Goodbye Eleanor, goodbye Thailand

Thailand oh Thailand, we are so happy to be back! Laos was great, but quite cold and we had enough of the roads, the sandwiches (however great they were) and the sights, which weren’t many considering we aren’t trekking lovers. Otherwise we would have had a great time, especially since there’s a national park there with wild tigers running around!

The crossing to Thailand wasn’t all that hard, just costly. Man, those Laotians know how to charge! A ferry ride lasting not even five minutes cost us 500 Baht (17,5 dollars). From Thailand into Laos it didn’t cost us anything! No hassles on the other side and we got a stamp for a sixty day entry, so no more worries about running out of time, visa-wise. First stop was Chiang Rai, described as insignificant and ‘make your way outta there fast’. It was OK for a night. We stayed at a dingy place (but it did have a TV with the tennis on, so that was not too bad) and had a devil curry. The spice still tasted on our lips half an hour after we had finished the meal (because you can’t throw away food – what a waste). We were excited about Chiang Mai, 200 km further south, Thailand’s second largest city, so we got out of Chiang Rai quite quickly. But not before having one of the best breakfasts ever; rice and roasted duck, cooked to perfection, yum!

(David, ready for another swim, needs to watch his head a lot!)

We got to Chiang Mai via a beautiful back road that led us into stunning mountain scenery. On the way we had lunch where we took a photo of that menu that was posted on the blog earlier. We had a good laugh about that one and choose the safest option, fried rice, which was excellent. In Chiang Mai we found a very decent place to stay for a few days with cable TV, so we watched quite a bit of the Australian Open, wonderful! When not watching a game we saw the sights around Chiang Mai, which consist of a lot of glitzy temples and Wats. Chiang Mai is a beautiful city, very well set up for tourists, but not in an annoying way. Remains of an old city wall and a moat enclose the old part of the city, which is where we stayed, excellent food was served both inside and outside the city wall.

Since we missed spotting wild tigers in Laos, we decided to cuddle little tigers at the Chiang Mai ‘Tiger Kingdom’. For 35 dollars we were allowed in the enclosure with four six month old tigers, one of them called Jenny. They slept the whole time and we weren’t allowed to approach them from the front, but we did have the chance to pet their super soft bellies and back paws. It was quite cute! In Chiang Mai we also got a bit greedy again, just like in Krabi, by seeing so many clothes and silverware at the street markets and many, many shops. We got another few shirts tailor-made for a song and once they were ready we were ready to go as well. Keen to ride our Eleanor a bit more. We got a feel for the price she might fetch in Chiang Mai, and got some good offers. So we left the city in good faith of future offers to come.

Phrae was our next stop. Just a stopover, really, because we wanted to see the ancient ruins of Sukothai, but that was a bit too far from Chiang Mai. Phrae is listed in both the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, but we haven’t seen any tourists there. However, the local foodstall did have an English menu! One that was also decipherable. Food, shakes and ice coffee were incredibly good in Phrae, and cheap too, so we liked this little city. Accommodation however was relatively expensive and not too clean, so we left after one day, despite the amazing food.

There wasn’t much to do in Sukothai, other than seeing the ancient ruins dating back to the 13th century. It was quite impressive to see such old buildings still standing, hence this ancient city is a world heritage protected UNESCO site. Yes, we got another one ticked (and getting over them too). Having already seen the ancient city at sunset, we could move on the next day to go further south. We saw some more ruins and old city walls and eventually stopped at Nakhon Sawan, a city both guidebooks hadn’t bothered writing about. Finding our way around was therefore a bit more challenging, since we had no maps. Finding a hotel was also a challenge, considering every sign was in Thai writing – no English. We memorised the word for hotel (both written down and verbally) and we got ourselves a place to stay. A bit of a dive, but at least it had a huge screen on which we could watch more of the Australian Open. We stayed for another three nights when we found a really nice place. We mostly stayed in the room to watch the tennis with a beer or two. Very relaxing. Go Serena!

