Battambang

The first town that I visited in Cambodia was Battambang, which is the second largest city in Cambodia but still quite small. However the only reason I came here was so that I could take the boat to Siem Reap (the town where Angkor Wat is located) instead of having to take a bus over some supposedly terrible roads.

I arrived in Battambang in the early afternoon and decided to spend the rest of the day touring around small villages surrounding the city. However since it was late afternoon when I was touring around, most of the activities that we were supposed to see where finished for the day such as making rice paper and bamboo sticky rice. We did get to stop and try a local snack of fried snake and palm wine (the palm wine was made from sap from palm trees), and we also got to visit a place where they were making fish paste. However other than those couple of sights the rest of the tour was just spent driving around the country side which was still quite nice.

The next morning I awoke and went to catch the boat to Siem Reap. The boat trip was very good, at least for the first few hours, as from the top of it you could see lots the locals out along the riverbank going about their daily activities. The boat went through a narrow river channel for most of the trip (passing other oncoming boat traffic was very interesting as the channel was so small) and eventually came out on Tonle Sap, the large lake in the centre of Cambodia. Although the boat trip was fairly enjoyable it became quite boring by the end as it was 7 hours of sitting on a boat seeing the same thing over and over. However I was told that it was much better than the bumpy road that was the alternative so it was a worthwhile trip.

The next stop was Siem Reap and visiting the world heritage site of Angkor Wat for the next few days, update to follow shortly.









Some kids at a road side stall where we got to sample the fried snake (in the bowl on the right) and palm wine.














A shot of the road that we were driving down with Rene (one of the guys I was traveling with) in front.












A shot from the boat to Siem Reap of some farmers plowing their fields using an engine pulling them while they stand on a board that plows the field.








A kid that was poling his small boat along side ours, this was just before we entered the huge lake so no more narrow channel as you can see.

Sukhothai, Korat and Getting to Cambodia

I've managed to finally get an update up (I know I'm a little behind) but there's also 2 more updates of pictures from earlier below this one too.

After leaving Mae Sot and Um Phang I had to make my way across Thailand to enter Cambodia. So I decided to break this trip up into smaller sections and spend a day in a couple of cities along the way. The fist city I stopped in was Sukhothai, the first capital of Thailand and home to some nice ruins.

Sukhothai is divided into old and new Sukhothai with old Sukhothai containing the ruins of the ancient city. For the day that I had in Sukhothai I spent the entire time cycling around the ruins and exploring the old city. Some of the ruins were quite impressive although this was only the ruins within the old city walls, all of the ruins in the surrounding area were very much ruined and didn't provide much to see except the more scenic location. Other than the ruins at old Sukhothai though there wasn't much to see or do here so I moved on.

After Sukhothai I took the bus to Korat and didn't expect to spend much time here really enjoy the time that I did spend here as it isn't a very touristy town. It was just necessary to go to to catch another bus to the border of Cambodia. However, when I arrived here I discovered that they were hosting their 4th annual grilled foods festival (something like the Thai equivalent of the Calgary Stampede). The grilled foods festival was actually very enjoyable as it had tons of delicious grilled food and even a free show that was like the grandstand show. Not to mention it was quite funny seeing all of the Thai people dressed up as cowboys.

After Korat I took a bus to Aranya Prathet (a town on the Cambodian border) and once across the border I made my way to Battambang in a shared taxi. The taxi ride itself was quite interesting as there were 3 tourists that had rented the backseat and 4 locals (including the driver) all squished up front. More updates from Cambodia to follow soon.








Ruins at old Sukhothai.

Pictures of Um Phang

Standing near the main waterfall.















Our guide walking across a bamboo bridge to get to a small set of waterfalls for some swimming.















Our guide holding a gibbon that one of the local villagers owned. We all got a chance to hold and touch it too.













A work elephant pulling a large log behind it in the village where we spent our second night.










Our porters making bamboo cups for us along the trail.











The enormous elephant that I got to ride through the jungle on.

Pictures of Pai

Some kids from one of the villages where we stopped on our trek for some lunch.








Dinner during our trek.











The acommadation during our trek, we stayed in the right half while the people who owned the house stayed in the left half.







