Hoi An, Việt Nam

After the last week or so Hoi An seemed like heaven. Five years ago it was designated a UNESCO world heritage site, and at the time we were there they were holding a festival to celebrate this fact. Even without the festivities, it was a great place - the architecture, atmosphere, shops and restaurants combined to make it our favourite place in Vietnam. On the first night of the festival we ate at a restaurant close to the river-side stage where they were performing local dances, music etc. The stage was actually facing across to the audience on the other side of the river, but we could still see the boats that were part of the show. In fact, the the show was televised live so we were able to watch the pictures on the families TV in the restaurant while listening to the live sound! The show was followed by a long fireworks display, which must have been quite a novelty judging by the excitement it drew from the massive crowds.

We took the lazy option and stayed at the An Phu hotel, where we had been deposited by their tour bus. For 14 USD it was actually a pretty good deal - big room with balcony, air con, hot water, sat TV and best of all a swimming pool. Over the four days we indulged in some excellent food, both Vietnamese and western, and generally just relaxed. Kate took the opportunity to get some hand-made clothes made at one of the 200 or so tailors in the small town. For under 50 quid she got 3 trousers and 2 shirts, all excellent quality, at Yaly Couture. She also had some silk pyjamas run up at another (cheaper) tailors - the quality was not as good, but for 15 dollars it's not bad...

I decided not to bother with the tailors, but I was in need of a haircut (my 9th of the trip I think) so I sought out a "hot toc". Most places seem to have hundreds of them, but not in in the centre of Hoi An, where I could only find one; and it appeared to be mainly a ladies hairdresser, judging by the photos of hairstyles on the walls. Still, I figured they couldn't go far wrong if they had some clippers. On the two previous occasions I'd had my hair cut by chaps who spoke not a word of english, but sign language and the universal grade numbers prevailed to produce perfectly good haircuts.  So having established that the lady had some clippers, I pointed at the appropriate parts of my head and told her the numbers I wanted.  "Same same," she said, using the ubiquitous phrase that can mean anything - usually "it's sort of similar" - and pointed at a photo on the wall. The photo, which I'd not noticed before and was the only one with mens' haircuts, was an old Westlife poster! She plugged in one of the clippers (without any grade attachments), and then proceeded to cut my hair using scissors and a traditional razor, not even using the clippers. This was a rather long-winded approach, and resulted in a haircut that was indeed the same same (length) all over.  It wasn't quite what I'd asked for, and at 30,000 dong (just over a quid) wasn't the cheapest haircut I've had, but it looked okay and now I can say that I look like someone out of Westlife.

One day we took a trip to nearby My Son to see the Champa ruins. After seeing the likes of Angkor wat, Machu Pichu and Chichen Itza, they were a bit disappointing! Unfortunately they were heavily bombed by the Americans during the American war, so there's not a great deal left to see. For the last part of the return trip to Hoi An we took a small boat down the river, stopping at a "pottery village" and "carpentry village".

Da Nang

As we wanted to visit the Cham museum in Danang, we decided to spend one night there. We actually wished we hadn't bothered - we could have just popped into the museum for an hour on the way to the station the next day! When we looked around the sculpture in the museum (taken from various Champa sites around the country) we seemed to be the only visitors, but as we sat outside afterwards a few more people arrived and the guides emerged. We decided to let one of them (who was very proud to be named in one of the guide books) tell us about the Cham culture. At the end he asked if we had children, and said that when we wanted them we should come to him for some holy water and something to do with one of the sculptures....

From Danang we took the sleeper train to Hanoi (we'd decided to skip Hué). The "soft sleeper" compartment had four berths, although for most of the journey we had five occupants (six if you count the mouse that lived under one of the seats and emerged periodically to clean up our crumbs). The 20 hour journey was considerably more relaxing than the coach would have been, and we only made one unscheduled stop (when the train hit someone on a motorbike crossing the tracks). After standing staring at the guy for a few minutes the assembled onlookers decided that he wasn't dead, and picked him up, put him in a hand cart, and wheeled him off to who knows where.

Hanoi, Viet Nam

Spent a few days in the noisy, motorbike crazy city of Hanoi. Didn't like it much. You need to be the kind of person that loves the sweltering heat, dodging motorbikes wherever you walk, constant honking horns, being woken by communist singsongs coming over loudspeakers on the street at 5am and being hasselled every minute of the day by people wanting to part you from your cash in a variety of ways. Some of the shops were pretty tempting though.

