Days 24 and 25 - Wed Nov 26 and Thurs Nov 27 - Hiking at Khao Yai National Park

Our guide's name is Pan, which is just so perfect. He demystifies the trail for us in broken, but helpful, English - what elephants eat, where their footprints are, what sounds we are hearing. When we see two bugs wrestling against a tree, he says "Marriage season," and laughs.

Our Pan isn't a pan-pipe-playing satyr - he's a 20-something park ranger in leech socks who has worked at Khao Yai ("cow y-eye", rhymes with "my") National Park for about 7 years and he loves the place. Our 8 km hike starts off well-marked and with only one path, but as we walk deeper into the forest, the path gets more and more tangled with animal trails. It could be tricky to figure out, which is why we've hired him for the afternoon. Pan never stops at a fork in the road and thinks "this way or that way?" He's walked these trails so many times that when faced with more than one choice he chooses the right one with as little hesitation as a schoolkid at the mall who knows which escalator is the quickest route to Gap.

The trail is deserted and we don't run into anyone, which was the plan. Our guesthouse/"resort" specializes in group tours of the park - they go from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm, and include views of wild elephants at salt licks, and a sunset view of millions of bats leaving their cave and heading out to the woods for dinner. And a 4 km hike.

The idea of a 4 km hike offends Pierre ("I didn't come all this way to do a 4km hike. That's like an hour at most, unless you're with slow people...") as does the fact that our resort is aggressive in it's sales pitch. The Internet is 80 baht an hour, but it's free for guests that take a tour. You're not taking a tour? Well, then the "free" ride we gave you from the bus station is 200 baht. Not taking a tour? Why not why not why not?

Confrontation in Thailand is a big no-no - a cultural minefield and all the guidebook tips say to keep polite and smile. So I use friendly confusion as my weapon of choice: "Oh no, thank you, we're fine on our own, but thank you for offering again - that's so nice of you." The thank you and the genuine smile are key - ingrained politeness triggers a "you're welcome" and a smile, and the sales pitch is dropped for the moment.

Internally, however, we regress into stubborn kids. We're second-class guests without the tour? Then we won't spend any money here except rent. So we buy our breakfast at 7-11 (bread, jam and yoghurt), take dinners at a restaurant across the road (the lovely Gecko Bar), find alternate ways in and out of town, and give up Internet for a few days.

The decision not to take the tour also means that we have to find our own wheels which requires a bus ride to town (20 minutes away; about a 40 baht/$1.10 fare, flagged down for us courtesy of some friendly security guards down the road) followed by several hours of walking the main strip of Pak Chong searching for a scooter rental. In spite of the confusing helpfulness and redirections of the people we meet (including a few officers at the police station who try to help us out) we don't locate the rental place until after closing.

On the ride home and over dinner at the Gecko Bar, we debate whether we'll be reduced to taking the group tour with the resort or if we'll just skip the park and leave the next day. By fluke, the waitress has a boyfriend (a teacher from Chicago) who has a scooter he's willing to rent us, and our transportation problems are solved.

Like most mountains in Thailand that we've seen, Khao Yai rises up out of the flat landscape suddenly, without the preamble of foothills. Though I have experience driving a scooter (automatic), and so am voted today's driver, the scooter we have today is a standard and gearshifting involves a bit of a learning curve. While chugging up one particularly steep and curvy hill (about 45 degrees) I accidentally learn how to pop a wheelie at 10 km per hour: Gear down to 1st gear without taking your hand fully off the gas, and make sure you have a heavy weight (ie. Pierre) behind you on the seat. Pierre's elbow and my ass take the brunt of it, and we bang up the tail light (which we feel very bad about), but a nice ranger patches Pierre up and the rest of the trip goes smoothly.

This nice ranger is one of about 110 rangers in the park, if I understand Pan correctly. Most days, about 70 of them are out and about in the park , living in lookouts and walking trails keeping an eye out for poachers. Another 40 stay in the centre of the park doing other work, including being available for hire for hikes, which is how we meet Pan.

