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| In our flower garden :) |
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| Bamboo tea |
So since my last post, we had a slice of Pai, an accidental tour around the North of Thailand to do our visa run to Burma, back to Pai and then all the way down south to the opposite end of the country for a bit of raving in Koh Phangan, ending my travels far deeper than I thought I'd ever be, down at 20m below surface level in Mango Bay, Koh Tao, with my open water diving PADI! And then somehow, after a 34 hour journey, we took a long sleeper bus to Surrathani, on to Hat Yai (where we missed our bus) a stop off in George Town/ Penang and then at 4am.finally.we arrived. Surrounded by high rises and spaghetti-motorways, we're home again, but are we really?
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| Chillin in a giant telephone box.. |
We inhaled our breakfast before our early morning bus to Pai, thankfully not eating too much in anticipation of the incredibly windy roads that lasted for 3 hours (when your driver's hitting the accelerator like he's on speed). Up, up, up into the old town that was discovered accidentally by a group of hippies, and now inhabits the most eclectic mix of ethnicities and tribes in all of Thailand. After surviving the 6 hours of windy roads from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng (Laos) this was a breeze, and getting to our destination was worth every bend. We sat down with our new mate from Chang Mai 'D', at a lovely rustic cafe called 'L'Artiste'. The first thing you notice is that unlike many other places we'd been, here people cared about their guest houses, cafes and restaurants. You could see down to the smallest detail that it had all been thought out, strategically painted, placed and primed to look beautiful and fit into the gorgeous surrounding mountains. We all rented bikes and headed off to a few waterfalls to get in as much of Pai as possible given that there were so many things to see and do. The first waterfall we went to was alright.. if sliding down huge slippery rocks into shallow water is your thing.. the boys all managed it seamlessly, while I attempted the baby slide at the top, crashing and burning in front of a live audience of English Lads (always the best) as I went too slowly, flipped onto my front and narrowly avoided banging my face on the side of a rock... so after my elegant performance, I decided the bigger slide just wasn't for me. The next waterfall we checked out was hidden in a huge cave, stepping stones lead through the murky water to get to the final 'fall'. We climbed up above the water, to a far more appealing site, until we stood still, looking down below at the lush green bamboo and listening to the rushing water.
We headed back, along the amazing windy roads, perfect for nimble motorbikes, and stopped off at a viewpoint for sunset. The only frustrating thing about driving is that when you want to look up and just take in the curly clouds and colourful houses dotted all over the mountain side, you just can't do it for long enough, in fear of forgetting about the whole 'driving' part..
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| 80 degree hot springs |
If anyone's looking for a gorgeously cheap place to stay in Pai? Go across the rickety bamboo bridge, passed the first 2 guest houses and you arrive at 'Phu View guesthouse', $7 a night for a huge bungalow on stilts in a beautiful flower garden, with it's own bathroom, TV and huge double bed -- we'd found our niche. At night the marketeers appeared with their crystals, art pieces, hippie clothing, delicious food of all types, jewellery made from old stone/wood and so much more. You know how sometimes you wish that everything you wanted could just be in one shop or on one little street. Well Pai made my wish come true, the fact that money had to be involved to actually obtain anything material, kept us slightly apart, but at least browsing doesn't cost (much to J's frustration as he hurried me past every evening).
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| The face in the flowers |
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| Running into 'I' in Pai :) |
That night the sniffles came on, I'd caught J's cold just as he'd gotten over it, damn. Luckily I was in the perfect place for it, ailments of all sorts could be found. The funny man that always wore the gorilla hat was round the corner from us, selling his delicious 'ginger and honey tea' in tubes of bamboo, and 'hot n healthy noodle soups' for under $1 next door. When you're sick and you actually listen to what your body wants, and do as you're told, it really makes a difference. So within 2 days I was up and at it. The next morning, just as I was turning the key in my bike, I turn around to see 'I', a from my yoga retreat in Cambodia, we squealed with excitement and planned a day out -- waterfalls and hot springs it was. The weather was not calling for hot springs, but they were there to see so we thought we may as well see em. After a long and beautiful drive (and getting lost one or two times) we managed to soak ourselves in the 40 degree river - reading about all the health benefits it was giving us. We slowly lost all sensation in our bodies and when the heat got too much we got out, feeling light headed for minutes afterwards. The only cool water source around were the sprinklers for the grass, so we stood under them, appreciating the cool trickles of water down our hot bodies. Up at the top of the hot springs were the big daddies, 80 degree water that had steam rising out of it and eggs thrown around the sides that lay boiled beyond belief. After a chill and a chat, we made our way back to the bikes, hopping over the millions of red ants that lay in our path, and as we rode down the hill, the little old village ladies popped out from their houses making a 'smoking' sign and holding out bags of flowers - we laughed, of course it was the ones you'd least expect.
