Bangkok Flashback (earlier this month)

Chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #5

on our way back from the Arcade Bus station in Chiang Mai two days ago when we cycled up there to get our bus tickets for the journey to renew our visas yesterday.

close to Arcade Bus station is this abandoned Roller Coaster Hall, somewhat spooky, even at daytime..

below some photos from our 'visa-run' yesterday:

the 2nd class bus that drove us to Mae Sai, which is the Thai city that borders Myanmar or Burma.

Chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #4 / Legal Aliens

We have renewed our legal status:

A long day has passed since we got up at 4.45am this morning to make our way to the bus station, catch a bus north to Mae Sai, via Chiang Rai, to walk across the border to Burma, which doesn't exist because it is now Myanmar, where the time is 30 minutes behind the time just 20 meters back, where it is Thailand.. Why the time warp? I think a perfect signifier of where we arrived: in a country with one of the most controlling military regimes, priding itself on an endless itinerary of human rights abuses/ violations... None of which affects us as pale skinned westerners, but you wouldn't want to be one of the many minority groups around the country, now would you want to be an outspoken stand up comedian or pro democracy politician or simply a pro democracy supporter... It would also be uncomfortable if you had a family member who was any of the above.. Oh and you might not want to enter political discourse with foreigners either... It wouldn't matter if you were a civilian, a teacher, a manual labourer, an academic or monk.. the wrong opinion could land you an open ended jail term; and the comfort levels would be well below minimal also you might want to make arrangements for how to get nourishing food, because it's unlikely that the prison would provide this...

Anyhow...

none of this concerns or affects us little tourists (unless we want a mark against our name which might ensure we couldn't cross this border again..).

So we arrived in Myanmar, where the time is half an hour in the past, where they keep your passport to make sure you don't run off into the country that you are not permitted to visit freely, but you could have asked for a 14 day permit (not called a visa here), which would have permitted travel in the Khan State, no other. (limited options, but foreigners access to the country is limited, the government isn't too keen on us spreading the gospel of democracy, even if it appears to be revealing itself even in the west: to be more a fairy tale than reality)...

So.. Myanmar.. We walked around the market right by the border for some time, were offered copious quantities of viagra, which I am not sure what it is for.. why did they keep offering it to me..? Do they realize I lack the appropriate body part? (this is of course Birgit speaking)..

Jason was offered unspoken other things, that involved pointing to the nose and mouth.. I wonder if the man was offering to kiss Jason or let J touch his nose? Whatever it was we declined many times to many sellers.. One thing that went a LOT to far for me was seeing a boy-child with the same basket of items trying to sell us stuff which also included very cheap bright yellow dildos or vibrators (not really sure what they were). I was pretty shocked by that, that's just a lot of a steps too far!

Myanmar, the place of time past, we had great espresso (some happy trivia) and eventually walked back in reverse across the border, experiencing no problems - bar the incident when a small boy who had been trying to beg of us for the past 2 hours- shouted a few 'fuck-you's" at Birgit which she took a bit too much to heart. But it was a huge shock. That hasn't happened since Liverpool, where kids are tough and rough and their families riddled with poverty and no education.. (last happened quite a long time ago).

We just weren't expecting it HERE! Asia is so polite! It's just unthinkable that anyone here might swear. Much less a child. But today it happened.

And it's so tough to see them shoeless, poor, clearly in need or else who would beg like this.. It's so tough to not have the power ( $£$£$£) to help with effect. We can't even afford to hand out 50 cent to everyone who asks. And really you'd want to give $50 notes to REALLY make an impact on how the rest of the month goes.. SO when after all the heartbreaking moments when all we can give is a tiny thing or no thing one person shouts abuse it just hurts even more.

It's sad to see real poverty, existential poverty!

Cutting the long story short: we caught our bus and landed back in Chiang Mai..

The overall bus journeys came to around 11 or 12 hours plus some local travel time and lingering around time..

4.45am - 8.45pm (the time here now)

and Jason just popped back in with our rice and stir fried vegetables..

Our Visa is good for 15 days.. That's how it is with Visas obtained at land border crossings.

If you were to fly in you would automatically get 30 days... Oh that would have been nice!

Bon appetit to us, and we'll add some pictures to this later.

Jason and Birgit

Chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #3

our Chiang Mai home:

Manop's wife and their dog off on a road trip:

Manop's new place opening across the road:

parked next door:

The Blue Diamond cafe in Chiang Mai, where

we occasionally have breakfast/dinner/lunch,

but we don't go too often as we are now able to

have some simple things at our place and we live

just around the corner from a great market where

you can get delicious food for under $1 !

breakfast reading:

still reading:

our breakfast dinner (too dark for pictures)

Christmas 2011

I wanted to upload a video of Jason but have been having a 3-4 hour long battle with laptop & internet and am declaring defeat...

Happy Christmas to everyone!

Jason and Birgit. xxxxx

Chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #1

So we are in Chiang Mai, Christmas is sneaking up and we are both feeling essentially happy but a little subdued as we have friends and family we miss at this time. Most likely our Christmas days will be spent learning massage pressure points with yet to be decided evenings.

