035 On the way to Laos

"So you want take the night train Saturday? So sorry, it already full. No more ticket"

Wandering the backstreets of Bangkok, I walked into one of the hundreds of travel agencies here. At the door, an old man sat behind a rickety desk, his only purpose seemingly to rush to the door and hold it open for anyone who came close enough to the shopfront to be lured in. The walls of the place were lined with yellowed posters of tourist attractions and airline companies. Interestingly enough, all the other employees were women. One lady, her desk to the right, was attending to two Norwegian ladies who were planning a trip to a remote fishing village in the center of Thailand. The other lady, probably the owner of the place, shouted at me from across the room, beckoning me to the office chair in front of her. When I sat down, she kept on shouting at me and at her colleagues. Even though I sat just a meter or two away from her on the other side of her big desk filled with traveling brochures and hotel's business cards, she seemed to think there is a concrete wall between the two of us, and she has to use all her decibels to get her message through. Besides that she didn't appear dangerous, this was just her normal way of talking. I had told her I planned to take the night train to Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand. On Saturday, which was also tomorrow. 

"Everyone want to go to Chiang Mai tomorrow. If you go on Tuesday, maybe I can get you ticket", she yells at me.

"Ow, that's a pity, I really want to go tomorrow"

"You want hiking tour in Chiang Mai? And hotel? The hotel has train tickets"

"Wait, I thought you told me that the tickets were all gone"

"Yes, but the hotel book tickets, only for package. You get hotel, two nights in hotel, three days tracking in hills. You sleep in village, ride elephant!"

I see what is happening here, I am being played. There might still be tickets in the train station. Or there might not be. The train station, however, is far away. That's why I walked in here in the first place. And I need a hostel in Chiang Mai, I want to go trekking there, that's why I am going there anyway. But didn't my guidebook warn me not to buy a package in in Bangkok? Ow well, it can't hurt to hear what she offers me, I can always just say no at the end.

She continues to tell me about the nice hotel, the well organized trekking in the hill country, the bamboo rafting I would get to do, and the omnipresent elephant ride, which seems to be obligatorily included in every package I have seen advertised before and after this. Barraged by her sales pitch which she trows at me with turbojet power, slowly my determination starts to crumble, my Jericho wall of firm resolution brought down by her sales trumpets. And the price seems alright. I get the train ride in a second class sleeper, a night in a single bedroom in a hotel with swimming pool, a trek in the hills including the elephant ride, the rafting and all the meals, and another night in the hotel when we come back, for a grand total of 80 euros. After doing some quick mental arithmetic I decide that that's not so bad, and it saves me arranging all these things separately. Of course the agency is making money on this, but it can't be a whole lot, if they actually deliver.

And they did, I was lucky, they turned out to be dependable. Normally I never book these packages, because it is also a lot of fun to arrange things on the spot, but for now it was fine. The train ride, albeit air-co chilled to sub Arctic temperatures, was the best one up to now. The hotel was ok (they did have a swimming pool, but in the end I didn't take the time to swim in it). The walk was fantastic. The guides took us into a remote hill forest area. During the days, we hiked over small paths through dense jungle and across and through small streams, far away from civilization. During the nights we slept in small bamboo huts near villages without electricity. One night we stayed in huts right next to a waterfall, at the base of which we swam after the walk. The last day contained the elephants and rafts, as advertised. It was fun to sit on an elephant. In these parts the kings and maharajas used to ride elephants during parades and festivities. It must have looked majestic, but now I am sure it can't have been very comfortable. Nearly getting seasick on this ship of the jungle, we had to hold on tight when going downhill. The animals minders, however, seem not to mind. These Mahouts sit on the head of their big animal without anything to support them but experience.

