Good bye south east Asia

Jacq & Rhys, last day in Hanoi, Vietnam

Bangkok, Thailand – So long you crazy region. After four months I’ve come to really like you. The smells, the countryside, the poverty, the heat, the noise, the scams, the food. Oh, the food!

Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learnt about travel on this trip is not to rush it. So often I’ve spoken to people who only have four days to see a country before speeding off to the next one, the whole region ‘done’ in two weeks annual leave.

My advice is to save up your money and holidays (or just sell it all and go) and give yourself as much time as you can in a country. Vietnam needs a month, minimum. Two if you can. Cambodia as long as you can stand it. Laos? Two weeks for the north alone.

Bangkok, again

Long tails on the Chao Praya River, Bangkok

Bangkok, Thailand – It’s like ground hog day.

Arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport at night. Hike from the plane to the baggage collection. Wait an eternity for our bags. Down the escalator to the taxi rank. Give the attendant the address of our shitty Banglamphu hostel.

Speed down the expressways at a million miles an hour. We’d never survive a crash at this speed so seat belts are unnecessary. Which is why there are none.

Turn into Soi Rambuttri. Every kind of backpacker is illuminated in the taxi’s headlights as they walk along the road beside us. The filthy man in fisherman’s pants who’s been here too long. The sunburnt English girls. The lost couple lugging their packs up and down the road in a vain attempt to find a room.

Check into our room. No window. Dim fluorescent light. A large air conditioning unit that knows only on or off. Hot or freezing. Quiet or roaring.

Lock up and head out for a beer and a pad thai on the street. Then back for sleep.

Doh!

Ao Nang, Thailand – Due to a bit of confusion about whether 12:35am actually belongs to Saturday night or Sunday morning, Jacq and I missed our big flight from Bangkok to London.

As I know now, 12:35am occurs right at the very start of Sunday (ie still Saturday night if you think about it). Unfortunately, I thought I had all day Sunday to enjoy in Thailand before flying out that night.

I realised this wasn’t actually the case about 10:30pm, just three hours before we were supposed to fly out. Unfortunately, I was in my underpants reading in bed in Ao Nang in Southern Thailand, many hundreds of kilometres from Bangkok’s Suvarnaphumi Airport.

It’s an amazing feeling to suddenly realise what the mistake meant in terms of extra cost, stress and possibly losing accommodation in London.

Mind you, we’ve had a pretty good track record so far. Of all the buses, tuk tuks, trains, mini vans, motos, boats, ferrys, longtails and canoes we’ve caught, we’ve never missed one. Before this.

Backpack Storybook tip: If you’re going to miss your flight, I highly recommend calling the airline or airport in advance and cancelling. We cancelled with one hour notice and then emailed our failthful STA travel agent the next day. She was able to get us on a flight to London two days later. We only paid a $AUD50 penalty fee each. Phew.

Killing time

The author, liberating a coconut, before his descent into Lord of the Flies style madness

Koh Jum, Thailand – It was only when the ferry had departed, we’d checked into our uninspiring accommodation and tried to swim at the rocky beach out the front that Jacq and I realised allocating 24 hours on the island of Koh Jum was perhaps about 18 hours too long.

We’d taken the ferry north from Koh Lanta, where we’d spent the past week in island bliss. A great bungalow on the beach, a moto to blat up and down the length of the island each day and lots of swimming characterised our time there.

We needed to move on though, our flight to the UK looming on the horizon. So we looked at the map of southern Thailand, dotted as it is with islands and bays, and picked one almost at random.

Getting there was a bit of fun too. The ferry slowed in the calm ocean just off the coast of Koh Jum (about halfway between Lanta and Krabi on the mainland) and a fleet of longtail boats came speeding towards us, their distinctive rooster tails of wash kicking up at the rear from the angled props. They swarmed alongside the ferry and practically dragged us onto one of their boats.

So there we were. 9am and depressed about being stranded on a tropical island.

After that things improved. We rented a moto – perhaps the single best solution to any problem in south east Asia – and explored the island. On the southern tip I borrowed a tomahawk axe from a villager and took half an hour to open a coconut. And it was almost worth the effort too. Sweet milk inside and tasty, soft flesh.

At the northern tip we took the moto out on the low tide beach and tested its soft sand capabilities. The Honda Wave is no Hilux 4×4 but it impressed nonetheless.

At one of the island small villages we stopped for lunch and ate white rice noodles with a sweet curry sauce. Extended family and neighbours dropped by for their lunch and we had a great old time communicating in sign language and generally embarrassing ourselves.

In the afternoon, wiped out from the heat, we fell asleep on the soft grass under palm trees near the beach for an hour and only woke in time to huddle in a thatched roof shelter when a tropical storm swept through.

All in all, a day that was thoroughly enjoyed. And rather than catch the late boat the next day, we were out of there first thing the next morning. Short and sweet.

Big blue

Koh Ngai lagoon

Koh Lanta, Thailand – One of the ‘must do’ activities on Lanta is a tour out to the southern islands.

We booked a day trip on a long tail boat for about 600THB. There is also the option of a speed boat for a couple thousand baht, but apart from seeing one extra island, it didn’t’ seem worth the expense.

The longtail is the real deal. Its how the fishermen get around the waterways and oceans of Thailand. Its loud as hell and bloody crude too. The boat builders in this part of the world take a car engine, strap it onto a swivelling platform at the back of the boat and rip the muffler off for good measure.

In the hour or so it took to get across the straight to Koh Ngai Island I had forgotten about the chainsawing noise from the back of the boat. Instead, I took in the beauty of the white sand beach, the crystal clear water of the lagoon and the swaying palm trees. It really was like a postcard.

