Thailand

Going straight from Pakistan to Bangkok everything was a bit of a shock at first - the heat and humidity, gleaming modern buildings, traffic (and what traffic!), farangs (foreigners) walking around in skimpy clothing (bare arms, oh my!), and food galore available on the street (when we left Pakistan, it was the middle of Ramadan, a month-long period of fasting, so we hadn't been able to consume food in public during daylight hours). Somehow, the couple of days we'd planned to spend in Bangkok turned into a week of visiting temples and museums, riding the riverboat taxi, watching free movies on video in the restaurants, and eating! Not exactly a cultural exchange experience, but lots of fun after the challenges of Pakistan. (No one stared at us, either!)

From talking with other travelers, we found out that Laos is now safe, easily accessible, and seems to be almost everyone's favorite place they had traveled in Southeast Asia. While waiting for our visa, we headed off to the island of Koh Chang in the east of Thailand. It's a quiet place, not too touristic, with calm beaches and basic bungalows. Not much to do there other than read; primary exercise activities included walking into the water to cool off and relocating the blanket every half hour as our shade kept moving. A few days to unwind, then back to Bangkok to fly to Cambodia.

After flying back to Bangkok, we hopped on a train and visited two ancient Thai capitals (Ayuthaya and Sukothai) on the way to the north. We have to admit that the ruins were pretty pale by comparison to the Khmer buildings we'd just seen in Cambodia. We then spent a few days in Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city (which is quite full of foreign residents), and enjoyed a Thai cooking class as well as the annual Flower Festival Parade, complete with floats and beauty queens. We even caught a showing of Titanic, which seems to be as popular in Thailand as it apparently is back home (but tickets are a bargain at $1.40).

Our main purpose in heading north was to head out on a trek to visit the more mountainous area where the hill tribes live. We decided on a 5 day trek instead of the more popular 3 day trip in order to get further away from the crowds. It turned out to be a lot more effort than we expected with 5-6 hours of trekking in hot weather at a pretty fast pace (our hellish trekking guide seemed bent on reaching the next destination in a hurry, though he never seemed too quick to start up after a long lunch break). The terrain was far more beautiful than we'd expected - forests with tall teak trees, shady bamboo thickets, clear mountain streams with icy waterfalls, and poppy fields (those aren't grown just for looks, but rather for the opium that is harvested from their pods). Too bad we were hiking to fast to fully appreciate the natural beauty around us. Despite our poor choice of a guide, we did have good luck in selecting our trekking mates, a very nice young Australian couple who are bicycling around Southeast Asia (they did leave the bikes behind for the trek to travel on foot). We spend our nights in various villages, staying in family homes. None of us slept very soundly or long, because the bamboo floors were hard and the nights were very cold. And of course you've got your friendly household roosters crowing starting from about 4 am, and then there's the pigs…

Unfortunately, we didn't have as much interaction with the hill tribe people we visited as we had expected and hoped. I'm not sure it we were all too shy, or if our trekking guide picked homes where the people had already seen a lot of trekkers and weren't interested in getting to know more of us. The last night was a particularly poor choice of accommodation, because it turned out to be the local opium-smoking center for the village, and people kept coming into the house and smoking opium in the corner of the building until late hours. We weren't comfortable with this activity, but didn't know what to do about it, so we put the blankets over our heads and tried to get some rest. On the fifth day, we arrived at the very small town of Suppong, where we stayed for the night, The next day, we headed to a nearby cave with our Australian friends Bronwyn and Darren. Cave Lod, or Spirit Cave, is a set of three large caverns complete with a river and amazing limestone formations that look like elephants, teeth, crocodiles, and other interesting shapes. After a couple of days in the quiet town of Mae Hong Song, visiting a few temples and just walking around, we headed back to Chiang Mai. In a few days, we'll leave to cross over into Laos.

Once over the Laos-Thailand border, we took an overnight train and an overnight bus to arrive at the beautiful beach of Ao Nag, on the southwest coast of Thailand. At first it was disappointing because it is fairly developed (I mean there are cars, normal restaurants catering to tourists and plenty of dive shops), but once we saw the scenery we were able to forgive. Along the coast you see many steep limestone cliffs rising straight out of the water with white sand beaches in between, all bordered by aqua clear water. We took a few boat trips to nearby islands where we saw some amazing coral and colored fish(only snorkeling - we may take a dive course later on in Indonesia). Then we headed to Ko Phi Phi, where we enjoyed more beautiful scenery - above and below the water. The highlight there was probably the shark we saw while snorkeling. It was really exciting diving under and swimming alongside it and it was a beautiful rose, purple color. Okay. so the shark was only a couple of feet long and we had been told they're totally safe, but it looked big enough when you're only a few feet away. Despite the lovely views, our visit was almost completely devoid of cultural experiences, and we decided to head to Indonesia a few days earlier. Actually, it's not fair to say there was no cultural aspect - I'm sure southern Thailand is an excellent place to practice your German! And it you're into watching topless foreign ladies sunburning on the beach, well, then it's the place to be.

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