Halong Bay & Cat Ba National Park

We were glad to leave Hanoi for a couple of days to visit Halong Bay, another world heritage site. On the three hour drive to the port at Halong City we experienced the Hanoi morning rush hour (madness), the massive Red River (it really is VERY red!), and scenery that got better and better as we got nearer to our destination. It was amazing to see massive limestone hills rising sheer out of the flat, bright green paddy fields. Although the Vietnamese seem to have a pretty big industry which consists of nibbling away at some of these karst formations to provide interesting-shaped rocks for water features or bonsai gardening. It is really an eyesore to see some of these hills half cut away.

We arrived at Halong City where we were going to get on a Chinese style junk for a 3 day tour, and were greeted with the scene of hundreds of other tourists being herded off and on boats. I thought that it was going to be really rubbish cruising around the bay with hundreds of other boats, but the bay is so massive that once we set off, all of the boats seemed to disappear in the maze of 3000+ islands.

The scenery of the bay was fantastic and we had a great few days chugging around on our boat, swimming, visiting a "surprising cave", kayaking around some of the islands and exploring hidden beaches. The only negative aspect was the rubbish. Alot of the boat crews just chucked their rubbish over the side. We would come across massive slicks of it in the sea so you couldn't tell the jellyfish from the plastic bags. Some of the beaches were also covered in rubbish which was pretty nasty.

Hanoi (again)

We spent a couple more days in Hanoi, not really by choice, before our next side-trip.  We went and looked at Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, although only from the outside because they'd closed for their three-hour lunch break, along with the neighbouring museum & Uncle Ho's stilt house.  We also visited the Temple of Literature, which was quite a scenic haven within the city. It featured 82 stelae on the backs of tortoises (stone ones).

Sapa

We took an overnight train up to just short of the Chinese border at Lao Cai, and thence by minibus to Sapa.  Perched on the side of a hill at about 1600m, Sapa was pleasantly cool - like an English summer, only we lucky again in that it didn't rain while we were there.  We spent the first morning looking around the village, the market, and the many handicraft shops.  The local hill tribes produce various styles of colourful weavings, embroidery and brocade-work etc., which are sold both in shops and by forceful young girls & old ladies in the streets.

After lunch we walked down the side of the hill to the village of Cat Cat, where the Black H'mong people live.  All along the path there were people selling (or at least trying to sell) the characteristic indigo died products.  We stopped at one home where we saw the material being soaked in the natural indigo dye.  We were spared some of the uphill return leg when we were picked up by a Jeep (in fact a Russian jeep, which rightly or wrongly we called a Komandarsky).

The Jeep took us to another village, in this case where the Red Dao ("Zao") live. We walked to a cave where the locals had trapped 75 members of the invading Chinese army in 1979. We were surrounded as we walked by about 20 women in their colourful dresses & bright red head-dresses. Needless to say, we did not escape the village without first buying something from the very persistant ladies.

After a night in a hotel with views across to cloud-cloaked Fansipan (Vietnam's highest mountain) we set off another downhill trek to some more villages.  The views over the terraced rice-paddies were beautiful, and reminiscent of the Inka terraces in Peru, as were the local tribes people.  Our guide cooked us lunch at a house in one of the villages, and we then returned to Sapa (by Landcruiser) in time for yet more shopping!

We arrived back in Hanoi at 5.30 am in time to witness Hanoi waking up, sweeping clean the pavements, playing badminton, running/walking around the lake, and performing Tai Chi / fan dancing / random physical jerks, all to the tune of tinny music over loudspeakers on lamp-posts. No wonder they need a three hour lunch break!

Vientianne, Laos

Sick of bus journeys, we splashed out and flew from Hanoi to Vientienne, the capital of Laos.

After checking into a small guesthouse we went to look around the city and were amazed by the peace and quiet. No honking horns, no floods of motorbikes, no rubbish, no touts and hardly any people on the street. It was LOVELY. Even the tuk tuk drivers just watched us walk by without the usuall "where are you going, want a tuk tuk?".

We spent a day on bicyles exploring the city (more like a medium sized town), and drinking the very nice Beer Lao by the Mekong river.