After a a nice and quiet day in nearby Chiang Rai, I am getting really close to the Laos border now, and running out of Thailand. After one last Thai Noodle Soup in a sleepy border town, I take the ferry across the Mekong river, and book a hotel for the night, and the near-legendary slow boat for the next day. This boat takes me in two days to Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos. We report at 9:00 o'clock the next morning at the pier from which the aptly named slow boat is supposed to depart at 9:30 but sits in the gently flowing river until 12:15. The rest of the day we (that is me and the other 74 passengers of this boat, plus the 75 in the second boat just ahead of us) float downstream. Walking would have been faster, but is more relaxing. In between getting acquainted with the fellow boatpeople, reading a bit, looking at the gorgeous landscape and taking an afternoon nap, the seven hours on the boat don't seem all that long. After disembarking in Pak Beng, the town in the middle, where the only thing that happens every day is the arrival of one or two boats packed with tourists, the scramble for rooms takes off. After a frantic game of Musical Chairs, some people end up sleeping on mattresses in guesthouse lobbies. I manage to secure a dingy dark room with a bathroom that I have to share with more than the other guests, but hey, it's only for one night.

Somewhere during the second day on this slow slow boat, you start realizing that one day would have been enough to practice sitting down and doing nothing. An then you arrive in Luang Prabang, a UNESCO protected beauty hemmed in by two rivers and filled with French colonial buildings which have decided unanimously to become guesthouses. A nice place to spend a few days.

034 Same Same but Different

Suddenly I feel almost normal again. Gone are the curious stares. Gone are the questions that I was almost getting used to getting. Suddenly, I can sit in a bus without anyone taking more than a superficial look at me. The streets have more or less functioning side walks, and although they are still filled to the brim with traffic, the air is a little better. I have left Sri Lanka and India behind, I am in Thailand now.

What a difference! The food. Oh, the food! I like rice and curry, but after nearly two months of it, the Thai street food is a godsend. The afternoon I arrived in the city, my Couch Surf host takes me out to eat on the street near his house. We cross the pedestrian bridge over the six lane arterial road, and walk towards the big Tesco Lotus supermarket complex. The streets are lined with food stalls. Unlike the other places I've been to, these actually all sell different things to eat. We try noodles with duck, noodle soup with some undefined dumplings and some kind of rolled noodle-fish-vegetable contraption that looks a lot like sushi. It all costs next to nothing and tastes delicious. Admittedly, because of the copious amounts of fatty pork and poultry in most dishes, it's not all very healthy. Neither is Thailand the easiest country for vegetarians, but hey, I'm an omnivore, so that's okay.

Walking around Bangkok (and driving around in all the cool types of public transport: Sky trains, motor taxi's; pick-up trucks, metro's) it strikes me that this city somehow makes me feel of being in Japan or Korea, a little bit. A lady on the super chilled sky train wearing a face mask as if she just stepped out of the operating room; kids wearing black and white school uniforms; shops selling seaweed snacks; a twenty-year-old girl, her straight black hair in a ponytail and wearing a short skirt, somehow looking very Hello-Kitty like.
But of course, this isn't Japan just yet, and we are still smack in the middle of South East Asia. It's affordable, with lots of small markets selling everything imaginable and then some more. Traffic is crazy, although the decreasing craziness trend I noticed going from India to Sri Lanka seems to hold. The more touristy parts of the city are full of tourists (no surprise there), but Bangkok is a city with many layers. Step away from the central temples, down two or three streets, and if you didn't know better, you could think you were in a much smaller provincial town somewhere, with quieter streets, local shops and people chatting with their neighbours.

The public transport boat departs from the pier next to the sky train station. A old lady is feeding bread to the fish, the water teeming with fins and tails, all of them struggling to get to the food. On land, some ticket sellers look sad that I opt, not for the tourist boat tickets, but for the normal public boat. The riversides are a diverse spectacle, with huge white hotel high rises vying for space with government buildings. Here and there a patch of small houses, precariousy balancing over the water, have somehow withstood relentless pressure, capitalism not yet succeeding in usurping this valuable land.
And temples. To your left, the towering spires of the Temple of Dawn. To your right, countless more Buddhist temple roofs in the vast Phra Kaeo complex and the neighbouring compound where one of the worlds biggest reclining Buddha's is having a lay down.

