Author: matt

Well I’m still here in Pai, I only awoke at 9:30am after a large one with Zwi the Israeli in a club last night, so it seemed easier to stay here. We drove the 50 Km to Tham Lod cave, a lovely drive on a windy mountain road where some of the hairpins don’t even have potholes. Unfortunately only one of the three chambers in the cave was open due to the wet season, but it was still quite good. You can only even get into this one by raft (which was actually 4 large pieces of bamboo tied together with string). On the way back we scrambled up a cliff to a coffin cave, there are many of these in this area, which have these very long coffins in them made by hacking outside the inside of a tree trunk. They’re of unknown age and origin.

We also stopped off at Sappong for some lunch, a nice little spot but very quiet at the moment, as in the guesthouse we ate at only had 3 guests in September! I was giong to stay there but I think I’ll pass on that and head straight for Mae Hong Son tomorrow, if I actually wake up in time.

The town was decidedly dead last night, so in the end I went to a shop and bought 12 candles, 12 mosquito coils, 10 boxes of matches and 2 Chang beers for about 1 pound 75, and had a seance at my cottage. Over breakfast today I bumped into an Israeli bloke I met in Muang Noi Neua in Laos, so together we attempted to make our intrepid adventure to the other falls. After driving down a dirt track so narrow that both feet were clipping each side in places, we quickly discovered there wasn’t actually a trail, and you’re forced to wade up the river. After about 40 minutes of this we decided to head back and check the details with anyone we could find that speaks English. The girl working in my guesthouse came to the rescue, she said “Ah, yes. There is no trail, you have to hike up the river for 4 hours – it’s better to go with a guide”.

Unperturbed, we headed towards another waterfall, once more having to drive 4 Km down deeply rutted dirt tracks, and then a simple 150m hike which turned into about 400m of hanging onto steep, slippery earth slopes about 50 feet above the rocks, trying to make it to the top. We got there in the end, neither of us dying in the process, only to discover the real track on the way down, which again leads you to wade up the falls themselves, but in somewhat more safety. The only slight snag is that the water seemed to be full of sewage, which is a little strange.

On finally somehow getting back to the bikes, the Israeli (who’s called Syri or something like that) discovers that him and his key have parted company somewhere, so I have to pillion him all the way back to town and back again once he’s obtained a replacement. I’m not sure who was shitting himself more, him or me.

Sappong tomorrow, probably..

Today I’ve been out of town, first to some hot springs which were in a nice setting, but that’s about all you can say. Apparently you can bathe in them, but I couldn’t see anywhere appealing enough to want to do it. Then I went to a Wat on the top of a hill which was hilarious. I was the only tourist there, and the resident monk (still wearing his bed sheet) was sitting there listening to The Eagles, drinking copious amounts of coffee and smoking a spliff! He told me he has to meditate for an hour in the morning and another in the evening or something, so the rest of the day is for him to chill out.

This afternoon I went to a waterfall, half of the fun being to get there as it was down a dirt track heavily rutted by rainwater. On the way you pass through several tribal villages, I must have been offered opium about 15 times on the way, mostly by mothers carrying their infants, but then it is their major source of income I suppose. The falls were also in a nice spot with a pool to swim in at the base. Tomorrow I think I’ll find some other waterfalls which are a few hours trek, but the photos I’ve seen make it look worthwhile.

I bumped into Pete last night, a fella I’ve seen several times on the Laos circuit. Of course we went for a beer, a disaster waiting to happen. We ended up in some club called Bubbles, then at a night stall serving beer until who knows what time. I woke at 11am with my bus leaving at 12:30, but still made it, including returning the motorbike with only a few near-misses on the way. Halfway along the route to Pai I see Pete on the roadside who was also travelling to Pai on a dirtbike. Now I’ve just bumped into him again in town, he says it was a nightmare with the hangover he had. So of course, tonight we’re going for a beer…

Pai appears to be a very pleasant little town, I’ve got myself an A frame cottage on the riverside in a nice, leafy guesthouse complex. Time for a massage and to find some breakfast (not bad going, as it’s 19:40 at the moment)

Fish and chips became steak and chips but at least the idea was sound. My Honda Dream sputtered to the top of Doi Suthep today, at 1676 metres the tallest place around here. Perched right on the top is Wat Pra That, giving an impressive overlook of the city. You’re supposed to pay 30 baht to go in (foreigners only) but “somehow” I sneaked in a side entrance without paying. It’s a bit of a con on the part of the monks if you ask me, and they insist that you cover you arms and legs whilst they’re allowed to parade around wearing only a sheet that they accidentally washed with granny’s red cardigan, so sod ’em.