Vang Vieng, Laos

After a day in Vientianne, we got a bus up to the small town of Vang Vieng which strangely seemed to be populated mostly by Israeli backpackers. It was a pretty unremarkable place, apart from the massive karst formations looming over the town, on the other side of the river.

We hired bikes for a day and set off along a dirt road, through the beautiful Laos countryside, to go and look at a cave in one of the karsts. The track started off flat but soon turned a bit hilly and very muddy, with streams crossing the track and very large deep puddles. This would have been ok if I hadn't made the mistake of hiring a single speed, granny style shopping bike, which came complete with basket and massive comfy seat. The 7km ride to the cave was a bit of a struggle but good fun on my Crocodile Brand all terrain pink shopper bike!

Once at the cave we had to scramble up a path which was more like a staircase of slippery, sharp limestone boulders, to the cave entrance. The small entrance opened up into a massive cavern, with other rooms and tunnels leading off. We were the only people there and we spent over an hour exploring.

We visited another small cave on the way back which we had to get to by walking through the rice paddies over the mud embankments.

Route 13, Laos

The time had fianlly come to do the journey that I had been worrying about for a while - the road trip between Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang on Route 13. Last year a couple of government run buses were ambushed by H'mong rebels and the passengers shot. We decided to take the risk to do the journey, and flying was not an option as Lao Aviation's aging Tupolev planes seem to crash more than buses are attacked.

We got a minivan (instead of a local bus), which set off in convoy with two others. We drove through amazing karst scenery which got more massive (these are SE Asia's biggest karsts) and then started winding up the road into the mountains. The scenery was fantastic, with views over endless hills covered in pristine forest and given a bit of extra spice by having to dodge pigs, chickens, goats, small children, landslides on the road and the driver flinging the van round corners at high speed.

We passed solitary armed policemen sitting by the side of the road every so often, and all of the local buses had a couple of guards with AK47s riding along.

Luang Prabang, Laos

We arrived in Luang Prabang with no incident and spent the next few days wandering around this world heritage listed town. It was a very relaxing place on the Mekong river, with good restaurants, nice architechture and very good shopping! Every evening we walked up and down the night market deciding what things to buy, then on our last night, when we were going to buy things, all the ladies packed up their stalls early and went home. So we were saved from spending more money!!

Luang Prabang to Luang Nam Tha

We had planned to go up to the northern town of Luang Nam Tha to do some trekking, but found that there were not many transport options from Luang Prabang, so we had to get the local bus. We have been becoming a bit lazy towards the end of our travels and have been preferring the more comfortable transport options, so the local bus was a return to more adventurous travel.

The bus was everything a SE Asian local bus should be - tiny hard seats with no legroom, people being sick out of the windows, deafening engine noise, and tasteful pink and white gingham frilly curtains. We rattled along and ground slowly up hills for 7 hours until we reached the town of Udomsai where we changed onto a so called VIP minivan.

At first we thought it was going to be a comfortable journey as we set off with 2 seats empty, then it all went horribly wrong. Before we even got out of the bus station, we stopped to pick up 3 people and a little baby. The one guy took one spare seat then the two ladies sat on the single seat and a small plank of wood which had been placed across the aisle. The driver thoughtfully put a rolled up towl on the plank to make it more comfortable for the girl with the baby! Then we stopped to pick up another lady, who squashed in the front row with the others. That must be it we thought, then the driver stopped to pick up two more guys. One climbed over the others and squashed in the back with me, Paul and a German girl, so there were 4 people on 3 seats - comfy!! The second guy got in the boot and sat next to the luggage. We stopped for the last time and picked up possibly the tallest, broadest Lao living today, who squeezed into the mini seat between the driver and passenger and blocked the view out of the windscreen. There were now 17 people and their luggage in a minivan designed for 11 and we were very overweight and low on the suspension. This was not good as we hit a pot holed dirt road. In the back we were bounced and jarred and it was the most uncomfortable journey ever. It was made even better when the baby started screaming - only 4 hours to go!!

Luckily most of the passengers got out half way, so there was more space. The driver, now with a light vehicle, hit the gas and drove like a maniac to get to Luang Nam Tha before it got dark. There was a very random moment when the driver stopped by a large landslide, grabbed his machete out of the glove box and headed off to the bush. After 10 minutes of chopping noises and rustling, he returned with a bundle of wood, which he could have picked up off the ground next to the van!