We also miss the Christmassy feeling, the seasonal perks, the season full stop.. that includes the ungodly cold that rattles our bones.. It's odd to feel sad when we are so amazingly blessed to be here with the delicious food, the local markets that feed us both for no more than $2 a meal if we pick well, the warmth, Manop the music teacher whom Jason can study with for free ! Yes free, the value of the offer would be really expensive if J had to pay for it, we wouldn't be able to afford it. So of course Jason has to squeeze time out of our full days to make sure he has time to practice to make the most of it. The days here are really full, we actually miss having some down time..

We miss being home for Christmas!

Cambodia #9

(updated - there are still a lot more photographs to come, but uploading is really slow and we seem to never have much spare time.. check back in some time and hopefully I'll have had a chance to load more photographs!)

More images from our last day at the temples, finally we made it to the most famous one:

Angkor Wat and we found these monkeys hanging out... Did we tell you

that earlier that day a monkey walked straight up to Jason's bag and

successfully reached for a plastic bag within it.. That was the last we saw

of the expensive almond croissant that we don't usually spend money on...

(being tight as we are we usually eat local fare)

Anyhow, here is one of the type of monkeys that goes for french patisseries..

and here as a team.. ready to steal snacks...

once inside the temple we tried taking some yoga photos for Jason:

and one of Birgit:

one of the long bas relief walls surrounding the Temple,

I can't tell you right now which one this one is, not without

the guidebook.. Most of these reliefs (all carved into stone

some 800- 1000 years ago) depict tales of the Ramayana, which

is a story about Hanuman the Monkey God.. Or else battle

scenes of the Mahabharata, which is the Hindu story of creation

of the universe and all of human kind...

close-up attempt..

Jason likes seeds (and picks them up whenever he finds one):

Our last day visiting the temples, this view outside

Angkor Wat as we unlocked our bikes.

What you see here is how tall rice should be around

the time of harvest. Nakry's rice is about 1/3rd as tall

as this, spoilt by the recent flooding.

sunset over the rice field..

We bough tickets for the boat from Siem Reap

to Battambang. The journey took 7 hours (more pictures soon)

Great seat for seeing the scenery, awful seat for noise..

We sat not 3 meters away from the noisiest engine..

The 7 hour journey was the most beautiful but also very

exhausting because of the extremely loud engine. We put

toilet tissue into our ears for protection.

The kind of views that we would have for the next

hours to come: The Tonle Sap Lake is a really unique

lake.. why? I'll write later - we are hungry and must go eat now.

monks must pee, too:

squeezing through tight waterways (front and back-view

oops, back view not uploaded yet)

And as soon as we arrived we risked life and limb

on this crazy adventure (overpriced, too, $5 each,

plus $2 transport, plus $1 mandatory 'tip')

We took a Bamboo Train - utterly irresponsible..

But very much fun and we are happy to report that

no bones were broken, we remain in one piece.

More later, we are hungry and must eat breakfast now...

(it's afternoon, we've been awake a long time but just

needed a rest day, so we didn't leave the guest house at all)

Cambodia #8

Cambodia #7 family and friend greetings

And here is Jason relaxing (on a really uncomfortable tree growth)

outside the back of Beng Mealea Temple, 2 days ago on our looong

day trip to the 2 hour journey away temple.

Today we are, without camera, spending some time on the roof of

the Elephant Terraces Hotel, where Jason discovered a pool to jump into

(at the cost of $5 a day, which of course, white as we are become more like

90 minutes or else we'll be lobster tinted..).

Birgit is laying in the shade uploading videos with just her legs

poking out into the full on sunshine, attempting to colour from very

white to lightly tan. Futile attempt.

Jason is drawing, too when not splashing like a merman (mermaid but male).

Cambodia #6

Yesterday we got up at 5.30am to meet the Tuk-Tuk driver at 6am, just missing sunrise..

After a brief stop at the market to see if stalls were open already for snacks to bring we drove to Beng Mealea, a beautiful ruin of a temple 2 hours drive from Siem Reap. We were looking forward to going very much but on the day got temple fatigue and just weren't quite feeling it. What a decadent lazy attitude! But we did enjoy walking around the grounds, climbing over the wooden walkways constructed to make the ruined temple accessible for view. (Actually the walkway is left-over from a film set of Two Brothers, from 2004.

Without this it would be near impossible to navigate around the site. Thank you Jean-Jacques Annaud.... More information about the site: HERE)

and last but not least back in Siem Reap the next day as Birgit uploads the photos to Jason's blog: a perfect espresso at La Boulangerie Cafe. Happiness in a cup.

Cambodia #5

Yoga Asana on the upper level of Bayon Temple.

We spent most of the day climbing it's steps,

sitting in it's shade, photographing many of it's

amazing carvings, Jason played his Northern Thai

instrument, and we both climbed down, tired and

exhausted after a day's play to quickly take in a second

temple (Baphuen - which was less spectacular but still

a treat for us) before slowly making our way along the

long 'Elephant Terrace' to find out patient tuk-tuk driver.

The Elephant Terrace is a very long wall that was

once intricately carved with - of course- elepahnts.

Most have been badly damaged but some are still

visible but don't show up well on photographs.

A good long day, we are starting to catch some sun.

Cambodia #4

The floating village, not too far from Siem Reap in Cambodia.

below: Jason on the porch of the Community Leader's family home.

Jason caught some fish.

the sorry fish..

another catch of the day, Jason tried but said

he wasn't keen on eating snail. Here cooked in

coconut milk and Lemon grass.. (did you know

that snails are one of Birgit's favourite friendly

animals....?)

our captain asleep in the boat's hammock ..