Phnom Penh

After being led to the back offices of Air Asia to check my emails - like a friendly Ryanair - it turned out that my visa hadn't processed yet and I couldn't go to Vietnam.

So I hopped on a flight to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. The flight was only 50 minutes - same as Manchester to Guernsey - and they managed to fit in a full hot meal and a complimentary glass of wine! I thought a cup of tea and the Guernsey Press was good on Aurigny, but this truly impressed me.

I arrived in Phnom Penh knowing nothing about the city, language, currency. After a crazy tuk tuk ride from the airport I found a bustling hostel on the busy riverfront. It seems to have about a hundred rooms and a bar/restaurant downstairs where everyone hangs out, so it's good for meeting people.

The traffic here is insane - it's like Bangkok on crack. People generally keep to the right hand side of the road, but this is by no means a rule and people have to swerve out of the way of oncoming traffic. There don't seem to be many traffic lights, so at big junctions you just have to rely on your driver to push his way through. So far so good.

Went to the killing fields today. As you can imagine it was an absolute hoot.

Travelling sensibly with psychotropic drugs

While I'm travelling I have to carry my epilepsy medication - Epilim Chrono and Clonazepam. The Thai authorities don't mind the Epilim, but Clonazepam is a benzodiazepine and as such is frowned upon by authorities over here. I have 2 months' worth of the stuff - always some in my day bag in case my big bag gets nicked. I'm pretty careful about them not getting lost or stolen as that would kind of ruin my time here.

So it was with some shock and horror that I realised half my pills that had been in my day bag were missing. I don't usually carry that much with me, but I had been travelling back from Pai and I always halve my stock between big bag and day bag.

Anyway, they weren't there. Where could I have left them?

I checked my big bag, turned my room over and they weren't there. Some flurried texts to Lizi back in Pai and she would go and check various possible places in the morning.

I spent the morning counting pills and working out how long I had to last me - about 20 days so not a tragedy, but still - a pain in the arse and probably a trip to an embassy to pick up the emergency supply waiting with my Mum.

Lizi called and apparently there was a box of pills at the bus station in Chiang Mai. They must have fallen out of my day bag on the winding ride from Pai.

Ace! I finished my omlette, negotiated with a friendly tuk tuk driver, Mr Montree, who would be my drugs runner for the morning.


After getting to the wrong bus station and renegotiating with Mr Montree I started wondering if
a) they actually were my pills and I was getting overexcited
b) any had been nicked.
 

Fascination

I listened to Alphabeat to lift my spirits.

My pills and Mr Montree's above his head.

It worked, because 15 minutes later I was back in possession of an untouched tupperware box full of lovely benzodiazepines. Mr Montree must have thought I just wanted a tour of the town's bus stations, but when I showed him my bounty he understood and showed me a big bag of pills in his tuk tuk that he had to take every day. A bonding moment which I thought might lead to him letting me off the fare. It didn't.

Mr Montree my drugs runner. He was a happy chap but didn't want to smile because he was embarrassed of his bad teeth.

Piranhas, night tubing & illness in Pai

Pai was the perfect place to get ill. Up in the mountains, full of (nice) hippies and loads of little cafes doing smoothies, super shakes, ginger tea, that kind of thing. Annie had a bit of a bad throat, perked up and then crashed (to be fair there were a few cocktails involved in this); Lizi developed some sort of recurring nausea and I felt really rough as though I was about to get man flu. We all soldiered on and, many ginger teas later, Pai had nursed us back to health.

Lizi and I went Piranha fishing at a nearby lodge. It was well cheap but as neither of us have a motorbike we had to get a taxi out there. Time for bartering with the driver...
The first rule of bartering: Start much lower than you expect to pay. (Duh, everyone knows this)
The second rule of bartering: If your first offer is accepted then you've paid too much.
I started too high and we paid too much.  

Not representative of actual piranha

Dave who ran the lodge looked at us in despair when we said that we'd never done any fishing before. He taught us how to cast off. I was crap. Lizi was very good. A bucket of bait and we found ourselves a quiet corner on one of the lakes where hundreds of piranhas would soon be trying to eat us alive.

I was picturing something out of James Bond. It was more like Countryfile. 

1 hour in

An hour or so later with little more than a nibble at the bait, I went to try a different corner of the lake and got chatting to a guy who was clearly a bit of a pro.
Me: "So you caught much?"
Him: "Not today, it's not hot enough for the fish"
I don't know how hot it has to be for fish, but it was bloody roasting.
Me: "Has anyone caught anything today?"
Him: "Yeah, a couple of people have caught a few small ones today."
Me: "So what are my chances of catching some piranha today?"
Him: "Well none in that lake cos it's just catfish in there."

Even with this massive kebab of bait I got nothing

Annoyed, I went and told Lizi the bad news. We stuck it out though, safe in the knowledge that the catfish were awake, even if the piranhas weren't.

An hour later our taxi turned up and we left empty handed.

Cocktails later with Annie and her yoga mates and we all ended up in a bar with a Thai band doing Nirvana, Green Day etc covers. Fun times but I was feeling tired and ill so got a bit stroppy on the way home.

