Down Under

Well here we are in New Zealand and so much we didn't tell you about Thailand. We had hopes of doing a "food blog", a "transportation blog", a "temple blog", a "beach blog" but too much time was spent traveling rather than hanging out in Internet cafes so we'll have to fill you in when we get home or maybe we'll keep writing the blog from home and it will be more as recollections than an "as we go" type of record.

But for now we want to tell you a little about NZ before we head home. Outside of Auckland it hasn't been that easy to find an Internet cafe compared to Thailand. We suppose more people have Internet in their home and the only people looking for the Internet are travelers like us. Very few places in the kinds of small towns we are near have Internet cafes and if they do they close early just about when we are ending our day of being on the road and ready to do some blogging.

So the story begins with us spending 4 days in Auckland checking into various possibilities for travel in NZ. In between we go to see the National Museum with wonderful displays of the Maori cultural tradition in particular and how it relates to the culture of the Pacific Islands - Somoa, Fuji, etc. We also really enjoyed the architecture of Auckland - so many old buildings that have been preserved and refurbished but also lovely new modern architecture and nicely coordinated with the old. We happened to be in Auckland during a Chinese Lantern Festival which was lots of fun to see.

After much investigation and discussion among ourselves, we finally decided on a campervan for our NZ travels. This is a Toyota truck (diesel) with a big back on it. It is a lot like our trailor at Livingstone's Cove except that it is a lot smaller - the double bed is the table during the day and there is an extra sleeping area above the cab. This is where Courtney sleeps with a skylight above her head - she is going to miss seeing the stars when we get home. The other advantage over our trailor is that the fridge works - both on propane gas and/or electricity. This is also true for the heater and the air conditioner! Wow! We are the 2/3 person Super Deluxe Campervan

So this has been our home for the last 3 weeks with 1 week to go. We spend nights either on the side of the road somewhere or in DOC (Dept of Conservation) minimal-type campgrounds or sometimes we go for the big kahuna and get a real campsite in a Holiday Park - these are common throughout NZ and include cabins, tents, campervans, caravans, chalets, power sites, non-power sites - something for every budget as the saying goes.

We got out of Auckland as quick as we could not b/c we didn't enjoy Auckland but there was so much more we wanted to see of NZ and we have been seeing it. The driving has taken a bit of getting use to - driving on the left to start plus the round-abouts found on practically every intersection, the incredibly twisty, narrow highways that go with the incredibly beautiful scenery so it's hard to watch and drive at the same time. Of course Elaine is the second eyes with lots of oohs and aahs both b/c of the views and b/c of the driving!

We read somewhere that NZ is a land of natural wonders and that's certainly has been the case. Around every turn there is something new to wonder at - it's hard to believe that in such a small place there can be so much variety. The whole country is comprised of mountains - you are either driving in the mountains or looking at them. Much of the country is agricultural - loads of sheep and cattle but also deer. What this means is that there are miles and miles of rolling hills and grazing animals. NZ'ers do not make hay and so all the livestock is free range which takes up lots of room. The forest industry is also big - lots of tree planting in very orderly rows and lots of logging and logging trucks on those narrow steep roads. Most of the native forest has been cut down. We spent quite a bit of time up north learning about the kauri trees and the old forestry industry based on them and the kauri gum mining. Got to see the Tane Mahuta - a kauri tree with a 16m girth which is still alive and standing. It is between 1200-2000 yrs old! Obviously a cultural icon and treated as such by the NZ'ers. Also saw a entire staircase inside a kauri tree - David's day was made early that day and Courtney and I enjoyed it as well. The ferns are incredible in the whole of NZ - they are the size of trees and the fiddleheads have stems as big around as our arms. The fern leaf is up to 6' long. As a result the fern is a common motif for arts/crafts.

We also visited an area in the north called the Bay of Islands - beautiful beaches and coves and bays - unbelievable scenery with the mountains and the ocean - very idyllic and pastoral.

One of the favourite things for Courtney was her visit to Hobbiton in Matamata which is in the centre of the North Island. She and David went on a tour of the place where the Hobbit village was filmed for the Lord of the Rings. It was a sheep farm. It is the only place where there is still a set from the film - this because many of the scenes were in Department of Conservation areas and National Parks and the agreement was that everything would be dismantled and the area returned to it's natural habitat immediately after filming. Due to some particulars that we don't have time for right now, this was not the case for Hobbiton. Courtney and David have lots to tell you about the filming when we get home.

Right now we are on the South Island - the trip from the North Island to the South Island across the Cook Strait and through both the Queen Charlotte Sound and parts of the Marlborough Sound were incredibly beautiful as well.

We are on the west side of the South Island - unbelieveable ocean waves and craggy, limestone rocks - VERY hard to take ourselves away from here. We are constantly moving despite wanting to stay longer just about everywhere we go in NZ. Just saw the Pancake Rocks and on our way to the Franz Josef Glacier and plan to go to a little town (pop 30) - Okarito, where the author of The Bone People - Keri Hulme lives. We aren't going to see her but it sounds like a really lovely spot.

Well that's probably just about it until we are home in a very short week. We are delivering the campervan back to Christchurch here on the South Island - nice feature of this system is the pick up in the North Island the dropoff on the South Island. We are flying from Christchurch to Auckland on the Easter weekend, staying one night in Auckland, then flying via Brunei Royal Airlines (another great story) to Bangkok where we stay one night and then off to home via Tokoyo and New York on Japan Airlines (switching to Continental in NY).

Bye for now - our time is running out on this machine. Love to all.

Going South - Tsunami Experience

Upon leaving Chaing Mai, we traveled by train and bus for about 20 hrs to arrive in a place called Ranong on the west coast of Thailand. After that we spent time on an island off that same coast - the island's name was Ko Phayam. From there we went to the province and town of Phuket and visited several beaches. We are now in Krabi (pop 25,000) and will be taking an overnight bus tonight to Bangkok where we will stay for a couple of days before leaving Thailand for New Zealand on Saturday, Feb. 26. We hope to provide more details of the above places but for now we want to tell you about our experience of the last few days.

