Triphopopotamus

The next day we fly to Phuket and as we are coming into land we can see the white sands and aquamarine water and palm trees but that is where the magic stops because Phuket is an awful awful place where bad things happen to (relatively) good people. The airport bus drops us off at our hotel Baan Sawantawe where Ellie's older lady-friend booked us in. The discount is only 200 baht off the regular price but still its better than a kick in the bum!

And the place is lovely! Definitely the most swish hotel that we've stayed in though that's not that hard!
Phuket has the look of a fairly touristy town but when we go for a wander that night we cannot find people anywhere! It seems to be a common theme with us, do they all just pack up and move the party somewhere else when they hear we are coming?!

A smaller member of the frog chorus we could hear outside the hotel

From Bangkok,Phuket

Apparently the main touristy part is over in Patong beach, where we didn't really want to stay in the thick of the thickos, but we didn't realise Phuket town was quite so far away from the beach if we did fancy a dip into the debauchery.!

That night my leg which was starting to get better, gets a bit sore, I lose my appetite and get feverish at dinner and low and behold when I wake up the next morning the leg which was improving is red and swollen again. Strike 2, Phuket! apart from our nice hotel I don't like you very much!!

I go to a pharmacist and tell her that my antibiotics don't seem to be working, she looks fresh out of college- which must have been a short process because she also looks about 12. She has very broken English and doesn't seem to have ever seen cellulitus before. The assistant however has pretty good English and tells me I should probably go to a doctor. It's Sunday so I have to take a trip to the "Bangkok-Phuket Hospital" which is lovely...as disease-houses go.

The doctor takes a quick look at my leg tells me I have bad infection, might have an abscess, and if there is an abscess its just a small operation to take it out. Oh, just a small operation, that's grand so...WHAAT? Ah here, I'm on my holidays!

He sends me for an ultrasound and thankfully there is no abscess. He gives me some new super charged antibiotics that will blast the infection away and just regular old paracetamol for the pain.I have to go back to see him in 2 days time to make sure the antibiotics are working and there's no risk of abscess. That night I have fever again and can't eat. My patience with Phuket is wearing quiet thin!

The next day we decide to go to a beach that has been recommended to us as a quieter alternative to busy Patong. We rent a moped and Ellie drives the 40 min ish out to Nang Yai beach. It's the first day I was accidentally careless with my rigorous suncream re-application and Ellie likes to absorb the rays au naturel so we both get pretty roasted en route to the beach! Ouchie!

The beach was lovely and quite secluded with only a handful of other people there. We spent the day there swimming, reading, watching tiny little crabs scuttle along the beach and sunbathing/covering up in a shroud of towel,sunhat and glasses - I'll let you guess who did what!! We watch the sunset there and it is just stunning, makes it worth the 40min trip through nerve-wracking Thai traffic.

From Bangkok,Phuket

Little crabs

From Bangkok,Phuket

The only picture of ellie in her bikini I was allowed to put up!

From Bangkok,Phuket

Sunset

From Bangkok,Phuket

From Bangkok,Phuket

As we are on our way back. I try to distract myself because I notice I am squeezing El every time a car pulls out in front of us or someone changes lanes unexpectedly. So as I am staring across at something, I hear her say "Oh shit" and I look straight ahead to see a moped slowing to a stop directly in front of us. Our bike is slowing quickly but we will never stop in time. There is a crunch of plastic mudguard and the thud and scrape of the bike along the ground as we fairly literally grind to a halt. Then there are sounds of Thai voices and peoples hands helping us up, but I just sit there in the lane in shock for a moment. The people try to clean us up as best they can, for me its just my knee and my knuckles that are bleeding, but Eleanor's got cuts and grazes on her knees, elbows, forearms and her toe. One of the people that helped us up calls us an ambulance.

And though its probably a good idea to go to the hospital we feel a bit embarrassed when arrive with a stretcher! I just had time to grab the key out of the bike before we were bundled into the back of the "ambulance" (estate car with no back seats along with the unnecessary stretcher and a paramedic- a little cramped!).

