Thailand, La gorn krap (goodbye)

STATS: Day count=52; Current Illness count=0 (still in full health); theft count=0; rip-off count=0.4 ; tourist screw-up count=1.7 (see below); Chris’ photo count=570; Emma’s photo count=15

Countryside again! After a long bus journey just to get to the bus station in Bangkok, followed by a 7 hour journey to our next stop – Sukhothai – we arrived fairly refreshed and entered countryside and fresh air once more!

Shunning the tuk tuk drivers at the bus station as if we were natives, we walked to the guest house via fields and back roads. If it weren’t for the signs blatantly pointing the way to “No. 4 Guest House” I’m sure we would have been mistaken for locals who knew where they were going.

Nice guest house – in the middle of farmland, but with trees and plants growing in close proximity making it seem like we were in the middle of a jungle. There were not enough mosquitoes to be a big nuisance, but enough to keep Emma busy hunting them down each evening.

Sukhothai’s big tourist draw are the ruins of the ancient (13th century) main city. There are two towns – the old one with all the ruins and the new one with all the guesthouses and restaurants, with about 13km between them. The shuttle ‘bus’ between them moved slower than we could have walked (ok, I’m exaggerating a little) and I did wonder how the driver knew he needed more petrol, given that the fuel gauge, speedometer, odometer, rev counter and temperature gauge were all either missing or not working. But we got there eventually. After our surprise at the 150% price hike on entry fees from our 2-year old guide book (we’ll stop being surprised at that soon!) we wandered into the national park and around the ruins. I wont try to describe them. They were ruins. See photos. Apparently only temples important enough to be were built out of long-lasting materials, hence the only things left. Lots of school trips there – all the different schools in their brightly coloured uniforms cycling round the place and all wanting to say hello to the strange tourists walking around. I can just imagine the risk assessment forms teachers would have to fill in the UK to let a class of kids cycle around on their own amongst 9 sq km of ancient ruins!

Having had our fill of ruins, I spent the evening photographing a tree frog that was sat outside our room covered by swarming insects attracted by the light in the evening, just catching an easy dinner. It’s a tough life (for the frog and me!). The bird nesting outside our window, the frogs and lizards on our balcony and the cockerels waking us up in the morning all reminded us that we weren’t in Bangkok any more!

Other than lugging 20kg rucksacks around, and walking everywhere, we’re not getting lots of exercise on our trip, so we decided to go on a cycle tour in the evening – a guided mountain bike ride around local farms and villages as the sun went down. It was really good. A small group (6 + tour leader) cycling along flat (phew!) roads and paths for 2 and a half hours, seeing and learning about the tobacco farms, rice paddies (we’d never really seen a rice plant before!), chilli and vegetable patches, across rickety bridges and through towns where all of the kids and most of the adults wanted to shout hello and wave at us and seemed really pleased to get a reply and a wave. It was like being in an Enid Blyton book. And we had lashings of ginger beer to finish. Ok, maybe not, but picking our own fresh mangoes from the tree was really smashing!

Moved on from Sukhothai on the Sunday (21st) and arrived at Mae Sot, a border town with Burma (Myanmar). I will continue to call it Burma as it is quicker to type. Also, it is the corrupt government that changed all the names. I have no problem with a country renaming places to reduce ties with colonial rule, but it seems the government there isn’t all that great – as evidenced by the large community of refugees along the border towns, the catalogue of human rights abuses, and the numerous NGOs based in Mae Sot for promotion of Burmese rights and looking after the refugees, orphans etc. It seemed like an interesting place to visit, and it was. A noticeable mix of styles and cultures – Thai and Burmese, Buddhist and Muslim, legitimate worker and illegal immigrant, native and refugee. It took a day or two to get used to the place, but it was friendly if maybe a little ‘tense’. We looked to see if there were any opportunities for volunteering there, but the fact that we only had a few days there was a bit limiting. Plus many of the volunteering options were with NGOs that was a lot more formal (apply in advance, commit a month minimum etc) than we were able to comply with this time around.

It was nice to try some Burmese food for a change – there was a really good Burmese-run restaurant in the town – nice Burmese curries which seemed a cross between a Thai curry and an Indian one – not surprising given Burma’s location! Our guest house was dirt cheap (the cheapest so far) and was big and clean but when we got to bed we realised why it was cheap – the noise from the bar next door was a tad deafening! At least it stopped at midnight, fortunately. The mattresses were filo-pastry thin but we must have thought it was ok as we stayed there 4 nights!

The town itself boasted an interesting vegetable market – not sure I could name more than a couple of the vegetables – a golden Wat that looked very impressive in the bright sunshine (it still hasn’t rained at all for us in Thailand!) and a very colourful Chinese temple that we wandered around. And a cafe that  did nice ice cream. We went there quite a lot.

Headed out of town one day to visit a gibbon sanctuary that we had read about. It was about an hour and a half out of town, which is a little painful in the back of a pick-up truck with benches for seats. The website for this place implied they were pleased to receive drop-in visitors and as we hadn’t phoned beforehand we hoped that would be the case! When we arrived we weren’t deterred by the “Closed” sign on the gate and eventually got in anyway, talking to the owner. The place is really nice – has about 30 gibbons that it has been given over the years by people who no longer want them as pets, or from places that abused them. It also has a couple of Thai foxes (looked like wolves) and some monkeys (gibbons, as they were at pains to point out, are apes, not monkeys!). I could waffle on for ages about the place, but I wont bore you just yet – the reason it will crop up again is that we have volunteered to work there for a month on our return to Thailand in May. If you are interested, check out their website: www.highland-farm.org. It’s not flawless – the monkeys for example have fairly small cages (though much better than those they were rescued from) and they do allow / encourage breading of the gibbons, but don’t rehabilitate into the wild (most of the ones they receive wouldn’t be able to return to the wild anyway, but I’m still unconvinced about the encouragement to breed and then not to introduce the young to the wild) but as a place that just grew out of a couple’s desire to help mistreated gibbons, its heart is in the right place. Will be fun and insightful to work there for a month too. We are both very much looking forward to it.

This photo isn’t a gibbon. It’s a cicada that we discovered on the stairs of our guesthouse one evening (at least I hope it’s a cicada! I’m no expert). You don’t see them that often, but you can definitely hear them!

We then needed to head back to Bangkok for our flight to India on Saturday morning. Could be interesting, as there is a verdict on a big political trial here on Friday – decision on whether to seize the considerable (>£1bn) assets of the ex Prime Minister Thaksin. Talk in the media about potential unrest following the decision, whichever way it goes. We suspect a lot of media hype though (Us? British citizens? Suspecting media hype? Never!)

We wanted to break the journey a bit so we stopped in Kamphaeng Phet – another town based around ancient ruins. Unfortunately we made a cock-up in getting to the guest house (hence the increase in the statistic!). We walked (bad move – hot day, heavy rucksacks, 1 hr walk) to a place that we didn’t have the address of, and didn’t know if it was open. We found it (by some miracle!) but it was closed. Got completely lost finding the next one (this place is not very touristy, we had a pathetic map only, and for once there are no tuk tuk or taxis around). After walking backwards and forwards for another hour and a half or so a kind lady in a shop took pity on us and she actually closed her shop and led us to the hostel – it was just around the corner, but not signposted from the unusual direction we were approaching it from! Very kind of her. The hostel is great – very quirky and interesting. We were too late to see the ruins by this stage, so we have decided to revisit this hostel and town when we return after volunteering in June.

And that’s about it for Thailand. We’re on our way back to Bangkok for one night and, baring major problems, will be on our way to India on Saturday. La gorn krap to Thailand and Namaste to India!