My first full day in Luang Prabang was largely uneventful. I wandered around town a bit, napped, and then happened upon some people I’d met in Chiang Mai almost two weeks earlier. I had another veggie dinner at the night market, and then went to Utopia, the trendy new bar in town – it’s an immaculately manicured place on the riverside (giving it a bit of a golf-course-y feel), but its comfortable, and even has a beach volleyball court. After it closed (before midnight!) we took a tuk-tuk to LP’s disco and partied a bit, Lao-style (I guess?), before ending up at my friend’s guesthouse where one of the guys undoubtedly infuriated the other tenants by playing guitar until the wee hours. I was in bed by around 3:30ish, which I feared would frustrate my big plans for the next day…

Being the sucker for punishment that I am, I decided to rent a bicycle (a proper, modern mountain bike; still too small for me, but I came to value every one of its 24 gears) and ride out to the Tat Kuang Si waterfall, which I’d heard was quite beautiful. For a similar price to the bike rental I could have negotiated a ride in a tuk-tuk (one-way), but I am stubborn, and decided I wouldn’t glean the same satisfaction from it. The ride is about 32 km out of Luang Prabang, across undulating (as the Lonely Planet aptly describes them) roads through the countryside. A bit less than a third of the way along, the winding roads became viciously hilly, and I wondered if I would live to regret my plan, but almost every steep climb was followed by a blissful downhill stretch. Despite almost two hours of steady effort in baking heat that it ended up taking, it was a far more pleasant ride than the struggle up the mountain to Doi Suthep. Inaccessible by road before only the past few decades, Laos’ geography is a breathtaking mix of forested mountains and snaking rivers, so the scenery made the sweat worthwhile. There’s something about physical exertion that provides a wonderful slate for thought, and I spent some time reflecting on my travels thus far.

Upon arrival I ravenously wolfed down some lunch, then made my way on slightly rubbery legs up the road to the waterfall. I had been planning on walking up to the main falls, but was distracted by the sight of pooled water through the forest and decided it was worth getting sidetracked. After two hours of cycling, the plunge off the rope-swing into the clear, cold mountain pool was refreshing beyond words. Once I’d cooled off, I spent some more time taking stock of my surroundings in earnest, and found myself in an oasis paradise. The white-noise roar of the falls fills your ears as the water flows down dozens of limestone terraces sculpted by nature, filling placid turquoise pools with crisp, clean water. The surrounding forest is equally beautiful, springing with verdant foliage, the sinuous, grasping roots of ancient trees, dangling vines.

The main waterfall is rather majestic, and there was a path to hike up alongside it, though the reward was slightly disappointing; despite being near the lip of the falls, you couldn’t actually see it, though the view of the mountains and surrounding village was nice. Once above the falls, there was a sign indicating the path to a cave and a spring. Most of the people I’d talked to had come with tour groups, and so had a fixed amount of time to spend, and didn’t think the 3 km walk was worth it. I figured that I’d already been ridiculous enough to ride more than 30 km here, so what was another 3 km. I set out hiking barefoot, since I’d worn my boots for the bike ride, and didn’t feel like re-dressing the scrapes on my feet (though they are largely healed) to stuff them back in my shoes after my dip. While the scenery was less spectacular than below, it made for rather serene hiking, and I only encountered a trio of monks and two couples (rushing back to catch their vans) the whole way there.

While it was bound to happen after the stunning nature that was so readily accessible below, the caves and spring turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax. The limestone caves extended about 120 m into the earth, and were probably not very special by cave standards, but were interesting enough for someone who has never done any spelunking before. Still barefoot, I unfortunately had to keep my flashlight aimed more at my feet than my surroundings to avoid mishaps (especially since we spotted a few creepy cave bugs that I would have rather not stepped on).

The spring was a rather idyllic, peaceful little spot, buzzing with flies, bees, and butterflies. A sign urged visitors to keep the spring clean, and not to take a bath; ironically, a few minutes after I arrived, a villager stamped down a path on the opposite side, cleared his nose, and proceeded to rinse off.

After hiking back down, I took a final splash in the pools before setting back to Luang Prabang. By the time I left, the park had been almost completely depleted of tourists, and a calm descended on the falls with the lowering sun. I had to race the sunset back to Luang Prabang, and after the days exertions, the ride back felt long indeed, though the cooler evening air and (slightly) more downhill trend to the roads made keeping a consistent pace easier. I only took one break to guzzle some water, but was still caught in the dark by the time I reached the outskirts of the city. I ate an enormous dinner at the market that night (before I even returned the bike, I tore into a grilled chicken breast, the first piece of hot, satisfying food I could find). After a few beers with a cool Australian couple I’d met on the slow boat, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. After 65 km of cycling, the longest single day I’ve ever done – not to mention the hiking – it wasn’t hard.

I needed to kill a few days before meeting up with Andy, so the next day I got up early and hopped a minivan to Nong Khiaw, a town about four hours northeast of Luang Prabang on the Nam Ou river. The scenery is dramatic. The river flows clear, green, and fast, lined on either side by jutting mountains with sheer cliffs, bare where the dense forests can’t cling to them. The brilliance of the surroundings was belied by the dusty town on the western banks of the river which doesn’t present the greatest of first impressions.

The first day I did essentially nothing – the ease with which one can do nothing and not feel bad about it seems to be one of Southeast Asia’s greatest virtues thus far. I wandered around briefly, read some of “The Devil and Miss Prym” by Paulo Coelho (a concise moral fable about temptation, greed, fear, and change – makes me want to read his other stuff), and napped. In the streets, the plaything of choice for Nong Khiaw’s youths these days seems to be a bug affixed to a plastic straw (make two and you can race ‘em) – mildly cruel, but cheap entertainment. I’ve always wanted to make a house fly helicopter…

The hot season is coming on strong, and I suspect siestas are going to become a regular part of my days to come. Had some delicious Lao food for dinner (laap, which is minced meat with all kinds of herbs and spices, eaten with your hands, with sticky rice to ease the chili burn). I was also offered some lao-lao (the local rice whiskey), which is pretty much the same as the stuff I had in northern Thailand. A 640 mL bottle of lao-lao costs 10,000 kip (just over a dollar) – the commercial stuff seems to be limited to 40 degrees, but apparently most of the local brews are at least 50% alcohol.

I rented a bike the next day to go explore some of the countryside. Not far out of town is the Tham Pha Thok cave complex that housed hundreds of Lao villagers during the Vietnam War, and was pounded heavily by US bombs. It was much more impressive than the tiny cave I saw above Tat Kuang Si. One of the caves actually housed the bank of Luang Prabang from 1968-1974; there’s something truly odd about crawling through a tortuous limestone cave of shoulder-width passages and reaching an area with a sign indicating financial ‘offices’.

Further down the road from the caves was another village that was supposed to have a waterfall to see, so we took our horribly undersized single-speed Chinese city bikes to go have a look. The roads were quite hilly, similar to the ones that I’d devoured on a mountain bike the other day, but a bad bicycle really does suck all the pleasure out of riding. The seatpost was so low that while sitting down my knees never straightened more than 45 degrees, so the ride was largely spent either standing up, struggling on the uphills (the bottom bracket occasionally creaking alarmingly from the strain of torque), or sitting, gliding on the downhills. The waterfall turned out be so stunningly beautiful that we ended up completely missing it and riding another few kilometers uphill until we figured out that we’d gone too far. The ‘waterfall’ we discovered upon backtracking was only a few feet high, and looked like it was really just the result of a low concrete dam. Not so special.