On our bus trip to the south we started to see some of the devastation caused by the tsunami. There is an area called Koh Lak that we passed through. Much of this area is a national park. The wave came in about 3km in places there. There were lots of trucks and bull dozers working and much of the rubble and debris had been removed. What we saw from the bus was vast areas of nothing but palm trees with the ground underneath cleared and bulldozed. We know that there used to be buildings and people living there. The bodies of people still needing to be identified are being kept in a wat in the area of Koh Lak.

Further south on the beaches that we visited we saw minimal damage although there was some work being done around the waterfronts and obvious damage to fishing vessels. We started to hear about how the local people are suffering from a shortage of tourists. This is the "high" season for Thailand's tourist trade and where the local people normally were selling lots of food, souveniers, lodgings, massages, beach chairs, tours, etc. they were seeing a severe loss of business. The infrastructure in the majority of places was intact. One problem is that Thais and Asians who make up the majority of the tourist travelers in the south are worried about the spirits of the dead people who have still not been found. Some Buddhist ceremonies are taking places to release these spirits but the worries continue to effect the numbers of tourists who have changed plans.

Seeing/hearing of some of the work that needed doing in a few areas and hearing a little about ongoing volunteer efforts we began to consider offering our help near some of the places we planned to visit, but we were unable to find any further information on volunteering except for a few posters in Phuket at a guesthouse. We went to the web to see if we could find more information but came up blank. We concluded that there was nothing for us to do and more or less gave up on the idea.

Next we stayed for a couple of days at some bungalows in a national park called Hat Nappharat Thara near Krabi. Although the bungalows were on the mainland, we had to travel to them by long-tail boat. We had had some other experiences with this common mode of travel in the south and it's lots of fun. It's basically a fishing boat but the local people use them to transport tourists and supplies. While we were at these bungalows we got talking to a woman from BC who described a one-day tour she did to some of the surrounding islands including Phi Phi. Phi Phi is a famous island (actually 2 islands - Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Ley) in these parts. The Phi Phi Islands are also part of the same national park where we were staying on the mainland. Phi Phi Ley is not inhabited although there are day trips there. All the development and homes are on Phi Phi Don mostly in one small area. Phi Phi Don is divided into two parts by a narrow spit of land (.5km wide) with a lovely bay (white sand, emerald water) on each side.

So, we decided to take the same day trip. We spent the entire day on a medium sized "ferry-type" boat. It was a wonderful day. The scenery we saw from the boat was truely spectacular. Krabi is covered in these karst (limestone) formations which are 200m+ high and sticking straight up out of the sea and on land. Some of them look like giant penises (we are discussing about whether to call them penises or phallic symbols). We also passed by Chicken Island which has a formation that does look like a chicken's head at some angles.

We visited Maya Bay which is on Phi Phi Ley and famous for being the location of a movie called "The Beach" with Leonardo Di Caprio. We snorkeled in this same Maya Bay and saw the most wonderful fishes. We believe that we found Nemo! S/He was swimming right in front of us and although we tried to touch him/her she/he kept swimming out of reach. We also saw some wonderful coral here.

We also stoppped at the Phi Phi Don pier on this trip to drop off a couple of young people and it was then that we heard about the possibility of volunteering on Phi Phi Don. We also stopped at another island (Bamboo) to do some further swimming and snorkeling but the waves were very high by then and we had to give up and get back in the boat.

So we had a chat and decided that we would not do some of the other things we had planned for the south and instead we would take a couple of days and go to Phi Phi Don to lend a hand. We traveled the 1.5 hrs out to the island by the regular ferry (not so comfortable as the tour boat) and arrived at the volunteer station after passing through the main village street. You could walk through the street but all the businesses we passed were still full of debris from the tsunami, although many of the second stories were still intact but you could see through the first story straight out to the beach. The narrowest section of the island was a graveyard - on the island they call it ground zero. It was several acres covered in piles of rubble and garbage and nothing else except for a few trees and a couple of multi-story hotels on the edges. Neither of these were in operation due to the lack of any kind of infrastructure - water, electricity, roads, etc. It was very hard for us to see and we can't even imagine what it must be like to live there with this devastation around you everyday. The shear enormity of the clean up is hard to imagine and although there are some cranes and barges taking stuff away to the mainland it isn't much for the size of the problem.

Anyway, we were there to do our little bit and so we pitched in to do what we could in the couple of days we had. There is a little bar called Carlitos which is the centre of the volunteer operations. The owner appeared to be European, had been on Phi Phi for 10 years and was very familiar with the local scene. His establishment had been spared any structure damage and was open for business although most of the business was volunteer organization.

We were assigned to help clear a passage through a narrow street in the main commercial area of the village - it was just about a block long. When we started there was a pile about 8ft high of everything from furniture to clothes, books, pictures, metal roofing material, plywood, lumber, glass, sanitary pads, broken concrete and tile, dishes, toilets, rats, fridges, computers and one huge pile of sand. It smelled like a dump. We had a few wheelbarrels, some shovels (no spades), a few dust masks and work gloves. Luckily we had had the presence of mind to bring our sneakers, some of the volunteers and local Thai people were working in flip flops. This was where the one nurse who was available to give tetanus shots came in real handy! You may be wondering why they didn't just bring in a bulldozer to plow a passage through this street. That was our question. It turns out that the reason individuals are going through this piece by piece is because we were looking for photos, passports, IDs, bones, hair, human remains of any kind. This is because there are still so many people missing. Both the local people and the foreign volunteers want to see if they can find evidence to confirm the death of some of this missing. The day we were there there were police from Norway working with the volunteers on the beach area. First the volunteers were raking the sand and then the police were using dogs to sniff for bones. It was all rather surreal to realize how much of this work is still to be done. It recalled to us the Swiss air disaster outside of Halifax or in New York at the twin towers and how long it takes to finish the work of identification.

But by noon the next day the street we worked on was cleared so that the businesses could get into their shops and begin the indoor clean up. It was incredible to see how much could be done moving things piece by piece. From here the recycling people were sorting through the piles to see what could be salvaged - engines, wood, pipe, metal, household goods.

