of seats in the back row while Tess got one closer to the front. Hopefully it would be another couple of hours before we had to move into the middle.

It turns out that we ended up getting to keep the two back seats for the duration of the trip but about 3 or 4 hours in Tess had to move into one of the middle seats. I offered to take it instead, you know – gentleman and all, but she said she didn’t mind.

The problem with having a seat in the middle of the bus – besides the fact it doesn’t have a proper back rest and that you bounce around even more so than usual thanks to Myanmar’s pothole riddled roads – is that every couple of hours or so the bus stops for a toilet break. So if anyone in a seat behind you wants to get up (and they always do) then you have to get up too. So even if you’re lucky enough to get to sleep (and you never are) you’re bound to be interrupted after a short while.

In the back row I managed to snatch a few minutes sleep at one point before Tess finally asked if she could take my seat. I obliged and took hers. No more sleep for me. I think it was probably 1am by this point. I’d been awake for the best part of 20 hours and had tramped around Bagan checking out temples all day and now I had almost 6 more hours in the middle seat of a bumpy 14 hour bus ride before a flight to Bangkok and then another 10 hour bus ride to Chiang Mai. I was delirious with tiredness. My eyes were so sore from wanting to sleep that it stung to open them.

For the next few hours my mind played all sorts of tricks on me. Every now and then I’d open my eyes for few miniutes and notice that we were fanging down a dirt/sand path not really wide enough for two vehicles. We’d break suddenly every few minutes to crawl around a broken down truck or allow another to pass. Best to keep eyes shut. At one point we broke down again. This time we were on the road in what seemed like 10 minutes – but to be truthful time was blurring itself in my mind.

When the sun started coming up the driver pumped Thai pop music through the stereo system. Even with earplugs in it was still piercing. Pumping music like this was a familiar theme at dawn on buses throughout Asia. I’ve still got some of the songs in my head today.

Peach woke up at the back of the bus as we rolled into town and noticed it was nearly 6:30am – time was tight. She asked me to ask the driver if we were going past the airport. Gold idea. But unfortunately we weren’t. I could see smoke coming out of Peach’s ears. I could hear her muttering and swearing back there but chose to ignore it. She asked me to find out how much longer until we arrived but I refused – apparently that’s bad luck in Myanmar. More ear smoke.

We got to the bus station a few minutes later. Check in had already opened for our flight. There was every chance we’d miss the flight by a matter of minutes. There was nothing we could do about it though so there was no need to stress.

We started bartering with taxi drivers. The driver we took said the airport was 40 minutes away. Tick tock, tick tock. Peach stress level: CODE RED!! He quickly bailed us into his car and we headed off. He seemed quite sure we’d be late. I applied my Myanmar time filter and reckoned we’d be at the airport in 20 minutes instead of 40. And correct I was!! No need to stress. We checked in our bags and got some breakfast in the large stinking hot waiting room that housed the 2 departure gates. And we waited. And we waited. Finally the plane took off nearly an hour late – ha ha!! All this time we thought we were going to miss the flight and then it gets delayed. What a capper!

Arrival in Bagan

The boat from Mandalay arrived in Bagan at about 5:30pm. There were several options for getting the 4km from the pier to town: car, trishaw or horse and cart. Lots of people – especially in more rural areas – still use horse (or Ox) and cart as the main mode of transport in Myanmar. It’s probably a more reliable mode of transport than most of the cars on the road.

The cheapest option was trishaw. Sold. The three of us caught 2 trishaws and the poor guys who were our drivers had to pedal all the way into town carrying us and all our crap. I felt like an ugly rich tourist – until I caught my first glimpse of the temples.

Bagan is a huge plain. Kind of like what you’d see in a spaghetti western. The land is dry, flat and dusty. Every so often there’s a tree or two. Dotted around this area that would otherwise be a waste land are 3000-4000 temples of varying sizes some of which are 1000+ years old. The sight of these temples in the middle of nowhere was awesome. I immediately pulled the camera out and started snapping away. I don’t think I took more photos of anything on the entire trip. And this place was now my number one destination of the trip so far. I was mesmerised all the way into town.

We got our drivers to take us to a travel agent first up. In Mandalay we’d arranged to book a bus from Bagan back to the capital Yangon the next afternoon. Apparently the Mandalay office couldn’t’ book it from there so they were going to call their Bagan office to do it for us. Fine. The night before leaving Mandalay (about the same time I was getting nauseous on betel) we booked a flight from Yangon back to Bangkok. Turns out the only way in or out of Myanmar while we were there was by flying from the capital. That shattered my hopes of overlanding it. Boo! Anyway so we had this flight booked out of Yangon and if all went according to plan our bus should get into Yangon with about 3 hours to spare. No wuckas.

At the travel agent in Bagan the master plan started falling to pieces. Firstly the agent had tried to book us a seat but all the bus companies were full. We wouldn’t be able to go until the next day. To rub the salt in our airline required 48 hours notice for rescheduling. So we were going to have to forfeit the flight. I didn’t mind so much. I loved Bagan and was happy to spend more time there. The girls, who thankfully were almost back to full health, had spent a fortune on the Thai gold coast and weren’t going to miss the flight and see the money lost. Tensions were rising. Despite a long day of doing nothing we were all getting tired and irritable – we had been up since before dawn after all.