After lunch, I spent a while reading, but found myself bathing in sweat just sitting there, so I decided to take my chances and go for a dip in the river. While I don’t trust the sanitary habits of the few towns that are upriver on the Nam Ou, locals and tourists alike were swimming here at Nong Khiaw, and the water was clear and the current strong. As at the Kuang Si waterfall, the river proved to be a vitally refreshing reprieve from the heat after a hard, frustrating riding.

While I’d arrived overland, I heard that the majestic scenery along the Nam Ou makes the boat trip a worthwhile experience, despite costing much more and being slower. While the views are admittedly nice, seven hours sitting on low benches in a cramped boat is not my idea of fun. We even got some unexpected trekking included with the price of our ticket, since the water level was too low for the boat to pass through a few of the rapids fully loaded, so we had to walk for a while along the shore. On one stretch, we encountered an emaciated elderly villager clutching a piece of old ordinance – a mortar or an RPG – with a tatty piece of yellow string dangling from it. I’m not sure what he used it for, but it was a keen reminder of Laos’ sordid past and the unexploded ordinance (UXO) that continues to plague the country.

Arrived back in Luang Prabang, hunted for Andy a bit, and then ended up at a bar with a couple French Canadian girls I kept running into. Though it’s not enforced (for falang, anyway), strictly speaking there is a midnight curfew in Laos, so bars all close around 11:30. The girls (who were leaving for Vang Vieng the next morning) and a Frenchman that I’d met on the boat wanted to hunt out some post-beer lao-lao, so I tagged along.

The day after was largely been spent nursing the a vicious headache, care of said lao-lao, and then I finally met up with Andy in the night market. “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

I had nothing in particular I wanted to do today, but Andy had yet to see the Kuang Si waterfall, so we grabbed a tuk-tuk there and spent another afternoon swimming and chilling out. The backtracking will continue when we head out to Nong Khiaw tomorrow, but we’ll continue upriver to Muong Ngoi (or possibly Muong Khua, depending on how long it takes) where hopefully we’ll find some good trekking in untouched Laos.

I promised Andrew I’d meet him in South East Asia, and being a man of his word, departed February 10th for Bangkok. Seeing as I was connecting in Hong Kong however, I arranged a brief 12 hour stopover to get a chance to explore a teeming Asian metropolis. The plane arrived almost an hour early, meaning my flight thankfully was only 15 hours long. I slept almost the whole way, and felt no feelings of jetlag, despite the 12 hour difference. The customs officers letting me into Hong Kong couldn’t have cared less who I was or what I was doing, and I hopped a highspeed train to Kowloon, the “other” big city in Hong Kong. The train was incredible – so cheap, easy, fast, and comfortable. It seems every time I leave Toronto I realize what a cruel joke the TTC is, but then I return and after a few months I’m once again defending it for being the best it can under harsh circumstances or whatever. I have to stop doing this. Our system is a joke, the laughingstock of cities the world over. Even Bangkok , where I am now, puts it to shame.

The first thing about Hong Kong, and now Thailand, that really jumped out at me is how little pedestrians are respected. Crosswalks are unheard of, and cars never slow down for anyone on foot, whether going straight or turning. This made walking along any main street quite treacherous until I figured out the whole driving on the left thing, and even still you have to be completely alert at all times.

After walking around for a bit I met a Canadian from Thornhill, and we spent most of the day wandering together. First stop was the bird market, and this just blew us away. All businesses in Hong Kong are grouped by type, and you have to walk to each respective district to get what you want. The bird market was just laneway after laneway of people selling all manner of bird, cage, and bird food. I guess most of the pet birds here are insectivores, because bird food was predominantly grasshoppers, and some stalls just had these huge cages that must have contained tens of thousands of grasshoppers each. You could buy bags of 20 for one Hong Kong dollar, or about 13 cents.

Next stop, the goldfish market. Again, this was just a street with hundreds of fish stores, all selling pretty much the same things. I don’t understand how they all stay in business, but I guess they do. The craziest part here was how they sell the fish – not in aquariums like North American pet shops, but pre-bagged and hanging on pegboards. It must be a nightmare to clean and rebag all the fish every morning, and this is what most shopkeepers kept busy with. And yes, turtles and the like were also available, prebagged.

Lunch was at some little noodle shop that seemed almost the same as the cheap sitdown places around Yonge and College, and was mediocre and uneventful. Next we got to the Jade Market – this is where stuff got really crazy. Everything was for sale, and it was all thought to be edible. Dried lizards, dried and fresh penises from every animal, pig snouts, fish of every colour and kind. The most incredible, to me anyways, was the coexistence of live animals with the meat. Chickens would be running around, or their cages stacked right next to the butchered chicken on sale. Hair was getting scraped off pigs’ heads right into the public sewers. It was something else.

To finish the day, we walked down Nathan (the main street) to the water, through a neighbourhood indistinguishable from Yorkville. Every store sold overpriced western brands – Lacoste, Gucci, Victoria’s Secret, you know – and the streets were full of tourists. Before this point, I was blown away at how few white people there were in Hong Kong… we had counted maybe 5 over the first 7 hours of the day. Turns out we were just looking in the wrong places.
Clearing security to get back into the airport was as much of a joke as it was getting out, and soon I was on my way to Thailand.

I never ended up finishing the story of the roadtrip… made some notes, but never finished it. Now that I’m in Thailand, I feel it’s probably only right for me to wrap up that previous journey before getting into my new one. Here goes:

Once we were out of Louisiana and getting into Texas, for the first time on the roadtrip, the geography was noticeably different. We had finally left forested hills and farmers fields, which I would basically say were all we had driven through at this point, and entered dead scrubland, a mix of grasses and desert, that just looked quintessentially like Texas. We had actually made it to the goal of our shittalking fantasy (for that is how this all started, remember.

What do we do once we get there? Take a nap. A 9 hour nap. That’s what happens after 16 straight hours on the road. Dinner was late, but good. Went to a pretty nice Tex-Mex place, and Ii had a deep fried avocado. It was breaded and crispy and buttery and awesome. I need to find a place in Toronto that makes these.

We went to shoot pool that night with our Texan host, Nathan. The service was horrible – the waitress was just incredibly bothersome and unhelpful. I guess what really bugged me about her was how she would pick up my beer bottle every couple of minutes and shake it to see if there was beer left, which left the bottle constantly full of foam. Anyway, she bugged me so much I didn’t leave her a tip. When I told Nathan, about this, he flipped. I guess it makes sense. We were in Fort Jackson, a small Texan backwater home to two bars – a “good” one and a “sketchy” one. Pissing off one of probably three waitresses at the only bar you go to admittedly isn’t good practice, and Nathan went back inside to rectify the situation by explaining that we were Canadians and had never heard of tipping. Luckily, I doubt that our waitress will ever come visit, so it probably doesn’t matter.

A visit to a driving range the next day was in order, if only to prove we could comfortably play golf in T-shirts in December. Then we headed off to, you guessed it, Wal-Mart to stock up on ammunition for the night’s main event. The whole point of this roadtrip was to shoot guns in the desert, and it was really going to happen. Our shooting range didn’t actually end up being the desert – apparently Texas is really big and is only desert in the west. Instead, we went down to the levees of Freeport, just a few hundred meters away from both a huge Dow Chemical plant and a US Army base. Two hardcore NRA rednecks (they’re proud of the redneck title, I’m not trying to put them down) joined us, and showed us a thing or two about shooting. They thought it was absolutely crazy we had never shot guns before, and had a grand old time teaching us and making fun of Canada. At our disposal were three guns, a little handgun of some sort, an automatic shotgun (the first automatic model ever made, apparently a rare and highly prized weapon), and a vintage WWII soviet sniper rifle, complete with period ammuntion, including armour piercing rounds that could shred a fencepost. We shot skeet, beer bottles and all the empty energy drink cans we had accumulated along the way. There were a disgusting number of them. Pavel ended up the shotgun champ, Nate was able to hit an 8 inch target at 200 yards with the sniper rifle, and I realized that I really, really like guns. I just don’t want anyone else to have them.

