The Hangover 2.5

It has been a while since I did an entry here, I am afraid, and I have managed to fit in an entire country into the last 2 weeks. It has been a pretty busy fortnight. Here we go…

My bus to the Thai border from Luang Prabang was rather uncomfortable to say the least. It was crammed full of people, some lucky ones getting seats, but the majority sleeping on sacks of unknown contents on the floor, or on the seat of a motorbike that was joining us near the back. I was stuck right at the front, next to a nice Laos man. Well, he was nice when he was awake, but like so many Asians who have the innate ability to sleep anywhere, anywhen, he “spread” a bit when he fell asleep, and no amount of pointy elbows to the ribs seemed to be able to rouse him. As well as this, the roads were very windy and my head kept banging against the window. I did find myself asleep on my new friends shoulder at one point, and cautiously lifted myself off, when I realised, to see if he had noticed. He was out for the count. The final nail in my coffin of yet another night without sleep was the horrendous local pop music that the driver insisted playing until 4AM! This was almost like being tortured, with the nasal, atonal whinings of the Laos singers cutting through my mind like glass. I was partly glad for this, on some level, as it kept the driver awake, which is always a good thing on these journeys. At 4, he turned it off, and I think I was asleep before his hand returned to the wheel.

I woke with the sun at 6, which I am becoming more used to, and we arrived at the border a couple of hours later. After a little confusion and some farting around by my travel companions, we had crossed the Mekong into Thailand and were on a bus headed for Chiang Rai. I slept well here.

In Chiang Rai, I met a new friend, a Dutchman called Wilt, who I shared a room with for budget sakes. He was a nice guy and we had both shared the previous nights bus, so were both equally knackered. In Chian Rai, we visited some temples, got lost, ate some awesome food and just really bummed around, getting used to the town and the new country. He left the next day, and I left the day after. The night before I left though, I went to the night food market for my dinner and ate for about $2, very comfortably. I also got my first introduction to a Ladyboy show. Having met one or two in my travels, I still wasn’t prepared for the spectacle that I beheld. Dancing on the open air stage, in front of a few hundred people, families mainly, were 5 or 6 beautiful women in big Carnivale style dresses. I had to close my mouth, as I realised that they were all men. It was a very surreal experience, I can assure you. I went home feeling slightly unsure of my sexual persuasion…

The next morning, after missing my first bus, I managed to make it to Chiang Mai. I booked myself into a dorm, my first since I think China and got talking to the inhabitants. I spoke at length with a young man called Jonny, an 18 year old, fresh out of school and only just started his travels, with a thirst and an energy that reminded me of me, some 7 months ago. It was rather infectious and we were chattering away in no time. I felt like an old sage while talking to him, and it struck me just how long I have been doing this for now. I barely missed 6 months when back at home in Scotland, but out on the road, 6 months has seemed like an eternity. We were soon joined by the rest of the dorm crew, and we headed out to the famous Chiang Mai Night Market!

My parents had visited Thailand, way before I was born, before Thailand had been invaded by the droves of drunken tourists, whose bodies pave the streets of Bangkok and Koh Pha Ngan, and had told me of the wonders of the Chiang Mai Night Market. Sadly, this was some 30 years ago, and mass tourism has taken over. The night market itself was impressive in it’s sheer scale, but was certainly nothing like the dingy, grungy, real-life haggle-fest I had expected. Everything was very clean and all of the stalls seemed to peddle exactly the same wares. Even the food market was indoors and seemed a bit naff. Maybe I have been traveling for too long and I have been jaded. Maybe I was expecting too much. Maybe it has just become a victim of it’s own hype and become a tourist trap, full of cheap t-shirts and tourist tat. Certainly, it was no Black Market of Ulan Bataar, or Chonching backstreet slum bazaar, but it did have it’s charms.

