Day 111 – Aeroplane

After a wonderful couple of weeks in Thailand it is time to move on (though we could happily have stayed longer) and we are heading into Laos.  We spend the morning enjoying the last amazing breakfast in our accommodation and using the good WiFi connection to submit our Tour Maker interviews before its time for another taxi ride and another airport.  We would heartily recommend Chang Mai House for Dreamer as a place to stay if you ever make it to this part of the world.

We are a little surprised that our plane is a relatively small propeller plane with a 2 and 2 layout but the flight is fine, though like every flight since the first one out of Heathrow it failed to leave at the scheduled time (though unusually it left early rather than late).

On arrival in Laos we need to get our visa which involves three separate queues and paying in US Dollars unless you want take the opportunity to utilise their exchange rates for other other currencies that even Dick Turpin would be ashamed off.  We meet a lovely retired couple in the queue who have the best answer ever to the question ‘Where are you from?’ – they sold all their possessions 21 years ago in the UK and bought a yacht and have been sailing around the world since.

Feeling like we are back on a Thomson all-inclusive in comparison we head out to our accommodation and grab a bit of local food.  I should have perhaps heeded the advice on the menu that stated it was a local specialty for those with adventurous tastes as I spend most of the meal extracting pieces of wood from my dinner and failing to identify most of the remaining ingredients in my Luang Prabang Buffalo Stew.

Our first non-jet plane

When your menu option has a double asterix warning attached you cannot say it is a surprise

Before the stew arrived

Crepes to take the taste away

Day 110 – Where I find my heaven

Trunk doubles as snorkel!

Watching her leave the river from this angle, you really feel a sense of their size

Playing in the water

Mahout helping with bathtime

Feeding fun

Dust shower following a mud bath = elephant applying suncream

Keeping a close eye on me

Shhh…you haven’t seen me right!

Clean after a bath

Drying off

Not sleeping? Must be time to eat some food.

Again, more food

Elephants have no forward vision…not sure this was the wisest shot!

The tanks of the animal world

Well and truly pampering a pachyderm

Eye-spy with my little eye…

Wounds of previous abuse

Back of snoz

Mahouts with their companions

The herd being protective

Baby elephant. Too cute.

When you’ve got an itch…

Feeding elephants by hand – one of the most amazing experiences ever

Can I eat your camera?

Dust shower

Keep up…no food round here

Travelling the world provides numerous wonderful opportunities discover cultures and amazing scenery, but one of the aspects we have enjoyed more than most has been the opportunity to see the amazingly diverse wildlife our planet has to offer.

Spending time in Asia provides the opportunity so see one of the most recognisable and loved animals on the planet – the elephant.  Prior to setting off on the trip I was determined to ride an elephant, and knew enough to know I wanted to do this bareback, as the the seats can cause the animal damage and pain.

That said we like to think our ourselves as responsible and ecologically minded travellers and therefore we did a great deal of reading about these animals and how best to see them before deciding when and where.

A visit to the Elephant Nature Park north of Chang Mai was the result of that research, and had me questioning whether riding them was a good idea at all.  By the end of the video you are shown in the bus on the way to the centre I was convinced that I would not ride them.

For any elephants to be ridden, they have to be domesticated first.  The process that the animal goes through to achieve this is called ‘the crush’ and is 72 hours sleep deprivation, hunger and at times, quite savage beatings.  It is animal torture and one of the most barbaric and upsetting things I have seen.

The park is the work of an amazing individual called Lek (Time Magazines Asian Hero of the Year 2005) who has made it her life’s work to help protect these magnificent animals and educate people about their treatment.  The park opened in 1996 and now covers 300 acres and provides sanctuary for 37 elephants that have been rescued (which for Lek means buying them for around 1 million Thai Bhat) from domestic owners that no longer wanted them.

Paul, our guide for the day, speaks wonderful north-eastern English (he went to school in County Durham), and it never stopped being amusing to hear a Thai person speak like Ant and Dec.  The only thing stronger than his accent was his passion for the animals and their treatment in Thailand.