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| Tachileik in Burma |
I found a lovely 'whole-foods'ish' place to eat for breakfast and as we sat down with our coffee's we ran into the Dutch girls we knew from Chang Mai; more familiar faces - one of the best parts about travelling. The day was glorious, it went up and down in waves as we skipped around our flower garden, drew with our new crayons and painted with our new paints, watched the snowflakes on the walls and pacman on the ceiling, thought crazy thoughts, saw faces in the flowers and laughed our heads off. I had a thought that day about the importance of sexual energy in relation to our universe, bear with me..
When 2 beings come together and merge in such a way to raise their energy to the point of creating a life, it's literally the source of all energy/ life; That meiosis, that merging of 2 objects to create another form of energy, is just a minuscule example of the creation of our world (the big bang) and planets, the sun, the milky-way, the universe, the multi-verse, it's infinite yet it starts as something that you can experience and understand at such a basic level.. just a thought.
That night we wandered around Pai with our jaw clenched, feeling slightly weird as we ate at our local cheap plastic chair place that had whatever dish you wanted, as J sat across from me with his notorious rainbow headband, talking casually to the dog beside him.
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| The dreaded canyons |
The next morning after a strange sleep was a fresh start, yoga in the garden, breakfast at the amazing cafe 'boomelicious': Hash browns with poached eggs, bacon and salad with tomato jam (droooool). We wanted to do something active before sitting docile on a bus for the rest of the day, so we checked out the canyon TOTALLY underestimating what was to come. We began our little stroll along the path that soon disappeared and we found ourselves at the bottom of the crumbly brown canyon. We looked up in dismay, we couldn't go back where we'd come from as it was too steep and there was nothing to hold on to. We somehow managed to lift ourselves up, free-climbing with a backpack, on fragile-crumbling brown dust that fell away in our hands. There was a point at which J managed to slip down a pencil thin piece of canyon and I sat there, watching the fast-approaching storm and knowing we had to get back before our bus arrived - below me on either side was a steep drop and ahead was a thin path that had to be landed on perfectly, or else we'd fall to our deaths or break a lotta bones. With a lot of focus and sweat, I landed on the path in front of J and we walked on, the adrenaline pumping as we neared the end. On our final hurdle, my legs trembled as my body felt itself falling and my hands gripped onto dust, J. pushed me up and I scrambled to the surface with shaking legs, pulling him up behind me in return. We looked back at what we'd just managed to climb up and out of, and just gaped in disbelief. We ran back to our bikes as it began to pour, I wore the water-proof poncho to cover the backpack and Jack shivered as we zoomed along slippery roads to make it back in time for the bus, heading off to to Burma on our 9 hour bus ride. Luckily I shot-gunned the front seat, so with my legs stretched out in a pair of hippie pants, I settled in and managed to finish a whole book, 'Brain Rules' by John Medina (highly recommended if you're into psychology).
Our bus ride was supposed to be a quick visa run but turned into a full-day of picking up people in Chiang Mai and other areas of Northern Thailand, who were on the same mission. Kicking up a fuss worked in our favour and we blagged ourselves 2 free tickets back to Chang Mai for when we returned. 'Tachileik' in Burma is the inauthentic border town that's used for Visa runs, and the Burmese are prepared for everyone that walks across that border. We walked through the little market, swarmed by people selling cigarettes, perfumes, clothes, soaps and antiques. A familiar noise stood out amongst the sellers and I looked over my shoulder to see a plastic Psy singing 'Gangnam Style' - god it's everywhere. When we were rinsed of all our money we went back through to Thailand with my sandalwood soap and fake Kath Kidston bag, and made our way back to Pai for a chilled out sesh on the balcony, followed by 5 rounds of pudding, while sipping slowly through our bamboo tubes of tea.
