We've been in Thailand nearly a month now and are due a visa run. This is a common practice with backpackers here who want to stay longer then the 30 day tourist visa issued on arrival. In order to get a new one for free you need to leave the country and re-enter where they stamp you back in again. The nearest country to us at this time is Myanmar (Burma) so we leave the party capital of Thailand and head west. Once in Ranong (Thai boarder town) we hop onto a noisy long tail boat and cross the border.
Thirty minutes later after a few military checkpoints we're in Myanmar immigration office. The military have full control here and are not the friendliest in the world. We were told to have US dollars in good condition to pay for our Myanmar visa which ours were. We handed our money to a grumpy looking soldier and after a close inspection (which took a good 2 to 3 minutes) of our 2 $10 bills, the soldier hands them back to us and says 'No' our notes are not up to the required standard, they need to be pristine. Ridiculous, luckily after a bit of searching Pete found a $20 which seemed to impress him more so all were happy. This border town is very poor it's more of a slum then a town but thankfully did not seem to have been affected by the recent cyclone. We had planned to have a wander around to see a bit more but our intentions were lost in translation and ended up on the boat back to Thailand a few minutes later.
For all its stunning beaches and scenic forests the majority of towns and villages of Thailand are not the prettiest. Overall Thailand could do with a good lick of paint. Layers of dust, dirt and peeling paint is a common look for all local shops and homes inside and out, but among these shabby buildings will be their eye blindingly bright shiny, beautifully decorated Buddhas and temples. It seems so contradictory the whole country lives in relative poverty while huge amounts of money are pumped into their religious temples and icons. I took this photo above on the way back to the Thai boarder.
Next stop Phuket. Phuket like Koh Samui is a busy over commercial tourist trap and is not on the backpacker circuit. However the one thing it does have going for it is cheap cheap luxury during the monsoon. (As I'm sure you can tell by now Thailand is our summer holiday of our trip). We decide to stay here for around 2 weeks in total and stay in a few great places and eat fabulous food.
The average Thai backpacking menu is vegetable fried rice for breakfast, vegetable fried rice for lunch and yep you've guessed it vegetable fried rice for dinner! I'm not joking, you can always judge the overall price and standard of any Thai restaurant by the price of the VFR. If it costs more then €1 it's too dear and you keep on looking, it costs less than €1, bingo, that's were you eat for the rest of your stay. This was the case when I backpacked with my cousins Gillian and Suzy a few years ago. Myself and Pete however have decided to splash out and treat ourselves by averaging the cost of our meals to around €2 but would normally only eat 2 meals a day. We often eat in roadside hawker stands which are a one stop shop of noodle soup or chicken and rice dishes for less then €1. You sit on small plastic stools on the footpath and slurp away along with all the locals.
One night we were feeling brave and decided to chance a bit of 'Chicken on a Stick'. There are lots of chicken satay stalls all over Thailand and the barbeque smells fill the air. After close inspection of all the different types of chicken (including the entrails!) we settled on the safest looking one. Alas after our first bite we quickly discovered that there was more cartilage/bone/fat than meat and at an even closer inspection we realised that what we had bought was 6 chicken arses on a stick!! In other words the little triangular tail on a roast Chicken.... Mmm... Nice! As you can see by Pete's expression below he was quite dubious about trying another piece..
Which brings me back to Phuket since we were on our 'holidays' we decided to splash out and eat like kings for a week, huge fresh tiger prawns, rock lobster even steak! Mmm! We were the envy of all backpackers and amazingly no dinner cost more then €8-12, needless to say we'd have 10p packet noodles for lunch so it's all relative!!!
This is a photo of one of the hotels we got for €13 a night...
it's such hard work being a champagne backpacker...
Well-fed and well-rested we leave Phuket for the backpacking capital Bangkok! We're meeting Jeanette a friend of ours from home there in a few days. We've decided to get the overnight sleeper train because the bus would take 14 hours which is bad enough for me but would be hell for Pete (being ever so slightly taller then the average Thai). So after a 4 hour bus journey to the nearest train station we settle into our cabin. We have once again splashed out and spent the extra 4 quid to get a private cabin with 2 bunk beds instead of sleeping with all of Thailand in one of the tiny bunks in one of the main cabins.
This is the first time we've travelled by train and its really comfy with our bunks converted into a couch during the day, a little table and even a sink and even more surprising it actually works! It's nothing short of a posh hotel, a waitress even comes around to take our order for our following day's breakfast.
Unfortunately at some stage that day I must have eaten something dodgy because by around midnight I'm sick and vomiting and have to make several dashes to the loo. Even more unfortunate our 1st class toilet blocks and floods (Nothing to do with me I can assure you!) so now our nearest loo is the mail carriage which is worse then the lowest class with a rusted non flushing bowl for a loo where you can actually see the tracks flying past below, a sink with no running water and a smell to match!! The window has no curtain so I'm sure the locals got an eye full as we passed thru the towns! After a 14 hour bumpy noisy ride I'm still making panicky dashes to our -3rd class mail carriage loo and when we pull into Bangkok station I want to kiss the ground, but no time because we now have a death defining local bus journey to our hostel, the noisy hot and sticky half hour journey only cost us 14c but after several stomach lurching jolts and hand brake turns we arrive in The Kao San Road, the main backpacker ghetto of Bangkok and it's straight to bed for me...
Transport in general in Thailand and South East Asia is quite a funny thing. Since we've been here our modes of transport round up something like this... A Motorbike taxi no bigger than a Honda 50 which carried Me, Pete and the driver together, we had been looking to get a motorbike taxi each but thought they were charging too much so one of the drivers instructed us both to get on the same bike with him. Neither of us thought it was possible, either we wont fit or we'll burst the tyres, but believe or not off we sped clutching on for dear lives laughing at the state of us. Luckily we didn't have to go around too many corners, I wouldn't have counted on us staying up right for too long if we had. The next step up are the motorbikes with side cars, it's basically a square metal frame with a floor stuck to the side of a small motorbike. These are great, free air con (wind) a seat with a bit of cushioning and a bar to hang on to. This was our main mode of transport in Koh Lanta. Another form of island transport is the 'Songthew' which translates as '2 benches'. It's a pick up truck with a bench at either sides, can be a pretty bumpy ride on the islands dirt roads but once again the air con is free,even if it's a bit dusty!! The busier towns all have tuk tuks aptly named for their loud tuk tuk engine chugging along. These are 3 wheeled motorbikes with a 3 seater bench just behind the driver, With a colourful canopy on top, they are famous in Bangkok.
The buses range from hot stuffy local buses where the horn is used to alert all of Thailand that we're on the move but strangely enough it's louder inside the bus then out, (so all the passengers know we're on the move!) as I'm writing now we are on one of these buses where the air con is on low and the horn is on high (Pete and I are directly behind the driver so we can enjoy it on full volume) and to top it all off we have video Karaoke playing with some of the passengers diligently reading the words on the screen and singing away to themselves.... Great! On the other end of the scale the VIP buses tend to have ice cold air con, frilly pink curtains, a hostess handing out cold water and sometimes a meal and seats larger then first class airline seats, some even come with your own plug for your laptop..
So as I daydream about the nice cool VIP buses as we chug along in our bone-rattling, sweat box I'll sign off and leave you with this very important note.....
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