Back to Bangkok, Korea Prep and a Last Scare

Being back in Bangkok was nice, especially so because we were staying at Eileen and Kristina’s again. It cannot be overstated how much we appreciated having a place to use as a home base. It made our travel much easier than can be expressed here. We owe them a great measure of thanks.

Also, most of these pictures are from Mae Hong Son, at least the one of us and our bike and of the temple.

Anyway, we had a fair amount of minor tasks to complete in the two weeks we had before departing for Korea, so we got on them. After a few lazy days spent lounging around the house of course. Our first priority was to acquire our Korean visas. We were told that this might take upwards of a week, but in fact it did not. We went in on a Friday and returned on Monday. No interview required. Perhaps that was because our school here in Korea made most of the arrangements for us while we traveled. It was a bit of a test finding the place though, so we did our share. We called and got a general idea of the embassy’s location but when we arrived in that part of town, it was not immediately obvious and our directions consisted of the name of the subway station to get off at and that the building was opposite a large mall. In fact, the embassy was not across from the mall but rather down a street that was behind the building across from the mall. We walked all over and found nothing. In the end, we resorted to taking a taxi to find it, but by then it was noon and the embassy was closed for lunch. We had an hour and a half to wait. We walked back to the mall and got lunch.

Our other business was healthcare. Thailand has a major medical tourism industry as healthcare is dirt-cheap there. You couldn’t rent a car in the US for what you pay to get a dental check-up. Seriously, you pay more for a night in a Motel 6 than you do for a physical. So, we signed up to see the dentist and get checked out. Everything was pretty normal, except an odd encounter we had with a frantic French woman. We passed her talking to another westerner as we entered the hospital and she caught up with us in the magazine shop. Her story was this: Her and her husband had been somewhere on the coast in the south when they found themselves in a dingy, prostitute ridden town. They planned to spend the night and take the train back to Bangkok the next day. That night her husband went to get money from the ATM. As he was walking away, a pair on a motobike road past, the guy on the back grabbing her husbands bag which contained their passports, ATM cards, money, etc. Instinctively he grabbed the guy by the shoulder. Apparently he came flying off the bike and split his head open on the cement. Her husband then contacted the police who arrested him and charged him with assault. They demanded something like $3,000, but eventually she and her husband managed to get it down to $1,000, I think. Well, that wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the driver of the motobike hadn’t managed to keep the bag with their ID, cards, etc. She paid what she could up front and rushed back to Bangkok to get help from her embassy, but the French embassy apparently doesn’t give its citizens financial assistance in these types of situations because they do not support bribery, which is what this thing was. They found a hotel for her, began getting her new IDs issued and arranged for their flights home to be moved up, but that was about all they were prepared to do. She was frantically trying to get the money when we met her, afraid that the police would renege if she didn’t get the money right away. She was asking us for help. She needed something like 12,000 bhat. We gave her 1,000. It was about all we could afford. We felt terrible for her. What a terrifying position to be in. Later we learned that the Thai police hold westerners responsible in any legal situation. If you’re in a taxi and it gets into an accident, it’s your fault. If you’re being robbed, you defend your self and the thief is injured, it’s your fault, and on. The logic for this is that had you not been there, this thing wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Ass-backwards if you ask me. Generally I’m pretty accepting of cultural differences and appreciate that different countries have different mores and beliefs, but this one is just plain ridiculous, especially when you take into account how much the economy depends on tourism. Thailand has something like a million visitors a year. Bullshit. The country is beautiful, just avoid contact with the police at all costs. It’s better just to throw some cash at the person and leave. After that encounter, we were extremely careful.
On one of our days free of any errands to run we went to Lumphini Park where we saw comodo dragons swimming in the lake there and lounging along the banks. They are incredible. We saw one that had to be at least 6 feet long. It was great.

In the end, we said a sad goodbye to Eileen and Kristina and headed off to Korea, which is where we are now. The flight was easy and coming through customs was a breeze.


This is a Lady Bug in a plant of some sort.

Slice of Pai

So for the delay in writing this, raft of things have happened in the past few weeks and I’ve not felt up to it until now. Last I wrote we were taking the treacherously coiling road up to Pai from Chiang Mai.