We spend the day with another 4 honeymooners “Pampering a Pacyderm”.  A day trip whereby you get to spend the day with 3 elephants as they trek up for food (including crossing a river), enjoy a mud bath and dust shower, before returning to the river on the way home for a bath.  Paul introduces us to our elephants for the day: Mai Batong (35 years old), Mai Bang (45 years old) and the one that me and Niki are given, Mai Ban Yen (30 years old) who is sadly still recovering from the abuse she was subjected to and under strict instructions from the vet to not have a mud bath.

This is a truly wonderful experience to be close to the elephants (feeding them resulted in me being covered in mud and elephant slobber by the end of the day) and see them in their natural environment behaving as they would in the wild.

And that behaviour is mostly eating.  Being the largest mammal on the earth, weighing 10,000lb, and needing to eat 10% of your body weight a day is time-consuming work when you are a vegetarian.  In fact they will spend 18 hours a day eating food.  Generally we could keep pace with the elephants except for the sections that didn’t offer them any opportunity to eat, at which point they dashed off into the distance and we caught them up at the next area they could graze!

Being able to have this opportunity to spend time with elephants at such close proximity, and witness their individual personalities and gentleness (despite their size) makes the sometimes lifelong bond that develops between an animal and its mahout seem natural.  It also makes the fact that people can abuse these animals so badly even more hard to understand.

Lek is known as the ‘elephant whisperer’ and has described the park she has created as “elephant heaven”.  Having spent one of the most memorable days of the trip here, we cannot think of a better description and hope that she continues to help more elephants find a place their way here.

Day 109 – More than words

Our mean *cough* machine

Amazing roads on the Sameong loop

Rear view mirrors are an unecessary optional extra

One of the 10 waterfalls we stopped and walked up to

Mae Sa waterfalls

Some of the other road users on the Sameong Loop

A rare glimpse of gold

Less “Jesus built my hotrod” and more “Buddha Blinged my Moped”

Men Only

Monk Chat aka English Literature A-level

At night the silver temple goes all disco on us

The north of Thailand has a bit of a reputation for being great for motorcycling, an area that forms part of what is known as the ‘Golden Triangle’.  Similar to the famed Rhubarb Triangle, but its opium rather than delicious fruit that is grown round these parts.  It is not the crops, but the roads and scenery that have made this part of the world (shared between Thailand, Myanmar and Laos) a bit of cycling mecca.

For anyone interested in riding a bike round here I would recommend http://www.GT-rider.com as a wonderful source of information and routes.  From this site we select the ‘Sameong Loop’, apparently the best 100km loop in Thailand, and head out on a wonderful day in the saddle and enjoy the all but brief feeling of having independent travel capability again.

The loop brings us back into Chang Mai on route 108, which is conveniently the right side of the city for our evening plans at the only silver Buddist temple in Thailand (maybe the world), Wat Sri Supan.   Clearly a remarkable structure with intricate silver work on both the outside and in, but one that does not allow women to enter (so apologies that the internal and close up photos are mine, not Niki’s).

Whilst an interesting temple, it is not the reason we have chosen to come here.  The reason is simple: ‘Monk Chat’.

This was sold as a chance to speak to some of the Buddist monks in a unique opportunity to gain greater understanding about their culture, beliefs and way of life.  Eventually we got a chance to do this but not before we were given a task by the two young gentlemen dressed resplendently in orange before us, and that was to help them with their English Literature homework!

Both were originally from Cambodia and have been learning English for around 4 years, which made the fact they wanted help to understand two English poems written in the 17th and 19th centuries a bit of a surprise.  It is also made it quite hard.  Understanding the deeper meaning of “Good-morrow” (John Donne http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173360) and “Because I could not stop for death” (Emily Dickinson  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177119) ourselves was a challenge, trying to explain that to two people without English as their mother tongue was almost impossible.