Anyway, being with these two Texan to the bone, Ron Paul loving, NRA supporting rednecks, the conversation invariably turned to politics. Unsurprisingly these guys thought that the solution to crime was everyone owning a gun, and practicing with it regularly. What really shocked me was how serious they both were about the context of the Second Amendment – they both strongly believed that citizen’s militias are vitally important to protect Americans against their government. They knew their American history very well, and were convinced that when the day comes that the government has to turn the military against its citizens, Texas will be a logical starting place because of all the oil. To this end, these guys made sure they “know the land,” and were able to describe all the places they could hide and pick off soldiers. I “knew” that these people were real, but never really believed it until now. All I can say is thanks Dale and Charlie.. you made our trip.

We went to bed earlyish after shooting, and were on the road by 4am the next morning to make sure we made it to Missouri to party that night. It was nice to see Allison in the middle of nowhere, USA, and we brought her some moonshine in a mason jar Adam had picked up in Kentucky. All I need to say is that it was revolting, and Daniel, who had the most of it, was super hung over the next day. So hung over that on the drive home, I had to keep pulling over so he could puke out of the van. At one point this puking was on a front lawn, and I joked that someone was gonna come out with a shotgun. Instead, they sicced dogs on Daniel. Two big vicious things that charged the van and bit the tires as we drove away. It wa close to being a pretty bad scene.

Somehow we ended up in Chicago that night, and stopped for some deep dish pizza before pulling another overnight drive and arriving in Toronto around 6 am. All in all a good trip, and we learned some valuable lessons:

1. Roadtrips are awesome
2. Hairbrained schemes can actually work
3. Tight deadlines blow

Right, so Chiang Khong is a pretty boring place. It’s not a terrible place, there’s just really nothing to recommend it at all, so if you can spend your day somewhere else, you probably should. At least I was able to get a good night’s sleep before getting up early to jump on the slow boat down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang.

After the ferry ride across to the Laos side at Huay Xai, I pressed myself into the fray at the the chaotic crowd around Immigrations. After the strict order of the Thai/Burmese crossing at Mae Sai, it was a delightful throwback to some of tinpot crossings in Africa – the queue line was more of a mob, and the bored border employees would leisurely reach out from behind their windows to grab passports from the confusion of outstretched arms thrusting their documents forward. For some bizarre reason, Laos visas cost more for Canadians – $43 US – than for any other country in the world. Makes me want to Google “Laos/Canada relations” to find out what indignity we inflicted on them…

Slow-boat ticket to Luang Prabang in hand, I armed myself with a seat pillow (which cost 40 baht), a pair of sandwiches (40 baht per), two bottles of Coke (40 baht for both), and 700 mL of Black Horse Special whiskey (staggeringly, also 40 baht – that’s right, folks, just over $1 for a 26er of hard liquor).

The first stretch of our two-day journey down the Mekong was not superb. The boat seemed a bit overcrowded, with half of the aisle taken up by extra passengers sitting on plastic chairs, and the diesel engine droned noisily in the background. The scenery, while quite lovely, was largely unchanging throughout the trip, so it wasn’t enthralling.

At one point, a drunk Canadian named Evan fell off the side of the boat. It had been foreshadowed earlier, when he fell off his chair in to the boat. “The water’s a lot colder than you think, let me tell you.” He became a bit of a local celebrity on the boat after that, as the butt of endless jokes. My Africa nostalgia was again revived when we pulled into a town on the Mekong (largely, I suspect, to top up our Beerlao supplies) and the boat was invaded by Laotian youths carrying baskets of identical snack provisions entreating us with “chip’an’go!” Theories abound on whether their true meaning was “chips and Coke,” or “chip Pringles.” I spent a lot of the day reading, but towards the end of the trip, my rickety wooden bench demanded my constant attention as it parallelogram’med from side to side, threatening collapse.

We arrived at Pak Beng just around nightfall. As a town, Pak Beng seems to exist mainly because it is half-way between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang. I imagine village life during much of the day must be spent twiddling thumbs, punctuated by frantic rushes to attract business at night upon the boat arrivals, and in the morning before departure. (I bet the guesthouse owners would flip out if you said you wanted to stay two nights). While we didn’t indulge, most of the restaurants tried to sweeten their dinner deals by offering free Lao rice whiskey (whether this is actually a positive incentive remains to be seen until I try some of the stuff eventually). Also, everyone seems to want to sell you weed, which was mildly unnerving after coming from Thailand (where seriously intense drug laws keep public propositioning to a minimum). On the whole, I found the place rather endearing, and a great introduction to Laos – the laidback vibe, the decidedly temporary electrical supply (the generator is shut off at ten o’clock), and the requisite mosquito net in my room were charming reminders of Africa, and a real breath of fresh air after Thailand.

After another refreshing night’s sleep (given that there’s no power after ten, it’s sort of forced upon you), we got up early to have a stroll into the (very) local morning market. It was pretty tiny, but unlike many of the markets in Thailand hawking tourist-y trinkets, this one was definitely by the villagers, for the villagers, so it was nice to see.

One of the nice things about France’s colonial influence on Laos is the ubiquity of fresh baguettes (great for breakfast, as I found), which is a pleasant change from the ultra-refined cake-like white bread on offer in Thailand.

While I really hate waking up early in the morning, I really love being awake early in the morning. Mist hung gently atop the forested hills, and dawn’s light flattered all that it touched. Descending down the sandy banks to the river, we found ourselves on a different boat for the second day’s stretch. It was noticeably narrower, yet somehow seemed to accommodate everyone better, with no need for aisle seating, making it easier to walk around. Wooden scrollwork, tasseled curtains, and elegant light fixtures (that I kept bumping my head on) also lent it a much nicer quality than the somewhat shabby-looking boat that had carried us the first day, even though it really wasn’t any more comfortable. This one also had readily accessible life jackets (two girls were playing cards on their pair, thankfully the best use for them that day), which are the kind of thing you don’t realize are conspicuously absent until you see them.

I’m not sure whether it was the good night’s sleep, the lack of border paperwork, the crisp morning air, the little touches on our new boat, or that everyone was simply settling into the groove of things, but the second day’s trip was downright pleasant. The first stretch on the river was a bit magical, with the morning light diffusing through the soft fog, tranquility in the air. Along the banks, long bamboo fishing poles strung with nets dipped into the Mekong, wedged, untended, into the craggy rock outcroppings. Further along, a local rode atop an elephant, its trunk swinging gaily, saddled for work.

For all its luxury pricing, the Black Horse Special proved to be not-terrible (as ringing an endorsement as I can offer a bottle of whiskey that costs 40 baht), and generous Beerlao doled out from the ship’s bar helped to leaven the already buoyant moods of the passengers. I actually had a moment of genuine disappointment when I heard that we were arriving in Luang Prabang.

