02/02/2005
Some days we wake up and wonder what country we are in - it's that different to Southern Thailand. We imagine this is what Myanmar (Burma) must look like as we are so close to the border. It's quite similar to the lowlands in Nepal. Very green and lush, wide open spaces, mountainous and quaint with hilltribe people meandering around. A breath of fresh air - literally. A real cultural overload after being beach bums for so long!

Samui Again
This update starts in the South as we headed back to Samui for some much needed rest and relaxation from our holiday.  We went back to the same beach (Chaweng) and the same bungalow (Marine) but not to the same prices. This was peak, peak season and a month on from our last visit. Our room had gone up from 600 baht to 1000 baht and you had to play tough tactics to get a towel width space on the beach. After 5 days of sun, good food, beer and massages on the beach (check out the pictures in the gallery!) we decided it was time to move on and do some cultural things.

Overnight train sucks
After a dismal overnight bus from Singapore we decided to splash out on the train (2 x price of bus) to Bangkok. Waste of time. Too hot to sleep, no privacy and other backpackers smoking in the carriage. Next time we take the bus!

Bangkok again
After a first night in a lousy hotel stinking of mothballs (Sawasdee Bangkok Inn - avoid) and a double bed to fit 1.5 people and no room to swing a cat we found a wonderful hotel - The New Merry V Guesthouse. Huge room, large cable TV, A/C and hot water for 590 baht. Luxury. We checked out modern Bangkok with a visit to some department stores and shopping malls and visited Jim Thompson's house, the American silk entrepreneur who went missing in Malaysia. This was a bit of a waste of money as there is not much to see. One major disappointment was a half day trip we did to the Floating Market, 2 hours from Bangkok. It was very small and there were more tourists than vendors. The vendors themselves were extremely pushy, grabbing your arm to try and make you buy something - ah well it made for good photos (check the gallery again).

Much better was a one day trip we did ourselves to Ayutthaya, 2 hours north of Bangkok on the train. This is the old capital of Thailand and is full of temple ruins. We only had 4.5 hours but we hired bikes and had a brilliant time cycling around this flat 5km square island. We have one more return visit to Bangkok - when we leave at the end of the trip, so we are saving a couple of tourist atttractions till then, namely the Grand Palace, Patpong and the Weekend Market.

Kanchanaburi
We had been looking forward to visiting this area for some time due to it being the location of the Thai-Burma railway and WW2 POW camps, primarily Hellfire Pass and of course the famous Bridge over the River Kwai.

It took just two hours in a sweaty minibus to arrive at the Jolly Frog Backpackers - a lovely cheap spot on the river with even cheaper menu prices. Most dishes were less than Australian $1, a bargain!! We visited the War Cemetary for British, Dutch and Commonwealth soldiers and also the Tiger Temple in our first afternoon. The Tiger Temple was a very special experience. Monks look after orphaned and injured tigers in a compound where they roam free under the watchful eye of the monks. It was a bit touristy but if you stay until the end (which we did) and all the tourists are gone, then you can walk and stroke the tigers back to their cages. This was very exciting and a bit scary. The temple is the home for lots of other animals - horses, pigs, deer and cows. A real animal farm.

The following day we took a day trip which began with an excursion to Erawan National Park and the seven levels of waterfall. We got to swim in number 4 and slide down a rock slide into the freezing water. The fish there loved to eat your feet, it felt really weird, it wasn't a good idea to stay still if you didn't want to get nobbled!

Next stop was Hellfire Pass Museum which had special meaning for Andrew as his Great Uncle Albert (Coates) was a doctor POW at Hellfire Pass during WW2. To his delight we saw Uncle Albert mentioned in the museum and we went to see the Museum Manager who let Andrew sign the POW relatives guestbook. Outside in the searing heat we got to walk a bit of the railway track, it would have been one hellhole of a place in that heat under miserable POW conditions. We moved on to a trip on an old train that runs along the remaining railway track for 1.5 hours, which ended with the train going over "The bridge on the River Kwai". All in all a very good day trip. In the evening we treated ourselves to a foot massage, kind of pleasant but at times it felt like you were walking on sharp rock as they prodded your foot in painful places. Won't rush to get another one!

