Slow boat no 89, Houeixai

After 3d trekking around Viengphoukha, now taking a 2d boat along Mekong to Luangphabang, overnight in Pakbeng. Only farangs here.

Namkhong Guesthouse, Chiang Khong

A quiet town: after 8pm only occasional farangs and stray dogs roam its single street. Will exit Thailand tomorrow morning.

Golden House, Chiang Mai

Leaving Chiang Mai today after one week here and heading towards Laos. Should reach Chiang Khong in 5h and cross the border to Laos from there, maybe today, maybe tomorrow morning.

The week in Chiang Mai has been full of activities.

• Visited the Sunday street market. Lots of different handicraft were sold but we didn't buy anything. I need to buy new flip-flops but the ones sold are too expensive and/or too small. One notable item was small cages of birds that one could buy to release (just 20 Baht). Is releasing a bird a good thing (because a bird would be released), or a bad thing because it encourages capture of birds?
  
• Visited several second-hand bookstores. Most of the books are in English (but there are also shelves dedicated to Finnish) and the selection is quite good. The books could be cheaper though, e.g. paid 280 Baht for a book about Ramanujan.
• Ate several 7-eleven hot-dogs, but also ate at night food markets, a university mensa, and a fancier restaurant that offers northern Thai food (e.g. rice with pickled pork)
  
• Visited a Thai boxing match. Our favourite Petsiam unfortunately lost against the Japanese Tsubasa. Did not gamble as it was said to be illegal.
  
• Did the "Flight of the Gibbon" i.e. riding a set of zip-lines through the jungle. Could have been more extreme...
  
• Did a 3-days/2-nights trekking in the hills north of Chiang Mai. Saw some orchids and butterflies; hiked though some rice and fruit plantations; hiked in a jungle; washed and then rode some elephants; next morning hiked some more to the altitude of 1060m where the temperature is cooler (pine trees start to grow there) and where the Lahu people had set up a village (didn't learn much about the Lahu people besides that they want to massage you for 150 Baht + tip); then played some Celebrity Heads with out fellow trekkers; next morning hiked down the slippery hillside; swam in a natural pool below a waterfall; did some grade 1 white-water rafting; then some bamboo rafting (the raft was almost entirely submerged as there was 7 of us on it); and then went back to Chiang Mai.
  
• Visited the Immigration Office to find out if we need a re-entry permit since we want to come back to Thailand in a month or so to catch a flight from Bangkok. We were told that we don't need a re-entry permit as citizens of both Hungary and Estonia can get a new visa at the Cambodian border (free of charge). Remains to be seen if it really works this way.
• Visited Doi Suithep up in the hills (1050m and nice cool temperature again). This temple hosts some relics of Buddha. Didn't see them. Are they stored in the golden pagoda?
• Visited the Chiang Mai zoo (100 Baht + 100 Baht extra is you want to see the pandas). Panda seems to be the symbol of Chiang Mai even though in Thailand no pandas live and the ones at the Zoo are a gift from China. The highlight of the Zoo are 3 hippos whose enclosure is so close to the walking path that one could touch them if one wanted. (Note that hippo is a pretty dangerous animal, being the 2nd most frequent killer of tourists in Africa.)

N19.24,E98.83

Lahu village at 1068m. Csilla being lahu-massaged by locals. Pleasant after a shaky elephant ride + a 3h uphill hike. Tomorrow bamboo rafting.

Golden House Guesthouse, Chiang Mai

After 11 days we left Bangkok. This was the longest time we had spent in one place. Two more fewer pages left blank in the passports. But at least we may now enter Vietnam and India with our shiny new visas. During that time we completed most of the things on our to do list for Bangkok. I had to admit that I quite enjoyed reading and relaxing in the air conditioned hotel room for a change. Although for Kaarel it was not that relaxing, since he also had some work to do.

The highlight was meeting my friend Sumpun. It was great to catch up with him and spend some time together around his home place. We visited the floating markets with him that is located an hour drive away from Bangkok. The small town has many channels that were built for the irrigation of the fruit tree plantations and now are used by the locals as a mean of transportation. It was quite interesting with the many boats, although very touristy with many souvenir stalls instead of local products. At one place we even fed some fish in a canal. There were tons of them fighting over the food, but still that did not distract them enough to make it easy to catch them. Even though the water was literally boiling with fish, they still escaped our hands very fast. Quite disappointing for Kaarel...
We also visited Phutthamonthon where there is a huge Buddha statue (with 15.87 m it is he highest free-standing Buddha statue of the world) in the middle of a beautifully kept large park. There were many very very old bonsai trees (I was very impressed and jealous when I saw these masterpieces!!) and bushes pruned in the shape of different animals, e.g. elephants, deers, horses.

In Bangkok we visited some more Buddhist temples, a few IT malls, where interestingly small boutique-like private shops are clustered, offering more or less the same things for differing prices including a lot of pirated DVDs and software. We also managed to get up early and give alms to a monk who passed by around our hotel. It was a nice gesture, although I am not quite convinced that all the monks are respectable beings, as is the case with the priests. We saw many monks in shopping malls enjoying fruit shakes, buying sweets and one we caught even smoking. Hanging on their cellphones seemed just to be a very normal thing... We skipped the Thai boxing match in Bangkok, because it was quite expensive and the Segway tour for the same reason. Other than Kaarel teasing the tuk-tuk drives, we avoided interaction with them, so we walked quite a lot.

Yesterday we had a very long busride to Chiang Mai, located in Northern Thailand. It took a little bit longer than the planned 12h, because the bus was driving 40 km/h at the beginning and broke down eventually. So we had to wait for hours for an other vehicle.