My impressions of LP are still sketchy at the moment, with the twilight largely spent finding accommodation, though I’m already loving the night food markets here. A plate of food at the numerous vegetarian buffets costs only 5000 kip (something like 70 cents – I’m sure you’re all thrilled at having to remember yet another new currency for the next few weeks), and if you don’t mind everything being tossed together, they can even heat it up for you.

Might hire a bike and ride out to a waterfall about 32 km away today, or I might just take it easy and wander the city a bit.

Mae Sai is a thoroughly average, slightly dingy, town in Northern Thailand, and would be utterly unremarkable were it not located on the banks of the Nam Ruak river which forms a convenient marker for the border between Thailand and Myanmar. As one of the few (legal) border crossings into the country, Mae Sai has become one of the shopping hubs of Southeast Asia, with sprawling markets purveying loads of cheap Chinese goods that have made their way through Burma. Seeing as shopping is my favourite pastime, as you all well know, I found the place absolutely enchanting…

After getting a bit of a late start out of Chiang Rai (stopping for breakfast at the delicious Boonsita vegetarian cafeteria where I ate every morning), I arrived in Mae Sai in the afternoon, found accommodation in a somewhat run-down (real-estate agents would call it ‘rustic’) bungalow set off from the Nam Ruak, and set to wandering. I walked up to Wat Doi Wao, which has an excellent viewpoint of the country-side and Myanmar, as well as an enormous scorpion monument angrily poised facing the opposite banks. One gets the impression that Thai/Burmese relations may not have been the most amicable, at times.

I hadn’t been planning on going into Myanmar at all, since this border crossing doesn’t allow travel further afield into the country, so I’d essentially be handing the junta my $10 visa fee for the privilege of exploring a Burmese frontier-town for a few hours. Ultimately, I was convinced by a ex-pat Frenchman cafe-owner named Alain who expounded to me about the friendliness of the locals and said that I should at least get a taste for the difference between the two countries.

After some food at the night market on the main drag (night markets are one institution the West badly needs to embrace), I wandered back towards my guesthouse and got to chatting with Alain again. His Thai wife and a couple of other locals were there, as was another young French ex-pat. Alain had been nursing some Thai spirits, and when another bottle was procured, I was convinced to give it a shot. Lao khow (my spelling) is a clear spirit that can apparently be made from rice or sugar cane, and it reminded me a lot of sake’s stronger, nastier brother. You gulp the whole lot down straight, then chase it with water. One of the locals, who was drinking steadily (and seemed content to ramble on at me in Thai, happily oblivious to the fact that I was neither understanding nor responding), kept refilling my tea cup with the stuff, and I ended up drinking far, far more lao khow than I’d planned. It turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable evening, despite the fact that the conversations around me were either Thai or French, and I only had a very drunk old Scotsman who eventually arrived to chat with. When I got back to my guesthouse, there was a big lizard the size of my hand in the bathroom. I thought it was pretty cool.

I crossed into the town of Tachileik, Myanmar the next day, and since my time was so short, decided to actually hire one of the tuk-tuk drivers who perpetually harass passersby to give me a bit of a tour. I should have been a bit more discriminating, since my driver spoke no English, making for a rather opaque round of sightseeing. Sitting in the back of my rickety autorickshaw, we made our way around the town, to a few temples (at one of them, a boy hoping to sell me some junk, showed me a few little rituals that I was supposed to do for good luck), and then to a ‘longneck village.’ I’m not even sure what hilltribe they were supposed to be from (maybe Akha, though I’m not sure the proprietors even specified), but considering it was on the other side of the entrance to the “Regina Hotel and Golf Club,” I didn’t have high expectations. When someone came up to give me an admission ticket for 140 baht, I was downright skeptical and tried to ask what it included. No one could speak English, and I’d seen a sign about a dance show, so I tried to gesture if that’s what it was for, and they nodded cheerful affirmatives. I regretted spending the money. The was no dance show, just a walk up a crass, commercial, hokey version of a hilltribe village that had been erected to milk tourists (and undoubtedly gave lucrative commissions to all the tuk-tuk drivers to take people here). I passed a few of the ‘longnecks’ (village people who have stretched their necks with golden rings) working to make crafts at their looms, but the whole thing felt a bit like a human zoo (and not even a very big one, at that). I felt pretty cheated, especially since I don’t expect anything but a pittance of my money will make it to the people there.

Since my ‘guide’ was incapable of explaining what the sights I was seeing were, I was always a bit in the dark as to what was next, though it had always been largely self-evident. When we drove into a little side street in a residential area, I was a bit puzzled. I was ushered into a room with some dim reddish lighting, a Bollywood music video on the TV, some locals, and some plastic chairs. Someone gestured for me to sit down, but there was no indication of what I was supposed to be doing or seeing. It occurred to me that all the locals were girls, and they had lined up in a row along the opposite wall. There was a pregnant, awkward silence in the air, and I wasn’t exactly sure why, until it struck me. The driver (sitting contentedly a few chairs down from me) had taken me to a brothel. Apparently this must be a common stop on tourist itineraries. I waved my hands to show I wasn’t interested, and we were off again. Next up was a stop at a gem shop. I groaned and didn’t even bother getting out, just urged the driver on. We drove through the market, where a hawker thrust Viagra pills in my face, and ended up back at the border. I paid the driver, thoroughly unimpressed with my tour.

I set out on foot to try and gain some other impressions of the city, and maybe the country by extension. It seemed a little bit dustier, a little bit more run-down than the Thai side, but not especially remarkable. I was hoping to try some Burmese food for lunch, so I went to a local stall, asked about Burmese food, and gestured for them to make me something. I’m pretty sure it must have been a Thai food place, since the (unremarkable) soup was just like a dozen others I’ve had.

Armed only with ‘hello’ (min gala ba) and ‘thank you’ (ce zu tin ba deh), I tried to be friendly and hopefully find someone I could talk to, but found the legendary Burmese cheerfulness largely absent. Distraught with my inability to communicate (I hadn’t felt so out of my element since Burundi), or to glean anything at all about the culture, I wandered a bit more before finally being flagged down by someone who spoke English.

He was a scooter driver (though he’d hired out his scooter to an American that morning, who still hadn’t shown up with it again), and we went to a cafe to chat. Here I got an actual Burmese lunch (that was a bit different from Thai food, but not especially good), and some painfully sweet, milky tea; most importantly, though, I had a chance to talk with someone. While it seemed like he wanted to talk about politics and religion, he skirted the topics somewhat uneasily – he mentioned (between spitting out brown juice from chewing leaves) that nearly a fifth of the people in Tachileik worked for the junta in some capacity, many posed as monks, beggars, or lunatics to act as ears for the secret police. It was a bit of a heartbreaking conversation, since he had genuinely given up all hope that he could improve his lot in life. His university education in agriculture was worthless, his fluent English barely served him here, and his attempts at earning money in China and Thailand had come to naught when he was found out to be an illegal immigrant and had had his savings confiscated. He was a Christian, and when I asked him if it was difficult to practice in a country that was overwhelmingly Buddhist, he said he’d rather not talk about it, alluding to ‘the monkeyhouse.’ He had a wife and a young child, but business as a scooter driver was slow, and he couldn’t afford to lease a tuk-tuk from the monopoly that owned them all. He had lived several places in Myanmar, but found that Tachilek – as a border town with Thailand – was one of the few places that he could actually have some exposure with the outside world. I got his e-mail address, but he told me that he very rarely checked it, since he could ill afford to pay the border crossing fee into Thailand in order to get Internet access.