Back to my hut for sleep and the next day I felt surprisingly good, while Annie crashed and spent the whole day in bed. Lizi was up for tubing on the river so we got our swimming shorts on and got going.

Tubing (n - gerund) A leisurely sport involving sitting in big rubber rings and floating down a river. 'If you're going tubing, make sure you get back before the sun goes down'.

Unfortunately, Lizi and I had not had time to check the dictionary definition of tubing before we got in the van and were driven up the river. We hadn't checked the time or thought about sunset. The sun set over the mountains as we were floating along a very rural stretch of the river Pai. Really beautiful, but it gets pretty chilly when your arse is in a river and there's no more sun around.

Floating helplessly past local women washing their hair in the river like something off the Timotei advert, I felt like a proper tourist dressed in my bright blue shorts, blue t-shirt, sunglasses and wicker man-from-del-monte hat. Smooth.

By the time we got back it was dark. We trudged back along the main street where hundreds of (nice) hippies were trying on knitted hats and toerings. We must have looked pretty cool, shivering, with our wet arses and big rubber rings.

Ginger tea - a true saviour

Tubing man: "You're back!"
Me: "Yes"
Tubing man: "It gets pretty cold at night you know."
Me: "Yes it does"


A well earned burrito for dinner, more ginger tea, and the next day I jumped on a bus back to Chiang Mai. Had to say goodbye to Lizi and Annie which was a real shame, but I'll catch up with them in a few weeks time.

I wish I'd been able to stay in Pai for longer, but I'm really excited about Vietnam tomorrow - Ho Chi Minh city here I come. Gran says there's a war on and I shouldn't go, but the Foreign & Commonwealth Office assures me it's fine.

Pai

 Not a lot to write about, but I have moved on to Pai for a few days.

Said goodbye to our friendly hostel owner Tim, took my last look over Chiang Mai and headed for the minibus to Pai.

Morning over Chiang Mai

Friendly Tim

The bus only took about 10 of us and they'd packed it full. I got a comfy seat by the window and was planning to just listen to music for the 4 hour drive.




A group of French people got on and one started complaining that his girlfriend was going to have to sit up front with the driver as there wasn't enough room. I offered to swap - made no difference to me. What I didn't realise was that I would be on the middle seat between a surly looking fella and the driver. This meant I had no headrest and had to jam my knees in to the left of the radio. I probably wouldn't have offered if I'd known.

Said hi to the grumpy guy next to me  - a Greek fella called Nikos - as soon as we found out we had similar names we hit it off. I didn't really want to chat, but that was okay because Nikos had a 2 hour monologue prepared about his last 5 months of travelling. I sat and listened and tried to stay awake.

It's nice hearing people's travelling stories and it's what everybody here's got in common I suppose, but it gets to be a bit of a drag after a while and I needed a break. After an hour or so I got out my MP3 as a not-so-subtle hint. I even told Nikos that I was going to listen to some music. He then started to tell me a story about when his MP3 player was stolen by a traveller in Mongolia. Musical journey denied.

The road to Pai was very winding and mountainous with stunning views and everyone had to brace themselves for the sharp bends. It was all too much for one girl who threw up and we had to pull over pretty sharpish so she could have a break. She then swapped with Nikos so that she could have her head out of the front window.

So I was now in between the driver and the sick girl. Was bracing myself for a very unpleasant last hour of the journey, but she started feeling better and it turned out she was a TEFL teacher from Perth, so we spent the time discussing mixed ability classes, classroom management techniques and which nationality is the best to teach. Boring for anyone else, but we had a great time.

Pai seems very chilled out. This is clearly where all the younger people have been hiding out all this time. Lots of trekking, piranha fishing and cycling to do. Lots of nice little bars and restaurants, jewellery and clothes shops, all surrounded by lush green mountains - it's a really beautiful place.

Indiana Jones bridge

But the BEST bit is my hut. Over the river on a rickety bridge (that makes me feel like Indiana Jones) is this little group of huts. About 5 quid for the night, so I think I'll stay a few days here as it's really cool. Depends how much I get bitten tonight.

My hut

Fast Car - Tracy Chapman

Dutty Dancin

Okay, so maybe one more day in Chiang Mai, or two, or three. It's great here.

Annie and Lizi are heading up to Pai tomorrow. Don't know how they've stuck it out in our hostel for the last few days as they're next door to this mental American woman who has the most hacking cough and just sits in her room coughing her guts up. She even had the nerve to come out into the corridor and tell US to keep the noise down at 2 IN THE AFTERNOON - we weren't even being loud. She has well and truly got my goat. My room is upstairs so not so bad, but i can still hear her.

Splashing about at the lake

A bit bleary eyed from two successive nights at local nightclub Babylon, I walked out of the hostel looking for lunch and bumped into the girls. They had just met this guy Tom and after lunch he took us to a local lake. It was stunning and we were the only westerners there. I have no idea how we could have been here for so long and nobody had mentioned it to us.



Anyway, we swam, chatted, listened to Tracy Chapman to try and work out if it starts...

