Jon the Traveller

My mother asked me this question when the family were over for Songkran (Thai New Year) and she actually found me lacking…

Seriously what do we do all day?

Personally I think we do a lot, but I suppose it is very subjective when you consider that a lot for some folks is getting up and deciding where to have breakfast! Look at an average day travelling for me:

Get up – more often than not pretty hungover;
Hand in laundry;
Chill in a restaurant or the hostel common area;
Check emails and harass the UK late night folks on Facebook;
Go eat – sometimes street, sometimes restaurant;
Find a place to visit, be it a temple, shopping centre, local market, whore house;
or
Head to the beach and burn in the sun, or dive, or snorkel or kayak;
Nap time;
Sort onward travel to next destination;
Collect laundry;
Meet people and go for food and beer. Night usually becomes blurry at this point.

For some their day seems to be – this is pretty much island life – much shorter:

Get up;
Eat;
Hit beach;
Drink;
Eat;
More beach;
Drink;
Sleep;

Still my examples do leave much to be answered, once laundry, food, relaxation, internet time, visiting things and beer are out of the way, just what do we do all day? As not every day for me is like my first example and for the beach bound not every day is just lazing under the sun is it?

Comments on the back of a postcard please.

One of the best budget places I have stayed in. Period.

The best rooms here are those floating on the River Kwai itself, these range from 300 – 450 baht, the remaining bungalows on the riverside by its restaurant – that does great Thai food at street prices – range from 150 to 250 baht per night and from a look are just as nice as those on the river, but for me it was staying right on the river that was the big sell here. They also have a good tour desk attached to the operation that offers very good local tours and onward national travel at stunning prices.

Location wise it is in the heart of Thanon Maenamkwai, the main guest-house strip in town, so is very handy for everywhere.

All in all stay here if you come to Kanchanaburi.

Before I left, in fact while still mulling this trip over last summer, I decided to invite my family out to meet in Thailand over Easter – or during the Thai New Year Festival of Songkran. They took the offer up and so it was decided that the trip would happen and I’d meet them in Thailand when they arrived.

After Ko Lanta I had to head to Bangkok to meet the family when they arrived, so I got there a day or two early, meeting up with Daniel & Danielle, both from the South-East Asia 2010 Facebook group I keep harping on about (JOIN NOW!).

We had a good couple of days – went shopping, watched the Red’s before things turned ugly a few weeks later, and drank (3 Brits meeting up for the first time it goes without saying really!) in various bars around the Khao San.

Then my family arrived.

I met them out at Suvarnabhumi Airport and got them to their amazingly good hotel – they stayed at the Imperial Tara just off Sukhumvit Road – and dragged them to the Suan Lum Night Bazaar for good food and some shopping. I really hate to shop now. However, they enjoyed it – their food was good and they got to bargain with the vendor’s, which is one of the fun things to do in Thailand.

We had agreed that their time in Bangkok and it’s surrounds would be the usual array of sightseeing, followed by a day trip to Kanchanaburi. Without rushing them at all, I got them round the main Bangkok sights on their first proper day as well as ensuring they knew their way around the sky train themselves and then arranged to meet them down the Khao San Road that evening for dinner, so they could see how the other half live.

They, like so many others before them (mostly backpackers at that) loved the KSR. Had a little of everything they expected in Thailand, yet with the familiarity of the atypical holiday town, just a tad noisier than they are used too. I was quite pleased they enjoyed themselves on that most infamous of streets, as Ao Nang where were headed in a day or two is very similar, just more up market.

I really cannot say much about their visit to Kanchanaburi – I went with them – as I had been up drinking with Kelsey & Marcus amongst others till 7a.m. and only grabbed 2 hours sleep before meeting them. I do know doing anything like that still drunk and on little sleep was a bad idea. Not that bad as I did the same thing that night.

We flew down to Krabi – closest airport to Ao Nang – following that second all-night bender of mine.

Edit: Pictures to be added once uploaded.

500 Baht from Bangkok to Ko Lanta. Even I a regular user of public transport on my trips couldn’t beat that, so I nearly tore the agents arm off accepting the ticket. It was another hideously long journey, punctuated by waiting around for connections, although the boat from Krabi to Lanta more than made up for it passing by some of the amazing scenery for which the Andaman coast is famous for.

Ko Lanta Yai is one of Thailand’s larger islands and has quite a tourism scene developing on it, however it still seems to be a little known place out in the wider world, which is exactly what wanted when I felt the urge to really relax after a hectic few months and then the awful experience I had on Ko Chang.

I found a place to stay – well an agent suggested it to me at one price, and I rang them myself and got a better price – quite easily. The Lanta Full Moon Resort on Khlong Khong the 3^rd major beach on the island.

I then spent the following 2 weeks doing nothing but biking round the island, chilling in the pool or on the beach and meeting new people in the bar at night. And playing killer pool.

Life really is grand you know that.

Except when it rains.

…cars, boats, songthaew, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, motorbikes, trucks, minivans and buses. I have used them all in the past, but never so many varying types in one trip as I have so far on this little jaunt.

This was the first of my standalone pieces.  It will eventually become a seperate page on this blog, however for now it stays as a post.  This will have more images added  I get them of all the forms of transportation I have used on this trip.

Just a few words to say that I have not forgetten my readers, but powers been up and down on Lanta like the knickers of a whore in a navy yard.

