Day Twenty-Seven - the Kathoey perspective

Cars decorated in this fashion are to be seen everywhere in Thailand. Yet can you imagine any self-respecting, Jeremy Clarkson-loving hoon sporting lupins on their souped-up Citroen Saxos? 
You often see middle-aged men here holding hands in the street, but if I had to guesstimate on the prevalence of homosexuality in Thailand,  I suspect it would be about the same as back home.  It turns out that for Thais, tolerance doesn't equal proselytism! Who'd a thunk it? It would seem to undermine the basic thinking behind Thatcher's Section 28.

Of course, it could be that the Thai acceptance of sexual variance is part of their Buddhist belief that people are incarnated according to a divine ruling based upon choices made in previous lives, i.e. you're born this way, it's not a matter of vice on your part.

Which brings us to the kathoey, or as they are known in large parts of Thailand, the ladyboys - homosexual men who have taken on a female identity. We happened to be walking past a village bar (honestly) earlier this evening, when we saw that they were having a cabaret evening. The whole troupe of performers were kathoey and dressed in absolutely over the top glamorous drag. The punters were mainly enthusiastic middle-aged to elderly European couples, so this was definitely the Danny La Rue end of the entertainment spectrum, not at all sordid.
It did make you think about Thai tolerance though - why weren't these guys working in banks and legal offices, earning good money rather than performing in a tawdry little bar? Maybe there are still prejudicial attitudes to overcome which drive the kathoey into these self-mocking jobs. Maybe their preferred term for their type - "transformed goddesses" - is just an attempt to boost low self-esteem.  Maybe I pontificate too much. 

Day Twenty-Four - Summer Palace

King Rama's beach hut.

We are becoming exceedingly concerned at the rate at which our girths are increasing. Thai food is very tasty and very cheap and it is too hot to do much else than eat it.

We decided, however, to brave the heat and hire bicycles from one of the village traders. Our prior attempts to engage in any physical activity had been met with astonishment and incomprehension by the hotel's management. When we said we wanted to visit nearby Mrigadayavan Palace, they explained with pained courtesy that it was only 100 baht or so for a ten-minute taxi ride. We ignored their advice about heading up to the main arterial highway and cycling along that for safety reasons and instead rolled through the back lanes of the surrounding villages. It was well worth it.

The Perfume Making Room at the Palace

Mrigadavayan was built as a summer palace for King Rama VI in 1923 to the designs of Italian architect Ercole Manfredi. It nestles inside a complex of environmental park, army camp and education centres.

You get a real period feel from the buildings, from the King's office, where he wrote his enthusiastically received translations of Shakespeare and Agatha Christie, to the servants' quarters, which reveal the level of daily court ceremonials taking place in the palace.

The Parks are beautiful too and nearby is a nature reserve, set up by a member of the current Thai royal family, which is an interesting mangrove swamp. There was also a rope bridge but we won't mention that, eh?

On our way to fetch the bicycles for the journey home, we happened upon a group of students with their teacher working on some traditional tunes. A short video appears below.

Day Twenty-Three - Heat, Dust and Margaritas

Look it's really hot here, okay? We've reined in our ambitions to go whitewater rafting and zipwire zooming and settled instead for doing some restaurant research in advance of our Monday lunch date with Na and Pook. We walked into the village and pick up a taxi to a hotel outside Cha-am centre, where we are assured, the walkable section of the beach commences.  I should explain that despite the first high tide being between 7 and 8 in the morning this week, the sea by us still seems, at lunchtime, to be lapping at the edge of the roads leading down to the shore. We get a short three kilometre walk in and discover that Cha-am is flooded with Thai Chinese tourists, escaping from Bangkok to celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Snake (my animal sign, by the way) and to enjoy the annual Cha-am Crab Festival. Regardless of the crowds, there's a job to be done.

This one was nice. Probably too expensive and with the food toned down for the European palate, but we enjoyed the guy doodling on the piano in the background. He was a superb pianist but when he started to sing, oh dear! For some reason, all of the singers we have encountered in bars and hotel lounges on this trip have felt it necessary to make an attempt at Eric Clapton's mournful dirge "Tears in Heaven". I know the personal circumstances behind the song were tragic but that is no reason for every man and his dog to give us their rendition. I guess the world loves a sentimental tear-jerking ballad including Mr Piano Man below.

We made our excuses and left, just as Mr. P played the opening chords of "Nothing Compares 2 U".