The pace at first is slow, and I feel bad for Pierre, who's hoping for more than a stroll through the woods. But by the end of the trail (3.5 hours) Pan's saunter feels pretty brisk. The forest changes every kilometer or so, from flat an sparse to steep and dense, from deciduous trees to bamboo and back again.



Along the trail Pan points out evidence of Thai and Cambodian tree poachers, who chip away at the trunks of a certain type of tree (probably Aquilaria) used in perfume and incense. Park rangers catch poachers from time to time, either bringing the suspect (and the woodchips) back to the headquarters for charges, or burning the poached goods if the culprit runs away. We pass one of these poach-fires, which consists of a melted green tent, a plastic carrying bag like the sacks used for bulk rice, and handfuls of charred woodchips. Pan figures it's about a month old.

Pan points out the sound of gibbons singing in the distance, places where elephants have been eating the rattan vines and climbing steep hills, where animals have been scratching themselves against trees, termite nests...


...as well as the bodhi, cinnamon and rubber trees that line the trail.

(A cinnamon stump:)

(a Bodhi tree, I think:)
I hadn't expected that elephants could maneouver in such a hilly and heavily forested place but apparently they're pretty agile.

The forest has gibbons, monkeys, gaurs (huge wild cattle), cobras, wild elephants, bears, and tigers though they're all mostly nocturnal and the guidebook says you have to be pretty lucky to catch a glimpse of most of them. ("I don't know if I'd feel so lucky seeing a tiger," says Pierre at one point during the walk.) We see wild chickens on our walk, and get a decent look at them through the bushes before they fly off. Pan beams. "Lucky you see," he says. "Very lucky day."

We're not so lucky with other animals on the trail, except for monkeys. Monkeys are less rare, and pretty cheeky. At the trail's end is the Nam Tok Haew Suwat waterfall, most famous for it's appearance in The Beach:


The parking lot is peppered with monkeys climbing on parked vehicles and picking through garbage cans. A few swing by us as we sit next to the road, waiting to hitch a ride back to park headquarters, and Pan shoos them away. (No monkey pics this time, sorry.)


The ride back to the park headquarters is in the open back of a pickup truck courtesy of other visitors at the park. (Our guide fee apparently includes Pan's ride-hitching thumb.) The ladies who are driving pass back bottled water and prawn-flavoured chips for us to snack on during the ride. Pierre and Pan spot a bear sleeping up a tree and we see a few tiny barking deer eating along the roadside in places where it's grassy and open.

At HQ, we say goodbye to Pan and grab a bite to eat. On our drive back to the resort, we slalom through the inevitable troupes of monkeys lounging on the roads, and trigger a bit of a feeding frenzy at one rest stop when Pierre rustles a plastic bag while opening a snack for himself: a troupe of monkeys come running from 30 feet away like housecats that have just heard an electric can opener. They eventually realize that our arm waving and footstamping mean "no", get bored and decide to go try their luck with some cars that have just pulled into the parking lot.

Further down the road, a group of cars has stopped to watch some wild elephants walk through a ravine below, but the animals are gone by the time we park and walk over. We're not too concerned about seeing elephants (or not seeing them) so we head off home to beat the dusk, weaving our way through lazy monkeys and elephant droppings along the way.

photo credits: all P

Day 23 - Tue, Nov 25 - Addendum (by Pierre), or It Pays to Pay Attention

I remember learning to drive with my father. There were some hairy moments, like when I tried to take a turn off the highway at the last moment and quite a bit too fast, and there were some cool moments, like when I'd help him jump start off a dead battery. I never did memorize that latter procedure through those lessons, but I always thought it would be good to know. Regardless, I'd never needed it, so I ended up getting through life without the knowledge until sometime not too long ago when I read, inadvertently, the theory behind the process. Again, I thought to myself: "that would be handy to know..."