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| My long lost sister... |
The hardest thing in SEAsia is trying to figure out what 'a good deal' is when everyone's supposedly selling it. We finally figured out the trick of bus tickets - buy them from the station, and at the last possible minute . 10 minutes before our bus drove off we heard shrieks and screams, turning the corner we watched the ticket ladies going mental, waving their arms around to sell their last tickets - a scary site I can tell you. We were so happy to finally be able to choose our seats so we got the ones at the very front, next to the huge TV. We played backgammon on the floor until the bus started moving and the movie began! We were delighted when we realized the movie was in Thai, with Thai subtitles that the conductor was reluctant to change. We were handed pink strawberry buns and vegetable juice as a complementary snack (hm..) so sleep seemed the best option. We were pleasantly awakened at 2am by fluorescent lights and blaring music, as we stopped for a midnight snack. 30 minutes later, we took off again, only to be pleasantly awakened for the second time at 5am, an hour before we arrived - the purpose of this, we never found out, but the music soon stopped when a grumpy passenger broke the speaker.. So I lay out a blanket and started doing yoga, the bumps proving quite a problem and the confused looks from the passengers making me giggle, but it filled the time.
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| Above the waterfall |
So we walked around, bought cheap coffee (that was better than any starbucks could be, and 1/10th of the price) and sorted out our bus ticket to Koh Phangan, with much difficulty. The only thing we wanted that afternoon was a swimming pool, so we wandered Bangkok, being turned away from all of them as we weren't 'guests'; but we still managed to sneak into a lovely infinity pool belonging to a hotel nearby, doing a couple lengths and hopping out sharpish as cortisol levels rose in response to the 'INTRUDERS WILL BE FINED' signs that littered the walls. What to do in the heat of the day in Bangkok, when you're templed out and don't want to shop or eat.. hm. We headed to the cinema to see the new hit 'Now You See Me' - Hollywood, you did well.
We leisurely made our way back to the Travel Agent, crashing out on each others shoulders as the bus shimmied its way through the long country down to Surrathani. 12 hours later, at 6am, we'd arrived. We struggled to keep our eyes open as we waited for instruction at the bus stop; A man proceeded to walk over to me with a brochure and after lots of talking and persuading, sold us 3 nights at a gorgeous bungalow in the North of Koh Phangan - we bargained him down, he spoke to the manager, we got our receipt and after an official stamp, the job was done, with 'free pick-up' included. We were driven for half an hour to the ferry, where we crashed out for another 1.5 hours and finally, we arrived in Koh Phangan. It was about 11am at this point, and we were ready for a shower and a deep breath of flowers. But then things started to deteriorate.
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| On top of the Chinese village in Pai |
The free pick-up never came, so after talking to the manager on the phone, we caught a tuk-tuk over steep hills to get to the beautiful side of the island. We walked down a steep path, questioning whether this deal had happened, and saw the crystal blue waters ahead of us right next to the bungalow that was on the front of the brochure we'd seen - it did exist! We handed over our receipt to the manager and got a laugh in response.. 'Go to the police, this is fake'. What? I burst into tears, it was so unfair. After such a long journey, and so many mishaps and thievery over the last 6 months, we really didn't need more money slipping through our fingers. I cried and cried as the family that ran the guest house talked, their voices getting louder and louder until one of them lead us over to a table and sat us down to talk. Her crazy NA son was pointing to his necklace 'You know Buddha?! You're too young to know the game!! Everyone's lying to you! Everyone! Just get out of here! Go away! Get the fuck out of here!'. The family reacted passively in a typical Asian fashion, smiling away and avoiding all trouble as though no one was angry. We had no clue what he was talking about or what they were trying to say. Who was lying? And what game?? My tears gushed and my anger rose 'Karma?! Do you know what karma is?!?' J. stood in front of him as he moved towards me with his fists out. His mum told us we could stay but we weren't going to risk it, so tears still flowing, we hiked with our backpacks, up the steep hills that we'd just driven down, in the 12 O'Clock sun. We hadn't eaten since the previous day, so we stopped to eat, collect ourselves (and a few tissues), rented bikes and headed as far away as possible from the crazy man with the Buddha necklace. We stayed in a basic hut on Bantai beach called 'Sea Love bungalows' run by a cool eclectic gang of people, and that night, under the black moon, we found Eden.. (Read Part 2 for the rest!)
(A little verse of summer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkDDRdKaN8o)
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