Hello again readers. How's the family? I am still in northern Thailand, and the weeks are starting to fly past so incredibly quickly. I'm now halfway through my hill tribe volunteer project, on a rather warm and muggy Sunday afternoon in the sleepy northern city of Chiang Rai.
I'm staying in the city for the weekend with the rest of my new volunteer group, who seem like a quite spiffing bunch of people. As with the Delhi group we are a mix of nationalities: American, Canadian, Italian, Norwegian, Austrian, and we have another large contingent of South Koreans. International volunteer work seems to be a favourite passtime of South Koreans!
At the moment I'm in an internet cafe full of Thai kids playing shoot-em-up computer games - a typical sight in Thailand, even in rural areas! (Internet addiction is a common problem in many places in Asia - in South Korea they even have 'internet boot camps' where children are forced to spend time away from computers as rehabilitation!)
It is the year 2551 here in Thailand. Thais use the Buddhist calendar, which started over 500 years before the Christian one, so 2008 is 2551. Crazy! Despite being a huge tourist destination, with internet cafes chock-full of kids, Thailand still has its roots grounded in tradition. I've seen glimpses of the fascinating culture and the tourist brochure cliches about the 'land of smiles' are true - the people are really bloody friendly! The day-to-day living is very cheap and you start to realise there is a lot of financial inequality in the world.
Heck, if I can pick up a beautiful wife for the price of a Mars Bar I ain't complaining! No, that's not funny. Take it from me - Bondy cares about the troubles in the world.
The last few weeks have been a hectic whirl of travelling and sight-seeing, and it's high time I spent a day on my own slowly unwinding. And filling you in on my adventures of course dear reader! So much has happened... I'd got up to Bangkok last time I wrote this 'ere blog.
I didn't see much of the city in the three or four days I spent there. The city traffic is so bad it is very hard to travel round, and the taxi drivers have a love of ripping tourists off, so I was limited to journeying round on foot round the Grand Palace and the major temples. They were stunning though - check out Google pictures here, here and here. I've fallen into this daily routine when I'm travelling on my own of sightseeing in the morning and afternoon, going to an internet cafe in the evening, then at night I get food and try to perfect the art of "looking cool while sat on my own nursing a beer". And the damage to my wallet is light!
Thailand seems to be in something of a state of flux right now. The popular former PM Thaksin Shinawatra is back in the country to face corruption charges, and the country is in a 100-day mourning period for the king's sister, who died in January at the age of 84. (The royal family is highly revered, particularly the king, who is worshipped as if he was the Pope.) Also there have been elections, resulting in a 3-day ban on the sale of alcohol for fear of rioting. Despite the tough government sanctions, there is not even the merest sniff of trouble on the country's streets - it's a really relaxed place.
I saw a royal procession while I was in Bangkok. I was walking towards the Grand Palace when a burly man in uniform ushered me over the street to where a big crowd of people had gathered. "Okay," I thought, "the street's closing... this makes sense."
All the streets around the palace had suddenly become lined with crowds, waiting to see the king leave his palace by limousine. A phalanx of futuristically-uniformed motorbike cops were followed by a succession of security guards in an endless convoy of souped up Mercs. By now the moment when we would see the king was approaching, as the crowds began excitedly shouting 'song phra charoen' (long live your majesty). Then a stretched limo with a few shadowy figures sat inside sped by, and that was that. Off he went on his important state business. That was half an hour of my life I would never get back!
After Bangkok I spent a week in Chiang Mai, which is Thailand's second city. It is actually a lot smaller than Bangkok - it's more like a town. It's got a square moat, inside which is the kilometre of so of the old town. I travelled up there on the night train and woke up in the morning as the train was slowly winding its way through the stunning tropical scenery of the Thai countryside.
I'd booked to go on a three-day Thai cookery course and the package included four nights at a top hotel, the Chiang Mai Plaza! I swear I have never stayed in anywhere so ridiculously posh in all my life. It's the sort of place politicians and movie stars would go to get up to all sorts of seedy pursuits away from the public eye. The lobby is the size of an aircraft hangar, decked out in gilded mirrors and marble, and there are bell boys following you round everywhere if you look like you're carrying something heavy. It was kinda cool to be pampered after roughing it for several weeks but I just don't need that much luxury. The free breakfast buffet was amazing though, it had poached eggs and bacon! Mmm... bacon.
The cookery course was a fascinating learning experience that left me bamboozled under a tidal wave of knowledge. One of several such schools in Chiang Mai, it is run by a legendary Thai chef called Sompon Nabnian who has done TV work around the world. He actually taught most of the classes himself, demonstrating how to cook the dishes while dispensing James Bond-style wisecracks. I learnt about basic ingredients in Thai cooking, such as lemongrass, fish sauce and kaffir lime, and cooked over a dozen dishes (such as hot and sour prawn soup, Thai green curry and spicy glass noodle salad) in a class of around 25 people. The ingredients you need are easily available in the west, so I guess I'll be opening a Thai restaurant when I get home (if I can remember the recipes that is)! After you cook your food you get to eat it, and after a day of cooking and eating six or seven dishes you are bloody full!
I liked Chiang Mai, it's a very green and pleasant place - a nice change from the wall-to-wall noise of Bangkok. I also saw Doi Suthep, a stunning golden hilltop temple which you have to climb 306 steps to get to, and I stayed in a homely wooden guesthouse in the old town, nicely titled 'VIP House'!
The next day I did a day safari, which is a popular tourist package trip where you get to ride on an elephant and travel down a river on a bamboo raft. It featured a free lunch buffet with fried chicken drumsticks, and a snake show where three Thai guys prodded snakes in a miniature ampitheatre. I had a few good adventures and met plenty of fellow travellers while propping up the bar every night. Life was good.
Last Saturday (1st March) I came to Chiang Rai to start my volunteer group. Chiang Rai is a different city to Chiang Mai, but it's confusingly similar in name. It lies in the far north of the country, close to the border with Burma and Laos; a small town with a bustling night market.
I met up with the other volunteers at the bus station, and our Thai project leaders came to greet us with two pick-up trucks. We crowded on to the back of the trucks with our bags, and sped away into the countryside to spend the weekend in a basic wooden hut on the grounds of a rural children's home. After two days of team bonding and basic cultural orientation, we left the fringes of civilisation to head out into the wilderness, and live for a few days with a hill-tribe!
But I'll have to leave it there for now - it's been good fun but it will take another whole day to explain! Tata for now, again.
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