After, I spent a little bit of time wandering the market (where I could GameStations, iPhones, and ‘brOwn’ electric razors, galore!) and picked up a few postcards of Burma. Items here rarely have pricetags, as bargaining is the order of the day, and I wasn’t actually interested in anything (though I did inquire about a knock-off Strida fold-up bike; I was quoted 6,500 baht), but apparently this is one of the cheapest possible places to buy things. That is, if you don’t care that what you’re getting is a garbage Chinese counterfeit, anyway.

While I only spent four hours in Myanmar, I came away a bit depressed by the whole affair. I do think it would be a fascinating, and quite beautiful, place to spend a few weeks (not to mention an opportunity to at least do a little bit to support the struggling locals) if I had the time, but its not in the cards for this trip.

That afternoon I made my way to Chang Saen, a quiet town southeast of Mae Sai sitting on the Mekong river. The Mekong, which here divides Thailand and Laos, makes for a much more attractive border than the shallow, garbage-clogged Nam Ruak. Had dinner and drinks with a French woman I’d met on the bus, and took an early night (easy to do in such a sleepy town).

The next day I rented a bicycle and rode the 9 km to Sop Ruak. At what has got to be one of the least picturesque stretches of the Mekong, it converges with the Nam Ruak to form the tripartite border between Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar, dubbed the Golden Triangle. There’s nothing much special about it, but the sign alone is a tourist trap (and it obviously worked on me).

The Golden Triangle has quintessential connotations of the illegal opium trade, and so Sop Ruak made a fitting site for the government’s ‘Hall of Opium’ museum, on a huge, beautifully landscaped plot surrounded by lush forest. While I balked a bit at the 300 baht admission fee, the production values are pretty stellar throughout. The first impression is a 107 meter walk through a twisting, cave-like tunnel, complete with diffuse lighting and mood music. Distorted sculptures of human figures, faces, hands, appear partially submerged in the cave walls; subtlety in symbolism was not the goal, I imagine.

The museum had a flashy video introduction in a large auditorium (with a dose of requisite Thai propaganda that I found rather funny), and across two large floors covers the history of opium through the ages, including a significant section on the trade and opium wars that ruined China in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was also an area with an assortment of opium paraphernalia (including some incredibly elaborate pipes, and some rather uncomfortable looking porcelain pillows), a section on the drug’s effect and medicinal use through the ages (laudanum, an opiate/alcohol mixture was often prescribed for teething pains in babies), one on laws, enforcement, legalization, and approaches to tackling the drug trade, and finally some tear-jerker case studies extolling the evils of drugs. The final area was the ‘Hall of Reflection,’ with triangular pillars displaying abstract enlightening quotes from theology and philosophy, where we were to ponder what we had learned. I worry that I’m too cynical for pondering, sometimes.

I rode back to Chiang Saen, and after lunch (well, two lunches, really – four meals a day is de rigeur for a lot of travelers in Thailand, it seems) explored a bunch of the wats and ruins in town. Chiang Saen is actually a rather ancient city with a lot of history, and was actually of great strategic importance in certain eras, though time has largely passed it by. Chiang Saen is only a few square kilometers, so before long I’d seen the lion’s share of the ruins, and ended up on the road out of town to the south. I didn’t really have any aim, per se, but saw a bright white wat atop a hill in the distance, and decided to go there. I tried a shortcut (since I didn’t know where the real path was, anyway) down some rutted roads at the base of the hill, and ended up climbing a hill lined with a row of white and red-painted boxes. I didn’t pay them any heed until I was right next to them and suddenly became acutely aware of the swarms of bees everywhere. I gingerly retreated and decided to abandon the scenic route.

I eventually found a road leading up (the shrines and religious flurry around its base seemed to bode well), and after abandoning my bike and walking up, I came upon a stunning teakwood temple. The relief carvings were among the most incredible I’d seen, and while it was not as huge or ostentatious as Wat Rong Khun, I think its one of my favourites. Modestly scaled, but with absolutely beautiful craftsmanship captured in the warmth of wood, set in a deeply peaceful place on a hill surrounded by forest, it made a real impression on me. If I were the praying sort, I think I’d probably like to do it there. It’s amazing that there is such an abundance of beauty in this country that you can stumble upon it so easily without even looking for it.

A few hundred meters uphill there was the white wat I’d spotted. It was large, and impressive, and nice enough, but didn’t have anywhere near the same charm as the teak temple. Rode back to Chiang Saen – night market dinner, shower, journal, bed.

Today I grabbed a sawngthaew to Chiang Khong along a beautiful stretch of highway parallel to the Mekong. The trip cost me 200 baht, pricey, since me and a Frenchman needed to charter the whole truck for ourselves (he offered to pay 600B, since he was in a hurry and wanted someone to split the cost with). I could maybe have caught the boat to Laos today, but decided to spend an unhurried day here in Chiang Khong instead. Maybe I’ll stake out a nice spot on the Mekong and do some reading.

(Wow, for a relatively straightforward couple of days, this has turned into an absolute monster of a post. Hope the details aren’t too dense for you casual readers)

The two days I spent in Pai in the aftermath of my motorbike spill were utterly unremarkable. I did nothing of consequence, though I did read “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga. It’s a fun book, a firmly tongue-in-cheek tale of class struggle, political corruption, and entrepreneurship in the new India of the 21st century. Recommended.

The next day was spent entirely in transit, heading back down the mountain roads to Chiang Mai in a cheap, rattly bus. I was sitting on the bench at the back, and the rear doors, two feet from me, were open the entire time – I appreciated the breeze and the view. From Chiang Mai I caught another (far more comfortable) bus to Chiang Rai, further in the north, but between the two trips, my daylight hours had been spent. I ate dinner at the Chiang Rai night market, and was in search of Internet when a Thai man lured me into his streetcorner bar where I spent the night sitting outside on low stools drinking and chatting with an eclectically international bunch (two hairy, tattooed Finns, a South African girl, a guy from Cameroon, and at least one dude from Malta of all places).

I wandered around Chiang Rai a bit the next day, hoping to find a beach that supposedly exists in town, but gave up after a few hours of fruitless walking in the heat, and circled my way back to my guesthouse for a nap. Re-dressing my wounds, reading “Barbarians at the Gate,” (an account of the late ’80s leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in particular, and of Wall Street shenanigans and corporate excess in general), another night market dinner, and Internet made up the balance of my wildly exciting day. At the night market a few locals were parading around a baby elephant and selling people snacks to feed it. It had a flashing red bicycle light taped to its tail.

The following day, a sightseeing trip to Wat Rong Khun, the White Temple, was just what I needed to break out of my funk. Hopping on a creaking, woman’s single-speed (complete with a handy basket on the front to hold my water), I rode the flat, easy 15 km or so out of town to the temple, gleeful to finally be doing something.

Wat Rong Khun is the most spectacular temple I’ve seen so far, if only because it’s a totally unique, contemporary spin on the architectural themes that typify the Thai Buddhist style. It looks straight out of a fairy tale – it has all the requisite Thai intricacy of detailing and sculpture, but forsakes red, gold and coloured gems for a uniform coat of bright white, highlighted with mirror-like facets. The effect is spellbinding, especially when placed against the backdrop of reflecting pools (filled with white fish!), fountains, trees with snaking limbs, and meticulous landscaping.

Arched over the entrance causeway were two enormous concrete horns, and in front of each was a pit filled with a terrifying sea of beseeching, disembodied arms holding bowls, pots, and human skulls (!) for people to throw in offerings of coins. So cool, and completely unexpected. This was my first hint that Wat Rong Khun may be a little bit offbeat.