We found Nakhon Sawan quite nice. It scored high on our city rating list, thanks to the food, of course. We haven’t done much hiking, sight-seeing, city tours, river cruises or anything like that, but we have seen thousands of kilometers of Thai countryside (6000 km to be exact), thanks to our scooter and we have munched our way around the country. When we like a city, it is most likely because it has some excellent markets and loads of food stalls. According to our standard, a good market should have plenty of food to choose from; thanks to all the ‘meals on wheels’ carts that show up at any market (a scooter with a trailer attached, that consists of at least a gas bottle, stove and plenty of woks to cook in). A good market should have some deep friend stuff (chicken, flour balls, crab, squid on a stick, etc.), freshly cooked food (Chinese, Thai, seafood, chicken, pork, beef, veggies, rice, noodles, egg), fruit shakes and ice coffee stands, some fresh vegetable and meat produce (all body parts of the chicken, including head and feet, pork feet, livers, brains, hearts, fresh toads, insects, cockroaches, turtles) and of course the non-edible items; speakers screaming with nineties music, illegal copies of movies that are just showing in cinemas, loads of clothing, shoes, Tupperware, jewelry, make-up and toys. The markets really scores when they have a few elephants walking around as well, which happened in Nakhon Sawan a couple of times. For 70 cents, David got to feed and pet them!

In Nakhon Sawan, at any given time, three markets of which we were aware were running consecutively. The morning market would disappear at midday, making way for a smaller clothing market, that would transfer in the evening to an amazing food market. How is it possible to run so many markets in an average-sized city every single day and still get all the stalls running at a profit, or at least break-even (we figured; if they lose money, they wouldn’t have their stall at the market, so they must make some money)? No wonder there aren’t (m)any supermarkets in Thailand. Tesco seems to charge you a fortune and all the mini-markets and seven-elevens seem to have all the luxury items you’d want anyway (chips, chocolate). But why would you even touch these expensive western luxuries when, if you’re craving for sweets, there are drinks and snacks available so sweet it makes you think your teeth are going to fall straight out of your mouth. Or, if you’re in the savory mood, when there’s deep fried chicken or minced buns available on almost every street corner? And all this for five or 10 Baht per item! The seven-eleven probably exists here because despite of all these delicious items in Thailand, Jenny still can’t keep away from chips, nor can David stay away from Nutella!

But we’re happy to go back to Australia, too. We’ve missed the red wine, the strongbows, the cheeses (brie, camembert, blue vein) olives, anchovies, yoghurt, pasta, savoys, nutella to name a few (you can probably guess which items are on Jenny’s list). We had some very ambitious plans to go to India and even Kenya, but unfortunately we haven’t even made it to Cambodia or Vietnam. We have had a wonderful trip, though, and are ready to go back. We’re flying back to Darwin on the 3rd of February, and will be heading south-west towards Geraldton in Western Australia. We want to go back, but we also need to go back, because Jenny cannot stay out of the country for more than 90 days if she wishes to lodge her citizenship application this year. So we booked flights and all of a sudden our Eleanor was sold, too! We sold her in Nakhon Sawan to a very helpful private dealer and his sister (who could speak English and was our translator). They helped us prepare all the paperwork and even gave us a lift to the train station. So now we’re real backpackers again (we miss Eleanor already). We’re in Ayutthaya, where we have yet to visit another ancient city. Then a few days in Bangkok and then… back to Taj (our four-wheel-drive)!

Thanks for following our travels. Hopefully you will stay tuned for the ‘Around Australia’ trip, part two: Western Australia!

(Pimp my ride)

What would you like to eat?

In Thailand we don't always eat at places where they speak English. Considering we don't speak or read Thai, it is sometimes tricky to order a meal, and we usually get by just by pointing at some vegies and noodles.But sometimes we're lucky enough to have an English menu presented to us. Check out this menu (click on it to enlarge); this does not simplify our order! What would you like?