Placing my floating banana leave candle (it may be called a kratong but I'm not sure) in the river and making a wish.









Some of the colourful dancers in the parade for Loi Kratong.











One of the beauty contestants in the parade on the second night of Loi Kratong. There were several floats similar to this one with beauty contestants on them and each float had a very large speaker system blaring out Thai music.












Relaxing in the hot springs during a break on the rafting trip.











A typical view of the river without any rapids. The second raft is floating down the river in the background.
















Our rafting guides cooking dinner at the overnight camp.













Lunch break while on the rafting trip.

Pictures of Chiang Mai

The partially destroyed chedi of wat chedi luang.














The golden chedi at wat phrathat doi suthep, unforunatly it was being repaired or repainted while I was there so scaffolding was erected all around it.









Here is the view of Chiang Mai from the top of wat phrathat doi suthep, the wat located on a mountian just outside the city.





Also if you want to see pictures of me from the cooking course I took just follow this link: http://www.cookinthai.com/photo/browse.php?folder=20081106

Um Phang

OK first of all pictures are coming soon I promise.

After my multi day journey to get to Mae Sot I quickly left there heading for the small town of Um Phang. Um Phang is a beautiful town located in the hills close to the Burmese border and as a result there are lots of Burmese people that try to smuggle themselves into Thailand here. The trip to Um Phang was done on what is best described as a pickup truck bus, the bed of the truck has 2 benches placed in it and a nice shelter placed over top to protect us from wind and rain. Needless to say it's really uncomfortable. My trip started off pretty interesting as I'm fairly sure that we were smuggling somebody in our truck as one woman kept paying the police officers that stopped us to inspect our ID cards. After all of the bribes the trip got significantly worse: the road to Um Phang is through the mountains and so it's very twisty turny and steep. And as I soon found out the local people there can't handle these things at any speeds as of the 10 locals riding the "bus" with me at least 5 of them were vomiting for most of the trip. So that 5 hour bus ride was one of the least enjoyable I've ever taken.

Once in Um Phang I quickly signed up for a 3 day trek that included rafting, seeing the largest waterfall in Thailand and elephant riding. I thought it would be great fun. The rafting was in beautiful scenery but very similar to what I saw white water rafting so nothing too new and the short trek to the campsite after the rafting wasn't anything special either. To top it off there were at least a few hundred Thai tourists who did the same rafting trip and camped at the base of the waterfalls as us so there wasn't any chance to really see nature. The waterfalls themselves were very nice and probably some of the tallest ones that I've ever seen, but again there were at least a few hundred Thais there to enjoy them too. The last day was spent taking an elephant ride for 2 hours back to the road where we were to be picked up. Well I was pretty excited to get to ride an elephant but I very quickly lost all of excitement. Once on the elephant the basket that you sit in was very uncomfortable and you always had to hold on so that you wouldn't fall off. Then to top it all off my elephant was at least 1 meter taller than all of the other ones so when walking through the jungle while other people could easily fit under the leaves and branches of trees I had to fight them off.

After the trek I was able to get a ride back to Mae Sot in a private bus with the other people on my trek so the return journey was much more comfortable and faster. In Mae Sot I only stayed for one night before heading out to Sukothai and eventually Cambodia.

Pai

I haven't been keeping up with my blog updates as planned so today I have made 2 new updates (Pai and Chiang Mai) but unfortunately the computer I'm on doesn't let me upload photos so those will come later.

Pai is a little hippie town to the northwest of Chiang Mai and quite different to Chiang Mai. Everything here is much more relaxed and slower although it's still very touristy both with foreigners and with Thais. The biggest difference here though is that the town is located in a mountain valley so in the morning and evening it's quite a bit colder. The temperature was a nice change from the rest of Southeast Asia as I even had to put on long pants and a jacket one night, but it was pretty entertaining watching all of the Thais walking around in huge parkas and toques while I was usually in a t-shirt.

For my first couple of days in Pai I joined a 2 day trek to nearby ethnic villages in the national park. The trek was a lot of fun as it wasn't too hard but we got to see some nice scenery and all our meals were eaten in different villages (except breakfast and dinner). Meeting the locals was quite interesting and seeing how they lived was great, the most unexpected aspect of the villages was that almost each house had a solar panel for electricity but as far as I could determine the only thing that they used electricity for was a radio and large sets of speakers.