I have 7 or so accomodation reviews to finish, 2 – 3 weeks worth of regular blog posts, together with a handful of stand alone posts for the blog on a myriad number of subjects, as well as Google Maps added to each relevant post.

I hope to be fully updated by the time my parents return to the UK in mid April.

Jon.

After leaving Bangkok, I headed to Kanchanaburi, site of the famous Bridge over the River Kwai and the infamous Hellfire Pass.

Kanchanaburi was a nothing little place in a backwater part of Thailand, up until the Japanese arrived during the Pacific War – the regional name for this rather brutal theatre of World War II – and made it the central holding centre (prison camp) for allied prisoners forced to create the necessary rail link with Burma that would enable them to invade India, then the shining jewel of the crumbling British Empire.

Tens of thousands of captured Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen, as well as upwards of one hundred thousand Malay, Indonesians and Koreans found themselves drafted into “service” constructing a rail-road though some very unforgiving terrain, in weather that was the just as harsh and of course suffering under the brutality of their Japanese captors. By the end of war, over 6000 Allied servicemen had died in the creation of what became known as the “Death Railway”.

I only stayed a few days in town, there is a slightly sleazy feel to the main tourist drag – Thanon Maenamkwai – but if you stick the traveller haunts you wont really see that side of it much; although I did find the BEST English food outside of England at a bar on that road, including real back bacon and HP sauce.

As well as the Bridge, Hellfire Pass and the Cemeteries, there are other draws around town, including a couple of good museums, river rafting, waterfalls (Ere wan falls is possibly the nicest set of waterfalls in the region) and trekking of various sorts. However this time round I was just there relax and see the highlights before I headed off to Ko Chang for some beach time.

No way is there 4000 islands here, even if you attempted to include every bit of rock that shows as the level of Mekong falls it just would not total 4000. However this isn’t to say that the local name: Si Phan Don is something of an exaggeration, there is a large number of islands in the region, some of which only appear if the river is low, and all of the ones I saw were spectacular, its just 4000 islands of any size could not fit in the area they do. The islands that are there are a mix of palm fringed paths, bamboo huts, rice paddy’s and of course travellers, all surrounded by the great redolent Mekong river.

The vibe on the islands is one of a place at peace with itself, a slice of the Laos that placed it firmly on the traveller circuit and has kept it there to this day. Despite all the changes taking place across the country – the results of investment from it’s richer neighbours combined with the endless hunt for the tourist dollar – the pace of life on the islands, particularly Don Det & Don Khon, is as slow as the flow of the Mekong. While I may have bemoaned a slow pace back when I wrote about Vientiane, here it is expected and I have to admit I fell for it. But only for a few days before I had the urge to get back to the hustle and bustle of, well, anywhere not in Laos. So having a need to be in Thailand I headed back to Bangkok.

… Bored.

1. See more wats – some are impressive considering they are reasonably new given Laos turbulent history;
2. Tour the Laos National Museum – I thought I’d seen the end of museums that deny you the chance to go photo-happy;

3. Walk to and climb Patuxai. This is Vientiane’s very own Arc de Triomphé, built using concrete donated by the Americans for a runway. The views from the top are not quite as awe inspiring as those you can see from the French original, however they are still worth the climb;

4. Wander the wonderful prome – no wait, for some reason unknown to me, the Thai and Laos governments have turned one of the best things about Vientiane into a building site and now it looks awful. As Siobhan said its ruined one of the best ways there was to pass time in the city, no more can you chill with good Lao food, beer and a book and watch the world go by.

5. You can also get visa’s here for any number of countries in and around the region. For me this meant a trip to the now moved (thanks for publishing the move very widely…) Thai Embassy/Consulate, although the touts are the same (same as EVERYWHERE it could be argued), offering services that only the stupid would fall for, from copying your passport at inflated prices, to filling in the near child-proof visa form.

After getting past the touts and into the embassy I was allotted number 718 and hours of waiting began, with them closing at around the 300 mark. However this, as a friend pointed out, is Asia they keep offering numbers even though they know they’ll NEVER meet that target. So I went away and came back much earlier the next day – turns out Wednesdays are a quiet day there, and handed my stuff over. Then went away without having to pay a penny. Go Go the last two days of the free 60 day visa!! Collection the following day is so easy as long as you kept your number from the day before.

Apart from meeting Siobhan and passing the time comparing tales of substance abuse over several beers, the rest of my time in Vientiane passed like old people screwing – far too slowly. In the end I got an overnight sleeper bus to Pakse and moved on. The pace of life in Vientiane is just too damn laid back after all.

6.  Leave.

Having made the decision to fly into Luang Prabang, I needed to find a place that would pick me up from the airport, as its a slight way out of town.

After much browsing of Travelfish and Google, I happened upon Rattana’s and fired off an email. A few hours later my reservation was confirmed. A day later I was met at the airport and taken to the guesthouse.

Rattana’s itself is close to the boat landing for the slow boats, as well as close to Phou Si, the Hmong Market and pretty much the rest of Luang Prabang. The rooms are pretty spacious overall, and very well maintained. And at $15 a night you cannot ask for more.

Rattana’s also offers trekking and other tour services ould they interest you, as well as being able to arrange onward bus tickets to anywhere in Laos.

Overall as a slightly more costly place than most of the budget range in town, Id say Rattana’s does what it does very well and I have no complaints about the place.