Phuket Town to Railay Beach

Our first major stumble of the trip happened on our way to Railay Beach, near Phuket, on Thailand's West Coast. We took a flight with Thai Air from Chiang Mai to Phuket. This was not an issue; the flight was quick and efficient. But when we got to the other side, our transfer was less than graceful.

Perhaps it was because we'd booked ourselves in to stay at O'Malley's Irish Pub hostel in Phuket Town, the town made famous by its dingy, dark hotel room featured in the opening of the film, 'The Beach'. But I think it had more to do with our taxi bus driver cum travel agent who desperately wanted to sell us tickets to get on his boat to the Phi Phi Islands. Then again, it might have been the three total idiots who got on the taxi bus without a destination. "Just drop me at a cheap hostel or hotel, anything cheap, anything".

Never do this. People will hate you.

We drove around for the best part of two hours looking for a place to drop off the idiots. The taxi driver continued to tout his side business. And as it transpired, he didn't know where any of the hotels that people were staying at were. He refused to get directions and it got later and later and darker and darker. This is when Sara lost her cool and began chanting slowly and loudly enunciating every syllable 'OoooMaaaaaallllllleeeeeeeeys IIIIIrishhhhhhh PUB! OMALLEYS!'. We finally found it. It was closed, as you'd expect at 2:30 in the morning. The proprietor, a bald Englishman from Derbyshire, let us in past his Thai lady friend passed out on the couch in her knickers. The place in of itself was clean and quiet. But there were two problems:
1. there were no windows and it was about 35 degrees
2. the bunk bed I was assigned swayed dramatically to the north and south every time I coughed or breathed.

It was a hot night.

And the next morning, we made our way to the bus station to take the rest of our journey which involved a bus, taxi and longtail boat:
And curry for breakfast:

But first glimpses did not disappoint:

Railay Beach, my favourite place in Thailand.

Trekking through Chiang Mai

We slept horribly in the horrible Chiang Mai Backpackers' Meeting Place (never go there) before setting off on a series of activities that would have health and safety critics in the UK shuddering in horror. It started with a three-hour-ride in the back of a pickup truck with eight random strangers from the UK, Germany, Holland and France. We witnessed a man strapped to the roofrack of a pickup truck, wearing a poncho and barreling down the motorway at breakneck speeds. well, he wasn't barreling--he was holding on for dear life.

And then we rode elephants. This was most likely unethical, which Sara and I only considered after. And it was most definitely unsafe. We assumed our position atop an elephant sort of inside this metal box, equipped with what i'd like to call the 'oh sh*t handle'. It was open air. It was mental. The Thai man leading our elephant kept on hitting it on its head, which didn't sit well with me. But then our bugger of an elephant sprayed up with its trunk, took a lunch break, took a pee break, took a little rest. Elephants. Who knew?

From there, we made our way into the Northern Thailand jungles, temperature 95f plus humidity. Within seconds I was dripping in sweat. We wound our way through the jungles, up into the mountains with the final destination of a hill tribe, where we spent the night. And on the way we slipped through rice paddies:
Waterfalls:
And other stunning jungle scenery:


Our home for the night; we slept on the floor, under mosquito netting in little thatched huts. Interestingly, the noise of the crickets and cicadas was more deafening that my normal london night bus city noises.

On day two, we woke up early and sweated our way down the mountain in our ponchos. Walking through the village, we visited the local school, which gave me a lot to be grateful for in my current job.


And for our last stop, we sped down a river in a bamboo raft. Due to the high level of water, we could only make our way partially. But that was definitely enough for the big scaredy cat inside of me:
So after two days in the jungle we made some lovely international friends and were definitely geared up for sun, rest and relaxation. Since Sara was only staying for the two weeks, we tried to cram in as many of her beach destinations as possible.

Which is how we ended up in Phuket.

Chiang Mai

We took the night train to Chiang Mai. This turned out to be nearly 1000% better than taking the night train through Serbia. I was both grateful and disappointed by this. We made friends with our Thai train hostess who brought us a steady stream of Chang Beer, good soup and bad green curry. We fell asleep in curtained off sub-arctic mini compartments and woke up twelve bumpy hours later in the jungly north of the country. The only really exciting thing about our train journey was the 1960's inspired, or more likely still in service, car of the train decked out in smoke, haze and dim lighting. We think it was the restaurant car, though no food was available, and the picture hardly does it justice: We were greeted by our trekking company who held a sign signalling 'Jon Than'. It took us two moments to realise this meant us.

From there, nothing overly exciting happened other than monsoon-style continuous rain, our first backbreaking Thai Massage experience and meeeting our energetic but slightly drunken trek guide, Jay Jay. He had an affinity for Liverpool Football, 'no money, no honey' jokes and, to no great surprise, Chang Beer.

So we set off on foot to see the local environs. From what I gathered, Chiang Mai is the study abroad equivalent to Edinburgh. This made me love it. But we only had one day to explore the city, and in that one day, we saw: temples, temples, temples, an angry dog, a happy monk and temples.

But they were pretty:
We made friends with the retired ladies in this temple who beckoned us in to participate in a Buddhist service with them. They were delighted we spoke Thai (our one word, thank you) and offered us sticky buns, sweet buns and drinks. The monks stared at us amusedley and after ten minutes of bowing and genuflecting, we rejoined Chiang Mai society.






Loving the spelling mistakes in this country

We had a minor evening debacle of trying to find a restaurant that didn't exist but essentially made it home early for our 6am next morning start. This is, of course, when my camera died, if only briefly for my trek through the jungle. So the next post(s) rely wholly on Sara and Jon's photos.

Bangkoky

And then we got on a boat filled with wolf spiders along the Chao Phraya and its various backchannels that form the Gulf of Thailand delta.
With man-eating fish.
river and canalside settlements
more temples


and a bridge dedicated to a king (Rama the VIII)

Enough culture for one week; onto Chiang Mai.

Temple Fever

Our second tuk-tuk experience was classic by-the-book (literally, Lonely Planet told us this might happen). We looked lost. A local man on the street stopped us to see if we needed help. He established a link with us--'i'm a teacher too!' We fell for it. then: 'The temple is closed for the next three hours but you can get a tuk tuk for cheap to the other temples in the city that are open. For you, make sure it only costs 60 baht. That's the local price.'

Crap. locals don't take tuk-tuks.

We ended up in an Indian Suit factory which, Jay, our Thai driver from Chiang Mai ('Ah very nice city!') forced us into, in one of those smiling, obliging sort of ways akin to mentally unstable people about to stab you in the eyeball with a fork. To be fair, it was mercifully brief and he did take us to the suit factory en-route of four of the city's hundreds of temples.

The whistle stop tour:
Wat Traimat (also known as, get this, The Golden Buddha)
this delightful deity weighs in at a delicious 5.5 tonnes of solid gold...
now that's some expensive footwear




The more minor Wats



Our tour ended when Jon guiltily gave Jay a 40 baht tip because overall, at 100 baht, our little three-hour tour hardly broke the bank. We arrived on the side steps of The Grand Palace and Wat Pho (insert joke here) where a pair of smartly dressed, crafty Thai men were trying to convince us of a similar swindle.

Wizened with age, we opted out and instead paid our admission fees at another gate. Inside it was a disneyland made of solid gold. Minus the rides. and the sticky food. and the mouse ears.





but no temple is complete without at least two ridiculous signs:

Thailand's my kind of country.