So, as Dianna has previously mentioned, to get around Phanom Rung we rented a UK-style manual truck without power steering. Everything was fine until one particularly bendy hill where I didn't downshft quickly enough and stalled the engine, which isn't so bad by itself, so long as it starts again, which it didn't. There I am, thinking about how screwed we are to be stalled on a hill with nobody around who speaks English, not to mention around at all. My next though is "I don't even know how to jump start this thing", but I quickly amend to think "No wait, yes I do know how to jump start this thing." I then proceed to do the following (and hope I've remembered correctly) :

1. turn the key to just before ignition
2. hold down the clutch, making sure the transmission is in first gear
3. get the vehicle rolling to a decent speed (just a few kph will do - good thing we were just at the top of a downward slope at the time)
4. release the clutch slowly, while turning the key to ignition

note: you can also get it rolling in neutral and invert steps 2 and 3. Should also work on any vehicle with manual tranny.

To my great relief and excitement, it works and I feel awesome for having dredged the whole thing from memory and give myself a pat on the back for getting it right on the first try. In all fairness, it's not exactly rocket science, but it was pretty satisfying. Maybe it will help someone reading this sometime. Never hurts to be prepared.

Days 22 and 23 - Mon Nov 24 and Tue Nov 25 - Nang Rong

The trip from Phitsanulok to Nang Rong is about 8 hours long and we arrive late on Day 22. The guide book has no map at all for the city so we have no idea where anything is, but a nice man at the information draws us a map of how to walk to our guest house, the Honey Inn.

Over dinner at a roadside food stall, we decide to walk to another guesthouse and book it for the next night (if we like the looks of it) - the Honey Inn, it seems, has changed owners since it was last reviewed for the guidebook and it's pretty ramshackle (at least our room is). But, before we walk over to the P. California Guesthouse to check it out, we have a date with a hot chili: Pierre accidentally manages to get a julienned papaya from his papaya salad (doused in super hot chili oil) under the splash-guard of his glasses. We set up an impromptu eye flush station with a bottle of drinking water, and after 5 or 6 flushes, we're good to go.

The other guesthouse we see that night is exactly what we're looking for, so we arrange to go back the next morning to drop off our stuff and pick up a rental for the day. We decide to go with a truck (a standard with non-power steering) for our first rental, rather than a scooter.

The roads run opposite here to Canada, UK-style I guess you could say, so my key job in the rumble seat is to remind Pierre to keep left after making turns, and to say "500 baht" in Thai to the gas attendant when we fill up (and then "100 baht" again later when we drive back after a few minutes to buy a bit more, just in case.)

Our goal today is to hit a couple of key ruins that you can't easily reach without your own wheels. Our host has set us up with a homemade map of the area (there aren't many official ones, it seems) and has recommended taking the back roads, so we do. We pass a lot of scenic rice fields in mid-harvest, and drive over lots and lots of potholes - most are empty, while others are filled with hay (not so effective). Still, the backroads have some great views.

The first place we hit is Wat Kao Angkhan ("watt cow ANG can") - it's pretty deserted on this particular Monday, with only a bunch of stray/temple dogs hanging around the grounds and a huge reclining Buddha statue:

Next, we hit Prasat Meung Tam ("Meung" sounds like a cross between the "u" in "mung" and the "oo" in "book"). It's my favourite temple of the day. We're fairly close to the Cambodian border history-wise (about 80 km) so the architecture is more Cambodian/Khmer than Thai, and gives us a good idea of what we'll see on the Cambodia portion of the trip. The stone used to build this temple is surprisingly colourful, and in general the place is very well-restored:

A group of young monks pop in for a visit, which adds a splash of colour to the scene:

They're young and full of beans, punching each other in the shoulders, hopping up and down stairs and laughing like teenage boys on a school trip, which is what they are.

Later, we drive up to Phanom Rung ("pa-NOM rung") which is The Temple To See in the area. It sits on top of an extinct volcano which, after 900,000 years looks like a tall hill, and not at all like the volcano I had pictured. (Pierre would like to add here that a satellite picture of the area that we see later makes the former volcano-ness of the mountain/hill much more obvious.)

At Phanom Rung I have a Canadian moment as I imagine a Rick Mercer man-on-the-street interview skit where he drums up support for a petition to protect a volcano in danger of extinction...