We arrive at the hospital where they clean out our wounds and bandage them up. We have to come back again tomorrow to have them redressed. Between this and the cellulitus I'm thinking I shouldn't have bothered with the hotel and just booked straight into the hospital! I'll be on a first name basis with the nurses at this rate!
We head back to our hotel looking dishevelled and feeling quite sorry for ourselves. I've got a whole new hobble now as my good leg has become my only slightly better leg!

We are supposed to leave for Koh Phi Phi that day but not before we take a round trip to see the various civil servants of Phuket. First to the hospital to get our wounds redressed, Doc checks my cellulitus and says he thinks it will go with a another few days of antibiotics. After that we get a taxi to find our bike. The bike is gone, balls! The locals inform the taxi-man that its in the police station- phew! So we have to go there to get it back accompanied by the taxi driver and the man who rented us the bike. We have to pay to get the bike released, pay for the guys bike we crashed into and also pay for the guy who fell off his bike wages for 2 days work he will miss! We hand over the cash without ever being asked for our version of events, sign something in Thai that is not really explained to us. Then make our way over to the bike shop where we have to pay for the damage to our own bike.

Pretty annoyed we head back to our hotel where our bus will pick us up to bring us to the ferry. This is apparently supposed to happen at 12.30 when its 1pm and we still haven't been collected we start making some phone calls. We then are told not to worry the ferry we have to get is at 2.30 and the bus driver will pick us up at 2. He does not.

An apologetic but giggly Thai (as is grating on us at this point) woman I call up tells us she is very sorry but the bus driver must have forgotten to pick us up. Fantastic, the next ferry is at 8am in the morning, so we have to spend another night in this black hole of bad luck. I convince her to pay for the nights stay in Phuket as we have already paid for a nights accommodation in Phi Phi and are losing out on that. She agrees, a tiny victory in the battle against misfortune.

At 7.45 the next morning the bus arrives to pick us up. Finally we are getting off this bloody island. If I watched the TV show Lost I'd be inclined to make some reference to the way they felt stuck on that island, but I don't so I'll let you make one up yourself!

Boooooo Phuket.

And finally just one more sunset photo to remind myself it wasn't all bad

From Bangkok,Phuket

We board our overnight train to Bangkok
Ellie makes a good point that it really reminds you how small Ireland is when there is nowhere so far away that you would need take an overnight journey. Still though the beds would have been nice for those ropey Friday trips home from college in Sligo (I know Catherine would agree :) )

Ellie sits opposite a Thai woman in her 60s ish who's name is Lek. She is very interested in all our travels etc and in turn is an interesting character herself, she studied in New Zealand and tells us about her experiences there too.

When she learns we are off to Phuket she recommends the hotel of her nephew in Phuket town and books us in over the phone. Nepotism at its best!

As my good friend Dónall would say Sleeper trains are "the awesome" ! The best part being that they aren't minibuses and the driver can't overtake anyone and then stay for indefinite periods in the wrong lane...although I wouldn't put it past him to try!

My leg gets increasingly red and swollen on the overnight trip! Nice! I now have cankles! (for those not in the know, its when your calf and ankle morph into one tree trunk like monstrosity and there's no definition between the two!)
The plus point of the cellulitus being it has made me appreciate my regular ankles a lot more!

We don't get up to too much in Bangkok as the riots are becoming increasingly violent so we can't venture too far, plus I can only hobble so that impairs the walking around also. I get antibiotics and anti-inflammatories for the oul legeen- so hopefully they do the trick!


We get duped by two girls pretending to be helpful locals into taking a trip to the tourist office (a goverment organisation!! Imagine Bord Failte sending people out on the street to role-play the friendly Paddy!).
Girl:
"Oh you haven't booked anywhere to stay in the islands? oh my god, you shhhooould. Places could be booked out"
"you can get a tuk tuk or a taxi from here but don't pay more than eh...about 60 baht",
"oh look here's one here."
To the tuk tuk driver
"How much do you charge to go to Jula 6?"
Tuk tuk: "60 baht"
"Oh 60? oh wow, thats a good price.This guys good!"

They also recommend a trip to Chinatown afterward. We are only a little skeptical and we do need to book flights so we hop in the tuk tuk talking about how nice the girls are. The tuk tuk driver plays his part talking us up "oh wow you have thai friends?"
"very good, very good" and I think.... hmm it could be more likely they are "your" Thai friends!!

