Elephants and ostriches

Bangkok Part 2

The Thais played a nasty trick on us by making their beer super strong and putting it in very big bottles.

The scalping I had received in China had grown back a bit so we decided to go and get some haircuts. They managed to talk us into some manicures and pedicures, so for the next few days we were looking at our feet thinking how great they looked. Which isn't hard when you consider we've been wearing sandals 12 hours a day for the last month. I have to say, all the staff in there were completely in love with themselves and whenever they could they would spend 5 minutes preening in front of the mirror. But I guess it's their line of work.

At the weekend in Bangkok, the world's largest market, Chatuchak, gets set up. Its 35 acres and has something like 10,000 stalls. It gets around 300,000 visitors a day. It has its own map and street reference system. It was interesting for about an hour, and then everything looked the same, you couldn't find what you had seen earlier, and you started getting frustrated with the dawdling that is inherent in any kind of shopping situation. There were a lot of stalls selling puppies and these seemed to be the most popular stalls in the market. I asked how much they were, about 80 pounds for a small dog and up to 320 pounds for the bigger dogs. I managed to survive for 4 hours in the place, but emerging was a bit of a relief, I felt like a released prisoner tasting freedom again. You'd probably love it if you loved shopping.

Later on, we met our American and Australian friends, Robyn and Jess. Robyn had seen an advert for an Ethiopian restaurant in a Bangkok area called Little Arabia, but we couldn't find it, we reckon it had been demolished to make way for a hotel. So we settled for a Lebanese place who wouldn't give us any plates to eat off so we improvised with serving dishes and tea saucers. It was either that or eating off naan breads.

A visit to Bangkok wouldn't be complete without a visit to the Red Light district. I won't go into too much detail on this. The theme of the night seemed to be imprisonment, as the tuk tuk driver tried to kidnap us and take us to his shop, and then one of the bars didn't want us to leave when we wanted to. Another theme was tipping. Everyone wanted a tip, and for not seemingly having done anything for it. Or they would tell you one price, then try and charge a bit more. A bit like some kind of Red Light tax.

Anyway, if you want any more detail than that you'll have to force it out of us or visit it yourself. Suffice to say it's unique.

Bye Bye BKK

Our next stop was Kanchanaburi, about 2 hours north west of Bangkok. It took ages to get to the bus station, and the driver overshot the entrance so had to reverse up the dual carriageway. It was the finest bus station I've ever seen, all escalators and food courts and helpful staff showing us the way.

Kanachanaburi is the town where the Bridge over the River Kwai is located. To get the most out of a visit to the bridge most books say to visit the museum so we made the short walk down the road from our lodge to the museum before it closed. It's very sad. There are some pretty hard hitting relics such as the letters sent home to families telling them their husband or son was reported missing in action, later to be told that they are in a PoW camp. An awful bit of correspondence to have to receive.

The lodge where we were staying had an interesting set up. The bar/restaurant area was lovely, open air and over the river. It also seemed to be an extension of the sitting room of the old lady who did all the cooking (the Grandma of a family affair I reckon.) Any activity that she did was always ended by sitting down in front of the telly. In fact, sometimes it felt like we were interrupting by asking for some food, like they were a bit reluctant to cook as something good was on TV. Most guesthouses thrust a menu in your face as soon as you enter the place. Also, whenever we did order some food, you always saw the young guy get on his moped and return 3 minutes later, preumably to get some missing ingredient. A massive floating restaurant went by on the river, pulled by a tiny wooden boat, like a tug pulling an ocean liner.

We retired to our lodge and I spent 25 minutes hunting for the mosquito I knew was there, before giving up and climbing under my mosquito net.