In Laos

We couldn’t get Eleanor into Cambodia, but we managed to get her into Laos, which is where we are now! We rode some crazy kilometers zigzagging through north eastern Thailand to get here though. We zigzagged to two of the Thai borders with Cambodia only to find out we couldn’t get in with the scooter. Then we had to ride a long way to get closer to the border of Laos, after which we found out on the very useful gt-rider.com website that the particular border we wanted to cross at would not allow bikes to cross the friendship bridge. We were allowed to bring it in to Laos, but only by ferry crossing at different border crossings (apparently to stop the locals to go back and forward into Laos and Thailand). This meant another long day riding to this other border. We spent three very long days on the scooter (also thanks to a flat tyre on the way) and were quite desperate for a break or at least an easy day. We got it on day four, the day we crossed the border. We went to the sleepy village of Beung Kan, where the border is only open on weekdays. There was no line, no other white people trying to cross and a bunch of friendly people happy to help us out. It seemed, however, that they hadn’t had a lot of experience with processing the paperwork for the bike. We were looked at a bit suspiciously at first, and they wanted to double-check that the bike was really ours. Then they tried to tell us we were only allowed to ride around Paksan, the village just across the border. Eventually the paperwork got sorted and we were told we were allowed to ride anywhere around Laos. So we had our visa, paperwork for the scooter and got stamped out of Thailand, but there was still the Mekong River to be crossed. We were told the ferry would leave at 12pm. Of course there was no ferry until 3pm! We got on with another seven trucks whose drivers were all really interested in us.

The crossing went fine and we got to Laos in no time. On that side we had to arrange some more paperwork and finally we were allowed to go into Laos! We nearly got into a crash with a tuktuk because no one had told us they drive on the right hand side in Laos.

Laos was colonised by the French and they have left behind some heritage. Right-hand side driving, typical European road signs, French architecture, jeux des boulles and baguettes! Cheese and wine are also widely available, so we munched on a few French sticks with yummy Edam cheese for a bit, before returning to our daily portion of rice, noodles and chillies. The landscape in Laos is very beautiful. Huge limestone cliffs make up the scenery, overgrown with lush green vegetation in between fast flowing rivers. It is very mountainous and a lot cooler than we’re used to. The mountains, together with the bad roads with livestock on them, slow us down a lot. We probably only average about 50 km p/h at the moment. The pillows we bought for the scooter are a blessing! It seems that even the smallest town in Laos has at least one guesthouse, which is very good for us. The first day in Laos it rained a lot, so we didn’t make it to the capital city. Luckily, we could pull over into a reasonably clean guesthouse soon after we decided to stop riding for the day.
Laos seems to be the land of babies. We’ve never seen so many babies, puppies, piglets, chicks, calves, etc. in our life! They all hang around the road as well, so we have to make sure to avoid hitting them. The little kiddies that are just able to walk never seem to have any pants on. Perhaps that is because they wet their pants anyway. The kids here are so genuinely happy to say hello and wave to us, it’s very sweet.

Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is not very special. It has some lovely restaurants and cafes but it’s missing ambiance. Our only reason for hanging around there was to get a free 60 day visa for Thailand from the Thai embassy. As soon as we had this, we headed for the mountains. Vang Vieng is where every backpacker goes to go tubing down the river. Bars are set up along the river where tubers get smashed and go crazy. We thought it was a bit cold for any water activities but there were still loads of people tubing or kayaking down that river. We discovered a road that led to one of the river bars, so we decided not to go tubing but just to observe the crazy crowds from the bar. The next day we even joined them, splashed around in the river a bit and got ourselves a bucket of mojitos. It was a bit of fun, but we wouldn’t go back for it. Apart from tubing, Vang Vieng is magic mushroom paradise. A few restaurants show repeats of Friends episodes 24 hours a day, and serve ‘happy’ food. So people pass out on their chairs watching Friends after a ‘happy’ meal. We’d seen enough after a couple of days. We continued on to Luang Prabang, a six hour ride through the mountains. Very beautiful, but a fresh ride through the clouds and so twisty and windy. It was Flores, Indonesia all over again, but a little less steep. We were very happy to arrive in Luang Prabang, former capital of Laos.