Our research trip went pretty well after that - we found four of TripAdvisor's five top-rated restaurants in Cha-am. Getting back to the hotel was more of a problem though as we made our way along the highway leading home. The local taxi drivers were quick to spot us as easy pickings and asked for double the normal rate. Despite our tongues hanging out of our mouths with thirst in the ferocious heat, we waved them away haughtily and started walking along the aptly named Hospital Road. What they knew and we didn't, was that their stand was the last one on that stretch of road until Hua Hin, some ten miles south. Luckily, we were able to take refuge from the ferocious heat in a ramshackle roadside cafe, where an incredibly kind proprietor looked after us.  He rang a taxi firm while we had a coffee, and then brought out complimentary green tea, cake and a plate of fruit so that we could celebrate New Year with him.

We made it back okay in the end. We went into Hua Hin that evening just to explore the city. It's much larger than Cha-am, with many more Western tourists. We even found a restaurant run by three Mexican cousins - tacos, quesadillas, margaritas - we were happy.

Day Twenty-Two - Alternative therapy day

Maggie has been keen, ever since our holisticacious day in Chiang Mai, to enjoy another pampering day. So after having a pedicure and manicure in the morning, she spent the afternoon at the nearby Novotel spa enjoying one of their innovative flowerpot treatments. Here's a photo.

Day Twenty-One - On the Beach

The temperature here in Cha-am is 39 degrees, same as in London, though here we use the Celsius scale and I hear you lot back in London are still on the Fahrenheit system. It's too hot to blog but the beach is calling so here's a picture of the road ahead, featuring three of the local hounds. Every house, shop and restaurant seems to have three or four dogs lying outside prostrated in the heat, although they could of course be the same group of dogs employing some sort of thespian scam.

Day Twenty - Minivan to Cha-am

Early rise at Nhong's place in the Bangkok suburbs, as we parcelled up our belongings for the journey south.
Today, we said goodbye to Wiew who was to return to London for ten days or so to do her monthly accounts report before coming back to Thailand on company business for S&P.

Our new friend, Noy, she whose family sent us kilos of mangosteen and langsat fruit, had volunteered to drive us to the Victory Monument in the heart of the city where we aimed to pick up a minibus to Cha-am.





Travelling by minivan is the only viable public transport option to get to the resort.  The drivers' routine is that they wait for a full load of passengers and luggage and then set off - every ten minutes or so. The fare for a two-hour trip is about four pounds, so quite cheap.

Once again, we were to depend upon the kindness of strangers, because Nhong had contacted a colleague in Cha-am to pick us up at the minivan drop-off point and take us to our hotel a few miles south. So we met the lovely Pook and her English-speaking friend Na.The hotel is an attractive beachside complex and I am sure we'll be able to relax here after the last three weeks of relentless sight-seeing.

In the meantime, our Number One priority right now is to find a shop selling Schweppes Indian Tonic Water to go with the gin we picked up in LP.
We spent a couple of hours last night in Bangkok walking around the local shops trying to find some but it just isn't  that popular amongst the Thai people.

There's a village a hundred metres from the hotel which caters for the tourists like us who are too cheap to pay fancy prices in the hotel restaurant.  Restaurants, bars, tailors, grocery stores, nail and massage parlours, bike rental shops, taxi-stands, all clustering round the hotels like lampreys on a whale shark. Tonic must be out there; I think the gods will be with us tonight.

Day Nineteen - zzz

Writing more than one sentence about today would be my "small earthquake in Chile, not many dead" post, so I will just say it was a sleepy day and pick up the story tomorrow.

Day Eighteen - Fly

Back to LP's tiny airport to begin our journey back to Bangkok.  Since our visit to Laos was a spur of the moment decision, we had to fly back to Chiang Mai before using the other half of our return flight from Bangkok, where we were met by our friends Wiew and Noi. A couple of days recharging our batteries, doing our laundry, and we'll be all set for our trip down into Phetchaburi province to the seaside resort of Cha-am. So rather than describe the wash-cycle features of Nhong's washing machine, I'll just post some photos of the local flora and fauna encountered in Thailand and Laos so far. Apologies for the fuzzies!

Day Seventeen - Old Bamboo Bridge

Another Maggie Post

Day 17 was a lazy day - we wandered about and chilled out, for tomorrow we are flying out of LP and back to the Bangkok Maelstrom. Walking down to the Nam Khan river, John took this great photo of the celebrated old bamboo bridge with the Luang Prabang Range of mountains in the background.