English language and spelling has moved on as the years had passed which meant they had struggled with the Cambodia:English dictionary app on their phone.  After an hour or so of scribbling all over their notes, drawing pictures and a good deal of laughter I think we can safely say we will have paid a significant part in helping them achieve the D- they will surely receive.

We then spent another hour finding out about people that are held in such high regard in Thai life.  Monks have special seating areas in train stations, reserved seats on the metro, people give them gifts and food and every man is expected to be a monk at least for a period of time in their life (that may be for life, or a shorter period of around 3 months).  They don’t pray or believe in a god, but instead believe in a way of life set out by the man Buddha, who lived approximately 600 B.C.  His teachings are set out in 3 books detailing the rules of a monk, the story of Buddha, and the psychology of man.

Meditation is a very key part of their life, and following a simple introduction to it, we can see how doing this for the amount of time they do (hours a day) makes them what they are, which is some of the calmest and most relaxed people we have ever met.

Day 108 – The Bends

Arriving in Chang Mai off the overnight train from Bangkok meant that we arrived early in the morning and after a good nights sleep, not something that you can get with air travel. This puts you in a great place to start the day and I think that we will certainly look at to travel by train more in the future.

With our accommodation being a little out of town, so to make getting round a little easier and reduce our dependance on taxi’s we take the opportunity to hire a moped for a couple of days. The lady that owns and runs the place us amazing and she has someone that brings the bike to you and collects when you are done.

The quieter roads out of town provide a gentle introduction and give us chance to familiarise ourselves with our new 2 wheeled 125cc ‘beast’ before we headed into Chang Mai itself.

Roads in Asia are full of mopeds and motorcycles that weave between traffic with amazing speed and control, and the whole process seems to take place without the need for both indicators or looking what is behind you. The process seems to follow the one that exists on alpine pistes, that is it is the person behinds responsibility to watch what is going on in front and take the steps necessary to avoid collisions. Being from the UK makes this a hair-raising but ultimately enjoyable experience.

After visiting a few of the Wots (temple in Thai) and grabbing a bit of lunch we decide to head out on the open road to reach a viewpoint and temple called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. The total cycling distance was about 20km, so a round trip of around 50km including the journey home didn’t seem as though it would be too much of a challenge especially as it would take us away from the hustle and bustle of Thailand’s second largest city.

I clearly plan motorcycle rides with the same level of diligence and research that I have been known to plan bicycle rides in the UK. That is without looking at the route in any detail at all. Had I done so, I would have seen that the ride was almost totally up a steep hill with approaching 100 bends, many of them 180 degree switchbacks. Not the easiest of rides, but the view and the temple awaiting at the top made it all worth while, and were privileged enough to arrive in time to hear the monk’s evening chants as the last rays of the suns light reflected off the golden temple.

The ride back down in now complete darkness was actually good fun as we started to get used to the bike and how to best take the corners (in a smooth swinging motion, a bit like snowboarding) and arrived back on the outskirts of the city in plenty of time to have some food at one of the many markets.

After walking round many options we choose a rather unusual self-cook option. You select your raw ingredients and cook them yourself on a hot plate in front of you. We hopefully managed to avoid the food poisoning roulette of using raw chopsticks and cooked chopsticks at the right time (though we did notice that the Thai people around us seemed happy to use one pair).

Wor Lok Molee – one of the oldest temples in Chang Mai

Its considered bad from to leave the temple and take a better pair of shoes home than you came with (apparently)

Monks have a lot of time to do some gardening

A bit like students in the 1990s, monks get through a lot of incense

Baby’s got the bends…

Look out!

A rare picture of the two of us at Wot Phra That Doi Suthrep

Candles flickering in the dusky sky

Beautifully lit Dragon tail handrailing

DIY dinner. I might have burnt some of it.

Pick your ingredients. You might even recognise some of them.

Calor gas bottle under the table. BBQ Thai style.