E-Day (Elephant Day)

I woke up excited - it was Elephant Day! We were on a tour with a couple of Americans and several Dutch people. There are a lot of Dutch people around here, I think because Holland suffered many casualties from the Burma-Thailand railway. When we got to the elephant centre we met an elephant who was 72 years old. I didn't know they got that old. 4 or 5 elephants wondered over with their riders, and we climbed the stairs to the mounting platform. Everyone else got massive elephants and we got a small one, which I thought was unfair on the elephant as there was one toddler in our group. But then, I'm probably massively underestimating the strength of an elephant. I wasn't sure how to get on the seat on the elephant's back until the driver just said to step on the elephant, he doesn't mind.

We set off. Our elephant seemed slow. The seat was incredibly uncomfortable, I wondered how it was fastened. We climbed a hill that I would probably have struggled with on my own legs, let alone with 3 people and a wooden sofa on my back. I got to ride on the elephant's neck towards the end. The neck didn't seem broad enough and I felt like I would fall off sideways if I didn't hold on to the two ropes holding the seat on behind me. I looked a bit like I was limbo dancing on the back of an elephant. There were a few hairy moments where the elephant started walking straight towards a train of elephants passing the other way, and then when we went downhill. He was only 10 years old, a child, so fair enough he was a bit inexperienced. As we got off his trunk snaked across the mounting platform looking for the bags of bananas we weren't allowed to give him.

King and Queen of the Jungle?

We then walked down to the river, where there was another platform. We donned some life jackets, jumped on an elephant one at a time and they waded out and dived down so just our heads were above water. An awesome experience. I nearly fell off, maybe I'm not designed for elephant riding, and I had visions of a watery grave being crushed between two massive elephants. The rider was a bit of a spoilsport and wouldn't let the elephant blow water with his trunk. Maybe accidents happen that way, a pressure jet to someone's face probably hurts a bit.

We still hadn't been able to give our 2 bags of bananas to anyone so one lucky elephant at the end got them all, and some that the monks had. The elephant ate bananas like my Dad eats M&Ms, one after another until they're all gone. We were then presented with our Jo and Steve Limited Edition Elephant Riding Memorial plate, which shall take pride of place in our future residence.

One lucky elephant (and some monks)

When we got back, and Jo had seen a big snake in the river outside our lodge, we walked to, and across, the Bridge. I don't think you could fall off but one Chinese tourist in stupid shoes I was hoping would prove my theory wrong. As we got to the end, we were rewarded with a train over the bridge. People milled around in front of it like it was automatically programmed to stop in front of them when they wanted it to. We noticed when it passed that it was a working service.

On the walk back, we went into a strange but cool open air bar where they had to go out and fetch the drinks, had an aircraft refuelling tank as pride of place in the centre, and pet ostriches.

The Beer Barrel's pet ostriches.

Tiger time

The Tiger Temple is a pretty unique place about 45km from Kanchanaburi, where you can go and touch tigers. It is a place run by monks so there is a strict dress code that mainly applies to women and which we did not really know about until we got there. Jo's bare shoulders and shorts didn't go down very well with the gatekeepers. She didn't have any other clothes though, so our taxi driver kitted her out in some massive black trousers and an Everton football shirt. She looked like she should have been labouring in one of the nearby rice fields. The taxi driver was struggling with some bags so I offered to help him, turned out it was a bag of 12 dead chickens for the tigers!

Tiger Temple was a popular place despite only having been open to the public for 4 or 5 years. We joined the long line queueing for their photo with a tiger. A monk sat on a rock by the tigers to lend some gravitas to the tourist chaos, and occasionally helping to manhandle a tiger's heads onto someone's lap. There were about 8 or 9 tigers lolling about in the sun, with a big tiger chained to a rock at the back pacing backwards and forwards. About 30 staff supervised the tigers and sprayed them with water. I was led by the hand through the tigers to get a photo. I wasn't allowed to touch some of the tigers I posed with, and I never got to touch their heads. They're docile, having been hand reared from birth, but I still felt afraid to touch them or step on their tails. I bet they get that all the time, people stepping on their tails, but they grin and bear it. There was one scary moment when I knelt behind 3 young tigers stretched out on a rock, and as I stroked one it started to roll over and waggle it's legs.