The travel agent was a lovely girl who was doing her best to accommodate us. I was impressed that she was even serving us since when we showed up the store was actually closed for the night and she was out the back having a shower. Someone had fetched her to open up and see us. How’s that for top notch customer service! She began calling bus companies again to check again if there were any tickets available. It turns out there might have been tickets on a bus with no air-con. If the air-con works on a bus in Myanmar it’s always turned down low or off altogether since most people open their windows for heat relief. So a no air-con bus was fine. Then somehow tickets on a bus with air-con showed up but they were fold out seats in the middle of the bus – these would be a nightmare on a 14 hour bus ride but beggars can’t be choosers. We took the tickets. I’m not sure why we didn’t opt for normal seats on the non-air-con bus – looking back it seems like the smarter option. The travel agent ordered us to go straight to the bus station to pay for the tickets. And we did.

Our trishaw drivers had been waiting patiently and took us to the bus station. There we were charged a 50% premium on what the travel agent quoted. We were being blatantly ripped off but these guys must have known we were desperate and would gladly pay. And we did.

By now the sun was well and truly down and we still didn’t have a place to stay. Hunger pains were combining with tiredness to form a wonderful cocktail of grumpiness. The drivers took us to a hotel they recommened (read: got commission from) and we couldn’t be bothered arguing. Not only was it expensive but it was pretty crusty. Still I just wanted to dump our bags and grab some dinner. I don’t think the door to the room was even halfway open when Peach declared the place a shithole and stormed back onto the street demanding to be taken elsewhere. And I was just beginning to think she was coming around to dropping her standards to somewhere in the vicinity of my level. It’d be a while before that happened.

Back on the trishaws Peach barked directions at the drivers. She’d seen a hotel somewhere in the darkness and was going to find it. After a couple of turns and maybe even a u-turn we found another place. It was even more expensive (by Myanmar standards) but was deemed worthy enough to house us for one night.

We paid our long suffering trishaw drivers and arranged for one of their fathers to take us touring around the temples in the morning. After checking into our room we headed off on foot to find a place to eat. The restaurants in Bagan clearly saw a lot more westerners. The décor was much swisher and the menus were in English. Peach didn’t even need to find a 5 star hotel to eat dinner in. I scoffed down an Indian set menu that was enough for two people.

We finished the night by walking around town a bit before calling it a night.

Mandalay

Mandalay was much more chilled than Yangon or Bago. The first sign of this was the touts at the bus station. Instead of racing up to us and shoving pictures of their hotels in our faces they all stood quietly in a line. After looking at them somewhat bemused for a minute I went over and asked if any of them had a room available. They all answered politely that they did. “Well I need one!” I exclaimed. We picked a place at jumped in a pickup to the hotel. There was hardly any street noise from our rooms which was a welcome relfief after the Bago symphony.

I did my usual stroll-around-the-new-city thing in the afternoon and checked out a couple of Buddhist temples and got friendly with a couple of monks。

After getting sick Peach impuned all restaurants in Myanmar as unhygenic. She’d barely eaten in two days and was very weak but she hit upon a cunning plan. She made friends with a trishaw driver and the two nights we were in Mandalay she’d eat next to nothing during the day and each night get the driver to take her to “the nicest hotel restaurant you know of”. The first night we ended up in place that looked ok but served crap overpriced food. The next night I ate at a little restaurant near our guesthouse for $US0.80 cents and it was great. Peach headed to a 5 star hotel. She paid $US8 for a buffet that, admittedly, looked bloody good and from her reports tasted about the same. $8 is a bargin for dinner back home. It’s amazing how easily I slipped in to the price ranges of the country I’m in. In Myanmar $8 is a rip off. I was able to take the moral high ground too buy pointing out that the oppressive government owned the hotel. I was happy to see Peach getting a good meal into her though.

Speaking of prices. We decided to go for the uber-nice room in Mandalay with air-con and other mod cons. It was $US6 a night. The only problem was that the electricity was off across the city most of the time so we still ended up sweating through every night.

The majority of people in Myanmar chew something called betel. It’s like a hard nutty substance wrapped in a leaf. It’s supposed to make you feel a little bit drunk after you have it but the consequences are that it makes your teeth a disgusting red color – like a well fed vampire. The streets are stained with red blotches where people spit it out. On our last night in Mandalay I thought I’d give betel a go. It’s sold on every other street corner. You can get different strengths. I asked for 2 strong ones. It tasted a bit like antiseptic – not very nice. I persevered though and after a few minutes my mouth was tingling and I felt nice and fluffy in the head. I wasn’t very good at the chew-and-spit thing though and half of it dribbled down my chin. Apparently some was coming out of my labret piercing too. I had the second one but the effects didn’t seem to increase at all. So I went and bought one more. After the third one I started feeling nauseous. In fact I feel sick again just thinking about it. We had to get up early the next morning so I struggled back to the guesthouse to pack. I hate vomiting and will happy suffer the pain rather than have a chunder. This time was no different. Somehow with the room spinning and being on the verge of a huge puke I managed to organise everything for the morning before collapsing on the bed and eventually falling to sleep.

It was a good thing I did pack my stuff since not only was the power off when we got up around 5:30am but the backup generator, that at least gives you a small light, was broken. So by torchlight we collected our things and checked out. I was feeling back to normal now.

We were heading to the river to catch an all day boat to Bagan. As usual the taxi driver we arranged the night before told us it would take double the time to get to the pier than it actually did so we had some time to kill.

The boat probably had seats for 150 passengers. But there were only about 25 on board and they were all western tourist – mostly middle aged American’s who looked like they were on a package tour. I hadn’t seen so many foreigners in one place for a while so it was quite surreal. It was a great relaxing day though. Chilling out, listening to music, taking photos of interesting things along the way etc… It was good to recharge since the next few days were going to be very very draining.