I went down the causeway, admiring the brilliant white detailing that shone in the noon sun towards the temple proper. I thought the temple’s interior was somewhat more typical, though nicely executed, and I was pleased to see the inclusion of framed architect’s drawings showing the tiered effect they wanted to produce – a seated monk flanked by two increasingly large Buddha statues, in front of a huge Buddha painting on the front wall. When I turned to leave, something on the mural on the back wall caught my attention – a space station (!).

Upon closer inspection, the rest of the imagery proved to be even more bizarre, enough to leave any Western tourist utterly flabbergasted, especially compared to the tame depictions adorning the other big temples that dot the country. I just stood agape the whole time, trying, out of respect, not to burst into laughter. On one side of the door, there was – I shit you not – a dragon, who’s tongue was wrapped around a missile, which was firing a bright red laser beam at a giant luxury wristwatch being worn by a horn growing out of the ground (though I can’t be sure of that interpretation – the horn might also have been the trail of a projectile coming from the Earth, which sprouted an apocalyptic mushroom cloud). The theme continued throughout, with fighter jets, missiles, Star Wars-esque robots, aliens, and spaceships. And if all that wasn’t enough, one of the central images on the right-hand side was of the Twin Towers. On 9/11. One of the towers was belching flames and smoke (and two demonic spirit heads), and sure enough, the other tower awaited the impact of a tiny painted jetliner.

Photography inside was prohibited, or you’d better believe I would be posting snaps of this shit. I barely even believed it myself.

While it was plain to see after the interior, some unfinished detailing on the aft building confirmed just how new the temple was. Strolling around the grounds again, I noticed a few other fun little details. Not one for half-measures, the architect had obviously decided that plain pictographs to prohibit smoking and drinking simply wouldn’t do. At the rear of the temple, an ornately shaped signpost had a cut-out holding a real liquor bottle, circled in red, with a red chain stretched across it to form the strike mark. But the warnings at the front of the temple were even better – on one side, vivid, red-painted skulls, eyeballs, and claw-like hands surrounded a bottle ominously labeled “WHISKY,” while on the other side skulls and demonic fingers dripped with blood and held packets of cigarettes. So cool.

I ate some lunch, bought some lemongrass toffee (about as weird as it sounds), then walked around a gallery showcasing some work by the artist who (I assume) painted the temple interior, then rode back to Chiang Rai.

Tomorrow I think I’ll go to Mae Sai, the northernmost town in Thailand, bordering Myanmar, and possibly dart around a few other towns in the Golden Triangle before making my way to Chiang Khong on the Laos border.

The big ol’ chedi in the center of the Doi Suthep temple complex.

A picture of me in front of something, since mom bugged me about it.

This one is also for mom.

The view of Chiang Mai from the temple. This is part of a panoramic series, so by itself is painfully boring. I just wanted to show that I rode a bicycle up to here from down there.

Generic cool ornamentation stuff.

Pai is a tiny town nestled in the mountains of northern Thailand; discovered by hippies in the 70s, it has been an icon ever since. Sadly, the cult legend that is Pai has long since been outgrown by the realities brought on by its celebrity. I get the impression that it would have been an immensely charming little place, years ago, when it truly lived up to its reputation as a sleepy mountain paradise, but since then it feels as if its become a caricature of what it once was. The Lonely Planet lists its population at 3000, but I imagine it must be at least double that in the high season. It seems nearly all of its growth has been on the strength of tourism, to the extent that almost every business in town now seems to cater to that influx.

That said, it’s not all bad. It is a colourful, laid back, friendly place, and while its hippie quirkiness can at times be cartoonish, it does make for an awfully relaxing environment. If you aren’t exploring the surrounding countryside, there’s almost nothing to do in Pai proper except chill out, and that’s not such a bad thing. And while the night life again caters to Western tastes, live music abounds, and fliers for acoustic shows, cover bands, and open-mic nights are distributed liberally.

The day I arrived from Chiang Mai (after a somewhat hungover 4-hour minivan ride through twisty mountain roads) I was pained by the extent of its gentrification when I struggled to find affordable accommodation, lugging my backpack all through town and wincing at every guesthouse that was charging 400 baht for a night. After a long hunt, I was eventually able to find a modest room for 150 baht; despite its minute size, Pai is the most expensive place I’ve visited in Thailand.

After dinner I hopped from place to place listening to live music, and finally ended up at the aptly named Re-Tox on the advice of some Australian girls I’d met in Chiang Mai who’d spotted me wandering that afternoon. It took some work to find Re-Tox, located at the end of a long road in the middle of nowhere that took us past a rather dismal pig farm – one of the stalls was smeared with blood, and the smell was rank. While I was taking it easy for the night, the strength of Re-Tox seems to be in encouraging everyone to get really, really hammered – a beer pong game was in progress when I arrived, and free shots are distributed for various reasons, or none at all (I was handed a die and told that if I rolled a 6 I would get some tequila).

I woke up in good time the next morning, and having heard that there were stunning sights to be seen in the countryside, I decided to rent a motor scooter and do some exploring. I got a 125 cc automatic Honda for 100 baht per day, and while the initial learning curve was a bit jerky and worrisome, after a short while and 50 baht worth of petrol later, I was on my way. I didn’t really have any particular plan for where to go, so I simply decided to follow one of the roads out of town and see where it would take me. The roads in Thailand are an enthusiast’s dream – beautifully surfaced, well-signed, with twists, turns, and elevation changes galore. I took it slow, having heard too many stories of motorcycle accidents to do anything else, but gradually I became more comfortable. Slight counter-steering to initiate a lean into the corners became natural, and the smoother my technique became, the corners began to flow together with a Zen-like focused ease. Eventually I came to a sign pointing to some nearby caves, which I’d heard made for an interesting afternoon trip, but my gas was dipping towards the half-way mark, and I had forgotten to bring my camera, so I decided to save it for another day. I was just enjoying the ride enough as it was, so I looped around and headed back to Pai, looking forward to the return stint.

On the way back, I realized that I had perhaps been getting a bit enthusiastic for my own good, so I decided to slow it up and just enjoy the scenery. Ironically, caution coupled with inexperience would be my undoing. Around one long sweeping corner that I could certainly have made it through had I simply turned in and leaned further, I made the mistake of grabbing the front brake.

In a flash, I was down. Bike sliding, me tumbling, my vision alternating between sky and pavement. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…” is my internal monologue at this point. I leapt up, retrieved my sunglasses from the pavement, noticed my sleeve in tatters, cuts on my feet, hands, elbows, and spotted the bike wedged neatly under the guard rail a short distance away.

I was glad I’d chosen a light bike. Surging adrenaline helped me drag it up and right it, its intensity adding to my mental stew that blended fear, confusion, and amazement. There was a moment of panic when the scooter refused to start, but after about 15 seconds it sputtered to life. I feel like in a former life I would have been too shaken to ride, but after resolving to go slow – very slow – I again settled into a rhythm, albeit a timid one. At a rest stop down the road I pulled over and took stock of the situation – the bike looked amazingly unscathed (though the scuffing and a missing plastic exhaust cover added up to about $15 of damage, the rental company later reckoned). I was also in amazingly good shape. I had some fairly generous road rash on all the usual surfaces, but no individual patch was worse than what I’d suffered in bicycle spills in the past. That one of the biggest post-crash peeves I registered was my ruined clothes is a testament to how lucky I was.