The bamboo bridge is built across the river once a year by one family, who charge a few pence for every crossing.  In the wet season, the bridge is washed away and the crossing is made by boat.  When the waters go down, they build the bridge again.

John was keen to try it out, so I selflessly agreed not to cross in order to photograph his great adventure.

Children selling trinkets are a common sight in Luang Prabang and with my usual flair, I managed to get involved with 4 little girls, oldest one about eight, whose knowledge of English and exchange rates quickly got us into a discussion about the value of Laotian Kips, Thai Bahts, US Dollars, and UK Pounds.  Of course I knew what I was doing, and only paid about 10 times too much for four little doll keyrings that I didn't want.

Towards evening, looking for a restaurant for dinner, we came upon a little kitten, too small be on its own, but no sign of its mother.  We walked up the hill and bought some fried chicken which we took back and which kitty ate with great gusto.  It was hard to leave the little thing on its own, but the logistics of doing anything else were too great.  As we left, another couple came along and picked it up.  We can only hope ...

Day Sixteen - Kuang Si Waterfalls

The minivan pulled up outside our hotel at the crack of dawn (11:30) for our trip to the Kuang Si Waterfalls. It's a thirty or forty minute bumpy drive into the hills before arriving at the gates of the park.

A village has sprung up at the gates to feed and water the large numbers of tourists arriving at midday.  It was frustrating that we could not find a tour agency willing to schedule trips earlier in the day, as you feltl as if you were part of a rent-a-mob as you wound your way along the paths.  The local people also tend to visit at the weekends to take a picnic and play cards on the grassier spots.

Once through the gates, you are directed to a bear sanctuary, run by an Australian charity (link) with more than 20 Asiatic black bears, also known as Moon bears for their crescent markings.  The enclosures are adequately sized and a lot of thought goes into making their life in captivity comfortable and stimulating.  Most of the bears have been confiscated by the Lao government from poachers and traders intending to sell them onto the bile farms in neighbouring countries.

Bear relaxing in a hammock.

The trail continues from the bear rescue centre to the waterfalls which, it has to be said, are well worth the inconvenience of the crowds. First of all, you come to the bathing pools where if you have the cojones, you can brave the iced water.

Last time I went swimming in a tropical waterfall pool in India, I spent twenty-four hours in the bathroom, so this time I declared myself cojone-light.

For some of the younger visitors, the rope-swing from the tree overhanging the pool was irresistible. Others even younger were happy to paddle in the shallows.

Brothers

At the top of the trail, the largest of the waterfalls provides a spectacular finale to the trip.

On our way home, we stopped at a Hmong village, talking to the young children who were manning the first stalls. I'd lost my enthusiasm for shopping by this time and was quite content to wait for my fellow tourists to return, after what was described as a ten-minute stop. After ten minutes, the kids had badgered me into buying a few bracelets but there was still no sign of the others returning.

Eventually, Maggie came running towards me, shouting to tell me that the minivan was waiting for me a hundred metres down the road. Embarrassingly, I'd not realised that the path through the Hmong village took a semi-circular route. Red-faced, I rejoined the trip.

Day Fifteen - UXO Lao Visitors' Centre

Today, we visited the UXO Lao Visitors' Centre on the outskirts of Luang Prabang. It is primarily a field office for the organisation but there is a small room set aside as a museum of sorts.  It was a moving and sobering visit, so without apology from me, this blog entry is purely information on the work of UXO Lao.

UXO stands for Unexploded Ordinance.

This is what they look like:

A cluster bomb with its payload of "bombies"

Between 1964 and 1973, an estimated two million tons of ordinance was dropped by US forces on Laos, making it the most heavily bombed nation per capita in history. That figure included some 260 million anti-personnel "bombies" of which perhaps a third (78 million) failed to explode. The bombies and other small pieces of ordinance are, of course, very attractive to inquisitive children and, of the more than three hundred deaths from exploding ordinance in the Lao PDR each year (roughly one person a day), most involve bombies.

Most bombs were dropped in the poorest eastern provinces of Laos and, although the Laos government programme is painstakingly removing UXO as fast as its meagre funding allows, poverty and the search for scrap metal by local people constantly puts adults and children in harm's way.

A scrap metal hunter and his son

Although international agencies like the UN and individual governments, including the USA and the European Union, are helping the Lao government with their programme, the contributions are small and the UXO project remains  massively underfunded.

If you feel you can help financially with this vital work, you can learn about how to donate by visiting their website.