Category: Uncategorized

The nature of creaturely habits!

Having met up with my friend again, Triona and I decided to take a trip to Laos. Laos is the only land-locked country in SE Asia- bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west.

Laos is normally on the back-packer route to experience the very different, and potentially dangerous, activity of tubing. We left Bangkok on the 7pm night bus and arrived the following day at 2pm. It was such a gruelling journey but at least we got a bit of sleep on the bus-whenever you travel long distances, like this one, the buses are actually not too bad. The seats recline, there are toilets on board (on most buses), they have blankets in case it gets chilly with the air-con, they make a few stops to stretch your legs or to buy food and drinks, and some of the buses have on-route movies (mostly in Thai). When we arrived in Vientiane- the capital of Laos- it was still another 4 hour journey on very rugged roads to Vang Vieng. When we got there we realised we were in the middle of nowhere and wondered what on earth we were doing in such a place and we were ready to get on the bus and go back the way we had come- to Bangkok.  It is a small back-packer oriented town, with a myriad of guest houses, bars, restaurants, internet cafes, tour agencies and mostly western tourists. Take that away and you notice the beautiful karst hill landscape that surrounds the town.

We had gone there to go tubing, which is basically floating down the river in a giant rubber ring (very different), whilst getting extremely drunk (potentially dangerous). It cost 40,000kip, which was about 2 GBP, at the time, and, well, it is a lot of fun and worth the effort of getting to Vang Vieng. We picked up our tube at 9am and a guy took us to where you launched into the river. At that time of the morning there were no bars open so we went on our merry way bobbing along down the river. It took about 2 hours and at least the first time round we got to appreciate the scenery.

Although, it got a bit hairy when Tri got propositioned by this weird guy, who appeared to be lurking in the undergrowth, and when he saw us coming he came towards us but Tri was quite a bit in front of me and started yelling to me to come closer, so I did my best to move quickly to catch up with her, paddling with my flip flops, and we managed to bob passed him and he left us alone. It was quite scary considering that we were the only two people on the river at that time of day.

 

 

 

 

The second time round, the bars on either side of the river were open and there were more people around. If you want to go to a bar you just wave at the guys and they throw a stick, attached to a rope, and you grab it and they pull you in! We got into spirit (literally) of tubing and we were pie-eyed by 2pm! It was so funny and we met loads of people at the bars or floating down the river, it was great fun.

I really don’t know who thought up the idea of tubing but it seems such a good idea, however, as you will find anywhere in South East Asia, health and safety is lacking somewhat. It is so dangerous and you could easily hurt yourself coming off the massive slides or swings or letting go of the zip wires if you don’t drop in the right area. Especially when you have had a few drinks. In fact I have seen several friends, back in Bangkok, with legs and arms bandaged, and the first thing you ask them, “have you been tubing”?

We had such fun, Tri and I. The currency in Laos is kip and, like I said earlier 2 GBP was around 40,000 (now it is just over 3 GBP), we just couldn’t get the hang of it. We must have counted it a million times and still couldn’t add it up right (that might have been the copious amounts of alcohol we had).  In one of the bars we met a guy that I had met previously on Koh Tao- Ben- so we stayed and had a real laugh with him and his friends.

Then the boys left to go to the next bar and, after counting the money yet again, Tri and I decided to go and see if we could find them again. So we got back onto the river in our tubes and made our way further downstream. In some parts of the river the current was very strong and you move quite fast, so when we eventually spotted Ben and his friends, we tried to stop moving and get out but we were literally swept away with the current and ended up on a little slope where a bunch of goats were grazing, one of which looked at us totally bemused! It was hilarious we couldn’t stop laughing. So after we had pulled ourselves together, we went on our way, drinks in hand, and made our way to the last bar, where we eventually met up with the guys and continued our fun packed day.

 

It was all part of a fantastic experience but there is so much more to Laos than tubing- Pak Ou Caves, Plains of Jars, Kuang Si Waterfalls, kayaking on the Nam Song River, Luang Prabang- to name but a few.  And with the apparent lack of safety measures, causing at least 22 tourists to die during 2011, the riverside bars have since been pulled down in an attempt to make tubing a much more relaxed, and not potentially fatal, experience. The authorities have taken steps to try and bring the charm back to Vang Vieng, rather than it being a haven for raucous behaviour and drinking, as Brett Dakin, the author of Another Quiet American states, “each time a young Australian woman strolls down the street in a bikini, a bearded American smokes a joint on a guesthouse terrace, or a group of Koreans tumbles drunkenly out of a restaurant, it saps a little more of the essence of a town like Vang Vieng”.