So we realise later on that the tuk tuk guy was on commission as 60 baht turns out to be ridiculously cheap to go that far, but as dupings go it wasn't a bad one. The guy in the tourist office asks us where we'd like to go in the islands and bar Phuket which we've already booked for 3 nights we plan and book the rest of our trip with them and pay for it all in one go. There isn't much wiggle room if we end up changing our minds and want to stay in one place for a few more days but the organisation is good for us as we are half way through our trip (aaah!) and we don't want to waste time trying to organise how to get to the next place/figuring out where to go/ places to stay.

Afterward we go to Chinatown, which is really cool. We seem to be among the few tourists and there is a very genuine feel to the place. We eat at a seafood restaurant/stall with tables and chairs on a street corner and it is delicious and charming.
Chinatown

From Bangkok,Phuket

The famously smelly but apparently delicious Durin fruit

From Bangkok,Phuket

Ellie,Chinatown

From Bangkok,Phuket

From Bangkok,Phuket

We arrive into Vientiane on a Saturday evening. We weren't able to get seats beside each other on the bus so i end up sitting beside an 'interesting' English woman who likes to make noises and gasp as she is reading her book and say things like "Aw I knew it was him" every so often.

She strikes up a conversation with me and proceeds to tell me her life story with all the ups and downs included. Grand- if a little soon in our relationship considering I just met the woman about 2 hours ago! Luckily she likes to talk so doesn't really require much input from me apart from the odd "yeah" every so often. So as the bus pulls up to the station, and I'm thinking about the relief of my impending freedom -she asks if she can share a tuk tuk with us to the area where the hotels are. Oh no :(

She is very opinionated about the way in which we should search for hotels and is on a tight budget. We are more than slightly concerned she will ask to stay with us in a 3 bed room with us so in a bit of a sly move, we end up staying somewhere slightly more expensive than we probably would have just to shake her off! A bit mean you say? Ah well sure- not to worry, over the next 24 hours that we spend in Vientiane we spot her about 3 more times, One of these times she sees us and of course runs across the road to strike up a one-way conversation and invite us shopping with her. So she wasn't too offended by the hotel shake-off....nor can she take a hint!

Meanwhile I notice I have a little red patch on my leg and don't remember getting burned as I've been quite good with the oul suncream application.

So Vientiane is a town that was colonised by the French in the late 1800s and you can see that the buildings have a very french colonial look that we haven't really seen in the other places we've been. The hotel we stay in also has a frenchie feel to it.
Hotel:

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

There are lots of little nods to the days of french rule such as street names and architecture and they clearly got hooked on the oul coffee and baguettes here back in the day and you can get quite good ones of each here. This is nice because as delicious as the Thai food is, they don't really know how to do bread.

However, on our one night in Vientiane the search for fun is futile. Tourists? Backpackers? Locals? Its a Saturday night - where is everyone?! We give up and settle in to eat in a restaurant that appears to have about 10 people in it.(the guidebook had implied it was non-stop/hopping with people etc!) . Its a relatively warm evening and but as we sit down to dinner I am shivering with the cold and completely lose my appetite. To cut a long story short have to go home to bed so maybe it's a good thing there was no party to be had anyway. That little cut on my shin in Vang Vieng wasn't as innocent as it first appeared and when I wake up the next morning the feverishness passes for a while but I have puffy red ankle that Nurse (by familial association) Ellie tells me is probably cellulitus.
Great- how many afflictions to I have to suffer that start with the letters c.e.l.l.u.l.i.t. !!

The next day we potter (limp) around a very very hot Vientiane and visit Haw Pha Kaeo -a national museum of religious art, which is nice but its pretty much another temple in disguise. And not a very good disguise as it's actually housed inside an old temple next to the pretty, French looking presidential palace.
Museum:

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

No pics allowed inside

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

In both Thailand and Laos they are quite bad at putting notices or signs on things so you are looking at 100s of these little Buddha sculptures and artifacts and maybe 10 of them will have a rough indication of what century they are from and that's about it. So it's a bit of a quick breeze through a museum when you don't really know much about the significance of what you are looking at!