Many of these businesses will probably never open again - some of the owners are dead or their family members are dead and the tourist trade on this island is virtually dead. Nobody had insurance and many do not have deeds for the land on which their businesses sit. The government has not be good at giving compensation and the issues are complex. The local government and the national government have different ideas about what should be done - one option is that Phi Phi be left as a day trip only. Many local people feel that the government just wants them to be destitute so that they will give up and leave and then the government and big business will come in with high-class resorts for the rich owners to get richer. There has just been a national election in Thailand and the prime minister and his government were returned to power by a huge margin. Thaksin who is the prime minister, is among the top 20 richest people in the world. Enough said about local economies and big developers getting a leg up.

On our second day of volunteering, we were assigned to washing dishes! The clean up moves from clearing streets one by one to helping businesses re-open. It is considered important for local businesses to open up ASAP so that the government will find it difficult to expropriate the land.

We washed dishes for a small restaurant (probably 6 tables - 12'x20') where the owner was plannning to open up again. He was a Thai and according to rumour one of the best cooks on the island. The washing up was much easier than the street cleaning. Unfortunately there was no water nearby and so we carried the dishes, pots and pans, utensils and chairs to the beach and washed them in the ocean. Everything was covered in sand which had turned almost to cement so it tooked lots of work to scrub the "cement" off. We were working with a couple of Irish fellows and a young British woman. It was fun. After this we washed shelves in the restaurant while others painted. Perhaps we will return some day to have lunch at the Papaya Restaurant!

We bought a couple of T-shirts. You might want to visit these sites to read more about what is happening on Phi Phi.

PHI PHI - Rising Above the Waves (http://www.phiphifriends.org.uk)
Help International Phi Phi (http://www.hiphiphi.com/)

David bought a necklace (a craft purchase) recovered from the tsunami. He thinks it is his first necklace since he wore a "worry" stone back in the '70s.

All in all, it was an interesting experience and one we will remember as a special part of this trip. We may have spent more time if we had learned earlier about these volunteer initiatives. Many of the young volunteers went for a day and are still there weeks later. It is sad to think that the government is doing so little for the people who really need the help but the issue is probably much more complex than we can know from our limited experience. Once we are back in the land of easy Internet access perhaps we will follow up to understand better the dynamics of the local situation vis-a-vis the tsunami and it's aftermath.

Bye for now...we leave this afternoon by bus to Bangkok. We will be three days in Bangkok and then we fly to NZ on Royal Brunei Airlines. We land in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital city of Brunei on our way to Auckland. This country is on the island of Borneo which it shares with Malaysia and Indonesia. It took us a while to figure out where we would be landing when the travel agent said "Bandar Seri Begawan"!

Chiang Mai - Second Time Around

Hello to everyone. We really appreciate all the comments you are sending either directly to the blog or to our email addresses. It really helps us feel connected to you which is very important to us. We are all missing the people at home. We are sorry not to be able to respond to you all individually but internet access is slow here and so we are mostly restricting ourselves to checking email to make sure there aren't any emergencies back home or things that we must respond to - those that are work related.

Another housekeeping point is to tell you that right now we are in the town of Krabi on the Andaman Sea in southern Thailand. We have booked a flight to Auckland, New Zealand for February 26 which means we only have about a week left in our Thailand adventure and so we are moving a little more quickly. We will spend a couple of days in Bangkok before we leave for NZ.

We want to make this posting one devoted to Chaing Mai (pop 160,000 with 1 million in the metropolitan area). This is b/c we spent so much time there and really didn't tell you much about it yet. We are so thankful to Nancy Peters for giving us such a good introduction to CM and helping us to make it our home for almost 3 weeks of our trip.

We stayed in three different guesthouses while we were there. Each time we left we came back to a different one. But the majority of nights we stayed at Blue House - one could do a whole study of the English names of guesthouses - so many have what we'd call "cutsie" names - Friend House/Joy House/White House/Wendy House/Happy Lagoon/Bazoom Hostel/Fantasy Hill Bungalow - I don't think that anyone knows "cutsie" like the Asians. People also have cutsie names, so that the proprieter of the Blue House was Jimee and people are named Tee or Ya or Pee - most often a very simple, one syllable name and it's our understanding that Thais don't often use surnames - people use these nicknames instead.

So, Blue House was our home for a few weeks. The room was functional and although it wasn't very big, it was adaquate. We had three narrow beds lined up like a dormitory. The mattresses were typically hard but we were getting used to hard by then. The guesthouses are an interesting phenomena in themselves. They are something like our B&Bs, with some having a real family feel to them and others with less personality evident. But at the same time, they aren't like a hotel. In the Blue House we got towels when we arrived but when David tried to exchange his towel for a fresh one, he was told that "this isn't a hotel". So, it was up to us to clean our towels ourselves or take them to one of a multitude of places where laundry is done for you - usually for 30 BHT/Kg (that's about $1CDN/Kg.). Ever try to imagine how much laundry is 1Kg? Not much, but it's common for people who are travelling like us to have your laundry done this way. There were literally hundreds of signs up for laundry services in CM. You could have it washed, or washed/dried, or washed/dried/ironed. There really is no eqivilent to our self service laundramats. Many, many women still do their families' laundry by hand and it's our sense that people don't really feel that an automatic washer can do the job of a handwashing. And even if people do have a washer (some have a Hoover-like machine), they still dry their clothes outside, so laundry is everywhere and since it is hung on moveable racks, it is moved about during the day to follow the sun. That being said, we almost always do our own laundry, one or two pieces at a time. Most guesthouses provide a drying rack or have a balcony where you can hang your clothes to dry.

The other thing that the guesthouses do is simple meals - most do breakfast at least. So, there is a common seating area outside the rooms where travellers can gather to eat, watch TV, play cards, chat. There is usually beer available. Often the guesthouse people do tours as well. So, for instance our Jimee took us on a day tour of the highest mountain in Thailand - Doi (mountain) Inthanon - 2,595m.

Blue House was inside the moat of the old city. There were probably a hundred other guesthouses in this area, with travelers from around the world. Many are Europeans, some Canadians but mostly from the west coast and very, very few Americans. Many of the young people go on treks - three or four day walking trips into the bush visiting small villages in the mountains around CM. They go with a guide who can speak the language and do the cooking.