The colour green is so prominent in nature and it comes in many different shades as you can see from these photographs taken in Vietnam.  The vibrant green of the paddy fields to the darker shades of the ocean represents the diversity of nature- for me the colour green symbolises a feeling of being alive and it evokes a sense of wonder in everything around me.

 

 

 

Songkran is Thai New Year and occurs mid April, and it just so happened that my friends were arriving from the UK for a holiday. The first to arrive was Nikki, but me and Tri had decided to go for a couple of drinks before heading off to the airport and we got absolutely soaked through. Basically Thai New Year is bedlam, everywhere closes for 3 days (10 days in other places such as Pattaya) and everyone tries to soak as many people as possible with water guns, buckets and hoses. In the beginning Thai New Year was a calm ceremony where monks would use water to bless people but, somehow, over the generations it has turned into a massive water fight. There are so many people- Thais, Westerners, young, old, children and adults walking around or in trucks soaking everyone in sight or covering people’s faces in flour. Everyone has fun and takes the soaking in good spirits (can you imagine doing that anywhere else? I think not) but after three days it’s a little too much.

We arrived at the airport, soaking wet, met Nikki at arrivals and got a taxi back to the Khao San Road. As soon as we arrived, Nikki dumped her stuff, got changed and we went back to join in the party. We went to DJ Station, which is a European disco in the Silom area of Bangkok- a gay club with a mix of Thai and foreign party-goers. It is a great place to party, although it gets quite overcrowded at the weekends.

 

Anyway we girls were having a great time dancing with the guys but we had to go to the airport again, this time to pick up one of my best friends, Hayley. By this time it was around 4am, and as we had to leave at 5.30am we decided it would be better to stay up and go straight to the airport from the bar. I have had better ideas before this point! Anyway we had a few more drinks before leaving, once more, for the airport. When we arrived Hayley was already through immigration and waiting for us. We were absolutely pissed, something that she found quite amusing (well I hope she did). We got back to the hotel and had some much needed sleep ready for another afternoon of Songkran.

Later that day we emerged from the hotel into the throng of people on the Khao San Road- the amount of people that were partying was ridiculous, there was no room to move- so much so that we lost Hayley within 30 minutes of going out. It was actually quite scary because if any one of us had tripped and landed on the floor I am sure that we would have gotten trampled over. In fact we saw a couple of people being carted away on stretchers. Today was much the same as yesterday- it was crazy, getting soaked and caked in flour whilst drinking our way through the day. It was so much fun.

 

 

Later we all got dressed up and got a tuk-tuk to go to DJ Station again. To this day I really do not know why we got dressed up AND got a tuk-tuk, in the middle of Songkran, because Silom road was busier and crazier than the Khao San Road and the tuk-tuk dropped us quite a way from the club and we had to walk. On the way we stopped at traffic lights and promptly had a bucket of ice cold water thrown over us- we were absolutely soaked and had to go into a small bar to dry off a bit before going into DJ. We had a great time in there as usual and left at the end and went to bed at 5am.

The next day we went to the Grand Palace and shopping at MBK centre and decided to stay away from any Songkran festivities, so we walked along Silom road but there was still people partying so we walked the other way away from them and found a nice restaurant to have dinner in, followed by a few drinks in an Irish bar until we thought it was safe to return to the Khao San Road (1am being the curfew for Songkran soakings).

 

 

On one of my many trips around Singburi province I visited a village called Khai Bang Rachan, which is remembered for resistance against Burmese invaders in the Burmese-Siamese War (1765-1767). One of the most prominent monuments here is the Heroes of Khai Bang Rachan monument, which remembers the villagers who bravely fought against the Burmese. There were many more troops to villagers, but it took the Burmese eight attacks before the villagers were defeated due to shortage of weapons.  The monument itself stands magnificently in impeccably kept gardens.

As we wandered around the gardens we came across a local Thai women releasing turtles. This is something you see in many places throughout Thailand where you can pay money to release a turtle into the “wild”. I have done a bit of research on this and apparently this is a traditional way of merit making for most Thai’s on a lot of occasions, such as birthdays and to bring good luck. On the surface this appears to be a nice thing to do, to release a turtle into the wild, but if you look they are all cooped up in a small, bowl –like container before being “set-free”, and then caught a few hours later and put back into the container, only to be “set-free” once more for the next paying tourist. It’s supposed to provide good luck- for you maybe, but for the turtle it is deprived of a normal life and will probably end in its death. Much better to get involved with one of the many turtle conservation projects, like the one I visited on the island of Koh Mannai, off the coast of Laem Mae Phim, where you can help to care for the turtles and learn about the work they do, breeding and releasing them into the wild (properly!)