According to our Lonely Planet, Pai is one of the last spots along the old hippy backpacker route through this region and we found that assessment to be pretty accurate – this is of note because the book’s accuracy has been less and less reliable throughout our trip. We arrived and found a dusty town with dirt roads choked with internet cafes, guided tour agencies, hip clothing shops and restaurants, a surprising number of which offering middle-eastern fair from baba ganouj to hummus and falafel. The town its self was populated with old ‘60s hangers-on and Thai men dressed and living as if it were still the summer of love, wearing bellbottom jeans and mesh tank-tops, long hair or dreadlocks flowing down their backs, stoned to the gills.

We headed toward Pai River and found a pleasant little bungalow, reasonably priced and on the water with indoor plumbing and a nice deck. We spent 3 nights there and didn’t do much in between them, just relaxed and explored town. We did take a daylong yoga class, my first, which we enjoyed but apparently was more advanced than most beginners’ classes. One of the draws for us was that the package included lunch and dinner, both of which were supposed to consist of Indian food cooked by a genuine Indian woman, this is a paraphrase of the flying that drew us there. In actuality the food turned out to be sub-par Thai-tourist fare. We were unimpressed. Mama, the name the teacher insisted we call her, was easy going enough and a decent enough teacher, but that didn’t make up for the disappointment in the food.

The rest of the time was divided between milling around, reading, shopping at over-priced bookstores, eating and checking e-mail (this is where we learned that our friend Annie was getting married to her boyfriend Tim – if you two read this, CONGRATULATIONS! We’re so happy for you.) The food was incredibly cheap and on our last night in town I had the best curry I ate all trip. It was yellow curry with eggplant. Delicious. (To all the food blog readers, I’m sorry about the lack of attention it has gotten. I’ll write more on it soon. Don’t worry, I haven’t stopped eating.)

We’d read that you can take a rafting trip on to the next town, Mae Hong Son, so we investigated and eventually signed up at one of the numerous tourism agencies. We left early in the morning and as it turned out, we had an even more nauseating drive ahead of us than the one in to Pai. The road was even more twisted and cutback riddled and this time we were riding on benches in the back of a pickup. I was thoroughly sick by the time we arrived at the drop. Only the mint gum I chewed furiously the entire time saved me from divulging the contents of my stomach all over the 5 other people we were riding with. For future reference to anyone who might be daring to take a similar route, an entire pack of gum is about right, no less than 5 pieces, but be sure to spread them out so that you take them at intervals and build up a tolerance for that much gum in your mouth at once.

In our group were a pair from England who’d been traveling for three years spending time working all along the way, a father and daughter combo from England (they had rented a car and drove themselves to the drop) and a Canadian couple that had just finished teaching English in Korea. Hilary took care of the questioning for me while I did battle with my inner ear.

Once at the river we got all suited up, life jackets, helmets and paddles, aumnd pushed off, the British father/daughter team in our boat. I immediately snapped my aluminum paddle. The paddle just peeled right off. Hilary, being the generous person she is, offered up her paddle and sat back to enjoy the ride until we reached the lunch stop where we could pick up another. The trip was billed as intermediate and supposedly had at least two class 4 rapids. The danger was heightened by our guide’s continuous attempts to high-side us sideways on any rocks he could find in the river, thus dumping one or another unlucky person. Mostly it was the father who was sent sprawling into the water or grappling with the edge of the boat to hang on. It was fun and in the end we all got it as we got a little too squirrely in the class 4 and flipped the boat. Hilary took a pretty good bump on the leg and I had the father come down on top of me, also I wrapped my ankle on a rock and had to ride out the rest of the rapid floating on my back. It mellowed out considerably after that and gently floated down river through a giant wildlife preserve spotting a pack of monkeys and several king fishers. All-in-all, it was a fun trip and we felt good at the end of the day. Plus we got to ask the Canadians lot more questions about living in Korea.