"Ooh you've got a fast car"
"We've got a fast car"
"Baby got a fast car"

Inconclusive, but that song has become the tune of the trip and Annie even got the DJ to play it for us at Babylon as the last song the night before. I've seen and done a lot of stuff on this trip but that was one of my favourite moments so far.

OH! and that reminds me. While we were dancing (not to Chapman - Jessie J I think - I'm being very cultural over here) one of the little 10 year-old kids that sells flowers came up to me and started pointing at my crotch. Annie gasped. I tried to move him away. Then he made a rude sexual gesture. We were both shocked, didn't know what to do and just looked pretty blankly at each other.

If only Paul had been there, he would have spanked the little tyke.


After the lake we ended up at a random karaoke place on the outskirts of town - deserted and on top of a car park Tom seemed to know what he was doing and we placed our faith in him. It paid off, but it's always nice to get back to our friendly hostel owner Tim.



Spoke to my good friend Ruth Bath the other day - my first Skype chat since coming here and it's probably the first time I've missed home since I've been here. It was in a silent internet cafe so I felt a bit self conscious about being too loud, but it was just really nice to see a familiar face. It made me miss the summer: Isca, farms, pies, cider, pigs, mud, camping, teaching.

Annie and Lizi and some SERIOUS pashing going on in the background!

But here I have my good friends Lizi and Annie and they're top. We understand each other very well and I was very lucky to meet them that first night in Chiang Mai.

More adventures to come...

Homecoming

Turns out that Ruud and I had picked the weirdest hostel / hotel in the world to stay at. It was huge, all made of mahogany and teak, a beautiful view over the Mekong into Laos - like something from the empire. All for 2 quid a night (to be fair the sink in the bathroom just had a tube that dropped onto the floor which made washing tricky, but a nice place anyway.

There were hundreds of photos of the owner - a 60 year old Thai lady - plastered all over the wall. It turned out that she had grown up with the ex Prime Minister and can't have been short of cash as she was showing me all her pictures of her travels all over the world. Maybe the hotel was kind of a hobby for her. But we just had to wonder how she could keep it going with 4 other guests in high season. The other guests were a huge fat Dutch guy and his tiny Thai girlfriend. They sat and ate and conversation was very very limited.

Him: "You like the food?'
Her: "Hmmm." (The tone of this could have meant 'kind of', 'not really', 'i don't understand', 'how did i get myself into this situation?', anything really...)

Some friendly Thai people asked us to join them and gave us a super sweet mix of banana in hot milk. Delicious, but I think it might have given me diabetes. The owner assured us that the girls were all 'from nice families', not like the girls on the street. We smiled and nodded.

Ruud and I played a couple of games of chess (he won) and then we went out to see what the one street in Chiang Khong had to offer us. Turned out our hotel was in the busiest place (2 bars open) and one next door was having their opening night. We played cards for a long time, befriended a local fella named Udon who gave me a prawn drenched in chilli sauce. It was very spicy. I managed not to break too much of a sweat and he looked impressed.

We finished up and went back to the hotel with plans to move further up the coast the next day.

In the morning I went upstairs to ask the receptionist about buses up the coast. Turned out we had missed the only one that day and it looked like we might have to stay in Chiang Khong one more night. Not very appealing. While were planning our next move the receptionist came over to us.




Ruanthai the receptionist


Her: "You both very handsome"
Us: "Oh thanks."

Ego boost.

Her: "Where you from?"
Me: "I'm from England and he's from Holland"
Her: "Dutch people very tall"
Me: "Yeah they are"
Her: "But you...you more..."
Me: "Like a midget?"
Her: "Yeah kind of"

Ego back to normal.

Quick plans made and I was in a minivan with a guy called Bird and a very decent German couple who paid for me to get to Chaing Rai so that I could change to get the bus to Chiang Mai.

Bird was a tour guide from China and had visited Machester cos he was a Man U fan. His next trip in a few months is going to be to Birmingham. "Anywhere else?" I asked. "No, just Birmingham". I like Birmingham, but seems like quite a specific holiday destination from Thailand. Anyway, fair enough.

Lizi text on the way and said that her and Annie were heading back to Chiang Mai too as they'd had a pretty crappy time. We randomly ended up on the same bus on the way back. Stunning scenery on a very windy (like bendy, not that there was lots of wind) and hilly road.

As we were pulling into Chiang Mai Lizi text saying, "Hostel, shower, McDonald's, drunk. Fancy it?" I did. And that's what we did.
It's what we needed and later on after a few buckets of Mai Tai we ended up dancing to random d&b in a local bar. A quality night. Just found out that Paul our Canadian friend ended up getting mooned by one of the 10 year old kids that walks round selling flower garlands. So what did he he do? Spanked him and mooned him back. What a legend.

We've all got Changovers today (a lot of Chang was drunk last night) so just chilling out. Another day or so in Chiang Mai and then I'll move West.

Oh and I should explain why I've called this 'homecoming'. I'm not coming home...yet, but Chiang Mai seems like a temporary home at the moment. Good to be back.