The moat is an important part of the life of CM. It originally encompassed the old city, like many of the cities of Europe. It is about 2-3 km per side. It was a pleasant place to walk. Unlike other parts of the city, it is alway kept clean of garbage, leaves and other debris in the water. There are many cat fish in the moat and people buy fish food to feed them, gaining merit for doing so. Although CM is a very large city, the area around the moat had a small town feel, other than the traffic which was tremendous and noisy. There are very few large buildings inside the moat, many old ones and funky bars and cafes to appeal to tourists and travelers. It also makes it easier to orientate yourself as long as you can remember whether you are inside/outside the moat! We were constantly asking each other - are we inside or outside? Courtney usually knew best. Traffic moves clockwise inside the moat and counterclockwise outside or is it the other way around?

David was very happy to discover great coffee in CM and northern Thailand in general. One of the important things that we discovered about the north is that new products (flowers, tea, garlic, rice) are being grown there to replace the opium growing that had been a source of income to the hilltribe people of this area. One of the things they have begun to grow is coffee beans and the coffee is excellent. Many of the little cafes and restaurants catering to travelers have high quality machines to make a "pressed" coffee which is very fresh and tasty. Coffee cream isn't common, mostly it's a soy product or a type of canned cream but Coffeemate in little narrow packets is everywhere. David says he's getting to like it but I suspect he will really enjoy a good cup of coffee with real cream when he gets home.

The night bazaar was one of our favourite places to go. In the evening you can visit the food court at the bazaar, after walking through a huge area devoted to a selling you everything you ever wanted or not. At the night bazaar, you purchase coupons and then use them at the various booths around the open-air courtyard. There are lots of variety of food and drink available - mostly Thai but also Muslim and Indian. David did end up eating a grasshopper of some kind. He said it tasted like nothing he had ever tasted before and he doesn't plan to eat one again - enough said.

But the best part of the night bazaar was that they had continuous entertainment while you ate. We saw dozens of traditional Thai/Burmese/Shan dances with both men and women. In addition all the music was live using traditional instruments. The musicians sit on the floor on the side of the stage. Each dance had a different beautiful costume as well. In some dances the women held burning candles using their arms and wrists to move the candles in a variety of ways around their heads and bodies. That one was lovely. We also enjoyed some of the rural dances where it was obvious that the dances were depicting the planting and the harvest. There were also single men dances where the man was very graceful and had that look of "Siam" that we all find familiar.

There are many beautiful wats in Chiang Mai. We visited many of them - some in the old city inside the moat, some in the mountains surrounding the city, some in the forests found outside the old city. Each has it's own individuality and some similiarities to others. The statuary and architecture of the wats is beautiful but it was the ordinary things that we often found most endearing. You have these centuries old buildings and you are admiring the Buddha housed inside and maybe there is a ratty old vacuum cleaner sitting on the side of the "altar". Every Sunday night there is a huge night market inside the moat of the old city of CM. But you will find many of the food vendors are inside the grounds of the wat and also the traditional Thai massage therapists. The wats seem very integrated into life here. A person can always stay in the wat grounds overnight if you're traveling and can't find alternative housing.

We visited Chaing Mai University and in particular the main university library. They have several specialized ones for medicine, pharmacy, science and arts/humanities as well. What I found most interesting about the library was that there was a large room in a corner of the second floor that was called the America Corner and under this sign it also read World Wide Web. Inside there were dozens of computers with Internet access and also a huge screen TV with earphones and students watching CNN. They did have computerized OPACS (online public access computers for the non-librarian readers), a room for databases, and a wireless area for students with their own computers, there was no access to the internet in this library other than in the America Corner. It's our observation that Thais aren't all that interested in the Internet. Right now we are in a little shop where there are 20 computers with Internet access and we are the only ones using it. The other users are young boys playing computer games. I don't even think they are doing online games - just your regular computer game. And this is very common. Most of the time, the only people using the Internet in these places are foreigners like us, doing email and information/web searching/surfing.

A typical day in CM involved David leaving the room early in the morning to walk about and get lost, usually finding a place to get a coffee and maybe have breakfast. Once he found his way again, he would pick up yogurt and fruit which he brought back to the room for Courtney and Elaine. We would add homemade granola that we brought with us to the yogurt. This would take us to about 11am when we were ready to go out for the day. That usually entalled more coffee and a fruit shake for Courtney (she is going to miss them!) and sometimes more breakfast/brunch. Then we'd have an activity - visit a wat or an area of the city we hadn't explored yet which involved lots of walking, enjoying the city life along the way. We'd usually end up back in the room late in the afternoon to take a break before heading out for the evening. Many times we ate in the street markets on the side of the street, deciding each time which one we would attempt to find. Often we would be peering into the vendor's carts trying to figure out what they were preparing. Sometimes there was a dirty little English menu that would appear but mostly we were on our own to figure out what was being prepared. We discovered some wonderful dishes this way and some that we wouldn't try again. David had soup everyday at least once!

Well we are now arguing about what else to tell you about and how careful we should be with tenses, so we think that the heat is getting to us and it's time to call it a night.

Next posting will probably be something about southern Thailand where we have been the last few weeks. We have seen some of the devastation of the tsunami but generally things appear to be back to normal for many people except that tourism has suffered tremendously. There are lots of discussions about rebuilding and how it should be done.

We'll keep you posted. Love to all.....

Pai & Mae Hong Son & Mae Sariang

Just arrived back in Chaing Mai after spending 10 days west of Chiang Mai in the province of Mae Hong Son.

This trip started with a 4 hr bus trip from Chaing Mai to Pai. Besides the scenery the bus culture is an experience in itself. This time we had more than a full house starting out. We have learned to arrive early at the bus terminal to get a ticket so that we have assigned seats, otherwise you will be permitted to board the bus but you might not have a seat. So, this day we arrived early, loaded our big knapsacks in the storage area below and put our smaller knapsacks on our assigned seats on the bus. Then we went off to a nearby vendor for rice/noodle soup for breakfast. We arrived back near to departure time only to find people in two of our three seats. We had a small discussion with them and with the bus conductor and ended up with our seats back but it meant that David ended up sitting in the back row of the bus (where his seat was suppose to be) but he was squeezed among 5 monks in their saffron robes. I asked David later if he felt sactified but he denied it, saying that one of them was a smoker (not on the bus, thank goodness) and they were all sucking little mints (the kind you get at restaurants at home). I guess that cancelled the sanctity factor.