Mae Hong Son was an entirely different sort of town than Pai. It did not pander to tourists what so ever. In fact, we had a bit of trouble finding a guest house. It is a regular small town, the same as you might find in the U.S. There is of course a market, but it wasn’t any different from the rest. Near to the town are several Long Neck Karen villages. They are considered refugees from Burma though many of the villages they live in are pretty old. Hilary and I decided that we would rent a motobike and check out a village then look for the biggest waterfall in the area. We had a map we got from our guest house, but weren’t sure of our competency on the roads on our own. I drove and Hilary rode on the back with the map. She got us to both places successfully.

The Karen village was not at all what we’d hoped for. There were several on the map and we chose one of the smaller ones because we figured that was our best shot and seeing one that wasn’t thronged by tourists and constructed around the accompanying trade. It didn’t matter. We paid 500 bhat a piece for entrance – the money supposedly goes to supporting the villagers as they cannot work in Thailand due to their refugee status. The village was little more than several little stalls where villagers were selling postcards of Long Neck Karen (in one case a woman was selling postcards of herself), little trinkets and cheap art pieces. The understanding was that you’d buy an item in exchange for taking a picture. We did this once. We don’t mind contributing to a village, especially when it’s so little, but it just seemed tawdry in this manner.

The waterfall was beautiful.

In the end, we did something like 100kms on the bike that day. It was great. We even got the bike up to 80km/hr.

The next day we left for Mae Sariang, but when we pulled into town, we decided we were ready to get back to Bangkok, and the fastest way to do that was to go back to Chiang Mai and catch the train the next day. That is what we did.


More Pictures later.

Bangkok, Jobs and the North

When we got to back to Bangkok, our intentions were to stay overnight and get on up to Chiang Mai (a popular city in the north of Thailand) and the surrounding region for a couple of weeks, but as it turned out, we had potential job offers waiting in our e-mail inboxes and they would require some attention. For those of you who don’t know, which may be very few, we applied to teach English in Korea via Park English, a job placement organization. We had been waiting to hear from them for a while and had become somewhat antsy about it as our departure date was fast arriving. Before heading out on our travels proper we had purchased a pair of tickets to Korea that left on October 10th and here we were, little more than a month from flying and without jobs. So, we pushed a little and it paid off. The e-mail we received was a job posting for a pair of teachers at Edo Best English School which is located on the southern coast of Korea in Yeosu. We did a little research on the area and found it to be everything we were looking for. It is in the least developed region of Korea, is right on the coast and with a mere 300,000 people is smaller than most other cities. We e-mailed Park English right back, saying we loved the job and would like to move forward with it. The next step was a phone interview with the headmaster. That went swimmingly and what followed was a whirlwind of e-mails and phone calls between Park English, the headmaster and us. After a few hours, everything got worked out and we were e-mailed contracts which we signed and faxed right back. And we then had jobs. Relief. If you want details, comment and we’ll e-mail you them.
Sorry for the simple nuts and bolts beginning, but that’s pretty much how it went and I couldn’t find anything humorous to write in there. At least nothing that wouldn’t be a complete diversion. Besides, there’s nothing funny about job hunting and the particulars. This is serious business people.
Anyhow, having gotten that squared away, we boarded a night train for Chiang Mai and slept restlessly through the night because the air-con was on high and the lights were left on all night. It was cold. While we’re looking forward to the coldness that Korea will offer, being cold when you know it’s hot outside is a different thing entirely. It’s not nice. We don’t like it. It’s like when you order something and then it arrives and what the person next to you is eating looks better. Maybe.
It was hot when we got to Chiang Mai. Very hot. Made especially so because of the ice box we’d slept in over night. We were not impressed. The first few guest houses we stopped at were all booked up and so we took what we came next. The room looked a little dingy but beggars and all that stuff. We took it, brushing away a few hairs we found on the mattress and planning to move the next morning. We had the whole day ahead of us, so we set about making plans for the next day. Hilary wanted to take a cooking class and I had seen a mountain biking trip. So we signed up for separate things. I signed up for my biking trip at a guest house near to ours that we had over-looked and had vacancies. This would come in handy later that night. We spent the rest of the day exploring the city. It was nice enough, I suppose. Nothing all that remarkable if you ask me.
After dinner we headed home, got ready for bed and went to settling in. That’s when we found the band-aide. It was until then hidden underneath one of the pillows and it was used. Now, we can handle a few stray hairs, we can take a couple of roaches or ants, we can even deal with large reptiles living in the walls, but we draw the line at used band-aides in the bed. Call us prissy or pampered or what-have-you, but we’ve got our standards. Though we’d paid for the night, we said F this place. We’re out of here and headed over to the aforementioned guest house where I’d signed up for mountain biking. The next day went much better. I can’t say exactly what Hilary’s cooking class was like but I know she enjoyed it and learned to make green curry, som tam, sticky rice with mango, and something else I’m probably forgetting. As for myself, I had one of the best days of the whole trip. Hilary has had to hear about it several times since.
The trip started at around 9am. Now, in the brochure there were pictures of riders in heavy gear, chest protectors, shin guards, gloves, elbow pads and helmets. It struck me as ridiculous that we would be made to wear so much gear, but by the end I was thankful. When I signed up I was offered rides ranging from beginner to expert. I didn’t want to get myself in over my head, but at the same time, I didn’t want to find myself on a leisurely ride through the park. As luck would have it, out of the 6 signed up (3 women, 3 men) there was an Aussie in the group who was in a similar situation. We were all taken to the top of a nearby mountain, outfitted with all the heavy duty gear and told to ride around a bit to get comfortable. Once we were set, the guides badgered the third guy into trying the advanced track we were starting on. At the start the trails split for a ways and then rejoin so that anyone who can’t handle the advanced trail can take it easy. The third guy could not handle it. Not five minutes in I saw him go flying headfirst over the handlebars. He proceeded to do that 5 more times before we met up with the women and he begged off. To be fair, the ride was damned dangerous. We spent a great deal of time riding the breaks down near shear, mud covered, root riddled trail. I was sent off my bike several times as was the Aussie and even our guide. It was great. I was at the point where I was pretty scared, but not so much that it wasn’t enjoyable. Meanwhile, the trail was just about all my technical skills could and some times more. I was filthy and exhausted by the end of the day, and feeling like I’d accomplished something.
The next day we took a minivan up the most twisted road I’ve ever been on to Pai, a small hippy town in the mountains.

