Thailand - again
It gets boring saying it but our return back into Thailand from Laos was through yet another hassle free border. We crossed the border near Vientiane and clocked up 350 miles through some lovely countryside to reach Sukhothai by late afternoon. For about 50 miles we had giant creatures threatening to jump out at us from the roadside which kept us well amused; beautifully kept topiaries of elephants, giraffes, rhinoceros, camels, dolphins and people dancing on giant toadstools.
Then miles of rolling forest clad hills, waterfalls, brown snaking rivers and fields of rice and corn. Hardly any foreigners around this area of Thailand but some great national parks to explore that seem ripe for tourism.
click here for another image
We spent a day looking at the beautiful ruins of Sukhothai, an ancient moated city that was prominent from the mid 13th to the late 14th centuries. It has some beautifully preserved Buddha images in ruined temples all set in a huge well-kept historical park. We stayed at a lovely guesthouse here set amongst the fields on the outskirts of Sukhothai in a lovely Thai style wooden bungalow with a surrounding balcony and big sloping overhanging eaves. We drifted to sleep to croaking frogs and chirping cicadas outside our windows.
click here to see our guest house
We left here, travelling north to Si Satchanalai, another ruined city from the same period as Sukhothai, quite eerie in its isolation as its far less visited and has more unkempt grounds than its more famous neighbour.
We ended the day in the city of Lampang which we used as a base for visiting the nearby Elephant Conservation Center. Elephants in Thailand were predominately kept as working beasts but with the decline in logging and machinery replacing them in the fields their owners are forced to find alternative ways for them to earn their keep. Of course it would be preferable for them to be living wild but with a declining natural habitat and poaching this is not always possible. So elephants are now largely used for tourism and we saw a show, elephants displaying skills used in the logging trade and also playing musical instruments and painting.
click here to see elephant painting
Far more interesting for us was the elephant hospital on the same grounds where we saw some distressing cases of sick elephants. To list a few injuries, a 2 year old paralysed after it had fallen down a bank, a chopped off trunk, victims of land mines on the Burmese border and forest fire burns. The vets here are doing some amazing work reviving some pretty sad cases, as being Buddhist they dont like to put any animal down. We were lucky to see lots of babies including one 10 day old girl who was still very wrinkly and tottery on her feet.
click here to see elephant recovering from forest fire burns
Although we visited Chiang Mai and Pai when Mum was here, Rich was keen to take the road following the Burmese border through the mountains on the bike.
If you are a map nerd you may wonder why we crossed back from Laos at Vientiane instead of the more obvious northern border of Huay Xai. We had been warned that the road down to Huay Xai was particularly rough. Our friends Heidi and Bernd had previously come through on their 2 KTMs and warned us that it was a full on day of dirt biking, hilly, wet clay, large boulders and that we may not make it on the TDM. The alternative is a two day river trip but that costs $100US to transport the bike so we gave that border a miss.
click here to see Lisa and friend
Instead we rode back up to Chiang Mai where we saw a fantastic cultural show involving classical and tribal music and dancing and the bike went to Joes Bike Team for some loving care; a new chain, rear brake pads and a new fork seal. We thought the chain would make it back to NZ with us as weve got an automatic chain lubricating system, a Scottoiler, which Rich thinks is brilliant but hed done around 40,000 miles with the chain and it was getting too stretched. One fork stanchion had been badly scratched by a dodgy, overpriced London mechanic and now eats fork seals an expensive, frustrating habit.
On to the lovely town of Pai at the start of the Mae Hong Son loop. This route is a great stretch of road that winds through the forest, past waterfalls, thatched hut villages draped in mist, rice paddies and more or less follows the Mae Nam Moei river that separates Thailand from Burma.
At Mae Hong Son we visited the Karen Long Neck and Big Ears villages with the usual dodgy road in, lots of little river crossings over nice slimey, slippery concrete, getting wet feet at one and slipping over on the slime in another.
These are villages of Burmese refugees that the Thai government has given refuge to for the past 10 or so years. They survive financially by being a tourist attraction in their own right we paid to visit, talk to them and take photos of them. Crass tourism but speaking to them they prefer the life they have here, earning money in this way to the persecuted life they led in Burma and it encourages them to keep their culture and look because we pay for it.
Its only the females that participate in this body beautifying and for those families that choose to do so, they start around age 5. They Long Necks told us their daughters start with about ½ kilo of brass coiled around their necks and each few years will increase it by another ½ kilo until they wear up to 6 kilos. Its unwound instead of being cut off and it lowers their shoulders rather than elongating the neck. They also wear coils around their knees, aluminum bangles and bizarrely plastic flowers in their hair. The Big Ears village adjoining is similar in that daughters start wearing rings in their earholes around age 5 and these rings are gradually expanded as they get older.
click here to see our wet bike
At Mae Sot we crossed over the Burmese border for a day to the town of Myawadi, a typical dirty border town. The Burmese customs are happy to allow tourists a day visit in exchange for some Yankee dollars and we enjoyed looking at yet another style of Buddha in their temples and looking at the antique shops with some amazing things left over from the British occupation.
click here to see what is for sale in Burmese antique shops
Another day ride to Ayutthaya which is the more famous cousin of Sukhothai, being another ruined Siamese capital. It was the home of 33 kings, spanning 4 dynasties with sovereignty stretching to present day Burma, Laos and Cambodia. This kingdom ruled from the mid 1300s to 1767 when the Burmese conquered it. By this stage we had tired of looking at Buddha images and ruins but there is no denying the beauty of the remaining architecture.
Down to Bangkok to collect our new carnet (border document for the bike), sent from the RAC in England, as they expire after one year and we are approaching that time. Last minute shopping and finally we are heading south again for a new country.
We wanted some beach time before we left Thailand so stopped south of Bangkok at a little known, beautiful, tourist free, white sandy beach and enjoyed some peace and quiet and warm seas for a couple of days.
Want to know what we do at the beach? Click here
Further south to the opposite of that idyllic beach, we stopped at Krabi. Rich came here 10 years ago and remembers a gorgeous spot like that we had just left but we found what felt like the Majorca of Thailand, package tourist heaven, loud bars, neon lights, expensive resort accommodation and worst of all, McDonalds. We couldnt believe it, but arriving at 6pm at night we had little option but to head for the furtherest beach we could find and get a cheap bungalow. The positive sides of coming to Krabi were the virtually empty beaches (everyone sat around their hotel pools) and a fantastic day snorkeling at a few of the beautiful islands off the coast. Unfortunately a lot of the coral was dead but we also found some pristine, clear waters with some beautiful coloured fish and incredible sea plants. Ive not done a lot of snorkeling so was really blown away with the beauty of it but didnt like being bitten by one particularly territorial baby pink and green stripped number. After 3 nips which werent particularly painful but which left red marks I made a mental note to avoid them in future.
So thats it, in total seven and a half weeks in Thailand over 3 visits, 5 times to Bangkok, 2 mechanic visits and 3500 miles covered.
Time for a new country I reckon.