As we were getting the seats sorted out, more people were getting on the bus and in the meantime bags of rice had been loaded into the middle aisle. So the new people actually had to climb over the bags of rice to find a place to park themselves. We had several people sitting on the floor - one with a cardboard box in her lap and others standing, plus we picked up more people on the way through to Pai. There seems to be no maximum number of people permitted to board the bus. Each bus has a "conductor", someone to organize things and collect fares and they never deny anyone entry. Today they even stopped the bus at a police station along the way b/c a farang needed to use the bathroom. It probably helped that he was grey haired - I guess they respected his need.

On the bus trip from Pai to Mae Hong Son, another trip of 4 hrs or so, we had three mountain bikes in the aisle! Before the mountain bikes were loaded, David helped unload lumber from the aisle through the window of the bus - big thrill for David! So, the conductor allowed three young fellows (one was a Calgarian) to get on with their mountain bikes. Most buses have racks on top for storing larger things but this one didn't, so the bikes came onboard. Everyone seems very accepting that people have things they need to move from place to place and there is no moaning from the other passengers when they have to accommodate extra baggage, people, bikes, rice, lumber, etc. We haven't yet had live animals unless that was what was in some of the cardboard boxes but if there was they were quiet.

In Pai (pop 3000), we stayed in bamboo huts again. This time we had an electric light in the hut rather than just a candle, but the bathroom and shower were outside and shared. We had a nice little "verandah" with a hammock for lounging which was welcome in the heat of the afternoon. There were at least a dozen other establishments with these bamboo huts for rent all along the river with little bamboo footbridges going to cross the river.

We stayed in Pai for 4 nights. It's quite a place - beautiful river valley surrounded by mountains. It was a "hippie" haven back in the seventies and it still resembles a bit of a utopian atmosphere. Lots of young foreigners are there. My guess is that many stay for a while. There are also lots of young Thais hanging out together with the young foreigners. They all seem to be into health, herbs, reading -much like what we find in our little local cafes, like "b2g" in Antigonish. The other new thing we saw was little cafes showing movies for free - some even having different movies at different times of the day. Of course, you are welcome to buy food and drink while you are viewing the movies. One place was showing Bad Education - a movie directed by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar (sp?). It was in Spanish with English sub-titles. Since there are so many people staying in places with no TV and no movie theatres in this little town, this seems to be a very popular pastime.

There are lots of expats in Pai - long term foreign residents. Many seem to have set up shops and businesses with Thais. This is common everywhere we've been so far in Thailand. Our understanding is that foreigners are not allowed to own businesses or land in Thailand but they often go into business with Thais. So, you will see places listed as Thai owned/German managed, for example. It usually seems like couples - Western male, female Thai. In Pai, these business would be very small - for instance a restaurant might have just 4 or 5 tables or an elephant riding company would have 1 elephant with a baby. But they would still have a little shop front in town to hang out and visit with potential customers. This seemed to be the main occupation of the town - hanging out and visiting.

In Pai, Courtney was very happy to go elephant riding. We had seen the elephants several times before this but hadn't taken the time or initiative to go riding. In Pai, Courtney and David rode an elephant for 1 whole hr.! They rode "bareback" with just a blanket between them and the elephant's back. Courtney even rode up close behind the elephants ears and felt the ears flapping on her legs as they rode along. They went into jungle areas and a river. Courtney says that the elephant always wanted to stop to eat so the mahout had to keep encouraging it to go along. Two British fellows were involved in this little operation and the mahout was Thai. David asked one of the British guys how he ended up in Pai with this elephant riding operation. He said he came initially for the hot springs at the guesthouse close by for his bad back. After a while he decided to check out the elephants next door. He became friends with the family and he now lives in Pai six months of the year. His is a typical story for foreigners in Thailand.

We also rented a motorbike for the first time in Pai since it was such a little place and there weren't many vehicles other than small half-ton trucks, motorbikes and bicycles. It felt quite safe compared to Chaing Mai with regards to traffic.

David took Courtney and I in turns to a park where there were hot springs for bathing. We took the cautious route in going in turns - we have seen Thais riding with as many as 5 people on one bike - granted they were kids but you regularly see two adults and two kids on a motorbike or three adults. We have often seen dogs riding on motorbikes and even a live pig in a sidecar. Anyway, the hot springs were lovely. Lots of Thais using them for bathing - they seemed to reserved the best spot for getting clean. We all got into our bathing suits and tried them out. It felt like a hot tub in a motel, except you were outside in a lovely mountain park.

Another day we rented three bicycles to go outside Pai. That was another crazy experience. David took a mountain bike but Courtney and I felt more comfortable with the Raleigh Sport type bike - no gears. We got a block down the road when mine seized up - the fender seemed to be preventing the tire from rotating. We brought it back for a replacement. That one had a piece falling off but the fellow fixed that before I left the lot. Off we went - getting a kilometre or so out of town when my chain came off. We messed around with that long enough that a nice women who was pumping gas nearby came over to see if she could help. She knew just what to do to get the chain back on. We thanked her profusely (kwap-koon-ka) and decided to take a chance that the chain would remain in place and kept on going. We had a great ride along a country road passing through several little villages. We started back, planning to stop at a little place on the road to have a bite to eat. Along the way I took my hand off one of the handles to put my hat back on and lost control of the bike. I was heading for the shoulder where there was a residence with a nice little row of potted plants. I was sure I was going to crash into the plants and was thinking - great, out in the middle of nowhere, can't speak the language and I cause a disaster with the plants, breaking the earthenware pots. Luckily I just miss hitting the plants landing in the sand right in front of them. Two ladies are sitting fixing food, see me coming and try to stop me. We all end up in giggles! They get a big charge out of me landing practically in their laps. As it turns out they are running a little roadside restaurant, so we stop for noodle soup and end up "talking" with the proprietor lady. We are using our Thai phrasebook and sign language. Great fun.