Laos Continued

Laos is one of the most beautiful countries we were able to visit and Vang Vieng was probably the most stunning place we stayed. The surrounding landscape looks like someone took the islands from Halong Bay, giant limestone configurations that rise from the earth almost perpendicularly, and transplanted them. In Laos, these very same formations rise out of vast green rice paddies. Spectacular. Just as in Vietnam, these rocks are riddled with holes, some of which are deep enough to be called caves even. We (the Germans, Micha and Mieke and ourselves) had heard all about the different caves to be seen. Some very tall tales none of which we were entirely sure of. So, on our last full day in town, we decided to head for the one rumored to be the biggest, best cave of all, 5 km down a muddy road from Maylyn (where we were staying) and away from town. We had been told there was not only a cave there but a lagoon to swim in. We were excited.

Being four strapping you and healthy adventure-happy travelers, we decided that we should walk it – we’re also frugal currently. It was hot that day my friends. H-O-T hot. Mirage appearance hot. The kind of hot that threatens to dry your eyeballs right out of their sockets. After the first km, my skin was like those perforated hoses that are used for watering. I mean I was sweating like a sweet tooth at a dentist’s office. It took the better part of a couple of hours to get there and when we did… well… there was no lagoon to be found, only a narrow river, more a creek really. There was a small rope swing and shaded bamboo platforms to rest on, but no lagoon.

We had been warned that the trail up to the mouth of the cave would be treacherous and that the flip-flops Hilary and I were wearing probably wouldn’t be sufficient. We dismissed these warnings at the time but found ourselves scrabbling up a near vertical path, more rock climbing than hiking. We did make it. The mouth of the cave was relatively small but once inside, the ceiling rose too maybe 50ft and the room spread out to the size of a respectable cafeteria or ballroom. Just inside, the trail led down to the center of the chamber and on to others. This we learned after. Citing our weakly shod feet and lack of a flashlight, we declined to follow Micha and Mieke into the cave. Instead we navigated our way back down and took a dip.