On the way home, one of our group, a Dutchman called Johan, was accosted by one of the many Ladyboys trying to entice man into their bars, so we decided to go for a drink, just to see what would happen. I was thankfully wedged deep into a corner of the booth we were in, while Johan and our other friend Josh were far more exposed to the roaming hands of our hosts… hostesses… Anyway, we had some drinks and ended up playing the most intense game of Jenga I have ever been involved in. We were up to level 32 before it collapsed. It was very tense, and we were all genuinely sad to see it topple. We had also developed a code for whether we thought the girls were girls, or if the girls were boys. “Black Label” was code for boys dressed as girls, and “Red Label” was code for actual girls. Jonny kept getting confused and was convinced that some of the “girls” were Red Label, when actually there wasn’t a Red Label in the house, apart from Fiona, the girl we had brought with us, as a sort of human shield! As the night wore on, Jonny and Fiona left Josh, Johan and I alone with the ladyboys, one of whom was very beautiful, but had bigger hands than me. She convinced us to go to a club with her, but when we got there is was closed. Josh and I decided to head home at this point, and when we turned to see if Johan was following us, we saw he was striding off in the other direction with Mini, the Ladyboy! It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch! In his defense, he did return half an hour later, but that doesn’t make for quite as funny narrative, so forget that.

The next day I went on somewhat of a pilgrimage. After doing some temples and chatting to some Monks at a thing called “Monk-Chat” (No, it’s not a dating service for lonely Buddhists), I went to visit a pub, imaginatively called “The Pub”, that my parents had been to some 30 years ago. It was still there, and looked very similar to how it had so many years before, apparently. I spoke to the owner, a friendly American, who had taken it over at about the time my parents had been there, and the girl behind the bar, a Thai girl with the strongest Durham accent I had heard outside the Midlands. I had a pint and just enjoyed the quiet surroundings. It was an odd feeling, knowing that my parents had sat in this very spot, more than 5 years before I was born, some 13,000 miles away from home. It felt very right to be there.

That night, I took a bus from Chiang Mai, to the fabled city of Bangok. I’m not saying it is fabled like El Dorado or Atlantis or anything, it’s just, well, if you have been there, you know what I mean. We arrived at 5am, as I had in Guilin so many months ago, but I didn’t quite fancy hunkering down for a nap on these streets. I ambled around for a good hour, getting my bearings, stumbling over the flotsam and jetsam of the previous nights debaucheries, discovering the traveller heaven/netherworld that is Koh San Road, and leaving very quickly, witnessing a drunk American giving abuse to a local woman, for no other reason than he felt he had the privilege to talk to here in such a way, as she was local, and quickly leaving as said local woman’s husband stood up to deal with the American dolt. I smiled at that.

Eventually I found a cheap (and nasty) place to stay and bedded down for a couple of hours to rest. I found Bangkok to be another wonderful city, but one I think I would have enjoyed a lot more had I been with other people. I managed to visit most of the cultural sites; the fine art gallery, the Bangkok Museum, various temples, China town, Koh San Road, I even took one of the river taxis and got lost on the streets at night, but I didn’t have any proper adventures. I couldn’t quite bring myself to go and see an pingpong show on my own, or a Thai boxing match. Maybe next time. I did bump into Wilt again, which is funny as we had bumped into one another both in Chinag Mai, and in a random bus stop on the way to Bangkok. One particularly note worthy event was my first real Thai massage. Now I understand! The little woman pretty much broke me. She twisted and bent me and cracked me, with a power I didn’t know such a small person could possess. I left feeling broken and out of breath, and was genuinely unsure whether I felt any better coming out than I had going in. The Grand Palace was also worthy of a couple of sentences, just as it was so Grand! The beautiful stupas and exquisite murals, as well as Thailand’s famous Emerald Buddha were all very wonderful to see.

One of the highlights of my stay was my trip to the Chatuchack Weekend market. Now, if the night market had not been to my tastes in Chiang Mai, this more than made up for it. A market is not a market until there are signs of animal cruelty, and the adorable little puppies were completely out of their tiny little minds on drugs to keep them docile! There was also a plethora of things for sale, from clothes to, well, everything! I wandered round for a good couple of hours, very tempted to buy everything and just send it home in a DHL lorry. This was certainly the vast labyrinth of stalls and alleys that I had expected most of Thailand to be like. I was not disappointed.