After the museum trip we head up for a look at Patuxai or the "vertical runway" as it is known. Situated on Vientianes wannabe Champs Elysées (Lane Xang Avenue) this is a bad impression of Arc de Triomphe and was built from concrete that the US donated for the building of a runway! Haha! hence the nick-name! I believe its also supposed to be an homage to the Laos people that fought against the French for their independence, interesting so that they would build them their very own Arc de Triomphe!

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

We walk(I hobble) back to the hotel where we get collected by our bus. We head to the border where we will catch the overnight train to Bangkok (still adamant on the no more VIP minibuses issue!!)

So smuggling our contraband inflatable rubber rings in my bag we make our way to the taxi pick up trucks which will bring us to the river. The tubing police never catch us and the woman and her baby live to tell the tale...we assume (i never checked back!)

We have the pleasure of sharing our journey to the river with a scandanavian lesbian and her close personal friends who's company she has paid for. One of the ladies of the night(or broad daylight in this case!) compliments ellie on how white she is, and says she could give her some of her colour because Laos girls want to more white. Her scandanavian friend says "Oh dont give it to her, give it to me".
Laos prossie: "Oh I'll give it to you later".etc. etc.
We are treated to more sleazy conversations along our way as we stare at the mountains and pretend to be totally comfortable with the whole sex-trade situation! When we get off the bus we ponder if the prostitute is even a lesbian or do dollars speak louder than sexual orientation.

Anyway after brothel-bus, we sit down, have a few drinks and once we have inflated our tubes we commence our float down the river. In parts the water is low and I get a little cut on my leg, I think nothing of it but it comes back to haunt me later.

The further one floats down the river the more debauchery you can take part in, with all kind of "happy" meals on offer- not exactly what you get in McDonald's... No free toys. We have a few beers chat to some people and when it starts getting dark we make our way to the taxis, they try to charge us an arm and a leg because we are the only ones there but we are a bit tipsy and full of dutch-courage so we pretend to start walking off into town and eventually one of them follows us up the road and gives us a decent price! Seems we are finally starting to learn how to play the pricing game here!

We spend a couple more days in Vang Vieng chilling out, watching TV-shows while lying back on pillows in restaurants, having beers. By night we watch the gazelles dance around to drum and bass music in 'Q-bar' while we hang out swatting flies by the watering hole! And- while they're harder to come by in Vang Vieng, we do manage to find a few nice normal people to hang out with for a evening or so!
Ellie and her pink bucket:

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

Ferrrrry cross the Nam Song. (bit muddy after heavy rainfall)

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

A spot of drunken photography!!

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

Without realising it the chilled out atmostphere takes over you and before we know it we've spent 5nights in Vang Vieng.While there is more stuff to do here- caves, rock climbings, kayaking etc we never really manage to get around to it! On our 6th day we pack up and leave to spend one night Vientiane.

We wave goodbye to the home of the winding river, the beautiful mountains, the beautiful people in "Beer Laos" and "Tubing" logoed vest tops, and the most children under the age of 3 that I ever seen in the one place at the one time. Very pro-creative the Laos people!

We make our way by big VIP bus to the capital that evening (no more minibuses for us!)

The title more or less sums it up but I'll elaborate anyway.
So after about 3 bus changes,9 near death experiences, a spot of border crossing and a quick stop off in Laos' capital city Vientiane we make it to Vang Vieng.

Before we even step off the bus we can see the views of the stunning limestone karst mountains that Vang Vieng is famous for. We walk down to the riverside and get ourselves a room for the night in Le Jardin Organique. I can't say we ever really find out why this is an appropriate name for the place but we have a nice clean room with air conditioning. The only real issue is our roomates- insects everywhere.yuck!
Vang Vieng

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

The other things Vang Vieng is famous for we experience over the next five days that we spend there.