Luang Nam Tha, Lao PDR

When we eventually made it to Luang Nam Tha we decided to stay at The Boat Landing, which was slightly beyond our normal budget but seemed to be the only nice place around.

After an easy day relaxing & recovering from the journey, we went on a mountain biking trip (Tour 2) to an Akha hill tribe village, about 35km from the town. The 35km ride was almost entirely up-hill and was pretty hard going. When we reached the top we had a Lao-style pinic lunch (sticky rice, chilli paste, cumumber, omelette, bits of meat all served on banana leaves) and then descended a little into the village. As we entered the village lots of children rushed out to meet us, and when we left our bikes they crowded around them with great excitement! It had been several weeks since the last time any cyclists had been taken to the village, so we were quite an event.

We went to the house of the headman of the village, where we sat on his porch and were offered some muddy looking tea and more cucumber. We then went for a short walk around the village, which at the time was populated only by children and a few women - the men were presumably working in the fields or hunting in the forest. The children were quite inquisitive, but very shy at the same time - if you approached them or tried to take their photo, they'd run off and hide - but then they'd follow you around behind you. They even chased/raced us for quite a distance down the path when we left.

The return trip via the same route was rather more exciting, and took half the time it had in the other direction. We passed a few Akha women on the path carrying their wares, and a few men with very long rifles. The women had to leave the village at 3am to walk the 5 hour trip to the market in Luang Nam Tha. We got quite strange/surprised looks from people, and comments (translated by our guide Ton) that suggested they couldn't understand how we could pedal up the hills - their bikes are all 1-speed.

It was a hard but very rewarding day, as the village was visited even less than those visited by the approved eco-trek groups.

We'd put our name down on the waiting list to do a 2-day trek to see some hill-tribes etc, but the end of our time was drawing near (we only had 15-day visas). So we decided to do another day of mountain biking; this time a rather more leisurely amble around the valley, taking in various villages along the route. One of the most interesting places at which we stopped was a project run by a Swiss organisation that was trying to help the locals improve the quality of their silk and weavings to a level that it could be exported, thus halting the presnt decline in production. They dealt with the whole process, from growing the mulberry bushes, cultivating the silk worms, spinning the silk, making the apparatus for spinning the silk, to the weaving process.

When we visited a group of women were extracting (not sure of the correct term here!) the silk from the cocoons. Some were doing so in the traditional fashion, pulling the silk fibres from the cocoons by hand (which are floating in hot water) using a very basic spindle arrangement, and a pair of chopsticks. Others had more complex gizmos that presumably produced a more uniform thread.

We deviated from the normal Tour 1 to visit a Lanten village which seemed to be doing quite well for itself - probably because the villagers could walk to town in only an hour or so, and hence could sell their produce. A number of aid projects etc. had provided 2 clean water wells and 14 families had small solar panels, which with a car battery and a 12V light bulb were the height of technology. We went into one family's house (a typical traditional wood & bamboo hut), which (presumably thanks to the lack of windows) was cool - almost cold - inside. It was very basic as you would expect, with a dirt floor, a small raised area on which they slept, and shelves that came down from the roof rather than up from the ground, to avoid the water when it flows down the hillside. An wizened old lady, who looked about 100 but was probably only 60, was using a very large wooden pole to manually thrash the grains of rice from the stalks, repeatedly raising the pole and thrusting it down into the bowl of rice.

At lunchtime we stopped at another village where we ate in one of the locals' houses. Each time the bike trip goes there they use a different family home, so that the money gets distributed throughout the village. As we ate the traditional Lao food (sticky rice etc.) in the traditional way (sat on the floor of the main room of the house), the father of the family offered us some lao lao (so-called lao whiskey) (made in basic stills in every village in Lao from rice). We tried a shot of this stuff and found it to be very strong, but actually very tasty thanks to the herbs etc that were floating around in it. At this point Ton explained to us that for Lao it was traditional that you could never have one drink, on the basis that you can't walk with one leg - you need two - and the same principal should apply to alcohol. Having drunk a second shot we thought we were safe, but shortly afterwards the blood-shot eyed grandfather of the family turned up, and tried to insist that Kate have another drink! According to Ton he'd already drunk 5 bottles of the stuff, because they were celebrating the fact that a member of the family was going away to Vientinne to study!

