Sunday 22 January 2012

travel day

7am in Chiang Mai and we are almost ready to set off to Bangkok...
Our train leaves at 8.30am and will take 12 hours !!!

Bon voyage to us, we are looking forward to the views of the countryside along the way. The last 2 times that we traveled the route we took the night bus and of course didn't see anything.

Must go or we'll miss the train..

Thursday 19 January 2012

Chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #10 / last week and this week

YES.. we now each have 3 months, single entry visa.
Below is the entrance area of the Indian Consulate in
Chiang Mai.
and after we collected our passports with visa stickers, stamped and ready to go...

on our way to the travel agent (where we went to enquire about flights) we stopped at this lovely pagoda.


last saturday morning around 6am... This was the day where we got up at 3.45am to travel to a distant mountain with Manop, his wife and his brother. This mountain is part of the Himalayas and we forgot it's name.. Why so early? To see the sunrise - naturally... But the weather had other plans and it was incredibly foggy, so much so that we had to drive up the mountain at absolute snail-speed so that we didn't fall off the side of it.... Half way up we were stopped by guards and had to wait for the fog to clear. It didn't clear. We drove back to Chiang Mai and arrived back home (back to bed) at about 10.30am. What a morning. But it was fun, too. Jason made a Thai friend in the fog, while Birgit fell asleep in the car.. The rest of the day was spent sleeping and feeling jet-lagged.:
a video from that morning last saturday (the fog encounter on the way up the mountain)

At the little restaurant next door to Manop's place one evening..
Not sure which exact evening. The food here is delicious, but can
be a little spicy.. (It might have been the same saturday evening that we had tried to drive up the mountain, when fog stopped us)

just 3 days ago when we found a nice market:

today after collecting our visas, getting train tickets ... lunch/breakfast/brunch...
outside Manop's place this afternoon, new wires being put in place...:

Wednesday 11 January 2012

chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #9


we are back once more from Burma/Myanmar with fresh visas, valid for 14 more days.
This morning we also applied for visas at the Indian Consulate.
Sadly they will only give us 3 month visas now. Collecting on the 19th.

Full sentences and more later. Running out of internet time.
x

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[you can click on any photo here and it should open a larger view for you]


setting off in the morning, catching the 8.30am bus to Mae Sai, the border town to Burma.
While standing waiting for the bus, look at the scaffolding...
on the way to Northern Thailand, to the border with Myanmar/Burma, view from the bus window, behind those hills is Burma..
Jason at the Myanmar border.
the temporary entry permit we were given in exchange for leaving our passports with the border guards.. Passports to be collected on the way out of Myanmar/Burma.. always a funny feeling..
having a coffee in a coffee shop in Burma, serving Thai coffee. Jason looking a little french/bohemian..
in Burma, a pretty poor country, which becomes apparent as soon as you step across the border. Everything changes, sewers are open, people dressed often in what clearly is from a limited selection of clothes, material often shabby and worn. But we found a fair few friendly, if weary of life, faces.
You can tell by the state of the dogs how well a country is, in Burma as in Cambodia the dogs are pretty rough, often patches of fur missing... People's main priority is to feed themselves first before sharing with the four legged friend.

a wall we traced an old drawing on:

the shared bus back to Mae Sai Bus station where we caught the bus for the 5 hour journey to Chiang Mai.. 5 hours on winding roads through jungle, serious jungle, and more open areas with views of paddy fields and more urban places... (no pictures of the journey as most of it was in the dark)


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Back in Chiang Mai (the previous day)
we went and bought a little present / souvenir here:
the woman makes everything herself and really well.

Tuesday 10 January 2012

chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #8

it's NEVER actually this quiet outside our place! This picture lies...