It's a really pretty location but it's a very touristy (albeit backpacker tourism)spot, and is full of young and beautiful single people who want to party-and I'm not too sure how I really feel about places like this- is it all free spirits and free love a la the 60s or is it just like a load of post leaving cert students getting trashed and making tits of themselves in Ayia Napa?... Or maybe I'm just bitter because I wasn't in with the hip crowd here!!
Leaving cert tits on Holiday:

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

As you walk down the streets of Vang Vieng you have a pretty good chance of seeing any episode of friends you want if you wait around long enough as there are about 5 or 6 restaurants that exclusively show Friends re-runs all day and another few that intersperse friends episodes with other shows! There is also a Family Guy place- where we spend at least 3 hours recovering one day!

Our first day of tubing we are obviously the typical newbies and after renting the tubes (inner tubes from tractor tyres) and floating down the river to the first bar, our tubes are stolen within about 10 mins! There goes the deposit! Anyway we enjoy some drinks and watch people jumping off the trapeze style swings into the river. Too scared and not confident enough of my upper body strength to give it a go, its just a spectator sport for me!

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

I don't know where they keep all the beautiful people the rest of the time but when they let them out, an awful lot of them seem to go to Laos on holidays- and bond with each other over how beautiful they are. Needless to say I didn't manage to forge too many lasting friendships there! I realise my blog title is quite appropriate as I feel like some kind of 'seldom seen in these parts' endangered great white hippo who's wandered into a herd of bronzed gazelles. People make us feel at ease like a Swedish girl who asks us "how come you're so white?"
To which I laugh and reply "we're Irish". Ellie asks her where she's from - Sweden. And trying for a little irony El asks her "How come you're not blonde?" She lifts up the front of her dark hair to show us her blonde roots! That joke didnt work then!

We console ourselves over the fact that we may never be friends with the cool kids by getting quite drunk on buckets at the bucket bar and other spots! One morning I realise I have left my green size 6 flip flops behind me at the bar and walked home in one mens grey flip flop size 11 and one mens black flip flop size 12. Ah the joys of drinking alcohol from a bucket!

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

Our next tubing excursion we decide to purchase our own inflatable rings that we have seen some people with. Walking into the shops trying to find one was like trying to find some kind of legendary monster that everyone is terrified of. I walk into one place and ask can we buy some tubes and the girl looks terrified and is like "no, no, not here, not here!": and backs nervously away from me, the next shop pretty much the same thing until we get to the last shop, where the woman doesn't say yes or no but nods and calls her husband to come over. She swears us to secrecy not to tell anyone where we got it from and points us to a black plastic bag under a shelf where I have to slyly take the two rings out and quickly shove them into my bag as she cradles her crying baby as if he knows the whole deal is trouble!

part II to follow

So we spent the next day and half in Chiang Mai wandering around the night markets in the evening, testing our haggling skills which we haven't quite got down to a tee just yet! Our days we spent eating, stocking up on stuff in our local Boots and booking our trip to Laos.
Tha Phae gate Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

I really enjoyed Chiang Mai and would love to do the trekking/rafting again in the wet season. El liked the trekking but I think wasn't quite as keen on Chiang Mai itself as I was. The fact that we were getting eaten alive by mosquitos probably didn't help either.

After one day of me convincing El that her insect bites on her legs really weren't that bad and that she shouldn't worry about them 2 Hawaiian girls say "oh you don't have mosquitoes in Ireland, right?". I was just like 'nooooooo, shut up shut up'!!! (apparently if you get bitten a lot the bites don't come up as red after a while). Information -interesting, however pointing out peoples bites when you've tried to convince the person they're not so bad- unhelpful!Cheers girls!

We decide to head for the border by overnight "VIP minibus". This is our first real experience of Thai roads and driving. And we get to enjoy it all with a front row view! In our minibus we draw the short straw and manage to get stuck up the front in the cabin with the driver. And the middle seat has no headrest. Can't really say I felt like too much of a VIP with my knees jammed against the dashboard and my head flopping around when I start drifting off- not that I actually managed to sleep as I was too terrified to close my eyes. The physical level of discomfort did not even come close to the emotional roller-coaster one experiences on the road in Thailand.
The drivers are all a bit risky, but our guy was a gem altogether!

Between the speeding, overtaking 5 cars at a time and driving in the middle/wrong side of the road for prolonged periods - including windy hills, I was a shivering wreck! I could really do with popping some of the Xanex El got from the travel clinic but it's packed away unfortunately!