At another island, little more than a limestone cliff rising out of the ocean, we snorkelled around its base in the green water. Inquisitive fish buzzed around us in their hundreds. I felt like that deep sea diver figurine you find in aquariums sometimes.

At another island, Koh Muk, we swam with our guide into a dark cave which eventially opened out into a hidden beach.

I use the word ‘hidden’ creatively. When we arrived there were another two or three tour groups sunning themselves. By the time we warmed ourslelves in the sun and swam back, the procession of tourists emerging from the gloom of the cave onto the beach was almost constant.

Nevertheless, a great day out. I mean, you can’t expect to have Thailand to yourself in January.

Island time

Koh Lanta sunset

This little fella wasn’t feeling too flash. He chucked up after I took this shot.

Koh Lanta general store

One bungalow, one towel, one bike – all you need in Koh Lanta

Jacq, lazy hamock afternoons

Kantieng Bay

Koh Lanta, Thailand – Tourists swarm this island on motos like angry bees. Locals run on island time. Bungalows beside resorts on the beach. Waterfalls, bays and jungles. An island of contrasts.

More images at the Thailand photo gallery.

Backpack Storybook tip: We stayed at Iyalangka Bungalows on Klohng Nin Beach, just south of the shops at the highway turn off. Great Thai-Japanese bungalows and the best bathrooms in all of Thailand in the sub 600THB bracket.

On the beach

Life is so fucking hard right now

Ao Nang, Thailand – Ao Nang is the stereotypical southern Thailand beach. Limestone karsts rising out of the turquoise water, coconut-tree lined beaches and colourful longtail boats. So beautiful it looks like a postcard come to life.

But we have arrived in peak season and I’m not ready for the full force of European tourism. Luxury resorts, upmarket restaurants, bright pink Scandanavians everywhere and even a – gasp – MacDonald’s.

We’re lucky to find a street vendor selling pad thai for 30THB a plate because otherwise we almost couldn’t have afforded to eat here. A tall bottle of Leo Beer from the 7-Eleven completes the night’s meal as Jacq and I make plans to escape to the islands in the morning.

Tiger temple

Human and tiger bond in the tranquil surrounds of the Wat

Kanchanaburi, Thailand – A friend of Jacq’s had recommended a temple in Kanchan called Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, run by monks who have taken in orphaned tigers and those rescued from poachers. It sounded like a tranquil place to observe monk and tiger going about their daily business.

However, as we got closer and did more research on the internet, a few things started to make me think it wouldn’t be quite as we thought. Rumours of drugging the tigers to make them placcid around the tourists. Questions about whether it was right to keep them in cages and only let them out for a few hours each day. That sort of thing.

We actually considered not visiting. Neither Jacq and I were the type of people keen to pay to see animals locked up. But in the end we thought we should check it out and make up our own mind.

300THB (about AUD$12) bought us the chance to pose with three or four different tigers while having our photo taken. All up we were next to them for about one or two minutes. We were among about 50 Western tourists in the enclosure, which is a canyon or quarry. About another twenty handlers were there and one monk.

The tigers seemed happy enough, mostly laying about. They wore collars chained to concrete blocks in the quarry. I was led by the hand to various tigers and instructed to sit or crouch behind the animals. The guide took photos of me and then we moved to the next one.

At the end of it I think I was more disappointed that the exercise was just one big photo opportunity. I didn’t get to see the tigers in any sort of natural habitat.

In fairness, the temple does claim proceeds are going towards building a large enclosure for the animals with space to roam around. When that will happen they didn’t say.

Banana pancakes and the Death Railway

Allied soldier graves, Kanchanaburi

Kanchanaburi, Thailand – We came for the tiger monks but accidentally stumbled across the Bridge over the River Kwai.

That about sums up our trip to Kanchanaburi, or Kanchan, about two hours west of Bangkok.

You can read more about the tiger temple here. It was just one of the sights we visited during our three days by the River Kwai.

Almost immediately after checking into our riverside bungalow, we rented a moto and sped off to check out the lie of the land. A few minutes north of town we came across the infamous bridge built from back-breaking POW labour in World War Two. It’s a story that we would read about and see many times over in Kanchan.

The original wooden bridge was bombed to shit in WWII but a new iron and concrete structure spans the river today.

More than just the bridge, this town is about the Death Railway. Fittingly, it has two large cemeteries for Allied soldiers, three war museums and half a dozen sights just up the highway, including Hell Fire Pass.

Once Jacq and I took in some of these sights, which we did on a moto in about a day, I was ready to leave. The travel fatigue that had set in in Vientiane was still with me. The hot weather and the inability to swim anywhere (the river looked fairly dirty) made me irritable.

And after the smells and sights and foreigness of Vietnam and Laos, the main road of Kanchan was a disappointment of internet cafes, Western restaurants serving banana pancakes and sunburnt tourists.

On the move

Jacq, still managing a smile

Bangkok, Thailand – Tuk tuk to Vientiane’s Talat Sao bus station. Sold out for the 11:30am border crossing into Thailand. Instead we get another tuk tuk to the border. Exit stamps. Bus over the Friendship Bridge into the land of smiles.

Visa stamps. Bus to Nong Khai markets. Tuk tuk to bus station. Big bus to Udon Thani bus station. Tuk tuk to Udon Thani Airport. Flight delayed. Finally board at 6pm.

Arrive in Bangkok at 8pm, too late to strike out for Kanchanaburi, two hours away. Instead taxi to Banglamphu. Farang everywhere. Wasn’t this busy when we first arrived in October. Hotels and guesthouses are full. 9pm and starting to get worried.

Finally find a room in Soi Rambuttri. An air conditioned room with a window opening into the internal stairwell. We take it.

Eat on the road and watch the freak show walk past. Do these people voluntarily stay here? Or are they just en route like us? Some look like they are in no plans to leave. Crazy.