The Cheat. Trip to Thailand for a week.

The coin flipped and Thailand won, I was actually relieved in some way. The trip to southern Laos didn’t sound overly interesting from people I talked to and it was also going to put me days away from the things in Cambodia I wanted to see.

Anyways the friendship bridge greeted me the next morning. What I completely forgot in all of the planning of my route was my Thai visa… yeap I spent days in Vientiane  and in the end forgetting this… I hit the border and checked out of Laos with no problems apart from lots of confusion as to where I had to go and who I had to bride to get my bike through, in the end I gave the dude my bottle of Lao-Lao (whisky) and waved away, so much cheaper than when I entered Laos.

On the Thai side it was even worse, I had gone through the customs and passport control then asked how I get my bike and then they promptly asked me with guns drawn to empty my bike contents out for inspection… 2 hours later and a x-ray on my body I was aloud to go. I still have no idea why I was targeted by they were extremely interested in my bike, must have been the Vietnam plates.

Anyways I was in Thailand, WELCOME. I had a visa for 15 days, no where near enough time to see the country so, I pulled into the first thing I could see after the border. A 7 Eleven! Clearly I was in a “westernized” country again, otherwise there wouldn’t be a 7 eleven on every corner. 

Parked at the train station
ready for loading

Bought a map and looked at the ground I had to cover. If I wanted to spend any time in Bangkok or get to Cambodia around Christmas I would have to do a lot of KM to get there then move on with no time to see anything. I took the easy way, I drove all day then pulled into a town with a railway station. Bought myself a ticket with a sleeper and booked my bike on as well. I was heading directly to Bangkok.

Im going to leave the day to day accounts here. I spent a lot of time in Bangkok but most was relaxing, I had been on the bike every day for a month and needed some serious beer time, hell I was in Bangkok after all!

While in Bangkok I did manage to see lots of the sights by foot and Tuk Tuk.

The Giant relining Buddha and royal temple was awe-inspiring. It was completely covered in gold with mother of pearl on the souls of Buddha’s feet. The temples around were covered in glass and mirror pieces that made them sparkle as you walked around.

In the center of the Palace area was the great Jade Buddha. A Buddha carved out of a single piece of Jade and the largest of its kind in the world. The temple was amazing and had paintings on all the walls telling the story of how Buddha came to this place and how the king of Thailand came to be… I sat in the temple for a good 40 min listening to the monks prays, it was a really quite mesmerising.  

The palace was beautiful as well, it had a very French feel to it and the guards even looked like the European royal guards.

I was able to catch the Wat Arun (The Temple of Dawn) at sunset and have a nice relaxing beer over the riverside.

While in Bangkok I also took a day trip out to see the floating markets, there’s a large number of them and I can not remember the name of the one I visited but it was a good 2 hours out of the city.

The markets themselves where nothing overly special in comparison to others ive been to in Asia, but the food there was amazing!
 Small boats on the side of the river offering fresh seafood and meals for 1-2$. I pigged out and took a small boat ride around the markets, before heading back to Bangkok for the evening.

The rest of the 5 days I spent in Bangkok I used to try and find some new shoes… you would think in 7 major retail shopping centers in Thailand you could find some shoes that are 13.5, but it would appear the largest they have is 12. So no new shoes my ones that are falling to bits will have to do.

The shopping centers were not without mention either, I was in one that had Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini on the 2^nd floor of the shopping center, you can only imagine the things that were on the ground floor at the entrance…

Another center was made out to look like a airport, it was called Terminal 27. Each floor was a different themed country, Italy, England, China, Japan… they were all there and the shops had fronts that made it look like you had entered the place. Each level also greeted you with gate 2, 3, 4 whatever as in the floors… it was very cool, but super expensive.

The nightlife in Bangkok didn’t disappoint either, I had a great time heading out on the town with some friends I met and it was very easy to see how you could get into trouble. But a hell of allot of fun with the locals ;)

I left Bangkok after 5 days, and had enough of the city. It was nice to be in a place with subways and cars but it was time I got away from the big city again. A friend of mine in Japan told me about a small town called Pattaya, that was “fun” so that’s were I headed next.

On the way I stopped off at a free range zoo, this was fun as I was on my bike and able to ride in and around all the enclosures. It was a zoo and all the usual African animals, but what I found funny was the wild monkeys sitting on the cages. The zoo keepers trying to shoo them away.