Luang Nam Tha to Huay Xai, Lao PDR

Having stayed at the Boat Landing for 6 nights, and tried everything on their menu (lots of traditional Lao food) we had to leave and return to Thailand. This was no easy matter, since the transport options were as unattractive as they had been to get there! Faced with alternatives of going back to Luang Prabang (and then flying), or continuing down the potholed, muddy, washed out road in the back of a pickup for up to 10 hours to Huay Xai, we decided to take the boat down the Nam Ha river to Huay Xai.

As it cost $100 to charter a boat, we'd waited an extra day so that we could share with two Australian ladies that were also staying at the boat landing. This meant that the four of us had a fair amount of room to move about in the boat, relatively speaking - you could supposedly fit 10 people in there, but it would have been as cramped as the minivan had been on the way up. The boat was a basic affair with no roof, no seats, and two young boatmen who spoke no English. However, the 5-hour trip down to the boatmen's village was uneventful and not too uncomfortable.

We arrived at about 1.30pm, and were given lunch in the boatman's (or one of his extended family's) house, which consisted of instant noodles and sticky rice. Somehow the locals have worked out that all farang will eat noodles, so that is all they ever offer them. It only took about half an hour before all the local women, and even a few men, were trying to sell us their weavings. Jenny, a 60-year old teacher from hippy Nimbin, an insatiable shopper at the best of times (she'd already bought several wardrobes-full in LP & LNT), couldn't resist and ended up with about 9 weavings. Kate luckily settled for just one - which was huge, very inticate, and at only $6 was probably the best buy of the trip.

We sat around all afternoon trying to avoid people selling us stuff, and had an amusing conversation (of sorts) with one chap who'd spotted the little compass on my watch strap. I gave him an example of somewhere in each direction - Luang Nam Tha, Kampuchea, Thailand, China - and he insisted I remove the watch so he could try it. After turning it around several times and repeatedly checking that N was still pointing towards China etc. he really seemed quite impressed! It's not the first time inquisitive locals have quizzed me about the compass, but it's the first time they've not known what it was.

After dinner at about 7pm (instant noodles, this time with a few bits of unidentified meat) we went to bed - on mats rolled out on the floor of the main room of the house. We were awoken at about 4.20am by the cockrels, and then stirred out of our beds when the family got up at about 5am and started chopping wood for the fire etc. After breakfast (instant noodles) we carried our bags back down to the river where the boats were tied up.

We'd been told that we'd have the same boat, and same boatmen as the first day - but the boat and crew set off while we were waiting, and another chap told us that he was our captain for the day. He pulled his boat over - even smaller than the previous day, and worryingly flexible - and after half an hour of farting about (hammering in some bamboo wadding to fix a leak at the back of the boat, finding a new length of hose to replace his leaking fuel line etc) we set off, already cursing over how cramped and uncomfortable it was. We got about 10 minutes down the river when the 'captain' let out an exclamation and (with the help of the two ladies sat at the front with paddles) turned the boat around. Having gone back and collected the jerry cans of petrol that he'd left behind we set of again, stopping only after 15 minutes to pick up a spare propellor from another boat (the one that we should by rights have been in!). A few minutes later we stopped at another village (a very flashy one with metal roofs thanks to a member of the family who lives in California) and picked up a lady and a few bags of weavings etc. to take the market in Huay Xai. She squeezed in next to the boatman at the back so we didn't lose any of our precious space, but the boat was getting pretty low in the water, with only about 5 inches of clear board on each side.

We made one or two more mysterious stops for no apparent reason. El capitan seemed a bit worried about something at the back of the boat - I think we were still taking on a fair amount of water around the prop shaft - the bilge pump was running on overtime and he spent a while bailing out water at one of our stops. Our limited faith in the bloody eyed boatman was shaken even further when he almost crashed us into the river bank. I happened to notice that he was staring at the back of the boat again, and looked forward to realise that we were gradually veering to the left. At about this point the ladies up front (who generally acted as look-outs for submerged rocks and floating debris, and occasionally used their paddles to help manouvre through the rapids) suddenly realised we were going to collide with the trees at the side of the river and started paddling like mad. I looked back to find the boatman still distractedly looking at the back of the boat and yelled at him just in time for him to swerve and pull back on the throttle. We still hit and scraped through the half submerged trees, but thankfully didn't hit anything too solid and didn't get tipped over. The locals all seemed to find it quite amusing, but when we discussed it that night we realised we'd all been quite scared.