Luang Prabang is a lovely town, very tranquil but vibrant at the same time. The Mekong runs along the city and they’ve utilised the river views really well. It is probably the prettiest town in South East Asia, with lovely French architecture and beautiful clean streets. It is a bit out of the way, though. It takes either a day on the river or a few hours driving through the mountains to get to this place. We were planning to take a boat from Luang Prabang to the border of Laos and Thailand. This trip would take two days, with an overnight stop in a middle of nowhere town. We were planning to put the scooter on board, but that didn’t work out. We’ve made a few plans that in theory seem great, but can’t always be realised (e.g. getting the bike into Cambodia, getting into Laos via the friendship bridge, getting the scooter on a boat). So after a couple of days in Luang Prabang we took off to eventually get to the border by road.

The first 150 km were so pleasant! The sun was out, the road was fantastic and we had a really great lunch, so we were ready to ride. On the way we saw an elephant walking on the road (with its owner, not the first time it happened, but always a nice surprise!) and we stopped to pet him for a bit. Then we continued on and arrived at a beautiful town on a river (Nong Khiaw) just in time for sunset. The next day, however, was very different! We wanted to get to Luang Nam Tha, a 200 km ride. We knew it would take a while, but we hadn’t prepared for the amount of potholes in the road. It took us eight hours including a couple of breaks) to get there. They were constructing the road for about 50 km and the other 110 km was definitely due for an upgrade. We were very close to China and the construction workers looked more Chinese than Lao. Traffic signs were also suddenly displayed in Chinese characters. We could have crossed the border into China, but then we’d need another visa for Laos, so we decided not to. It’s not as if we haven’t been in China before anyway!

We were so relieved when the road finally became smooth again for the last 40 km. What a day! And unlike in the southern part of Laos, these northern hill villages did not seem to have guesthouses anywhere! At one point we would have liked to stop, but we just had to push on. We arrived in Luang Nam Tha, only to leave again after less than 24 hours. We’re in the border town of Houay Xai now, hoping to cross the border tomorrow. We’re looking forward to being back in Thailand for a while. We can just smell the Pad Thai just over the Mekong ;)

Still on the bike and alive and kicking

We have moved quite a few kilometers since our last post from Ko Phayam. In southern Thailand we only had a few days left on our visa, so we decided to hop across the border into Myanmar for the day. Unfortunately our visa money went straight into Myanmar’s military government’s pocket, but what can you do? It was only a short boat ride across the sea, but the other side was a lot different to Thailand. Roads were old and dusty and buildings seemed a bit older and dodgier. We didn’t get to see much of Myanmar, but it gave us a bit of an impression anyway. We were planning to travel around in the country, but it seems impossible to arrange the paperwork to bring our scooter with us, so we went back into Thailand that same day and got a stamp for an additional 15 days. Plenty of time to get into Cambodia.

There’s only one highway connection southern Thailand with the north, so after a beautiful scenic mountain pass we had to stick to the highway for most of the way to Bangkok. We did find a quieter country road for about 100 km at some stage, which was a very nice change from the busy highway everyone uses. The highway has a couple of lanes and an emergency lane that is used by all slow vehicles, including us. This lane is also used by all slow traffic going in the opposite direction to avoid U-turns. The highway is dotted with petrol stations, which seems logical considering the number of little motorbikes on the road. Our scooter has a capacity of three liters and we can ride about 120/130 km until we need to fill up. Petrol here is not as cheap as in other Asian countries; about $1.20 per liter. Lucky we’re very fuel efficient! We can ride about 350 km per day before our bums get really sore and we both get grumpy. The first 100 km is over with in no time, but the last 80 are so hard; it can sometimes take up to three hours! When we do 350 km we really ride the whole day. But we get to see lots and we take lots of country roads that we wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. The bike isn’t as fast or as comfortable as the bus, but it is cheaper and certainly gives us a lot more freedom and flexibility. It’s also very handy when looking for accommodation. We look at a few places before we decide where to stay, we don’t have to walk the distances between hotels and than back again anyway. It’s given us some great bargains!