Next stop on the loop is Mae Hong Son (pop 7400). Again, we go by local bus for this four hour trip to go 110 kms with few stops. The reason it takes so long is that there are 1085 hairpin turns between Chaing Mai and Mae Hong Son and many of them are through this stretch. It was another amazing experience - all mountains and trees with some agriculture on the relatively flat spots in the very narrow river valleys. The forests are predominantly teak. At this time the leaves are dry and brown, falling like big pizza pans, ankle deep in some places. They make a big noise when you walk through them compared to our puny leaves.

This is the capital town of Mae Hong Son province. It is quite prosperous. According to our Lonely Plant book, the prime business is supplying the Burmese drug lords with rice and consumer goods. There was a lovely wat at the top of the mountains overlooking the town. David drove us up (another motorbike rental - $4-$7/day) and Courtney and I walked down (900') - we were already up 3000' in the town itself. We also went up early in the morning to see another "sea of fog" which envelopes the surrounding mountains. Our timing was good and the mist totally obscured the town and completely cleared off in the next 45 minutes. Watched the young monks chopping wood in their robes and flip-flops. One of them was using a machete to chop 2" diameter branches. They were having a great time doing this and chasing chickens around at the same time.

Another interesting experience in this town was a local Red Cross fair. It was similar to our fall fair in Antigonish except there were no animals and only a couple rides for young kids. There was a bumper car disco or "dodgers" as one of the British backpackers we met there was calling it. The cars were in a caged in area. The Thai teenagers surrounded the people riding the cars, jumping up and down everytime the music and cars started. It was a bit like a rock concert and the riders would try to hit the dancers rather than the other bumper cars. The teens loved it!

There were several live acts going on as well. Some kind of bawdy "play" with a midget making obsence gestures holding a rubber penis. There was a sideshow with a poor alligator in a small cage as we heard it and also a "human head" on a table with was done with mirrors and was freaking people out, particularly people from the rural areas. We saw the infamous Karen Patong girls. This is a small group orinally from Burma. They have a tradition of wearing brass rings around their necks which pushes their chests down giving the illusion of a "long-neck". People pay $$ to go see these girls and take their pictures. The same British fellows said they spent all day in the mountains surrounding Mae Hong Son looking for this tribe and low and behold they were just part of the crowd at the fair. Another night there was a stage with a chorus of young Thai girls with knee-high 8" platform boots accompanying various singers. Overall the noise was deafening but people were having a great time. Again, there was loads of food, lots to drink, lots to buy.

There was a lovely lake in the middle of the town which the balcony of our teak guesthouse overlooked. Lakes are a rare occurrance in this area of Thailand - loads of rivers but few lakes. This one was just small, not much bigger than the Cameron Lake. The guesthouse had beautifully sanded and polished teak floors and woven bamboo walls and ceilings with teak mouldings. We could have breakfast (banana oatmeal porridge was a favourite of ours) sitting on the teak floor on cushions at a little low teak table overlooking the lake and temples.

Next town was Mae Sariang (pop 7800) - this really wasn't a tourist destination type town but we enjoyed a couple of nights there. Had a guesthouse with a balcony on the river with view of the surrounding mountain. From here we watched water buffalo swimming in the river along with a group of kids. The buffalo crossed back and forth each morning and evening. There were lots of birds to be seen here as well, in particular a blue heron type bird which was completely white.

The final portion of the trip back to Chaing Mai went through an area with a huge gorge (think petite Grand Canyon) and a large river running through it. Most of the forests on this section were leafless. It looked very much like our hardwood forests in winter. It was very dry through here with the only greenery around the river. This was unusual for what we have seen so far. Also, most of the underbrush had been burnt leaving almost bare ground.

We are off to Bangkok today by train. We will head from there to Ranong in the south of Thailand. We expect to send our next message from somewhere in this area - not quite sure where yet but we plan to see some beaches. We have booked our flight to New Zealand for February 26.

Traditional Thai Massage

Warning: this post may have more detail on the massage than most people will be interested in but with both Liam and his girlfriend Brenda currently enrolled in a 2-yr training course for Massage Therapy in Canada, we figured they would appreciate the extra details.

Since our last post, we've had a traditional Thai massage. You can't walk down a street in the neighbourhood where we are staying in Chaing Mai (or many other cities in Thailand) without there being a Thai massage available, including people actively soliciting you as a customer. There is the foot massage, the neck/shoulders, face, hands, legs each for a .5 hr. or a full one/two hr. full body massage. There is the oil massage, the clothed and the unclothed varieties. Also at many wats (temples which are kind of like our churches but with additional structures on the grounds and often with resident monks) you can get massages and at some markets there will be many lazy-boy type chairs with people offering massages - mostly the feet in these cases.

With so much choice we decided to take some time to hopefully find the best of the best. What we read was that the massage schools are usually your safest bet for a legitimate traditional style Thai massage. Tara Callaghan, a prof at StFX, had a colleague at Chiang Mai University who had an association with the:

Thai Massage School of Chiang Mai
http://www.TMCschool.com

She recommended this school highly so we checked it out and decided to give it a try. It turned out to be outside the downtown area so we made an appointment for 2 hour massages for all three of us and arranged transportation.

We had also read that this school had a high number of non-Thais taking classes due to the high quality of the English language instruction. When we arrived the students were all leaving for the day. They were mostly farang (foreigners).

But our massage therapists turned out to be the instructors themselves. We were ushered into a lovely room with open windows on a river. There was a small candle burning and a half dozen or so mattresses on the floor with bolster pillows and little face/neck pillows like you see on massage tables in Canada or those ones people use on airplanes to support their necks. We were given a little bamboo basket with a PJ-like outfit (Courtney says they were more like hospital clothes). Anyway, they were roomy and soft. We also had a bathroom and were asked to put on the PJs and they would be back.

Three women arrived to take us through the massage all together. It was wonderful doing it this way. We had our blood pressures and pulses checked first and then they washed our feet since they would be doing so much foot work as part of the massage process.

Thai massage is one of the four disciplines of traditional Thai medicine, the others being herbalism, meditation and dietary control. It is related to oriental practices of body work such as Chinese acupuncture, Indian Ayurveda and Hatha yoga. Thai massage works on the principal of maintaining the condition and the flow of the body's vital energy through a network of chanels known as Sen, again related to the Chinese "chi" and the yoga "prana". The massage focuses on the muscoskeletal system (the bones, joints, muscles, ligaments and connective tissue) and the ways in which they inter-relate with the body as a whole. It is described as combining modern scientific knowledge of anatomy and physiology with oriental medical disciplines.