Overnight bus sucks again!
We took the cheap over night bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai for 11 hours. Guess you get what you pay for. The seats would not recline and it was stuffy. We arrived in the dark and were escorted to a hostel where they began to sell trekking tours to us at 7am in the morning, plying us with tea and coffee and cheap accommodation. Amazingly half the moron backpackers on our bus signed up for one. Each group had 12 people in the trek. Not exactely a special experience. We got the hell out of there and found a lovely hotel with no trekking pressure - Water Well Apartments. After that hard sell we decided we would not do a trek with everyone else from Chiang Mai but find somewhere more remote.

Zoe cooks for the first time in 4.5 months!
Before we went away Zoe decided to do a one day course at the Chiang Mai Cookery school (www.thaicookeryschool.com). She was whisked off with 10 other people (mostly couples - Andrew spent the day on the internet) to a large house in the suburbs and was taught vegetable carving (not very good at) and 6 courses of food, which you got to eat. You spent 10 minutes in a demonstration room then went to your own cooking station where you cooked each course in turn. They all tasted brilliant. The dishes were:

• Minced pork clear soup
• Spring rolls
• Roasted duck and pineapple curry
• Chicken and ginger stir fry
• Chicken wrapped in pandanus leaves
• Mango and sticky rice

When she gets home she will be trying them out!!! Andrew can't wait!!!!!!!!!

Chiang Mai
A lovely city, much prettier than Bangkok and with lovely cool evenings. We managed to be lucky enough to be here on a Sunday night when the weekly night market is on. It was terrific, the best shopping yet! We went a bit crazy and had loads of street food. The place was alive with dancing and singing and all manner of festivities. The daily night bazaar was a disappointment in comparison and had just the usual tourist fayre. Chiang Mai has temples in abundance but the highlight for us was Wat Pra Singh as we got to talk to two 17 year old monks who wanted to pratice their English skills.

Mae Hong Son
Since we were put off trekking from Chiang Mai we decided to go more remote, towards the Burmese border. We treated oursleves to a 35 minute flight to Mae Hong Son in the far North West of Thailand. MHS is a really pretty, quaint town not really geared up for tourists yet, but this made it very quiet and when we booked our trek we were the only two people on it. The centre of the town is a lake which in the morning is covered in mist and looks magical with the Wats in the background. The lady we booked the trek with told us about a festival of fire on at the Stadium that evening so we went up and it was a huge fair with people from all the surrounding hilltribe villages. We got to see a longnecked girl playing the tombola with a big-eared girl. Lots of very drunk Thais and little girls dancing on stages, just like an old fashioned fairground where the prizes ranged from whisky to soap powder.

Trekking
Day one of the trek we visited two villages a Hmong Village and then a White Karen village in the afternoon. This is where we would stay the night. It was very small with just 15 bamboo huts and lots of farm animals. We had dinner cooked for us over a fire and we spent the night on a families living room floor - very cosy. In the morning we were bombarded with local women trying to sell us their wares - so we bought a top and skirt in the hilltribe fashion. The second day we spent going steep downhill through the jungle where we camped the night in a bamboo hut and a fire to keep us warm. We had dinner cooked with pots made from bamboo stalks, it was a very original method of cooking. We spent the final day crossing the river around 14 times and coming out of the jungle.

Pai
We had heard a lot of good things about Pai so on our way back to Chiang Mai, before moving to Laos, we stopped at Pai for a couple of nights.  It was pretty but we had been spoilt by the more backward Mae Hong Son. Pai was overrun with backpackers and longterm western hippies. If you walked out of the town the surrounding rice fields were nice to look at and we walked up a big hill to a Wat which overlooked the whole of Pai. It was very hot and to cool down we went to the local swimming pool, our first pool since Phi Phi.

We are back in Chiang Mai now and we head to the border with Laos tomorrow. Looking forward to a new country.

Food
Excellent pizza at the Jolly Frog Backpackers in Kanchanaburi. It blew us away, western food done extremely well for les than $3. We love Ratana's restaurant in Chiang Mai. The local dish here is called Khao Soi. This is a mild coconut curry with crispy noddles on top. We also love Mango and sticky rice - you can buy it on the street corner for 20 baht and its so moreish. Zoe will attempt to make it when she gets home.

People
Once again very friendly, although we didn't like the trekking pressure. It was great to see Hilltribe people especially at the fairground in their normal gear hanging out with their friends.

Landscape
The best we have seen since Nepal, this is why we keep forgetting we are still in Thailand. The further away from the big cities the better it gets.

Health
A few mozzie bites, Andrew has a bit of toothache and some weird dreams (?!) - apart from that okey dokey.