Friday 6 January 2012

Chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #7

Breakfast in Manop's music shop, downstairs from our room
papaya with yoghurt and some wheatgerm for added fiber and goodness:

Jason with the bus ticket to Mae Sai.
Mae Sai is a border town between Thailand and Burma.
We took our first visa-run journey there about 10 days ago and are going again on wednesday the 11th. The bus journey takes about 5 to 6 hours each way.
[by the way, if you click on this photograph and wait patiently then a picture viewer opens, where you will see this photo larger, you should from there be able to see a 'slideshow' of images from this blog post, this also works on some of the other posts we have made, unless the images were uploaded to Flickr, in that case clicking on the photo will lead you to Birgit's Flickr site.. click away and explore: you can always return to the original blog post]

This was the view from our seat on the 2nd class bus. the ticket cost us just 160 baht or thereabout, which is $5.25 / £3.20 (approximately, give or take a few cent/pence). An American in his 60's, from New Mexico and dressed like a Cowboy let us swap seats with him, which meant at that at least we had seats together, which on the long, bumpy and wobbly bus journey was a mild relief. Jason couldn't sleep, Birgit curled herself into a pretzel shape and slept for half the journey....

we didn't take any photos at the bus station when we arrived in Mae Sai but here is one from after leaving Thailand, standing on the "Friendship Bridge" all bridges crossing rivers that seperate Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) are called Friendship Bridge... imagination for inventing names was limited it seems.. Behind Jason you can see the Myanmar border. There is also a smaller sign (blue) that says something like: Welcome to the Golden Triangle.. Which effectively means: welcome to the place where the 3 principal Opium growing countries meet.. Although today the cultivation of Opium is no longer permitted, until not long ago Laos, Northern Thailand and Burma traded Opium - very encouraged by British Colonialism, but that's another story and a longer stream of thoughts... Very interesting, but also one's ears flutter just thinking about how much foreign invasions have changed the shape (and health) of entire countries and affected their cultures forever...
In the immigration office on the Myanmar side (Myanmar = Burma, why the name change? Because to explain it in very basic terms: government changed and insisted on the name change from Burma, which was a democratic country to Myanmar which is a military ruled country with some serious Human Rights Violation issues..)...
But: the officials in the immigration office were nice to allow me to take a photograph there:
notice the time difference? The Thai Time is 30 minutes ahead of Myanmar time......... Make of this what you will, but in our mind it sparks imaginations about the change of reality from one side of the border bridge to the other. :

For the most part toilets that we have visited in Thailand and Cambodia were the western style ones but this was also largely due to the places we visited. We haven't really left towns and cities much and in those we also stayed in more western orientated places. This is a squat toilet, which might seem odd at first sight but actually if you know a little about the anatomy of the human bowels: this encourages the full clearing of the bowels which is much healthier for the body than our lazy western toilets..

Here they also don't use a flushing system like we are used to but you scoop up some water from a bucket beside the toilet and flush so to speak: manually. Which is totally fine and once you've done it once you won't notice the difference. No problem at all..

The actual hygiene of these toilets does vary however. This one is located at a VERY busy market that is exactly next to the border crossing and it costs 5 baht to use this one. (10 pence, 15 cent) It doesn't look that great, but was decent enough. Other squat toilets might be a lot brighter and the surroundings more white and sterile looking. Of course that's nicer, but as long as the toilet bowl is as clean as this one was and the urine smell very low (as it was) we are fine with it.
It will actually be like this in most public toilets in India. (where we will rent a room we will most likely have a western toilet or else a very nice and bright clean version of the squat toilet - lucky we are so used to flexing our legs - through yoga and exercise - squatting is good for you!)
the women's toilet:
and the men's toilet:


Back in Chiang Mai at the Massage School:
and of course: espresso!!

quick flashback to Bangkok:

restorations of one of the doors on the temple that houses the Emerald Buddha






Wednesday 4 January 2012

Chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #6

We both passed Advanced Thai Massage (60 hours training) just hours ago today.

We haven't had wifi since the end of the year and for another couple of days, hence the long silence and no pictures.. Jason is looking forward to a few days off Thai Massage and more yoga, music, tai chi and other such lovely things. Our room is still really noisy, but for $100 a month we really haven't got much leverage to complain have we...?

Both happy and healthy.