After the trek I returned to Pai where a festival was about to start called Loi Krathong. This festival started on the 12th of November and lasted for 3 days with celebrations occuring each night (not much happened in the day though). So I ended up staying in Pai for two days of the festival so that I could observe the party. The festival was in celebration of the end of the rainy season and to celebrate it the local people send flaming laterns (like small air balloons) into the night sky and float rafts made of banana trees and leaves down the river with candles lit on them. Also added to the celebration was a parade each night and a big outdoor festival. The festival wasn't all that interesting because all it seemed to be was food stalls, muay thai boxing, a game that's best described as volleyball without using hands, and lots of noise. The muay thai boxing and feet volleyball were quite interesting but with the boxing more time was spent waiting for the match than actually seeing it. The volleyball was pretty interesting but it's played everywhere here in Southeast Asia so I had seen it lots before. The biggest problem with the festival was that it seemed like everyone had large stands of speakers blaring music as loud as possible, but each one was playing something different so it just seemed like a lot of noise.

After the festival I took a 2 day white water rafting trip from Pai which ended up in Mae Hong Son. The trip turned out to be pretty fun but at first it seemed that our guide was completely crazy as he would aim for every rock in the river to make the raft swing around and get everyone as wet as possible. In the end it was a great trip and no harm was done although we did manage to flip the raft once and I fell out with our guide a second time. The rafting was a great way to travel between Pai and Mae Hong Son because the road between the two towns is extremely twisty and the river we rafted on was along the edge of the national park so the scenery was absolutely beautiful.

I spent a day in the small town of Mae Hong Son relaxing after the rafting trip. The town was quite nice a small lake in the centre but not a lot to do in town, most people make day trips to nearby villages which I didn't have time to do since I felt that I spent too much time in Pai. From Mae Hong Son I made my way down to Mae Sot stopping overnight in Mae Saring (another small and sleepy town with not much here).

Chiang Mai

After leaving Laos my first destination in Thailand was Chiang Mai. My first impression of Thailand was one of almost a culture shock because after sleepy Laos Thailand was very busy. The amount of traffic on the streets and the number of people walking around was something that didn't exist in Laos.

The old part of Chiang Mai contains several wats that I spent the better part of a day wandering through. The wats seemed to be fairly similar to most of the wats that I had seen in Laos so I didn't feel that many of them were special. There were a couple though that were quite impressive: wat chedi luang contained the largest chedi that I had ever seen even though it was significantly damaged in 16th century, wat phra singh is the other impressive wat as it is quite large and one of the most important temples in the city.

Just outside of the city is wat phrathat doi suthep which is located on a hill overlooking the city. This wat is huge tourist attraction as when I was there so were about a hundred other tourists, mostly Thais. The wat itself was quite impressive with a golden chedi in the middle; however, the most impressive aspect about this sight were the superb views of the city from here.

Aside from all of the wats located in Chiang Mai many people come here for a massage or cooking course. I joined a cooking course on my last day in Chaing Mai and had a great time although I ate entirely too much food. The course started out with a trip to the local market to learn about the fresh fruit and vegetables used in Thai cooking. After the market tour we returned back to the house to spend the next 6 hours learning how to make 5 Thai dishes of our choice (from a list of 15). I learned how to make phad thai, spring rolls, panaeng curry paste and panaeng curry with pork, tom yam soup, and sticky rice with mangos for dessert. It was all very delicious and a great way to spend the day.

At night in Chiang Mai there is always the night bazaar which is a fairly long night market set up on one street. Here a person could buy anything that they desired; but it was a very touristy market with the majority of people wandering around being foreigners. In addition to the night bazaar there is an even bigger night market every sunday that seems to take up most of the old part of Chiang Mai. I was lucky enough to be here for a sunday and got to witness this huge market where you could still buy anything you wanted and more but it was not only for tourists which made it even better. There were still lots of tourists there but probably just as many Thai people shopping around as well.

After Chiang Mai I took a bus to Pai a small town just to the Northwest of Chiang Mai. Again the computer I'm on doesn't let me upload photos so I'll get some up soon.