What shall we do next? Possible activities in and around Chiang Mai include:

• Flight of the Gibbon:  flying fox zip lines and hanging bridges in the jungle canopy (www.treetopasia.com)
  
• elephant rides in the jungle
• trekking and visiting the hilltribes, including the Kayan where the women twist copper wires around their necks to make it grow longer
• Thai boxing match (Petsiam, presumingly the Thai champion vs. Tsubasa, a Japanese fighter)
• pet tigers at the Tiger Kingdom (www.tigerkingdom.com/Home.htm)
  
• visit Immigration Office for a re-entry permit to Thailand
• visit Sunday market or night bazaar
• visit more Buddhist temples

Happy House Guest house, Bangkok

Been now in Bangkok for 6 days:

• arranging visas (received already the Vietnamese visa, now the passport is in the Indian embassy);
• visiting various temples hosting various kinds of famous Buddha statues (reclining, emerald, golden);
• taking river boats and ferries on the Chao Phraya river;
• cruising over Bangkok's hotel, embassy and shopping mall district in the air-conditioned SkyRail;
• squeezing through the streetmarkets of Chinatown;
  
• drinking litres of water, Coke/Fanta/Sprite, fruit juices and beer to balance the constant dehydration;
• letting fish massage our feet (yes, upon check-in, our hostel gave us a free coupon for a 10-minute fish massage);
  

but the TODO-list is still long:

• visit the nearby floating market(s) together with Sumpun (Csilla's colleague from Uni Zurich Tierspital) and his family;
  
• learn to meditate under the guidance of an English-speaking monk;
  
• see a Thai boxing match;
• see a standing Buddha (adding to our collection of several sitting, walking, and reclining ones);
  
• buy cheap electronics, e.g. a 320GB external HDD to back up our travel photos;
  
• feed a monk (for that one needs to wake up at least at 6am, which we have failed to do so far);
• go on a sightseeing tour on a Segway (probably too expensive, though).

So we'll stay here for another 5 or 6 days.

An internet place, พัทลุง, ราชอาณาจักรไทย

Yesterday reached Thailand in an air-conditioned shuttle bus from Georgetown. The border crossing took an hour since the King of Malaysia had a birthday, and many of his subjects apparently went to Thailand to celebrate it. So had to stand in a line for one hour to obtain the entry stamp. (We already had a 60-day visa that we had received in Georgetown.)

In Hat Yai got off the shuttle bus and took an intercity bus to Phatthalung (พัทลุง), an entry point to the Thale Noi lake that Csilla insisted on seeing. The bus dropped us somewhere at the edge of the town and the driver pointed us to a pickup truck that was just about to leave to Thale Noi. These pickup trucks seem to be the core of the public transportation here. Similar to public transportation in many places of the world, they are overloaded with passengers, some travel outside the passenger compartment hanging somehow to the side railings.

In one hour the truck was in Thale Noi. It's off-season now so most of the aquatic birds that the lake is famous for had flown somewhere else --- the lake that would otherwise be white with egrets was now simply black with mud, with some patches of pink water lilies. The village by the lake is a domestic tourist destination, the only foreigners that we met were a group of geography students from Singapore, sent here to study the tourism potential of the lake. (The best idea would be to get Lonely Planet writing about it, currently Lonely Planet Thailand 2007 doesn't even mention it, so all the international overlanding tourists who arrive from Malaysia will go straight to Phuket.)

As a result of the little international tourism, nobody speaks English and all the signs are only in the Thai script. So we walked along the main road looking for a hotel, probably missing several of them, since the only word we know in Thai is พัทลุง (Phatthalung). Ended up at the other end of the village, about 1km away from the center, where we finally found a hotel. The signs there didn't contain any Latin characters either but a friend? of the owner? enthusiastically dragged us in.

Sunrise over the lake this morning was impressive. We arranged with a local boat man to take us on a tour on a lake (2h for 2per = 400 Baht). One can see quite many birds (egrets, jacanas, kingfishers, cormorants, eagles) but only from a distance because the noise from the engine of the boat scares them away. Was nevertheless quite a pleasant trip.

We have now arrived back to Phattalung and are killing time in an internet place till our overnight train to Krung Thep (i.e. Bangkok).

A food court close to the Clan Jetties, Georgetown

Eating Hokkien Prawn Mee and drinking carrot juice. Csilla is eating noodle soup and drinking orange juice.

Yesterday got the Thai visa, so might go to Thailand tomorrow.

Tourist Guest House, Georgetown, Malaysia

Arrived here yesterday after a 5 hour bumpy ferry ride. The ferry was almost empty, probably everybody else flies this distance as the prices offered by Lion Air and Air Asia are almost the same as the ferry prices. Also, the Medan airport is right in the middle of Medan, so when flying one does not need to take a minibus to the Belawan port (duration 2h!).

Georgetown is pleasant: there is no traffic chaos as in Indonesia, people speak better English, there is free wireless, no giggling schoolgirls who call you "Hello Misterrr!", etc. Even the climate felt acceptable when we arrived yesterday, but based on today this was probably misleading. Only beer is unacceptably expensive, so switched to drinking fruit juices, counted 30 different kinds at one stall (Tangerine/Sour plum was a bit too sour for my taste).

Now thinking how to best visit Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam. These are our constraints:

• we are now in Georgetown, Malaysia
• at some point we need to end up in Bangkok to catch a flight to Bombay (flexible date)
• we have about 1.5 months to spend
• the entry regulations to each of these four countries are complex, e.g. not every border can be crossed with an e-visa
• we want to visit Buddha and Hindu temples, relax on beaches, trek in national parks, see animals (e.g. Irrawaddy dolphins), visit indigenous tribes, ride on railways and rivers, learn the rice growing technology, buy a new cell phone cheap, etc., etc.

Dear readers, if you have suggestions for the most optimal itinerary through these 4 countries, please let us know.