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Friends and On The Road
Saturday, September 13, 2008, 10:21
Manu, my friend from halls, and her friend Carolin visited for a couple of days last week. It was really cool to have visitors and I took them out to Erawan waterfall. I had put my bike in for one last service, so we hired scooters and the journey there was really fun - it's a beautiful road and there are mountains and scenery all the way. The way back however was a little bit of a nightmare - it gets dark very quickly in Thailand and the darkness brought rain. Lots of rain. I impressed Manu and Carolin with my Thai by pulling in to a garage and getting the lights on the scooter fixed, which made the journey safer! We finally made it home and had a well deserved beer.Quick on Manu's heels, Rick and Dustin, my mates from Brighton arrived. We did the same kind of things and Erawan got our business again. We went out kayaking the next day and then the lads left for Ko Samui. That's where the adventure began for me...
I have sold the bike to a guy down on Ko Lanta. It's a good 1000km from Kanchanaburi and a bit too far to ride. You can take bikes on the train so after negotiating the train strike it turned out I needed to make a 100km trip to Ratchaburi and then get the train down to Trang. Ko Lanta is 100km at the other end.
I am currently in Ratchaburi in the loudest internet cafe in the world, jam-packed with Thai teenagers playing LAN games. It's an experience! It has been raining all day and the trip from Kanch to Ratch was not the most pleasant, but it was fun! I got pulled by the fuzz and played the dumb foreigner - it's benificial to learn when to show off with the Thai and when to just act the Englishman. I was safely on my way (with no fines!) after spending 20 minutes comparing Thai Police ID cards with my driving license, and having them all laughing at my passport photo.
I pulled into Ratch and proceeded to give myself and the motorbike a shower with a bottle of water and a pack of tissues, much to the bemusement of the local motorbike taxi posse. I asked them where to get food and they pointed to a restaurant across the road. It was huge when I got inside and I was the only one there so I had five waitresses all fussing over me. I'm now waiting for the train at 2037 having arrived a little bit early (4pm), but it's better safe than sorry.
Once I hand over the bike tomorrow I'm going to meet Rick in Ko Samui and make my way back up when they leave on the 22nd.
Add comment Lao PDR
Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 10:08 -
If I'm totally honest I only went to Laos to renew my visa for Thailand. Cambodia was a bit of a disappointment for me and I wasn't expecting much better from Laos. I went with my friend Dew who has just quit her job here in Kanchanaburi, so she had some free time. We travelled to Nong Khai from Bangkok overnight, but the train had no sleeper carriage beds available, so we had to buy seats. It was a pretty uncomfortable journey, but eventually, some 11 hours later, we pulled into Nong Khai station at 05:05. Then the usual Tuk-Tuk driver tricks started. It doesn't matter what you ask them, they will take you to whatever company pays them commission. When you persuade them to take you where you want to go, they will pretend they have no change for 100B if the price is 80B. I thought that having Dew there would help, but they tried all the same tricks and she still had to argue with them for a good price and change.Anyway the guesthouse we eventually checked into, the Khiang Khong, was 350B a night (about 5 pounds) and it was pretty good. We could see the Mekong from the balcony. There had been flooding there and more was expected, the Mekong was really high and some structures on the banks were already underwater. A lot of the businesses in town had sandbags layered outside and some had even built temporary breeze block walls around the front of their shops that you had to step over to get in.
Nong Khai is very small, but as a border town for Laos it does have quite a lively tourist area. Down by the river there are some amazing restaurants - we ate in a Vietnamese restaurant called 'Daeng'. I would never have tried it had I been on my own, but Dew had eaten Vietnamese food before and persuaded me that there would be lots of vegetarian food. She was right! We ordered a selection of vegetables, noodles and sauces and made them into little parcels using flat rice noodles that looked like lasagne layers. It was really nice and we watched the sun set over Laos on the opposite bank. After dark the place looked really cool with paper lanterns everywhere.
The next day, we sorted out Dew's border pass. The ASEAN nations have an agreement to allow easy movement of their citizens between other ASEAN countries. Dew has not got a passport, but she could travel on her Thai ID card with a border pass. She got a three day entry for about 50p at the Nong Khai town hall.
We crossed the 'Friendship Bridge' by bus after going through Thai border control. They won't let you walk across the bridge, but the bus is only 15B. On the opposite side I had to sort out my 'Visa on Arrival'. I thought it was going to be difficult, Laos is a communist regime, officially named the Lao People's Democratic Republic and is a fairly repressed nation in terms of political freedom. It turned out to be very easy - the border guards were friendly and it was no hassle at all to get in.
To be continued...
An Open Letter to the Tuk-Tuk Drivers of Asia
Tuesday, August 26, 2008, 03:46 -
Dear Sirs,Please rest assured that if I ever need either a taxi ride, smokey-smokey or 'a lady', I will not hesitate to ask you. Basically, my point is, you don't need to ask me any more.
Thanks,
Michael
Cambodia
Thursday, August 07, 2008, 13:36
I finally sorted out and uploaded some photos from Cambodia. Have a look here.
This is Angkor Wat at dawn.
H5N1
Thursday, July 31, 2008, 14:18 -
A funny story from Phnom Penh that I forgot about until today...I was sitting downstairs in the guesthouse, enjoying a morning omelette with onions, when a girl asked to sit at my table. Her name was Jenny, she was American and she was in a similar situation to me: she lived in Indonesia and was on holiday in Cambodia for a while. We got chatting and it turned out she worked for the U.N. and was an avian flu researcher in Indonesia. She talked about how there is still a very real threat of a pandemic and how poorly the reporting system worked in Indonesia. The guesthouse dining area was pretty small, which is why Jenny needed to sit at my table in the first place, and I could see most of the people in the place. I was facing in and Jenny was facing out. She was a good talker and I could see people were half-listening to our conversation. Anyway, after explaining all about how bad the situation is, how easily H5N1 spreads, how there could be an outbreak at any given moment and that they wear full chemical warfare suits to investigate cases, she sneezes really loudly, sniffs and says 'I think I'm coming down with the flu'. You could have heard a pin drop in the place, everyone's head snapped round to look at us and one guy dropped his fork. Jenny never saw any of this because she was facing the wrong way and at that moment her taxi arrived. She said goodbye and left. I never saw her again, but I'll always remember her just for the looks on the other diner's faces... It was a thing of beauty.