I was humbled. Despite my perceived caution, obviously my enthusiasm had overwhelmed my skill; yet even after the crash, I still look on the experience as a positive one. Morever, I know that if I’d been wearing leathers (yes, of course I was wearing a helmet – I’m not that stupid, though many tourists are), the whole affair would have been almost totally trivial. I’m thankful I was able to walk away relatively intact, having learned a valuable lesson on the cheap. A Brit I met on the bus to Pai who had drunkenly lost control of his scooter in Chiang Mai had earned himself an arm in a sling, a chipped tooth, a nasty cut along his chin, and who-knows-what-else under the clothes, though the accident could well have killed him.

In the evening we watched “3:10 to Yuma.” It’s a pretty badass movie.

Today will be spent in Pai to lick my wounds, and hunt out a new book to read. After that, onward to Chiang Rai and towards the Laotian border, methinks.

So yesterday I rented a bicycle for the day – a ’steel is real’ era KHS from the 90’s with 21 gears – a shockingly good find (despite the locked-out front suspension) for the 50 baht I paid. The frame was still a bit too small for me, and the saddle grew to be remarkably uncomfortable, but at least the seat-post could extend to a proper height. The reason for expounding on my steed with such detail is that the bike became an intimate acquaintance of mine throughout the day, as I set out on a trip that was probably too ambitious for my own good.

Wat Pra That Doi Suthep is said to be the resting place of a holy relic that had been carried on the back of a white elephant, entrusted with the task of delivering it to its rightful home. It is located high upon one of the hills on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, some 16 km out of the city. 16 km up a hill, I decided, wasn’t so far – I’d hiked as far in one day while climbing Mt. Kenya, after all, and now I had a bike and paved roads!

I had forgotten just how unpleasant climbing hills on a bicycle really is. Shortly after beginning the ascent in earnest (the first stretch going out of the city is almost flat), I strongly considered going back and paying the 40 baht for a sawngthaew (pickup-bus with benches and a roof) for the trek up, and then just riding back down. Even though in the real world that’s less than $2, I rationalized that it was nearly the same price as the bike itself, and talked myself out of it – and in my stubbornness, it was cheating, anyway.

Two hours of sweat-soaked pedaling (and several breaks to ‘admire the scenery’) later, occasionally egged on by incredulous riders flying past on motorbikes, I had reached Doi Suthep. The road had been fairly well-trafficked, but I was still amazed at the extent of the tourist infrastructure, with dozens of shops selling food, knick-knacks, jewelry, and souvenirs. Thoroughly exhausted, I was dismayed to see the huge staircase that still awaited me (flanked by two immense dragon sculptures that formed the railings) before I could reach the temple. I later learned that there was actually an escalator installed (“you know you have way too many Western tourists when…”) to get up to the temple!

The Wat itself was quite impressive – not quite up to the level of ostentation displayed at the Grand Palace in Bangkok, but still thoroughly encrusted with beautiful gold, stones, carvings, and sculpture. The architecture itself is also of a slightly different style here in the North, so it was interesting enough, despite being ‘just another temple.’ The main chedi (the ornate spires in Thai religious architecture) was resplendently golden, and was, I assume, being restored at the time, because it was surrounded by a nest of (gold-painted!) bamboo scaffolding.

While many pilgrims wait to see sunset at Doi Suthep, I gave myself plenty of time to descend, since bombing down mountain roads on a bicycle with no lighting and no helmet didn’t sound like a brilliant plan. As much of a struggle as the climb had been, the sublime ride down erased all memories. The smooth, sweeping, cambered mountain roads snaked their way down the mountainside, and I was easily able to hang with the motorized traffic (the first part of the ride was actually spoiled somewhat by being stuck behind a tour bus that noisily laboured down the hill, before I decided to pull over for a few minutes and let it go ahead). At times, there was almost no traffic but me, and I blazed down the hill, leaning my way into the twisting corners with the wind in my face. Just beautiful.

The last part of my adventure was confounded a bit by a wrong turn that brought me several kilometers out into the new city (part of it along a major highway), with attempts at navigation spoiled by a complete lack of any Roman alphabet signage. I finally managed to find my way by some landmarks just as darkness fell, and after navigating my way through the spaghetti-bowl of Soi’s (side lanes) back to where I’d rented the bike, found that the shop was closed. Bah.

Despite our fancy new digs, Jasmin (the Swiss girl I’m rooming with), discovered a decidedly larger bed bug on her sheet this morning. I didn’t see any on mine, and I don’t think she had any bites, but I think I might have one (though it’s difficult to discern from the cut where bike pedal dug into my leg at one point, yesterday). Amazing how I managed to travel through Africa for two months without ever encountering them, and now they’ve found me twice in a row in Chiang Mai.

I ended up taking a one-day Thai massage course today, which, after yesterday, seemed like a better call than attempting a day on an organized mountain biking trek. The lesson took place outside of Chiang Mai, at the instructor’s house. Wasana, our teacher, was a pleasant woman, and impossibly well-preserved for her age. It must have been something of a slow day, because only me and a Dutch dude (who I’d actually met at a bar previously) were in attendance.

I wasn’t fast enough to snatch the opportunity to be demonstrated on, so the morning was spent watching techniques and taking notes. That said, I’m not sure whether it’s more useful to know what it feels like, or what it looks like (though I could have really used a proper massage after my bike ride). Lunch was a tasty home-cooked meal with vegetable fried rice and Thai soup – it crystallized the experience a bit for me, setting it apart from a more impersonal course at a bigger school.

The afternoon was spent being practiced on and then practicing (and revising notes that seemed so clear when you were watching someone do the techniques, but were suddenly utterly confusing to recall). I suspect if I don’t get a chance to use the skills regularly (which equip me to perform a rather thorough 1-hour massage on legs and back), I’ll forget everything straightway, but it was an interesting enough way to spend a day all the same.

Pai tomorrow? I think so.

For good measure, two of my scant pics from the Grand Palace complex in Bangkok:

Besides my own motivations, probably the only reason that any tourist would bother to visit Khorat is as a base for day trips to the Khmer ruins in the surrounding areas, at Phimai and Phanom Rung. While my day in Ayutthaya had overloaded me on Thai ruins a bit, the ones surrounding Khorat are in a different style and from a different era, and it was something to do while staying in an otherwise rather bland city.

Phimai is a quaint town, and I got the impression (from the profusion of signage) that the ruins were something of a point of pride for the local people, something to put them on the map. Walking over to the site of the ruins, I absent-mindedly attached myself to group of old white tourists who had just been disgorged from a tour bus, bypassing the toll booth (only partly by accident). Prices throughout Thailand, and especially at historical sites, have been raised across the board recently, so for the historically-inclined backpacker on a budget, it can get frustratingly expensive. Thailand is no longer nearly as cheap and cheerful as it once was; my Lonely Planet (or ‘Lying Bastard,’ as one Englishman I met in Uganda called it) was only published in 2008, and as with Africa, a fair rule of thumb is to double most of the prices listed.

The ruins, while not huge, were quite impressive – massive post-and-lintel Cyclopean masonry combined with elaborate relief carvings of bizarre Hindu creatures on all the surfaces, and the dramatic main spire that characterizes Khmer architecture. Even in such degraded state they have the power to inspire – I can’t imagine what it must have been like when it was newly built (or any of the Wonders for that matter – what the Great Pyramids must have been like when they were sheathed in marble and capped in gold!). As in Ayutthaya, it struck me as really interesting the way the ruins had become so integrated into the fabric of a contemporary town; there’s something a bit surreal about peering through thousand year old ruined arches and seeing girls on scooters and street hawkers on the other side.