The waterfall people wanted 200 baht so I snorted in disgust and sped off. You can buy 5.714285 large bottles of Chang for that money! Tomorrow I’ll leave for Pai, working my way around and back here in time for a train I’ve booked to Bangkok on 10th Oct.

There’s a fantastic sign on the monitor in here – “Don’t open naked web too much. It will make every computer slow”. Pure class…

I hit a few too many Chang beers last night which has wiped out today, having woken at 9:30 with the TV and lights on (again) so tomorrow I’ll probably go and check out the waterfalls near here, then leave town the next day, first to Pai I expect.

I’ve discovered that the cables on my TV are long enough to reach it out to my veranda, so that is my appointment for this evening after I’ve sated the craving I have today for fish and chips!

After a nice smooth flight yesterday I am back in the land of the ladyboy, in Chiang Mai to be precise, and what a great city it appears to be! It’s nice to be back in civilisation after the last couple of weeks I have to say, with a nice comfy bed instead of sleeping on a board, nice quiet aircon instead of a 4:30am cockerel rude awakening, and TV with movie channels. I’m such a spoilt brat! I’ve found a great place to stay right in the centre of town, but it’s in a courtyard setting and so nice and quiet with a veranda to sit on whilst sipping your Chang beer and reading the paper. This internet place has a massage parlour upstairs, you pay 100 baht for a one-hour Thai massage and get one hour internet free, now that’s what I call a good deal!

I think I’ve set my final itinerary now, I’ll spend another day or two here, then make a fairly stress-free loop to the north west of here through some remote tribal areas for trekking and scenery and so on, return here for a few more days then head down to Pattaya for the final few days of sleaze before returning home. The night train from here connects nicely with the Pattaya train from Bangkok and the return train nicely with the flight, so by doing this I can avoid having to spend more time in Bangkok.

Now to go and find out what entertainment there is on offer here…

I made my way to Kuang Si waterfall yesterday, a very beautiful spot indeed with an equally beautiful fall. Here you can hike up one side of the waterfall, with various diversions en route allowing you to stand on ledges within the fall itself. Signs warn you not to slip and fall in. Once at the top you can walk across the top of the fall itself, hanging on to the twigs nailed to trees forming handrails right on the crest. You can gingerly lean over these and look down the fall itself! Then you can scramble down the other side again, and at the bottom you can wade into the knee-deep pool at the base, attempting to get as close to the water as possible. You can only get within about 20 feet as then the spray and wind from the gushing water are so great you can’t physically get any nearer and it feels like you’re standing in a force 11 storm.

From my best estimation my guesthouse here was the 100th place of accommodation for me on the trip so far! Now I’m leaving in a few hours now for Chiang Mai, meanwhile to work out how to run down my pile of worthless Kip before I leave – no money changer in or out of the country will change them to anything else. A few beers by the river seems like the best option.

A Buddhist monk with all the gear on just stopped by to ask me how to spell “abroad”. There are a load of them in here at the moment, doing their English homework presumably!

Amazingly the Nong Khiaw bus was only 30 minutes late and remarkably smooth, and I connected with a boat to Muang Ngoi Neua very quickly as well. The latter is a river village, isolated but for the river, with no roads, electricity, telephones or internet cafes! But it was beautiful and I stayed 3 nights in the end in a cabin literally on the riverbank, for about 45p a night. There were 4 cabins in the guesthouse but mine was numbered 6, one night we asked Mama why this was and she explained that the other two are probably in Cambodia or Vietnam by now, since the wet season has sent them on their way down the Mekong! You walk from one end of the village to the other in five minutes and quickly get to know the other 15 or so travellers in town at any one time. I mostly hung out with the Italian brother and sister and German guy that arrived on the same boat as me.