My next stop was Koh Pha Nyan, the home of the world-renowned Full Moon Party. I had always said before I left the UK that I had no interest in this, as it had ruined the island and had caused so much damage to the local communities and environment, but while travelling through Thailand, I began to realise that, yes, all of this is true, but it is now such a big part of modern culture, and I would be in the islands around the full moon, so why not? Just to see. I came, I saw, I don’t need to see again!

The journey there was miserable; wet, cold, tiring, and it wasn’t much better when I arrived, it being the monsoon season and all. Everything, everyone was drenched to the bone and completely saturated. I spent most of my first day in various cafes, waiting for my friends to arrive, the 2 girls, Steph and Kelly who I had met in Xingping, months before. When they arrived, it did brighten my day, and it was very nice to see them again.

All in I spent 4 nights on the island, 3 of which I was drinking. A lot. I remember my first night being the best, arriving, meeting new people, being fresh and ready for a party, enjoying dancing on a beach and just having a good time. The next night we attended a jungle party, which is, as you would expect, a party in a jungle. This was also great fun and I had a really enjoyable night, until the very end. Back in the UK, I do firestaff as a hobby. This is where you take a metal pole and attach wicks to the ends which you soak in parafin and light before spinning them around your head and body in intricate and arresting patterns. I am quite good. Not when drunk. I woke the next morning missing a watch and a bracelet I had been given by a Cambodian girl in the Angkor complex, but with an extra 2 large blisters on my right hand, and a welt under my right armpit. Lesson well and truly learned.

The third night was the night of the Full Moon, and I was already failing fast. We donned our fluorescent clothing, mine a vest and pink trilby (that I had somehow acquired from the night before) and headed out. The bar we started in was actually a great start, and I felt like I was on the edge of having a great night. It had a brilliant live band, and even put on an all you can eat buffet for us, so at least we had some food in us to soak up the booze, but when the clock struck 11pm, my body decided to just stop working, and no amount of redbull or dancing could solve it. We arrived at the beach at 12, and I was already a zombie. By one, I had returned for a disco nap, to sleep in one of our friends dorms for an hour. By 3, I was sitting at a bench, alone, staring blankly into space, and by half 4 I was cosily tucked up in bed, washed of the body paint that is customary on these nights, and sound asleep. I am obviously just too old for these kind of shenanigans, or just not built for it or something. I wanted to enjoy it, but the man from Dell Monte, he say NO!

Needless to say, the next 2 days were rather wasted, apart from swimming in the sea, which was rather fun, and obviously spending time with my new friends.

So now here I am in Malaysia. The journey from the Islands to here in Georgetown was arduous and long, but I am sure you are all sick of me complaining about arduous long bus journeys by now. Lets just make it a given that if I am on a bus, it is pants, unless I say otherwise. The border crossing was straightforward and easy and Georgetown is very nice. I met my friend Rob, who I had been chasing around Vietnam, and spent yesterday exploring the old colonial town and enjoying the culinary delights that this melange of a country has to offer.

I also really began to get my old feeling for travel back. Around SE Asia, I have been travelling with a lot of people and doing some very touristy things. This has been nice, but I have been craving a bit of solitude and just exploration, getting away from the crowds and finding the country for myself. Yesterday was the first day I actually felt like I was back in China, or Russia, still setting out and still hungry to explore and discover things on my own. I feel good about Malaysia. Hopefully Malaysia feels good about me.

Tomorrow I go to the Cameron Highlands, hopefully to do some trekking, but it is still the monsoon season, so I may just spend 3 days reading a long book, with some very nice coffee. After this it will be a short trip to Kuala Lumpur, to meet my friend from Ho Chi Mihn City, who I went on a quest with, before returning to Thailand for my diving course. From here I have made a little change of plans, and will shoot up to Chiang Mai again, possibly via the ancient city of Sukhotai and then back to Luang Prabang for Christmas and New Years, before making a mad, 2,000 mile, wacky races style dash down to Singapore, to catch my FIRST flight to Australia, in 10 days. It’s gonna be fun, it’s gonna be exciting, it’s gonna be full of Ladyboys (maybe not the last one). You will just have to wait and see…

Travel Well,

And remember, don’t play with fire!