The trip seemed to go on for ever. The scenery was admittedly absolutely fantastic - huge towering hills and lots of jungle - but we weren't really in the mood to enjoy it. At one point, as we went down some big rapids, a big wave drenched us all. We stopped for lunch about an hour short of the confluance with the Mekong river, where we were given some food - no one spoke any English so we couldn't chose what we wanted... you'll never guess what we were given.

The last two hours were spent going upstream on the mighty wide Mekong river, with Thailand on one side, and Laos on the other. We actually stopped on the Thai side at one point so that the lady at the back could sell the grubs (silk worms?) that she'd brought along. We illegally entered Thailand for a few minutes for calls of nature and then left again. After worrying all day that we wouldn't make it to Huay Xai in time to cross the border (our visas expired that day and we didn't wanted to have to pay the fine for being a day late), and the boatman promising all day that we would be there by 5pm, we did in fact make it by about 4.30, despite all the stops. We sent the boatman packing after he had the gall to ask for more money, and then for Jenny & Stephanie to donate one of the combination padlocks from her luggage.

We got stamped out of Lao, took a boat across the river to Chiang Khong, and got stamped into Thailand again. We stayed at the Bamboo guesthouse in a little bungalow with a view across the Mekong to Laos - just what we needed! - had a very nice Mexican dinner, with not even the slightest hint of a noodle in sight, and then slept for a long time!

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Coming back to Thailand after 2 months away was a bit of a shock.  Compared to Vietnam, and especially compared to Cambodia and Laos, it seemed so developed & busy.  Gone are the dusty roads, hundreds of motorbikes and hand-tractors pulling trailors, and in their place there are hundreds of cars - mostly big toyota pickups - and big wide tarmac roads!

We said goodbye to the Mekong River at Chiang Kong and got the bus to Chiang Mai. The bus was pretty old. It had aircon that worked but there were five seats to a row so things were very cramped. It was a 7 hour journey to Chiang Mai. We broke down once but the driver managed to get it going again. We arrived very stiff, tired and grouchy, but luckily there was one room left at the guesthouse we wanted to stay in, the very peaceful Gaps House, so we didn't have to traipse around looking for a room.

On our second day in Chiang Mai I did a cooking course run by our guesthouse. Before we started our cooking lessons we accompanied the teacher to the local market to buy all of the ingredients. It was a good chance to ask him loads of questions about all of the weird and wonderful fruits and veg that I have seen in other Thai markets.

We were then taken to a very nice outdoor kitchen, with lots of people to do all of the washing up, and started the lessons. We learnt how to make green curry, fish cakes, tom kha gai (chicken in coconut milk - my current favorite Thai dish) and a few others. We ate all of the food we made for lunch and were completely stuffed.

In the afternoon we did a bit of veggie carving (my effort would not look very appealing on a dinner plate!), then made some spring rolls and a gorgeous pud of coconut custard in a whole pumpkin (sounds strange but it was very good).

In the evening I had to sit and watch Paul eat dinner as I was too full to eat anything more.

Thai Elephant Conservation Centre

One thing I wanted to do while in Chiang Mai was to go and see some elephants. There are loads of elephant farms around the city, but we decided to go a bit further afield to visit the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre near Lampang.

We arrived just in time to see the elephant's morning bathing session in the river. It was great to watch them spraying water with their trunks and making a variety of trumpeting and squeeking noises. Then we went to watch the elephant show where the mahouts and their elephants demonstrated logging techniques. Then it all went a bit circusy as the elephants played musical instruments and painted pictures.

At the end of the show we were all given a bunch of bananas or some sugar cane and got the chance to feed the elephants. I held some bananas on the palm of my hand and the elephant wrapped its trunk around my hand and wrist until it found the bananas and grabbed them.

