March 2007

I am on an island called Don Det, in an area of southern Laos called the 4,000 Islands. Today I: swam in the river, rode a bicycle, tried playing kick volleyball, ate grilled fish, swung in a hammock and read a book about Laos history. I’m staying in a small thatched bungalow on stilts over the Mekong. I can see stars here, especially after the electricity on the island goes off after eleven. Tomorrow I’m going to try to spot the elusive Irawaddy dolphins.

And I am back in the land of Internet access. From Phonsavan I traveled 12 hours by bus to Vieng Xai, right on the Vietnamese border. Vieng Xai was intense; it’s a tiny village set among spectacular, cave-filled limestone karsts which housed the entire Pathet Lao leadership and thousands of soldiers during the decade of U.S. bombing missions. There’s literally a cave city of homes and offices and medical facilities, even an enormous amphitheater. From Vieng Xai I’ve just come 18 hours to Vientiane and am on my way to the south of Laos in a couple of days. I’ve uploaded photos from Luang Prabang, with many more from Vieng Xai and Phonsavan ready to go for tomorrow.

I arrived in Phonsavan, Laos this afternoon after a seven-hour bus ride through the mountains. The road from Luang Prabang is composed of approximately 10,000 s-curves in a row, with an occasional hairpin turn, all at breathtaking altitude and with very little or nothing to prevent the bus from plunging over the side of a cliff should the driver sneeze or possibly even blink at the wrong time. I often caught myself wondering with a kind of passionate intensity about things like the general maintenance practices of the Lao bus fleet and the overall well-being of the driver. Was everything okay at home? How’s his health been lately?

I’m here in Phonsavan to visit the Plain of Jars, a group of sites containing thousands of massive stone jars which are the remnants of an ancient and almost entirely mysterious culture. This area of Laos is also still heavily blanketed with unexploded ordnance (UXO in the lingo), the remnants of not-so-ancient aerial bombardment by the U.S.A. The reminders are everywhere; the lobby of my guest house has a display case filled with bomb casings and mortar shells and the like. Plus, I just had a quick beer in a bar named”Craters.”

Reports of tomorrow’s excursion, as well as photos and stories from Luang Prabang and the Mekong in the next day or two.

It is, as I’ve mentioned, tremendously easy to travel in Thailand. So easy, in fact, that I would say it became a problem for me. I fell easily into the same, well-established trails that have long existed here; they’re so deeply grooved into the Thai soil at this point that you have to make a very conscious decision to climb out of them. Of course, it seems dumb to come to Thailand only to go where no one else ever goes, especially if you’ve never seen Bangkok or the beaches or the historical sites. Still, by the end of the month I found myself asking why I felt like I was in Europe as much as in Asia, and why most of my conversations were with other travelers (instant travel conversation formula: the three Wheres–where are you from, where have you been, where are you going?)

This definitely has more to do with one’s attitude as a traveler and as a person than with the place itself. The question isn’t only where we are but what we choose to see when we’re there. We ignore things. The camera turns us into liars–or at the very least, editors. I caught myself yesterday framing a photograph, waiting impatiently for the one Westerner in the picture to move so it would look more “authentic.” At historical sites, I contort myself to avoid getting other tourists in the shot. (So many photos could carry the caption “Not pictured: 300 people also taking pictures.”) I was having a conversation with a German guy the other night and we both remarked about how little poverty we had seen in Thailand. You know it exists–the outskirts of Bangkok are said to be one of the world’s biggest slums–but it’s not quite insistent enough to grab you and really make you notice, if you don’t want to.

Still, we can learn. And this has honestly been a great, great month for me. Here’s some more on where I’ve been the last couple of weeks.

Sangkhlaburi: Sangkhlaburi was probably the most intriguing place for me, the place I felt the most strangeness and mystery and sense of dislocation. There was something dreamy about the perpetual fog and haze and the painted faces, and the tourist shuffle is not as choreographed as in the other parts of Thailand I visited. It’s also an unusually heterogenous area for this country. I met many interesting fellow-travelers; talked with a group of NGO workers involved with Mon & Karen refugees; listened to a Burmese man who had just moved to Sangkhlaburi; and rode around town with 300+ lb. American who lived there and owned a small book/bar/bike/food shop called Wild, Wild West. He took me out for a ride (both of us on his tiny moped) into the Mon village late at night where I got to hang out with a bunch of locals, drinking Archa beer & eating things I’d never tried before.

Also, I found a crazy half-English/half-Thai love letter in my room at the guest house one day, but I’m still not quite sure what it was all about.

Ayutthaya: A fairly ordinary-looking island city wrapped around some truly awesome ruins. Ayutthaya was a kingdom that began in the 14th century and eventually expanded to become the nation of Siam (it features prominently in that Thai film I saw here, King Naresuan.) My friend and I visited ruins by bicycle and took a boat ride around the island. Three rivers converge–the Chao Phraya (same as in Bangkok), the Lopburi, and the Pa Sak–and this was an excellent way to see temples and houses and the people living along the water. The boat ride we took advertised “Smiling faces!” and there were so many people waving to us, so many children splashing and laughing in the water, that I started to get an eerie, Potemkin-village feeling. The Ayutthaya Historical Park holds a superabundance of great temples and images: the Wat Phra Mongkon Bophit and its giant seated Buddha; the Wat Phra Mahathat where the iconic Buddha head rests inside the Bodhi tree; everywhere, walls and chedi stripped down to the bricks, being pulled by gravity into strange and elegant, almost parabolic, new forms.