We reached Bangkok after a long ride from Pretchuap Kiri Khan (where they have a disgusting monkey temple on a hill where the monkeys are very cheeky and show their teeth lots) and via a detour to the Damnoen Saduak floating market. We wanted to go to the market, but the place seemed dead and there wasn’t anywhere suitable to sleep, so we decided to push on to Bangkok, only an hour away, or so we thought…

The frantic, horrific, chaotic traffic of Bangkok met us about 60 km away from the city and only got worse, the closer we got to it. Without an accurate map of the outskirts of Bangkok, it was hard to navigate. We were also tired, having ridden all day long. Thanks to the compass we found our way east and within the map’s borders. Bangkok is a very difficult city to navigate in. The map might say that a road will bring you straight to it, however, it suddenly changes into a one-way street and you find yourself suddenly in a maze of unfamiliar streets, considering the streets hardly ever show street signs (or we kept missing them). After we rode around the city about three times, we finally found the bridge we were looking for and were in the middle of the city. We wanted to stay south of Rama IV (a main road in Bangkok) and saw signs for this road everywhere, but none of them actually led to this road. Eventually we found it and all we needed to do was a U-turn. This was possible in the past, but these days Rama IV has permanent barricades to make a legal U-turn impossible. We did an illegal one anyway and ended up with a fine (later on), only to find out that the hostel we wanted to stay at closed four minutes earlier. But not to worry, the suburb of Sathon had many more guesthouses on offer and they weren’t even expensive. Just a few minutes later we settled into a dodgy hotel, ready to explore Bangkok. And then it is really nice to have your own transport. We braved the traffic once again with David as excellent rider and Jenny as brilliant navigator. The first night brought us to Patpong market, where Jenny had been once before. The memories of this market were somewhat different, though. We stayed in Bangkok for a couple more nights, saw the sights, met some people and left on the 31st of December for Khao Yai national park.

Leaving Bangkok was a delight in terms of traffic. There was none! The 31st is a public holiday and no one seemed to be on the road. What a blessing! We quickly found our way out of the city and by chance found a really nice country road that led us to where we wanted to be. After studying the map a bit we decided we wanted to ride through the Khao Yai national park and stay in Pok Chang, not too far beyond the park. Just before we got the entrance of the national park there was a huge traffic jam (so that’s where all those people from Bangkok ended up), all weekend-trippers wanting to enter the park. The entry wasn’t free either, it would have cost us 830 Baht, about 30 dollars, to just ride through it. Lucky for us the traffic jam was so long that the guards decided to let traffic through without paying for a few minutes, to keep traffic flowing. That saved us a bit of money! The park was nice with thick monsoon forest and signs saying ‘watch for crossing cobras’ and ‘watch for elephants crossing’. Of course we didn’t see any of these animals, because they probably choked on the exhaust fumes of all the cars and motorbikes coming past.

New Year’s Eve was uneventful and the next morning we were on the road again. We ended up in Surin, in north eastern Thailand. A lovely, pleasant, sleepy town where we found a great bargain for accommodation and from where we could visit elephant villages and silk towns. It was really relaxed there and we made the best purchase ever; two pillows for our scooter! People seem to find our pillows very funny, but then again, we always get giggled at. It’s quite cute and everyone is usually all smiles. It’s so nice finding yourself amongst smiling, happy, friendly people all day!

We wanted to go into Cambodia, but our scooter wasn’t accepted in. Apparently along the Thai borders we should be able to fill out certain documentation, but not at this particular border. They told us Cambodia wouldn’t accept Thai registered bikes in their country. We decided to try another border, about three hours way. The same thing happened here and David even went into Cambodia to speak to the officials on the other side, but no luck. Oh well, we won’t see the temples of Angkor then. Instead, we ended up in a great little city with, again, brilliant food. We’ll stay here for a couple of days and then try to get into Laos. Let’s hope we get there!