When Micha and Mieke got back, we decided collectively that the only way to survive our return to Maylyn was to arrange a ride somehow. There had been a tractor and trailer bed thing parked near where we’d paid to see the cave and we figured to hire it, maybe. In actuality, it looked more like a rotor tiller with extended handlebars, but it did a pretty good clip and for a modest price (50,000 kip = $5). We got home safely and without further renal damage. The next day we left for Luang Prabang.

The ride wasn’t so bad despite the incredible amount of curves in the road. I managed to keep my lunch which is always an accomplishment. Once in town, we found a nice guest house right on the water – The Nam Khan, a tributary of the Mekong River. As luck would have it, we were just in time for the start of a three-day longboat racing festival. The festival is called Bun Awk Phansa which means End of the Rains Retreat according to my Lonely Planet – don’t quote me. Hilary and I took a couple in. The races were held on the Mekong. On the first day, each boat held maybe 25 people, but by the last day that number swelled to over 50. It was all very exciting and all the restaurants, permanent and otherwise, were packed with beer swilling Laotians cheering their teams on and singing karaoke. Meanwhile, all the streets near the river were packed with booths selling plastic toys, especially guns, the rebel fighter’s favorite the Kalashnikov to be exact, fake wooden handle and all. There were other cheap trinkets, some clothing and pirate DVDs and CDs too.

Also in town was Laos’ most popular pop rock group (not the monks pictured here)whose name eludes me presently. We learned this from a couple we’d met tubing in Vang Vieng and run into again in Luang Prabang. I don’t recall their names either and Hilary’s not here to ask. I do remember that they were from Portland, were on their honeymoon and we had a lot in common. We forgot to ask for their e-mail addresses before we left. Anyway, the concert was free and out doors, so we headed over en masse. As it turned out, it was sponsored by Carlsberg Brewing which owns Beer Laos, so there was cheap beer to be had along with county fair-like activities – balloon popping with darts for prizes and the such, and a couple of those giant inflatable castles complete with slides inside them. We tried to gain access but were denied. I guys we didn’t fit the height requirements. Isn’t that funny. At one point you’re too small to go on the rides and then later you become too big. We didn’t try the carousel. The concert was okay if you’re into stuff that sounds like Fall Out Boy. Personally I don’t but it was still interesting, at least until it started raining and everyone started rushing for the road.

The next morning Hilary got up very early, before 6am, and went out to greet the monks as they made their daily rounds. Throughout this region, Buddhist monks go out early in the morning to collect donations. The typical gifts change from country to country but rarely consist of money. Here it was rice and these rice-banana-coconut milk fritters steamed in banana leaves. They were delicious. After she returned and dragged me out of bed we left for one of the several different sets of waterfalls. We headed for the largest one. Again, the name is missing from the book and my brain, but it was incredible. Near the entrance is a bear rescue shelter where they have several Asian Black Bears. I didn’t take a picture so imagine a black bear wearing a gigantic fur around its neck, like a balding man’s afro.
(Here’s a link: http://www.wildlife1.org/cms/images/stories/endangered/bears/p-16.jpg)
They also had a tiger. The waterfall its self was a ways up an increasingly washed out trail. It had been raining recently and so the river was gorged. Finally we reached the base of the falls. Micha, Mieke and I opted to take the trail to the top, getting extremely soaked on the way. When we reached it, we found we had 2 choices on our return: either go back the way we came or walk along the very rim of the falls hoping that the wooden rail holds. I’ve never been one for returning the way I came and I suspect Micha and Mieke don’t like it either, so we did it. It wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds because the footing was pretty good and underneath the water was a pretty decent sized ridge to brace your feet against. The way back down on the other side was much less dangerous. The waterfall was spectacular. I think it was the largest we’ve seen. We opted for going back to town instead of on to the next waterfall with Micha and Mieke. I’d had just about enough of riding around in tuktuks and had been slightly carsick on the ride.

There’s not much special to mention about the rest of our time there. We did not visit any of the temples or wats because, well, we’ve seen enough to last us a while. Not to sound ungrateful. We flew out early in the morning and were back in Bangkok before we knew it. It would only be a brief stay, but important.

These are clouds.