One day we hiked to a cave, an adventure in itself as you’re nearly up to your knees in mud at some points. Nice cave though, you wade in above your waist to a point where it gets too deep and you can only look back in to the gloomy distance with your torchlight. Beyond this was a second cave down an even worse path, myself and Pascal tried to find it in vein, Pascal losing a shoe in the mud for a while. He found it, only later to let it float off down the river. On the path you meet locals from other nearby villages carrying veg and produce – these paths are their ONLY way to get around! Next day we chartered a boat to a point on the river where you then trek for an hour through beautiful scenery to a cascaded waterfall, lovely to sit in for 5 minutes before you freeze your nads off.

Other than that it was very much a chilling place, enjoying Mama’s cooking (she has a menu but there’s not much need – the only meat they have depends on which animal they killed that day) and Beerlao aplenty. This was necessary to try and stay asleep beyond 4:30 am when the pigs, cockerels, cats on heat etc. start realising that day is going to break, but was not really successful. Yesterday I headed back to Luang Prabang, another fairly easy journey except this time it was in the back of a sometimes rammed pickup truck (with the obligatory chickens and ducks under your feet). Today’s been lazy, just checking out the palace here and a couple of the Wats up on a hill overlooking town.

I’ve booked a flight to Chiang Mai with Lao Aviation on Sunday, lucky it goes that day as my Laos visa expires then. In the travel agent whilst waiting I idly watch the film playing on the PC of the bloke serving me. He catches me looking and says he enjoys a good blockbuster. I mention Hollywood and he asks me what it means – he’s heard of it but no idea what it actually is. I explained to him that it was a region of LA where the film studios are and lots of stars live, etc. etc. He was fascinated by this and it brings home what a different planet people live on out here really.

Tomorrow I’m aiming to find some waterfalls a little way out of town and then hit the fabulous night markets here, it’s about time to start buying useless presents for people. Any special requests should be filed before tomorrow 🙂

As I half expected things did work out the next day. With a little effort I found the other handful of Westerners that were in town that day, and the one guesthouse that was running a trip. The Plain of Jars is a fair spectacle, not least because of the lines of pegs that mark the path you have to stay to in order to keep away from the unexploded bombs! They are still clearing the area, 30 years or more after the mines and bombs were laid, and each day they go out they find an average of two pieces. The Jars are these huge sandstone vessels created up to 4,000 years ago and nobody knows why. The largest weighs 6 tons. We also got taken to a yard where all the collected artillery and plane parts etc. are piled up just like a car scrap yard, with a team of people sifting through everything trying to defuse anything that needs defusing before reclaiming the metals. Finally we went to a village which has a lot of buildings constructed partly from cluster bomb shells and so on, one place has a soup ladle made from the fuselage of an American bomber plane.

That night some of us were having dinner and watched a pick up truck glide gently into a ditch right outside the restaurant. Luckily for me my food just arrived then, but the others went out and spent a good 15 minutes trying to push him out. It was being driven by a 16 year old boy, who was pissed as a fart, as soon as they got him out he rolled backwards, very slowly for 20 yards before reversing into another ditch. Fortunately he got himself out of that one and moved on, but I doubt how far he got!

Today I’ve headed over to Luang Prabang, a colonial style town with a lot to see and do. The journey here was hell to say the least, first our bus stops at some kind of checkpoint for about an hour, we’ve no idea why. Then after hours of winding mountains and ascents and descents up to 2000 metres or so, we get to within 25 Km of the destination when a tyre blows. The driver jacks up the bus and removes the 6 nuts holding the wheel on (from the 8 that there should have been!) and gets down the spare. The spare had no tread whatsoever and an 8-inch gash in the sidewall, right through to the innertube, but somehow it stayed intact long enough to get us there.

Riding in a tuk tuk from the bus station into town though, things took a grim turn for the worse. I almost wasn’t going to blog this, but well it happened so… We stop behind some stationary vehicles, and looking ahead see a body in the road with the brain just beside it, only about 10 yards in front of us behind about 3 vehicles, so it must have happened within a minute of us getting there. About another minute later some people drag the body from the road out of the way, without waiting for the police or anything of course, and we carry on. Our tuk tuk wheel (as did all the vehicles I think) goes straight over the brain which they left in the road, for sure one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever witnessed in my life. Many of the locals standing at the scene were laughing and joking which was quite remarkable, but I think they just don’t value life all that much out here. Our driver told us he’d been on a motorbike and we think hit a tuk tuk or car.

Tomorrow morning I’ll probably push straight on up north to Nong Khiaw and spend two or three days before heading back to Luang Prabang to see it properly before flying to Thailand.