Ugh. Back in Bangkok. 03.14.2007.

I took an overnight bus to Bangkok from Chiang Mai yesterday and arrived at 5:30 this morning. Waking up after you had a really shitty night of sleep on a bus and then carrying your bags down dark alleys in Bangkok isn't fun. I felt sleepy, my vision was all blurry and I was a little sweaty from sleeping on the bus. I just wanted to lay down somewhere and finish sleeping. On top of that, every 20 feet there's a taxi-driver who bothers you with: 'Hello! Where you going?' Tonight I'll catch another bus south and then a boat for Koh Tao. This is Koh Tao:


My four day trip around the north was great. I mean, I spent 6 days in the Chiang Mai area, but I rented a scooter for the last 4-days and just roamed around on my own. I rented a slightly more powerful scooter the second time around and didn't bother to insure it. That came out to 150 baht per day for the scooter and that was discounted because I was renting it for a longer period of time. I was supposed to meet up with these two Americans I met in a Dunkin' Donuts, Jody and Mike, but we missed each other and I didn't really wait around for them.

I headed north on the 107 and got lunch in Mae Taeng. Most of the places that I ate at in the past 4 days looked exactly the same: a no-frills kitchen on wheels. The street vendors here must all get their gear from the same supplier (no matter how home-made it looks). Picture a counter-top, with one or two big metal pots set into it (the traditional street vendor fare is noodle soup so one of those pots will have soup bubbling). There's always a two-tiered glass case on top of that that holds all the ingredients they use, and you can check if everything looks fresh. If they serve rice dishes, you can expect a rice cooker and a wok to fry up whatever they put on top. I found that most places charge about 20 baht for whatever they're cooking and any more than that is gouging. The food is always delicious and sometimes gives you just a touch of diarrhea.

After Mae Taeng I stopped at a cave in Chiang Dao. Its really a series of caves that extends back into this mountain for kilometers and kilometers. There are fluorescent lights that brighten the path but after maybe 500 meters those end and if you want to continue you need to bring or rent an electric lamp and explore on your own. It was tempting but looked terrifying. Plus, if you fall and get hurt you'd better hope someone can hear you screaming, otherwise you're fucked.

I made it all the way to the town of Fang and spent the night at DJ's Guest House. The place was crawling with geckos (most places are) and I got some shots of them along the outside wall. I wanted to write some emails and update my blog but there were two internet cafes in Fang and they were both online gaming centers only. The Thai kids that were packed into them thought it was quite funny to see me come in by the way. Hillarious.

The next day I started out early (big mistake) for Tha Ton. From there a river runs to Chiang Rai and you can either hike along it or take a boat. Early morning that high in the mountains is FREEZING cold so I stopped and got coffee, waiting for the sun to climb a little higher in the sky. The boat option was out because it left once a day at 12:30pm and that was more than 4 hours away. So I decided to take my scooter along the river and stop at tribal villages along the way. Tribal villages are kind of the draw to that part of Thailand and there are quite a few of them. Some are right along the highway and *very* touristy. These women in traditional dress just sell cheap trinkets and bracelets and crap that have nothing to do with their culture and aren't even made in their villages (they will tell you differently---liars). I bought a bracelet from an Akha woman and later at the Hill Tribes Museum in Chiang Rai a woman told me that all the tribes in the area sell bracelets like this one and it doesn't have any cultural meaning. Lame. The other tribes in the area aren't visited very frequently and are high in the hills where its difficult to get to. These are the tribes I wanted to visit (Shit, I have 4 minutes left at this cafe). So I took my scooter off-road and went searching for tribal people. I found a few villages but was completely at a loss with how to interact with them. They couldn't speak English and I couldn't think of a reason to be in their communities. I wound up riding and trekking for hours, reaching a village, looking around in the main part of town (there wasn't anything) and then just moving on. Most of these tribes smoke copious amounts of opium so part of me wanted to find a cool tribe, fit in, and then be invited to smoke with them. That never happened. I just got a hold of the Americans I was supposed to travel with and they didn't have any luck either.

Oh, I'm out of time. More later

Miss you all