We make about 3 unscheduled stops on the journey, and one scheduled one. Everyone else is a bit bothered by this but I don't really mind because any part of the trip where we are not actually driving is good for me! One of the stops is for the driver to take a nap for 20mins- after which I am sure I see him doing one of the "head bob-jerk awake" things WHILE DRIVING! get me off this bus! If I had any doubt in my mind that it just happened, he makes another stop off about 5 mins later at a petrol station to wash his face and get a big cup of coffee, and then puts about half a pack of chewing gum in his mouth. He knows I saw him fall asleep and I keep staring at him to make sure he knows I'm on to him!

I have to say though, the most death defyingly hilarious part of the trip was when about 12 cars all pulled onto the opposite side of the road to overtake a fleet of trucks!

I never thought I was a nervous passenger before but then I guess I'd never experienced Thai driving before! We eventually (against all odds) make it alive to Nong Khai near where the border crossing is. Eat a disgusting breakfast (which on the plus side was included in the price of the minibus. Score!). Here we change onto other bus and make our way to the border.

Nong Khai -Sunrise

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

From Laos Van Vieng and VNTN

The day after we went trekking I decided to enroll myself in a cookery course. There are lots of them on offer but I decided to go for this one:

http://www.asiascenic.com/

Its just a half day course and located conveniently close by which is the main reason I picked it but it turns out to be a good choice. I'm picked up from our hotel at 4.30 and the course will run til 8pm. I meet some cool people who are also doing the course, 2 English lads, Australian couple and an Austrian couple (not to be confused- throw another schnitzel on the barbie!). They drop us off at the cooking school and we our met by our instructor Mam (not my Mam-its the girls name!). She welcomes us all in and is lovely and smiley.


First stop is the cute little herb garden out the back of the cooking school. She shows us the different herbs and spices that we will be using, and passes them around so that we can all smell them and get used to them. She goes through all the uses culinary and medicinal for them and its really interesting. Next she prepares a typical Thai welcome for us - crushed nuts, shaved coconut, whole chillies ,ginger and syrup (palm sugar maybe?) which you take and wrap up in a basil leaf like a little mini fajita! It looks really simple as we put it together but the flavour is amazing!

From Chiang Mai

Next we all have to agree as a group 3 categories of food that we want to cook so we choose a curry,a stir fry and a soup. Then every person can individually choose what type of curry (i.e. red/green etc) they want to make and so on.We will all also cook noodles.

We head off to the market and learn about the other ingredients that we need to buy.

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

First of all we make our Pad Thai (A very common Thai dish fried noodles with chicken/shrimp etc.) We sit down and eat this straight away after we have cooked it. Now, I don't want to toot my own horn but..... toot toot toot! It was bloody delicious! (pic may not do it justice).

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

After that we head back to the chopping board and simultaneously make our soup/curry and stir fry. Tough work in the heat hence the sweaty red face! (and that's just me check out the sunburned head on yer man!)

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

When we're done chopping/crushing/stirring/frying- we sit down to an absolute feast. Its all so delicious everyone wants to eat it all but none of us can possibly manage so we have to settle for eating about a quarter of each dish, and try to force down a bit more too but its tough work!


As we were eating Mam presented us with our recipe-books and told us lots of things about the village where she's from and Thai culture in general. For example slagging off one of the English guys for the way he said thank you. (you say kop khun ka if you are a girl and kop khun krab if you're a boy) so in her giggly Thai way she tells him "ohhh haha you have to say krab or people gonna think you a lady-man!"

It was a great day out and definitely recommend it as something to do if anyone is in Thailand. And you get a great oul feed aswell, cant bate it!

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

So, where was I? Ah OK so after trekking down the mountain our driver brings us back toward the river. And after a dodgy bit of reversing down a steep hill, we all hop out. This is where we will be doing our white water rafting.Our guide for the rafting (who looks about 12 but could be anything up to about 30) takes over from here and gives us our life jackets and explains in broken English some commands which he will yell at us from the back of the boat. The most hilarious being "jump JUMP" where we all have to bounce up and down to dislodge the boat if it gets stuck on something!

