The Chiangs

After a few days of apathy in Bangkok it was time to move on. I decided to catch the overnight train up north to Chiang Mai. The train was considerably smaller than those in India and hot as blazes but still comfortable. About an hour before we reach Chiang Mai I started talking with my neighbor passenger, Chris, who turned out to be from San Diego and had been traveling for the past six months in Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, mostly surfing. We ended up at a cheap guest house, $4/night, but were kicked out 2 days later when we didn't sign up with them for an over priced trek.

Chris and I spent about four days in Chiang Mai getting late, lazy starts, walking around and viewing lots of the Temples throughout the city, and having a few 'Monk Chats' with local monks. We looked at a few multi-day trekking options but couldn't make up our minds and decided to try and find one further north of in Laos.

One day we rented scooters and drove out of town to Doi Sutep, a large temple on a hill. Sunday night we took in the large night market and some local cuisine including crickets, bamboo worms, and ant and bee omelettes, and I finally had my first thai massage...for the $5 it cost for an hour I can't really complain, but it was lacking any real method. When we arrived in Chiang Mai we noticed that there seemed to be a lot of pollution in the air, it turned out to be inversion ('An atmospheric condition in which the air temperature rises with increasing altitude, holding surface air down and preventing dispersion of pollutants') caused by slashing and burning that was going on in Laos. On day four the inversion became bad enough that we decided to head further north in an attempt to get away from it.

We ended up in Chiang Rai, halfway between Chiang Mai and the Laos border. Unfortunately for us the inversion proved even worse in Chiang Rai, and worse still there was nothing to do or see in the more expensive town...to paraphrase the Lonely Planet, 'Chaing Rai is more suited for living than visiting'.

And so we headed out the next day to Chiang Khong and the Laos border. We got a room at the charmingly rustic 'Bamboo Guest House', with what would have been a great view of Laos sans pollution and where much to my surprise I had the best Mexican food I've had on this trip! A day wandering around Chiang Khong and breathing in the increasingly worse inversion was enough to see everything and push us to cross the border into Laos.

Photos: Chiang Mai, Chiang Khong

Getting out in Bangkok

Five days in Bangkok and I finally motivated myself enough to get out and do a little exploring. The day before I had dropped by the American embassy to get a refill on my passport pages and then dropped my passport off at the Vietnam embassy to get my visa taken care of. I figured I'd walk towards the Vietnam embassy and then stop by the 'Siam Center' (a giant shopping center I saw the day before from the taxi) on the way back. I made the mistake of waiting until mid-day to get started, and then rather than consult any map at the onset I figured I could retrace the route the taxi had taken the previous night when it dropped me back from the embassy. As a result I got fairly lost and spent 2 1/2hrs walking around in 100 degree heat, but I did get to see a bit of the city. I did finally make it to the embassy, just in time to pickup my passport before it closed at 4pm, and then caught the skytrain over to the 'Siam Center'...

The 'Siam Center' was an amazing conglomeration of several giant malls all in one place and all linked by large sky-bridges that let you go from one to the next to the next without ever having to go back down to the ground. I spent about 4-5hrs just wandering and wondering around at this place. As a result of my time there I'm going to have to revise one of my previous observations...the young white guys with thai girls are severely overshadowed by the old and entirely unattractive white guys, most of whom seem to be American, with beautiful Thai women on their arms. While at the Siam Center I did manage to stumble into some runway modeling going on for the 'Mango' store, pick out a few Bently's for sale on the top floor, see the tiny new Sony palm-top computer, have some iced-coffee from Starbucks, grab dinner at the 'Lee Cafe', see some crazy cartoon characters decorating the walls of one mall, and cross about 10 different sky bridges without setting foot on the ground. A tiring day...I still hate shopping I realized.

I also had my first close up encounter with a ladyboy who sat down next to me in an internet cafe, reaking of too much cheap makeup, stale cigarettes, and fruit juice, who later tried to grab my arm outside the cafe as I was leaving...I was nice in my rebuff this time, but I won't rule out a freak out if that continue's to happen.

Another observation: compared to those in India, the auto-rickshaws here are like trading in a push-mower for a suped-up limo-length riding mower built by 'tim the toolman', not only can I lay back and stretch out as we fly down the road at 80km/hr...I watched the guy next to us wheely his!

Photos: Bangkok

Bangkok

It's been a few days in Bangkok and I confess I've done pretty much next to nothing. I wake up late in my tiny hotbox of a room, eat some scrambled eggs, wander around the streets, read and write, eat the occassional street food (pad thai, mangoes and sticky rice), surf the web, and sleep. It's been nice. It's so much calmer here and I've enjoyed just relaxing it in a bit. The only excitement to speak of was my first nights battle with bedbugs (surprisingly my first of the entire trip), which resulted in me having to switch hotels in the middle of the night, but was fairly easily resolved thankfully.

I have yet to see a single tourist attraction and so photos have been few. I have been stuck here for a few more days than expected while I got additional passport pages and my Vietnam visa which will be ready today. Then I'm off to the north for a bit.