The Phanom Rung complex has a long promenade leading up to the temple:

...and inside are the restored ruins:

Everythere, there are signs like this one ("please don't sit"):


Please don't sit on the 1000-year-old statue's back. Please don't sit on the 1000-year-old railing. Please don't sit on Buddha's lap. There's a certain polite exasperation in the endless "please don't sit" signs we run into, not only here but at all of the other historic sites we've visited here in thailand. Please stop sitting on our history.

photo credits: D, D, D, D, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, D

Day 21 - Sun Nov 23 - Phitsanulok, or "Get me the hell out of here"

I'm sure it's a lovely place, this Phitsanulok (pits-a-NOO-luck). I'm sure I arrived in the wrong frame of mind (after a 9-hour-was-supposed-to-be-7-hour bus ride with no food stops). I'm sure the guesthouse clerk didn't mean to be rude and difficult, the mosquitos didn't mean to take over our room and that our sink didn't mean to be out on our "balcony" with the rest of the mosquitos instead of in our bathroom. I'm sure everything would have improved upon acquaintance (the town's bird exhibit sounded interesting), but I'm not impressed at all and didn't want to waste any time in this city. We (it wasn't just me) spent our evening figuring out where to go the next day in order to get far away from this city.

Let's blame it on the fact that we've broken our city-rural-city-rural pattern and miscalculated by making Phitsanulok our stopover on our way to the east. We remedy that quickly and head off early on Day 22 for a two day wat-stop before heading over to the Khao Yai National Park in the east.

We only snag one pic here, our tuk-tuk trip on the way to the bus station:


Photo credits: D

Days 19 to 21 - Fri Nov 21 to Sun Nov 23 - Chiang Rai - We came, we saw, we bought books

...We do slightly more than that, but not by much.

A priority for me is to get another book to carry me through the next week or two. (A book lasting me "a week or two" means I'm rationing it out to myself, ie. 20 pages a day, and if I feel I need to read more, I have to re-read what I've already read. Otherwise, I could easily disappear into book after book.) Pierre still seems to be content with the guide book as his only reading material.

Again, in Chiang Rai (sounds like "Chang Rye") we decide not to do any wats, and to instead check out the Hilltribe Museum. Mountain trekking is big business in many parts of Thailad, and one of the things almost all ads tout is Hilltribe Trekking - part of your walk includes "dropping in" on one or several hilltribes.

We aren't comfortable with the idea of this, especially since it isn't entirely clear whether or not these visits are really welcomed or of any real benefit to the tribes that get visited. The museum is our way around this dilemma.

Very good exhibit,and very educational - it covers the 6 main hilltribes of Thailand and includes a lot of pros and cons of hilltribe tourism. As suspected, hilltribes often get little from trek visits (ie/no share in the profits) and so their only choice is to hound tourists to buy their crafts.

One of the most disturbing factoids is about the "Long Neck Karen" (kuh-REN) women that appear in so many postcards here (they have the metal rings on their necks and arms):
"...a businessman has imported them for the sole purpose of tourism. The Long Neck Karen women who are living in these virtual human zoo's are seldom if [ever] allowed to leave the premises. The Hilltribe Museum objects to this exploitative kind of tourism." (<- quote from one of the museum posters)

There's one organization that has commuity-based tourism - the Ban Lorcha Project via an office called Population and Community Development Association (PDA). The PDA has done a number of projects in Thailand over the past few decades, one of which is their line of restaurants with the dubious name of "Cabbages and Condoms"; it's attention grabbing, as is their logo: "Our food is guaranteed not to cause pregnancy". Originally, they focused a lot on family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention, but now they are working to increase food security for people and "to make cabbage as easy to get as condoms."

The decor at the restaurant includes a 5'5" Santa Claus whose outfit, beard and hair consists of hundreds of unrolled red and white condoms (sorry, no pic).

After dinner, we stumble across a Saturday Walking Street night market, complete with breakdancers:

...and lovely lamps:


Before checking out, we get a picture of the view from our balcony, because during our stay it made us laugh (in a good way) every time we saw it:

photo credits: P, D, P, D

Days 16 to 19 - Tue Nov 18 to Fri Nov 21 - Chiang Dao

Our pattern so far on the trip is city-country-city, which seems to work for us, so we continue the trend by stopping off in the small town of Chiang Dao on our way up to Chiang Rai in the North.