As you can imagine rafting down the river in the dry season doesn't really involve a whole lot of "white water" so for the most part we are either easily floating down a calm river or getting stuck between big rocks and having to use the "jump jump" technique and rock from one side of the boat to the other, while locals on a family day out- laugh, splash us with water and often have to actually help to free the raft from between the rocks! It was a Saturday so all the locals seem to be out on the river. (A bit like Brannockstown on a hot day!!) They are having picnics on the shore, laughing and taking pictures of us. Kids swim around and splash water on us....you pretty much know your not white water rafting when a 6 year old floats past you in a rubber ring! In one part of the river we jump out for a swim. Men hand us cups of rice whiskey or sips of beer and when we climb back into the boat we have picked up a couple of stow-aways or rather mini high-jackers! They are very cute so we let them away with it!

Everyone waves and says hello to us ...and also laughs at us but you couldn't blame then as in some parts of the river we are getting stuck on big rocks every 30 seconds and bouncing around like complete idiots!! Its a pity I have no pictures of this but I didn't have a waterproof camera so no can do!

When we get to the end of the "white water rafting" trip, we pull into shore and switch over to a traditional bamboo raft which is a long flat raft (made from bamboo obviously enough) Its steered from the front with a bamboo stick and the guide uses a paddle st the back for extra propulsion . We are on the positive side of gender discrimination as Jan has to use a bamboo at the front while we all like down and relax!

After that we go and clean off and Jan treats us all to a nice cold Chang (beer) (we also learn Chang is Thai for elephant!). Jan explains that he is buying the beers because he did all the work so he's obviously earning the money around here!!

We finish up our beers and climb into the van for the trip back to Chiang Mai with a stop off at a long-neck tribe village along the way.

The Long-necks we visit are a hill tribe from Burma who have only been living in Thailand for 2 months. There are many similar tribes in the northern hills around Chiang Mai who have lived in Thailand for hundreds of years and maintained a simple way of life. If you want to visit these villages you can do another trek up the mountain, and stay the night in the tribal village but in this heat there is no way I would be able to handle it.

The village we visit is not in the hills and is rather conveniently located adjacent to the tourist attraction of a tiger zoo/sanctuary. From the second we step into the village it all feels a bit uncomfortable - these people are being used as a tourist attraction.
Long-neck woman (the rings on their legs are just decorative)

From Drop Box

The guide tells us about their lives. They are refugees in Thailand because of the fighting in Burma and have been here just 2 months. Only the women wear the rings around their necks which are put on when they are 5 years old and increase in size until they are 25.(so none for me!). They are different from long neck tribes in africa because the rings are one continuous coil, rather than a series of rings.
Kay buys handicrafts

From Drop Box

They remove the rings when they are traveling so that people won't stare at them. (Interesting so that their livelihood is now letting people stare at them).

We see some evidence of their natural way of life. Grinder for making flour from rice, pig pens, chickens etc. but mainly the village is stall after stall of handicrafts and women weaving scarves etc. All the stuff is beautifully made but it is just like a big market, and they have made a simple hill tribe into glorified pushy stall sellers. It all just feels a bit strange. Also we are practically encouraged to take pictures of the people and they pose for us, whereas in the guide-book had said that many of these tribes won't allow their picture to be taken because of their belief system...but it felt like these guys had been told the village will get more tourists if you let people take a picture with you.

Don't get me wrong it was very interesting to see the people and hear their story, it all just felt a bit exploitative.

We make our way back to Chiang Mai after this and say goodbye to Jan and Kay. It was a really great day out. We hit the town that night and go to a Thai rock bar where cover bands with interesting hair-dos bang out classic hits ("Arr in arr it's just another brick in the warr"
Check out the 'do'

From Triphopopotamus

Cheeky kid flower sellers come in and really give it the hard sell. One of them challenges me to a thumb war and knows all the words and wins (only because I was afraid of breaking his little thumbs...maybe)- I am charmed to bits as I think the words to thumb war might be pretty much the only English he knows. Good enough for me so I buy one of his flowers!

The next day I decide to embark on a another adventure...of a culinary nature!