It was a beach side city with more pubs and clubs that I could hit up in a year… definitely a fun spot. I spent the days on the beach swimming and the nights partying. Oh Thailand was going to be expensive but so much fun.

I only stayed in Pattaya for 1 day, it was all I needed to see what it was about and I had enough party time in Bangkok.

My visa was getting close to finishing, my Cambodian visa was opening up the next day, so I headed for the border and the following day entered into Cambodia.

So it was only a short 9 days out of 15 on my visa, and I will come back and see the “real” Thailand as I have no doubt that I have missed 99% of the country. But this was a detour at the end of the day.

Either way it was fun, I enjoyed the nightlife and the city… it was nice for a change not to have to worry about drinking water and ice cubes and to have fast internet to update my blog.

Time to head back into the unknown, Cambodia here I come!...

Till next time have fun!

Steffen.

Tubing, Caving, Visa's and a Coin flip - Vang Vieng and Venetian

I had arrived at the Vang Vieng and took a walk around the town. It was completely obvious this was a backpacker town. Teens walking around in swim ware, people walking around sky high on something. It was a noisy and happening place.

Every bar, restaurant and business had either Family guy or Friends showing and were full of people watching the episodes while drinking.

The next day I had heard about the tubing and caves surrounding Vang Vieng. I headed to the tube starting area on my bike to check it out, it was a launch pad for the tubes. The Tubes being basically big truck tire inner tubes. Then the riverbanks were covered in bars, clubs, swings, seesaws, and other recreation activities. I was way to early, everyone was still sound asleep or working off a hang over, so I went caving.

There was something like 10 caves in a small area, some of then were nothing special but there was a few that were amazing and large. One in particular went on for a good 500m or so, and had massive limestone curtains and other cave formations.

It wasn’t like they were easy to get to either, I got completely lost on the way to one of the caves and ended up riding around on my motorbike through some farmers rice fields. It would have been a blast if it wasn’t so muddy and the 2 meter cobra I almost ran over. That was enough for me.

That afternoon I doubled back to town and went tubing. Sorry no photos as it was all on water. But I got extremely drunk and it was a blast, I stayed well away from the swing of death. You could see the injuries from the people who had tried it, the water was only ½ meter deep and they are jumping at height into it… yeah smart one! Never the less the tubing is considered a rite on passage among backpackers around south east Asia.

The following day I packed up my things again and headed out of town, as much fun as the town is it simply didn’t interest me to stay for longer.

The ride to Venetian was truly nothing special after about 20km the road hit a flat plain and became industrial and farm land for 100km. Plus I had a headache from the previous day.

I reached Venetian nice and early that day, and checked into my hostel. I was in the capital city of Laos for the main reason to get my Visa’s for the onward trips sorted, the border visa’s were very expensive as I had to add a bribe on top so hopefully this would stop that?

Never the less I had 4 days to kill. So I went and to see some of the sights and sounds around Venetian. The day that I arrived I spent the rest of the day just walking along the Mekong river, it was so peaceful and when the sunset it was like always, perfect only thing missing was Sông. ;)

Some of the sights I visited in Venetian were really old and nice.

One of the days, i did take a nice long long long... drive out of town past the friendship bridge (the border to Thailand that crosses the Mekong), to a small town that had a big reclining buddha made out of stone.

The site had a few 100 different buddha statues, from all over the world. They had a massive globe like thing with a mig mouth, inside was a staircase and what could only be described as the "internals of buddha" it was grose.
It was all made out of clay and concrete but the figures were grose however it did give a good view when you reached the top.

I also went to see a small temple, the locals were hard at work renovating it by hand. They had some pet spider monkeys as well.

The last night in Venetian, I was up late. The next morning I new I was moving on but I couldn’t decide on where. The problem was that the south of Laos was a long drive around the Mekong river, and although it would be a nice drive. It would put me ½ of Cambodia and a week of riding to get to the things I wanted to see there. The alternative was to skip the south of Laos for another trip, and take the friendship bridge, which was 10km away over to Thailand. Then head to Bangkok and then to Cambodia. This would give me more to see and put me in the correct place.

I flipped a coin for it.

Till next time, have fun.

Steffen