After the ruins, I rented a bicycle (lamentably Thai-sized) and pedalled over to Saingam, a 350 year old Banyan tree, the shoots of which have sprawled across an entire island, wrapping themselves around the stonework and generally taking over.

The tourist map that I was using mentioned a ’scenic bicycle route’ to the north of the Banyan tree, and I still had two hours before the last bus back to Khorat, so I decided to try it out. I don’t imagine I found it, since the path I rode along was not especially scenic, but it was enjoyable all the same. I must have been a little bit of a ridiculous sight, a big white man on a tiny Thai bicycle, knees pistoning up to my chest, with one hand on the handlebars and the other rooting about in the front basket, popping little flaky pastries into my mouth as I rode along.

The next day I met up with Lindsey and Antony, the couple who I’d met the first day in Khorat, and took another day trip, to Phanom Rung. It is considerably more out-of-the-way than Phimai, and not directly accessible by bus, much to the delight of the local owners of pick-up trucks who can name whatever price they like to take tourists the rest of the way. Phanom Rung is similar to Phimai, but larger (complete with several Naga bridges), apparently the 3rd most significant Khmer ruin in Southeast Asia (Angkor Wat, of course, being the 1st). I’m glad that I saw it, but I’m always a bit frustrated by day trips; we ended up spending about five hours in transit to spend two hours at the ruins, and by the time our bus pulled into the station back at Khorat, the sun was already dipping below the horizon.

After a quick dinner, I then hopped the overnight bus to Chiang Mai in the north. It took about 13 hours, and would ordinarily have been considerably more comfortable than the transit I grew accustomed to in Africa, but I found it a bit difficult to sleep as the headrest didn’t do much to accommodate my height. They played Home Alone 2, dubbed into Thai – I don’t think I missed much by not understanding any of the spoken parts.

Chiang Mai is a cool enough city – considerably more laidback than Bangkok, but still heavily traveled by tourists. Trekking, biking, climbing, cooking or massage courses, and a slew of other activities are big business for the local guesthouses, and nearly all of them – not to mention the dozens of travel agencies – seem to advertise the exact same palate of options. I’m not sure whether I want to do any of the activities here, or hold out for somewhere a little bit more remote where groups may be smaller, such as Chiang Rai, or even Laos.

I accomplished very little during the day, slightly zonked from my snatched sleep on the bus. The evening, however, turned out to be the highlight of my time in Thailand having convinced some people to come with me to a Muay Thai boxing match, something I’d been looking forward to since the sticker-shock at the Bangkok stadium. General admission still gave a great view from the wooden benches circling the ring, and cost only 400 baht – almost a quarter the price of standing room in Bangkok. There were eight matches to be seen, and we arrived after the second or third.

The stadium gave off a decidedly local vibe, and was thick with atmosphere. A small band with a reedy Thai woodwind and some metallic percussion filled the air with its funny skirling, establishing the rhythm of combat. The first few bouts we saw were between shockingly young-looking flyweights without an ounce of fat on them. While boxing has never really captured my interest, between the liberal rules of muay thai, the exoticism of the environment, and the pervasive gladiatorial air fueled by the cries of the crowd, I found myself riveted.

Muay thai is a pretty brutal sport. Round-house kicks to the head, and close grappling punctuated with knee strikes to the kidneys join boxing-style punches to fill out the pugilistic repertoire. The amount of punishment, dished and received, is just staggering. You could hear the smack of meat-on-meat, and the spray of sweat and saliva was visible by the harsh ring lighting whenever an especially solid blow was landed.

Our night’s playbill was filled out with three international fights as well as the local matches. The most captivating was between a Canadian fighter and a local Thai – throughout the entire match it was anyone’s fight, with some rounds leaving us certain that one boxer or the other was finished, only to be surprised by a wild resurgence in the next round. The last rounds were especially vicious, as fatigue and the incredible, ruinous persistence of blows meant that defenses lapsed, letting each fighter strike with opportunistic flurries. During one round, the Canadian repeatedly grappled the Thai’s head down, only to meet it savagely with a raised knee. The crowd groaned with every blow – I was amazed that either fighter could still stand by the end, which saw the Canadian decided the victor.

The next international fight was between a terrifyingly muscled German and a Thai who looked much softer, as if he’d put on weight to fit in the same class. It ended after only a few rounds, with a surprising knockout punch from the Thai that utterly dropped the German.

The last international fight was between an Australian and Frenchman. It was one of the less eventful ones, neatly decided in the Australian’s favour after only a few rounds. The Aussies I was sitting with in the crowd were quite pleased. “French never win!” they’d been heckling, drawing laughs.

After the muay thai fight, we made our way to a pair of rather excellent bars, Roots Reggae and Heaven Beach, across the street from each other. Both had really entertaining cover bands, one playing reggae and ska classics, while the opposite belted out rock and alternative tunes. Chang beer flowed liberally, and we spent the evening drifting between the two bars.

Street food and the inevitable trip to 7-Eleven (they’re ubiquitous in Thailand!) followed, along with chilled out conversation at a guesthouse. I didn’t end up getting to bed until past 6:00 am.

I was quite content to do essentially nothing the next day, though I tagged along with a few other travellers on a rather half-assed sightseeing walk that was really just an opportunity to wander and chat rather than an earnest attempt to see the city. After a (very) late dinner at an Indian restaurant, I ended up at Roots and Heaven again. There’s something to be said about variety, but the two have such a good crowd, and there are few things in life more fun than ska dancing.

The night ended (thankfully) rather earlier, though the morning was unpleasant for reasons entire unrelated to drinking. Stirring to the sound of the TV blaring in Thai in the common room, I glanced down at my bed to see a tiny red bug ambling across the sheet. Smearing it into a little speck of blood with my fingernail, I noticed that the sheet was already dotted with a few other bloodstains, presumably from former residents. Good morning! Rampant speculation with my two dormmates ensued, followed by some frantic Googling. I suspect it was an ‘engorged bedbug nymph’ rather than an adult, since it was incredibly tiny (and so far there are no tell-tale rows of itchy bites), but it’s still not the sort of thing I enjoy waking up to. We resolved to find another room that day.

Today was the epitome of lazy days. After finding a new guesthouse (much, much, much nicer) and eating some lunch, we wandered over to an idyllic little park that is crammed in the southwest corner of the old Chiang Mai city (I’ve yet to do much exploring past the moat that separates it from the new city). After renting a straw mat to lie on for 10 baht, I spent most of the afternoon reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” a historical fiction about the Afghan revolution (which actually reminds me a little bit of “A Fine Balance”).

Afterwards, we wandered through the enormous Sunday bazaar that takes over two of the main streets in the old city, almost in their entirety, every week. Unlike most markets I’ve been to in my travels, the atmosphere was really pleasant - relaxed, without hassling vendors, and with a really interesting variety of food, crafts, clothes, and everything else.

I’m not sure how much longer I’ll stay in Chiang Mai. It has grown on me significantly since I first arrived, when I’d been a bit underwhelmed. It’s just so easy to hang out, without the sensation that the days are being wasted the way I’d felt in Bangkok. At some point I’d like to do a day trip to mountain bike, but I’m also tempted by the prospect of a Thai massage course…

I may end up spending longer here than I’d intended, before visiting Pai and Chiang Rai, and then onward to Laos.

(n.b. except for the Phanom Rung shot and the banyan tree, the other three photos are actually from Ayutthaya, I was just too lazy to upload them before)