It was also unreasonably, embarrassingly hot here. There is a photograph of the king I’ve seen a number of times. It looks like it’s from the seventies. He’s got a camera around his neck and appears to be wearing a polyester jacket with his trademark middle-manager eyeglasses. He is swimming in sweat; there is a perfect, spherical, glowing ball of liquid dangling from the tip of his nose. If I were king, I would decree that this picture be destroyed. Anyway, this is exactly how I looked.

Chiang Mai: From Ayutthaya, my friend L. and I took an overnight train to Chiang Mai. I was delirious with anticipation when we arrived at the station. There are no places more emotionally charged to me than train stations and airports and other “liminal” travel spaces, as Alain de Botton calls them in “The Art of Travel” (which I just read on the Mekong slow boat. I learned that Baudelaire was fascinated with these types of places too. What is it about the melancholic spirit that is drawn here?) When we boarded the train, I almost fainted with joy when the porter set up the sleeping compartment, all crisply and officiously (even a little snootily), folding things and locking them into place and dressing the bunks with sheets and pillows. The romance of the long-distance train was undermined somewhat by a visit to the bar car, however, which turned out to be a Euro-disco on wheels. Music was pounding, lights were flashing and people were dancing on top of their seats, all with the consent–no, encouragement–of the State Railway of Thailand. It was so utterly ridiculous and so completely the sort of thing I imagine only happens in Thailand that it was impossible not to go along with it.

Chiang Mai was founded at the end of the 13th century. There’s a moat surrounding the city center and the remnants of a city wall still stand in a few places. The feel here is international; I saw mostly tourists & Westerners around the main squares and most of the restaurants were anything but Thai (I was psyched to see a Mexican place, but it turned out to be empty and really dreary.) Chiang Mai is busy, though much quieter than Bangkok and not nearly as chaotically interesting. I’d say it was a college town but I don’t know how many colleges are here; still, used bookstores and cafes proliferate and it’s supposed to be a good place to come and take cooking and massage courses for a week or two.

L. and I signed up for an overnight trek in Doi Inthanon National Park (home to the highest mountain in Thailand). I can’t say I had enough expectations to be disappointed, but the experience was something of a letdown. There were good hikes and beautiful scenery but I never felt like I noticed anything; the pace and the social aspect of the tour overshadowed the setting, at least for me. We hiked to a Karen village, where we spent the night. Our interaction with the locals was minimal, limited mainly to the small souvenir stand and the drone of children selling bracelets: “10 baht, 10 baht, 10 baht.” At dinner I spoke more French than I have in years; the French are still nearly as bad at knowing other languages as Americans are. Afterwards, everyone sat around a fire and an older Karen man joined us and showed everyone magic tricks using a loop of string and we bought him beers.

The next day was an elephant trek–depressing–and a bamboo raft ride, which was kind of fun, although the boatmen, obviously under orders to liven things up for the farang, kept splashing and rocking the rafts and managed to flip one over and give one of the girls with us a huge welt. This trek was the time I most felt the underlying fascination/resentment between tourists and the Thai people who make their living off of us. There was a palpable tension and unease in the air at moments.

Back in Chiang Mai, L. and I went to a “Monk Chat” at a local temple/university, where you sit and talk with student monks, who get to practice their English in return. We chatted with two monks from Cambodia and I asked them some questions I had had about Buddhism, particularly about the way it’s practiced in Thailand (more that I want to say about this). Afterwards, L. and I went to a Muay Thai fight, which seemed set up primarily for foreigners (though there was a vigorous Thai betting community there). I’d like to see Muay Thai under better circumstances. Most disturbing were the kids fighting (see photos)–two fights involved children who definitely had not hit puberty. I don’t know how common this is, but the foreigners seemed much more horrified than the Thais.

From Chiang Mai, I traveled on the Chiang Rai, in the Golden Triangle–the first step of my next journey, into Laos.

I just arrived in Luang Prabang, Laos Luang Prabang after a two-day slow boat ride down the Mekong. This was not as romantic as it sounds (if that indeed sounded romantic to you); unfortunately it was more like an episode of Road Rules, Apocalypse Now edition. This after a couple of days of traveling to get to the Laos border so have been constantly on the move. I’m going to stay put in Luang Prabang (a beautiful colonial town) and rest up for a few days and eat many French-inspired baguette sandwiches, about which I shall dutifully report.

Am in Chiang Mai on a chilly (!) morning, about to leave for an overnight jungle trek/rafting/elephant ride/etc., with accomodations in a hill tribe village; it’s the typical tourist thing to do here. I haven’t seen much of Chiang Mai, but it seems to have a Boston feel to Bangkok’s New York. I’ve uploaded more photos–some more from Sangkhlaburi and a set from Ayutthaya. Will check back in when I return tomorrow (if I’m not trampled by an elephant.)

Photos added to the Kanchanaburi and Sangkhlaburi sets. Will be heading out on a train to Chiang Mai in a couple of hours and will post again from there; many photos and tales from the road to come.

Checking in from Ayutthaya, City of Gorgeousness (as my free tourist pamphlet puts it). I traveled almost 12 hours on 3 buses yesterday to get here from Sangkhlaburi. You will see on the map that the distance is hardly that great; travel time was due to a) lack of connecting highways, and b) the (non-tourist) Thai bus system being part Greyhound and part yellow school bus, picking up and dropping off passengers almost anywhere en route (many of whom were in fact school children). Still, happy to be here. Ayutthaya does have a certain gorgeousness about it; it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and is filled with some very scenic ruins, which I visited today. I’m off to Chiang Mai in the north tomorrow by train. But I will post accounts & pics of Sangkhlaburi and Ayutthaya either before I leave or after I arrive. I have had almost no time here in Ayutthaya to get site things sorted out, but it has been for a good reason. Cryptically yours and until tomorrow, Thomas.