When we arrive on Tuesday, we head over to the famous Chiang Dao caves (called Tham Chiang Dao, which sounds like "Tam Chang Dow" rhymes with "now"). To see the caves, you have to have a tour guide, which is fine by me since I have no experience spelunking and have seen The Descent (excellent horror movie if you haven't already seen it). At the entrance you "donate" 20 Baht per person for electricity (no donation = no tour, but it works out to only 70 cents Canadian per person.) Inside, a number of tour guides are waiting and ready for hire with their kerosene lamps.

Some of the rock formations, all natural, are pretty neat - a personal favourite is definitely "the Rooster"

"Dead Elephant" is pretty good too, though you can just kind of make out the belly and legs in this pic:

It's a tight squeeze in places....

...and in others it's pretty roomy.

Afterwards, we feed the fish on the grounds of the cave complex:

...and then head home to our little bungalow at the Nature Guest House. Originally, we plan to stay for only two nights, but on Day 17 and 18 Pierre is under the weather so we stick around for 3. It's the ideal place to be - we have our own bungalow, and there's next to no traffic. The hosts are friendly, the air is fresh and the restaurant is about 25 metres from our doorstep and they make all the meals from scratch.

Our bungalow:


On top of all that, there's a mountain just behind us visible from the yard (though this pic is not from the yard):

We hang out, read and watch "Russia Today" on our TV, a 24-hour English language news site from Russia on Russia. It's the only English programming on our TV worth watching, plus we figure it's good research for the Russia leg of our trip in 2009.

By day 19, Pierre is feeling better ("around 90%" by his estimate, which later proves to be incorrect) so we pack up and head off to Chiang Rai.

photo credits: P, P, P, D, P, P, D, D, D, P

Days 12 to 15 - Friday Nov 14 to Tue Nov 18 - Chiang Mai

The evening of Day 12 finds us in the north of Thailand in Chiang Mai ("chang my", rhymes with "why"). With a population of just over 200,000 it's far more laid back than Bangkok.

The first night, we decided to indulge in a movie - Pierre's been dying to see the new James Bond movie in the theatre, especially since he didn't get to see the first one, Casino Royale, on the big screen (I know this because he's mentioned it every time James Bond has ever come up.)The theatre is huge, loud comfy and nearly empty. We have a few nervous moments where we're unsure whether the movie will be dubbed in Thai or in the original English with Thai subtitles - it turns out that it's the latter. Pierre loves every minute.

On Days 13 and 14, we just wander the city a bit during the day and take in the night markets when the sun goes down. Chiang Mai is famous for its "Sunday Walking Street" night market, but we also check out the newer, less well-established (and less overwhelming) "Saturday Walking Street". To accommodae these markets, a long city street is barricaded off at around 5PM and kept closed until around midnight. Street vendors set up their kiosks and mats, set out their stuff and the selling begins. People need a license to set up at a particular night market, so it's not total mayhem and you get to see slightly different stuff at each of the markets.






Every night, we indulge in "Rottee" (pronounced like "ro tee", or what we'd usually spell "roti") - a super decadent dessert. Dough is fried and folded over sliced banana and then drizzled in condensed milk:

On Sunday during the day, we attend the "Thai Farm Cooking School for the day. We picked this one because it was on a farm (= fresh air) and it included a trip to the market:




The course cost about 30CAN$ each and was worth every penny. Very well-organized, well-coordinated and had a good selection of recipes. We learned how to make a total of about 12 things between the two of us, including red and green curry paste from scratch, pad thai, soups and desserts before heading back to town around 5:00 ish.


During our time in Chiang Mai, we only visited one wat (we had overdosed a bit on the wats), a huge one that had partially collapsed centuries ago - no one was allowed in, but it was impressive from the sidelines:

Photo credits: P, P, P, P, P, P, P, D, D, P, P