We looked around the factory where the elephant dung is used to make paper, and the elephant dung biogas plant. We then went to see a mother and baby elephant which were in an enlosure. There was only a low fence so the elephants could reach out to you with their trunks and you could touch their skin through the fence. It was pretty cool to get so close to them.

We then did the best bit - a 30 min elephant ride through the forest and a lake. The motion was very strange, especially when we went down hill. We rode past the large elephant hospital where sick or mistreated elephants are looked after.

Chiang Mai (Continued)

Having seen plenty of people from various hill tribes in Vietnam and Laos, we decided not to bother doing any so-called trekking from Chiang Mai. From what we've heard, and judging by the incredible number of companies offering trips, the villages have been heavily over trafficked in recent years. Instead we went to the interesting Tribal Museum in the north of the city, which has exhibits and information on the many different tribes.

Taking the advantage of a slightly cloudy afternoon we walked around some of the many wats and chedi in the old city of Chiang Mai. In one wat we chatted to a young monk who, we were at first surprised to learn, had heard of Reading; due of course to their recent good form in the football.

The 2nd of October was Kate's birthday, so we spent it shopping, eating, drinking and relaxing. We looked around the Worowot market, which is the locals' market unlike the various tourist-oriented ones. Having bought some silk and other souvenirs at ridiculously cheap prices, we went to the Siam Celadon Tea rooms for a nice long lunch in the green garden out the back.

The following day we took a tuk-tuk out to the so called Umbrella village to the east of the city. In fact more like a linear industrial estate spread along a busy main road, it consisted of various factory outlet type shops, some incredibly expensive, others quite reasonable. The most interesting was the umbrella factory where they hand-made umbrellas and parasols from bamboo and paper, often hand-painted.

In the evening we strolled around the Sunday "walking market" which took over several blocks-worth of streets in the old city around our hotel. It seemed a much better market than the much vaunted Night Market (which we'd visited on a couple of other nights), with a better range of products (ie less tourist tat) and a much more pleasant environment - less congested and with fewer farang pushing the prices up.

On our last day in Chiang Mai Kate did another cooking course - this time with another company (Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School). We'd had to wait until this day because they operate on a 5 day cycle, and Kate wanted to do a specific day. It was a more professional setup, with a fancy classroom & cooking areas, and they had more students on the course. Of about 16 people on Kate's course only one was English, and she happened to be a friend of my sister from school.

Phitsanulok

We took a swanky Sprinter train from Chaing Mai south to Phi'lok, which has to be the least pedestrian friendly place we've been to in Thailand. There were hardly any pavements and busy roads, which combined with one-way systems, the railway, the river and the Highway 12 dual carriageway, not to mention the heat, made it a struggle to get anywhere. And where were all the tuk-tuks or taxis??? We managed to make it across town to a nice floating restaurant, and between the station and our hotel, but that was about all we saw of the place.

Sukothai

The reason for breaking the train journey in Phi'lok was its proximity to the Sukothai Historical Park, which was 70km or so to the west. More by luck than judgement we managed to get on a bus heading west along highway 12 through Old Sukothai on route to Chiang Mai, and it dropped us in the middle of the park. After a look around the museum we hired a couple of Crocodiles and peddled off around the manicured lawns and ruined temples, chedi etc. of the former Thai capital. It was all very scenic and quite peaceful.

Ayuthaya

Another day, another train journey to another former capital: Ayuthaya, just north of Bangkok. Unfortunately, unlike Old Sukothai (which has big & busy New Sukothai a sensible 15km away), Ayuthaya is a still an active town, with the ruins dotted around in amongst modern structures. It took a while to find a half decent hotel room, and when we did it was unfortunately miles from anywhere. Ayuthaya did have lots of pavements but it was so oppressively hot for most of the day that you couldn't bear to walk anywhere!

We started early before the sun got too high and walked around some of the ruins that were close enough together in the centre of the inner city. We'd managed to shake off the tuk-tuk drivers who all wanted to take us round all of the ruins for a whole day, at an extortionate 200 baht per hour. However, in the end we rewarded the most persistant one (who'd pretty much followed us around all morning and then sat waiting outside the restaurant where we had lunch). For 300 baht "Pop" took us on a 2-hour trip around 5 or 6 of the temples etc. around the outskirts of the city. At one busy temple with a very large sitting Buddha (in fact the largest in Thailand) there were many families making merit. We watched as one family offered up a large saffron sash, which they passed over their heads as it was hoisted up over the Buddha's shoulder.