The massage was carried out on the floor with the therapist joining you on the mat. They began by each saying a prayer. They use their hands, fingers, arms, feet and elbows for the massage. At one point, I was on my stomach and the therapist was sitting on my upper legs, I think. There was lots of pressure and lots of attention to feet and legs. Most of the shoulder work was done with us sitting up. We were also pulled and twisted into what I would describe as yoga-like shapes - hanging onto their wrists as they pulled in several instances.

There was no oil except when they did our faces, there was a tiny bit of something with next to no scent, although it had been warmed by the candle. They started with a bit of soothing music but left off that once they got going. It was pretty quiet except for some occasional instructions to change our positions.

Courtney and I didn't have any "strange" experiences but David said that when his therapist massaged his face, he started having "visions" - visual images that he can't recall but that he also lost all sense of time. He couldn't tell if the facial massage was 5 minutes or 20 minutes but he said he didn't fall asleep.

After the 2 hours we were left alone in the room with little cups of green tea in china cups.

The cost was 300 BHT each (about $10 each for the 2 hours).

Oh yes, and the final technical detail for Liam and Brenda. Here are our pressures/pulses pre/post.

David
Pre-Pressure: 118/72
Post-Pressure: 115/80
Pre-Pulse: 65
Post-Pulse: 63

Elaine
Pre-Pressure: 122/79
Post-Pressure: 117/75
Pre-Pulse: 70
Post-Pulse: 55

Courtney
Pre-Pressure: 119/65
Post-Pressure: 80/59
Pre-Pulse: 69
Post-Pulse: 58

There was much animated discussion of David's results in Thai between the three therapists. I don't know if they came to any conclusion as to why one of his post-pressure results went up rather than down as it did with both Courtney and I but if they did we will never know. Any ideas?

Well that's it for now. We are planning to leave Chaing Mai tomorrow to go by bus to a small town northwest of here called Pai. Will try to send another post from there.

Thanks to the guys for comments sent and details re the tsunami news in Canada. Patrick teased me for saying it was just the women who were keeping in contact, but in fact both Patrick and Michael have sent replies and also great to hear from Sharon (with her coffee in hand) and Terry Dunnigan. Also heard from Teresa Babineau earlier.

Chaing Rai & 'Roundabout

Well we ended up spending 6 nights in Chiang Rai. It was a nice little city with enough to do but not too busy. Except for one night we stayed in a place called Mae Kok Villa - villa was definitely a stretch but it was adequate and cheap (210 BHT which translates in about $7 CDN). Now before you start thinking "Wow!, imagine paying $7 dollars for a room in a villa", let me describe those accommodations.

It was a small room, probably 10' x 10'. It had one double bed with a very hard mattress. I'm not sure what's up with Thais and their idea of a bed but having seen more than one Thai taking a nap on a cement floor, including one in the hallway of a hotel, I guess they think that a matress of any kind is a luxury. We have stayed in places with a brand spanking new mattress but it is still almost as hard as sleeping on a piece of plywoood. Anyway, this villa in Chaing Rai had the typical hard mattress. On the advice of Jan/Hilda, David brought Peter's Thermarest mattress with him so he inflates that to put on his side of the bed. I don't know what's up with me but I don't seem to really mind the hard mattresses. Courtney got a mattress on the floor and her's was pretty soft so that was the sleeping arrangements. In addition, there were two small bamboo chairs and a small vanity with a mirror.

The bathroom was in a separate room. It had a cold shower and cold water in the one tap. Both the sink and the drain in the floor from the shower went directly outside on the ground. For a hot shower, you walked outside the room down a covered walkway to a separate room (5' x 5') where there was a gas-fired hot water unit. You opened the "water cock" which is a lever to let the water flow and the water went into a very large aluminum basin. You used a plastic container to scoop the warm water onto your body/head and that was your shower. It was actually very nice. You were basically outside but with some short walls to protect your privacy.

There was also a nice space outside each room where there was a little table with a nice tablecloth and a plant and a large garden to see from there. This villa was a former missionary school so I suspect that our room was one for a teacher. There were also dormitory rooms at this place available for considerably less than $7 night. There were young backpackers staying there.

We did a day trip from Chiang Rai, spending ~$50 each to drive all day in the mountains outside of Chaing Rai in the luxury of an airconditioned van with two other tourists - a young couple from Britain. We also had a driver and a man from the Lisu tribe as a guide. He spoke good English and could answer our many questions, plus he ordered us a great lunch (We will do a separate blog on the food sometime soon). Among other things that day, we visited several hill tribe villages. The people in these villages came from China and other areas outside of the borders of the current Thailand. You see many of these people (Akha, Lisu, Lahu, Humong) both in their individual villages and also in the towns and cities of northern Thailand. Some, in particular the women, still wear their traditional clothes. You see them especially in the markets selling handicrafts. One of the villages we visited was run more like a museum/historical village, kind of like Sherbrooke Village in NS - the villagers were supported by an NGO to set things up in this way. There was fee paid to the village to have us visit and as a result the villagers were not urging you to purchase handicrafts and souviners. It was interesting to read and experience a little of what life was like in a traditional environment. We also saw the local day care in this village. It's always a treat to see children. The Thai children seem well loved for the most part and spend lots of time in physical contact with their parents. Many of the hilltribe mothers are very young and still carry their babies in slings on their back.

On the same trip we went to a small town called Mae Salong. This town was in the mountains and is known for it's cherries and Oolong tea. There were many tea plantations in this area, grown as an alternative to opium which was commonly grown in the north of Thailand and the surrounding countries of Laos and Burma/Mynamar. This was an initiative of the Thai royal family who promote many rural development projects in Thailand. Mae Salong was settled by people who left China when Chaing Kai Chiek (sp?) and his army (Kumaintang) were chased out of China by the communists.

Well that's about it for Chiang Rai, except for a riverboat trip we took. We'll tell you more about this next time.