Everton's newest supporter poses with a tiger.

We were then told we had to vacate the area as it was the end of the day and the tigers were going to be walked up the hill we had come done, back to their cages. So we walked up the hill. As we waited for the tigers to march past, a pig got stuck in some railings that then collapsed on it (it was ok in the end), and then Jo got hit by a stray slingshot fired by one of the tiger handlers who was trying to clear the area of pigs. That could have had someone's eye out! The tigers came walking along, we were about 50m away. There were a few bits of commotion as some of the tigers 'playfully' attacked their handlers. It was a strange scene, 20 or so supervisors walking tigers back to their cages. I imagine the tigers are fed before and after they are walked, so that all the tourists milling around don't tempt them on their full stomachs. At the end of the procession the monk leads one of the tigers: presumably this is some kind of symbolic man-animal head monk-head of the tiger family ritual. Jo took her peasant outfit off and we drove back to Kanchanaburi.

That evening we did a Thai Cookery Course. We were attracted by the name, Tasty's Thai Cookery School. Tasty ran the place but was away, so we had a woman with a deep voice called Micky. I spent the whole 3 hours trying to work out whether Micky was a he or she, before settling slightly for she. We cooked Pad Thai, Coconut Soup and Spring Rolls. I then won the Spring Roll Eating Challenge 2008, easily beating Jo's pathetic 4 with 8 (although she maintains I ate 10, unfounded allegations). We were given some roots and spices to take away but had to abandon them as soon as we realised there was no way Australian Immigration would let them in.

Masterchef at work.

Waterfalls, Waterfalls, Everywhere.

We had gone a bit crazy with the tours over the last couple of days so decided to strike out on our own to visit the Erawan waterfalls, a 7-tiered waterfall set in Erawan National Park, about 90 minutes drive from Kanchanaburi. We had the usual run around by the buses, no bus stop to stand at, a bus failing to stop for no good reason and then 30 minutes spent wondering if we were in the right place. When it did arrive, it was the oldest, most uncomfortable bus I've ever travelled on. It must have been built for people 4ft tall because the leg room was non-existent.

We got into the park and a guy took a picture of us on the walk in, then tried to sell it to us on a plate. However, the Steve and Jo Limited Edition Elephant Riding Memorial memorial plate was not in danger of being usurped! We hiked up the 7 tiers, past turqouise pools with fish in. We passed people in different attire, some looked like they were climbing a mountain, others like they were walking back from the beach. After the 6th tier the climb became a little steeper, rockier and wetter, but it was worth it for the 7th tier. We jumped in the water and were a bit creeped out by the fish that came and nibbled at our feet. We discovered they couldn't catch you if you kept moving.

7th - 10th August

We spent the 7th and 8th travelling from Kanchanaburi down to the middle of Thailand, taking in some dubious guesthouses, making some locals deliriously happy by eating their streetfood of rice pudding with meat and raw egg, meeting a Canadian tsunami victim with a strange sense of geography, and being driven round the town of Lang Suan looking for a bus stop whose only identifying marks were 5 sheets of A4 pinned to the wall. We were trying to get to the Islands of the west coast, in particular Surin Island. These are the less well known islands, the better known ones being those on the east coast (Ko Samui, Ko Pha Ngan, etc). But luckily we were told en route by a helpful lady at Kiwi Guest House in Ranong that we'd be lucky to get over to the Islands at this time of year, in particular from the pier we hoped to sail from, and we'd be better off going a bit further down to Kao Lak. Which we did, but decided we didn't have enough time to go over to the islands, what with needing a bit of R&R after 2 days on the road and needing to be in Ko Pha Ngan on the east coast in time for the Full Moon Party on the 16th.

So we're holed up in Kao Lak. It's low season so pretty quiet. We have a lovely lodge with a porch we can sit out on. The sea is a raging force and only for the brave. We leave tomorrow for Ko Pha Ngan and some Full Mooning.