In the evening we went to the only restaurant within walking distance of our hotel and were dismayed to find that Karaoke was in session. To the accompaniment of a dreadful computer generated backing track, a group of smartly uniformed traffic cops were singing their hearts out to a string of love songs. There was something rather incongruous and not a little amusing about this spectacle, but we had to resist the temptation to laugh.

Bangkok (once more)

We caught the bus down to Bangkok and checked into a quite nice hotel (the curiously named Wendy House) in the centre of town, near Siam Square. After lunch we went back up to Mo Chit to look aound the Chatuchak market - this time with the intention of buying rather than just looking. First purchase was an extra bag in which to carry all our souvenirs! After a few hours we still hadn't found everything we wanted, but were worn out by the heat and the crowds so we called it a day.

The following morning we put packed our bags, weighed them on the scales thoughtfully provided by the hotel, and left them in the storage room while we went back to Chatuchak again.

By lunchtime we'd finally completed our shopping and headed via the hotel to the bus station, where we caught the bus back to Pattaya, completing the 3 month loop.

Koh Chang

After a night at Amy & Neil's place in Pattaya (where we left most of our luggage!), we continued on to Koh Chang. This wasn't the smoothest or quickest journey, as we ended up catching 3 buses (via Rayong & Chantaburi) to get to Trat, then a songtaew to Laem Ngop, a minibus to the other pier, the ferry to Dan Khao, and another songtaew to Laem Chai Chet.

We stayed at the Chai Chet Bungalows which were on a rocky headland at the top of the long Klong Prao beach. After a couple of nights in a slightly expensive but comfortable bungalow with a view over the car park, we moved into a more basic bungalow that was on the waterfront and had views right down the coast to Kai Bae and also to the mountains inland and the wide ocean. For most of the week we did very little, just making the most of this short 'holiday' at the end of our trip. We spent some time most days on the quiet beach, which seemed to have almost no other farang staying on it. A couple of times we swam across a rivermouth to get the even quieter beach on the other side. The only downside to the beaches was the sand flies that sometimes attacked, leaving really itchy bites (but luckily for Kate no blisters this time).

The first day we were on the island it started to rain around lunchtime and continued to do so for the rest of the day, so we were feeling a bit depressed. Luckily, that day seemed to be the last of the rainy season, as every day after that was consistently clear and sunny - which is how it will probably remain for the next 6 months.

As the weather seemed to be on our side we booked up to do a couple of dives on our penultimate day. We booked with Water World Koh Chang, who promised brand new equipment and a fancy fast boat with air-con cabin etc. that left from the canal just in front of the bungalows. However, as we were the only two people that had booked for that day they applied the typical trick of farming us off on to another dive company, BB Divers, who operate a basic old wooden fishing boat out of Bang Bao at the bottom of the island. After an exciting ride down to the bay in the back of a songtaew with all the tanks etc crashing around we set off on the boat with a group of about 10 Dutch guys, three of whom joined our divemaster for the dives.

The dives were both very shallow - less than 10 meters - and conditions were great, so I was able to get some good photos. We saw quite a number of fish, stingrays, moray eels, Christmas tree worms etc. We didn't see the resident turtle or puffer fish, although annoyingly other divers at roughly the same time did do so. We weren't very impressed with either dive company, but the dive sites were pretty good.

Pattaya

After a relaxing week where the biggest stress was deciding at which of the beachside seafood restaurants we should eat, we returned to Pattaya (opting for the more expensive but speedier & easier minibus service). That was yesterday. Today Kate & Amy went to the Pattaya International Ladies Club coffee morning, and then we did some shopping for bits and bobs to take home - including some new spectacles for Kate. This evening we went out for a final Thai seafood dinner at Sharky's On The Beach, and after everyone else went to bed I've just spent 2 hours writing up the last 3 weeks for the blog!

Tomorrow we leave. We'll fly from Bangkok in about 24 hours time, arriving early on Thursday morning at a no doubt chilly Heathrow. All that remains is to work out how to pack all of our belongings and souvenirs into the 2 small backpacks and 3 larger ones, in such a way that we don't exceed our 40kg checked luggage allowance!

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