Just for the record we are currently back in Chiang Mai. Our tales of Chaing Rai are a little behind the times but we are trying to be somewhat sequential in our blogging. FYI - we are paying about $1/hr for internet access which is the same as a coffee or a bottle of beer.

Thanks for the messages from Kathy, Mary Ellen, Sue and Teresa. Interesting to realize that it's the women who are keeping up the lines of communication. David and Courtney are both doing some emails but since I'm the fastest typist, it seems that the blog falls to me. David and Courtney look over my shoulder and keep me honest and remind me when I forget things.

Love to all.....Simply MacLean

Animals in Thailand

We thought it was time to do a "subject" related post on the topic of the animals in Thailand.

Well the first is the dogs. I think we already told you that there are many dogs in Thailand. Well that perception is still strong. David was doing some yoga in the garden of the last guesthouse where we stayed and looked down to see six (6) dashounds (sp?) watching him. They all had there own little jackets with their names embroidered on them. The owners work very hard running this guesthouse - cleaning rooms, doing laundry, sweeping walkways and I'd guess a considerable portion of their income must go to taking care of all these dogs. Then there are the many dogs with T-shirts on. You will see this bulldog type of big dog with a human T-shirt on - the front legs through the legs of the dog and the waist kind of tied up around the belly of the dog. I guess people must be worried that the dogs will be cold b/c the dashounds lost their clothes during the afternoon. Oh yes, and they had mulitiple wardrobes b/c there were always extra jackets hanging out to dry.

Next is the chickens. Everyone seems to have chickens for eggs. We were walking down a busy street in Chiang Rai (pop 40,000) and there was a chicken on the sidewalk - not an unusal sight but we noticed a few extra legs under the chicken. Turns out that there were eight tiny baby chicks under the mother. They all just hung around the mom while she picked/pecked around the dirt next to the sidewalk. Also there are all these wonderful large basket affairs that people use to cover the chickens in their yards during the night and other baskets that they put the chicken in and hang from the edge of a roof. I guess this creates a safe space for the chicken to roost. And there hasn't been a night yet except the first night in Bangkok that we haven't heard a rooster crow at the break of dawn.

Then there are the geckos everywhere including in our current Chinese/Thai hotel. It was hanging around the bathroom despite the fact that we are on the third floor.

Elephants are a constant source of pleasure to see. We went on a 5 hour river trip down the Nam Mae Kok river in Chiang Rai province. During this trip we stopped for a rest at another elephant camp. It's alway fun to see them. There were giant pythons at the same place. I guess you could get your picture taken with them. Their bodies were as big around as David's thighs. I guess from a message I got from Patrick that you can eat snake in Thailand. We haven't been in a position to try that and I'm not sure that we would even if we did have a chance but you never know. You do have your choice of many bugs, slugs, worms and other tasty morsels at the food court in the night market. I haven't seen people flocking to that booth but someone must be eating them or they wouldn't be there.

Cows - we have seen white cows with humps at the back of their neck and another type of cow that looks like what I remember a yak looking like in school books. I don't know what it is in fact but I must look it up. There are also lots of lovely beige and brown cows and we've had to make our way by them when walking on the rural roads.

I guess that's about it for now - we are on our way to Burma/Mynamar via Mai Sai tomorrow. We will cross the border for the day so that we can update our Thai visas.

Post Christmas & New Year

I think our last posting talked about how we spent Christmas Day with Nancy Peters in the mountains of Phu Kha. From these mountains we drove to another range and a popular Thai tourist attraction called Pu Chi Fah (1700 meters). This formation is on the border between Thailand and Laos. It is a place where people go to see the "sea of clouds". You climb to the mountain before sunrise with hundreds of others and watch as the sun comes up revealing the sea of clouds below you and showing peaks of mountains showing through the clouds. Of course, it is spectacular and lots of fun to be there with so many Thais and Chinese tourists who are taking pictures like crazy. There are also painters doing their thing.

The overnight accommodations prior to the early rising were humourous. We passed on a place that had bungalows that were quite close to the road and a little higher than we expected to pay. I didn't go in the next place we stopped but David and Courtney came away a bit horrified because there was going to be just one big bed for all five of us! We went on to the next place only to discover the same situation. It was getting dark and it didn't seem that we were going to be able to find anything but this particular kind of room. So we bit the bullet and signed in for 4 people in one bed (10' by 6') - Nancy, Courtney, Elaine and David! The driver decided to get his own room. What a riot. One big bed filling up almost all the space in the room. Very dark with one faint flourescent bulb and one red bare bulb. You sleep in a row with a blanket for each person - the blankets were all pink and cutsie - teddy bears and clouds. We just laugh and slept well except for all the times someone knocked on our door to wake us up in the wee hours thinking we were someone else. We got up at 5:30am hours to quickly get dressed to drive to the location and hike a bit to get to the top. But it was all worth it.

From there we spent 3 nights in a small town (pop 9,000) called Chiang Chong. Nancy had to go back to Chiang Mai to check on the Trent students - as it turned out they were all fine although they actually witnessed the tsunami in Krabi.

Chiang Chong is on the Mekong River and Laos is on the other side of the river. We had a room with a balcony just outside the door of our room and it overlooked the river - wonderful choice by Nancy. We spent three days there watching river life and getting some extra rest. We ate most meals in small restaurants which were also right on the river. At night we could hear the disco music in the border town on the Laos side - that's how close it was.

From there we took a local bus to Chaing Rai (pop 40,000) where we are still staying. We were here for New Years Eve. There was a wonderful parade yesterday. It was some kind of Buddhist festival. Lots of buddhas were paraded down the street, plus many groups in various traditional dress and playing traditional music and dance. Hope we got some good pictures. We hung out at the night market listening to more music and watching more dance. Headed back to our guest house and at midnight there were lots of fireworks although the Thai government has foregone official celebrations of New Years this year due to the tsumani. We also saw many floating lanterns set off into the sky at midnight. They were like yellow stars floating in the sky.

We have just been to the Hilltribe Museum here in Chiang Rai. It's very interesting to learn a little more about the many ethnic groups here in the north of Thailand. Many are nomads who travelled down from China. The Chinese influence is quite strong here in Chiang Rai.

Haven't made any definite plans for what's next but we'll keep you posted.