Luang Nam Tha

Luang Nam Tha is a very small town in northern Laos and really the only reason to go here is for a trek to the nearby national park. Which is what I spent three days doing.

The trek itself was really good it started off from a local village where we picked up our second guide and more importantly our cook for the first night. The trekking itself was fairly easy and through some very beautiful jungle. The only downside with the first day was that upon reaching the camp for the first night there was nothing to do there; no fire, no where to explore, and nobody brought cards or a book. So needless to say when the sun went down at about 6:30pm it was bed time shortly afterwards as we only had one candle to give us light.

The second day of trekking was similar to the first although it became very muddy in sections thanks to water buffalos living in the region. For the second night we were joined by a different cook from a different ethnic group to sample some different local food. The second camp site was also in an abandoned village so we were able to have a nice fire and go exploring so there were things to entertain us here.

The final day was spent trekking through more mud back out of the jungle to Luang Nam Tha. The trekking here was excellent: through very scenic jungle, not too hard, the food was delicious, and the only downside was having to constantly pick leeches off of ourselves.

After Luang Nam Tha I went to the town of Houay Xai which is on the border with Thailand. Here I spent a couple of days but the town has nothing to do so I didn't stay very long and quickly took the ferry across the Mekong river and into Thailand.




Trekking through the jungle.






Standing infront of a section of bamboo forest.



The sleeping accomadation for the two nights.






One of the houses that we used as a camp on the second night of the trek.











The guides preparing lunch on the first day of the trek: sticky rice with some pork, vegetables and chili sauce all eaten using our fingers off of bananna leaves.









A view from just outside Luang Nam Tha of the rice fields at sunset.

Luang Prabang

For anyone who is very much into culture and history then Luang Prabang is a must to go to. The center of the city has been proclaimed a world heritage site since there are so many wats there, there seem to be thousands of them.

I spent a day in Luang Prabang just wandering around the city itself and stopping to visit some of the wats. It was a pretty good day but for myself once I've seen 3 or 4 wats then they all start to look the same. So needless to say I didn't see all of the wats that the town had to offer.

Surrounding the city are some nice waterfalls and caves that can be visited in a day trip, although I split it into 2 half day trips since I didn't get up in time to catch the boat to the caves on the first morning. The waterfall that I went to and the water level wasn't too high so we could climb up to the top of it and stand right on the edge of the waterfall looking down with the water rushing around our feet. At the bottom were sets of smaller falls with pools that were deep enough to swim in so most of the time at the falls was spent swimming in the pools and jumping off of the smaller sets of falls. A great way to spend the afternoon on a hot day. As we were leaving the falls we took a little detour and found a cage of 7 black bears, apparently it was an operation that saved orphaned bears and kept them so they didn't die. The caves that I visited the next day were fairly unimpressive after all of the caves around Vang Vieng. The only slightly interesting part of the caves was that there were thousands of Buddha statues in them.

On my last morning in Luang Prabang I got up at sunrise (5:30am) to see the parade of monks collecting their alms. The entire procession was fairly interesting to watch as hundreds of monks walked down the street collecting rice from locals that lined the street. The only drawback was that there were so many tourists there taking pictures that it didn't seem very real anymore and almost more of a tourist attraction as even some of the tourists joined in giving out alms and getting pictures of them doing it.







One of the many wats in Luang Prabang.









The monks receiving their daily alms.














Myself jumping off of one of the smaller waterfalls (about 10 feet high).







Standing in front of the main waterfall.

Halong Bay pictures

Typical fishing village in Halong Bay, there are tons of these scattered around.







Kayaking through a cave to get into a lagoon. This cave is the only way into the lagoon and it can only be accessed at low tide.








Local fishing boat.











Fishing boat inside one of the many caves .








Sunset over Halong Bay.

Pictures from Sapa

Trekking through the forest to get to Fansipan












Our group of trekkers at the top of the mountian, couldn't see anything though.








Our guides cooking dinner over the fire with the accommodation building in the background.














Kids using the irregation ditches as a slide and having a great time.











The waterfall at Cat Cat village.












Yours truly helping the locals harvest some rice.






Locals working hard harvesting rice.