One of the other layers of the city is that most people come here to have a good time, and that every one does this in his own way. I went for a drink with my host and a friend of his, on Khoa San Road, Backpacker Central. We ended up with the omnipresent bucket, a Thai institution with unknown quantities of unidentified alcohol. The only thing I had to do the next day was catch the night train to the north, and luckily nighttrains don't tend to leave early in the morning.

033 creepy and cute creatures

It is eight o'clock in the morning, the 29th of December 2011. I am close to Mirissa Beach, Sri Lanka. To be more precise, I am walking on a shortcut from the guest house I just checked out of towards to main road, where a bus will hopefully take me to the next beach town. The dirt road runs along the back of some overgrown gardens next to a small waterway. Most people in this sleepy village are still asleep, the path is empty, a lone rooster calls out this mornings unheeded wake up call. I hear something up ahead, and lift my head to have a look.For a moment I think I might still be sleeping myself as well. Did I just see a huge green dinosaur crawl across the path? Can't be. I look again. it's gone. I walk down the path a bit, trying to remember hearing any warnings for man eating alligators in this area. Not that I can recall. I look to where the creature disappeared into the undergrowth, and there it is. Not an alligator. But an humongous lizard. Easily two meters head to tail. It sees me looking at it, but in stead of scurrying away as any sensible, smaller reptile would, it cranes its neck and stares back at me, its tick green tongue slipping out of its beak, tentatively tasting the morning air. Good morning Mr. Lizard! Later I am told that the Water Monitor Lizard (Varanus Salvator) is known for eating dogs, but usually not humans except for when they are small.

The beaches here are the stuff of the Bounty commercials; white sand, palms, little huts to eat and sleep, the works. Well, maybe there are a few too many huts and there are a few too many actors about, so the term unspoiled paradise doesn't quite apply. I move to Unawatuna beach to meet the Scots again that I ran into in the mountains earlier. But before I meet them again, I have to find a place to stay in this currently overcrowded place. Half of Colombo and all the islands tourists came down to the Southern beaches to celebrate New Years Eve, so this isn't going to be easy. The first place I go to ask is fully booked. So are number two to five. Hotel number six has one room available. There is a good reason for that, they ask extortionist prices. The seventh place has no rooms either, and tells me it'll be virtually impossible to find an affordable place. I'm getting desperate, so I ask him if he doesn't have some spare room somewhere in his hotel. I travel with an inflatable mattress and sleeping bag, so I can camp down anywhere. Luckily my fear-fueled-boldness pays off, and he shows me a storage room with a bed in it. Looks good to me, its clean, I can use the downstairs' bathroom, and the rest of the hotel, including a nice restaurant and a quiet garden, are top notch. For about 6 euro's a night I am the proud renter of probably the cheapest room on the beach, even if it has the size of a cupboard.

The Scottish guys teach English in a government school in this town, and know their way around. They show me their favorite hangout, including a much quieter beach. They are also invited to a private New Years Eve party by a British lady who runs a charity here, and who owns a villa on the beach. The invitation includes me as well. the party is a blast. An eight-headed band plays traditional Sri Lankan music, and after 12 there is a DJ. This is definitively the most idyllic spot to celebrate NYE, with the rolling waves on the background.

After the new year has started, it is time for me to leave this green island. I spend two days in Colombo, the capital. The city itself is not very exciting. It is, however, my first couch surf experience here, and I stay with a very relaxed dude from New Zealand who is here to teach in a design school.
The park in the center of town is nice, because the big trees house the biggest fruit bats I have ever seen, sleeping upside down. They are shrieking at each other, and every now and then, one flies up, makes a circle above the foliage, and hangs himself down in another tree. Whenever one flies over, Batman's silhouette stands out in deep black against the spotless blue sky.

032 driving a scooter, reflections on people, birds

The train brought me, after some delays, to Ella, a village in the hills. It is a predominantly Buddhist place, and Buddhists don't do Christmas. So the only indication that it's that time of the year again in the sad little tree on the veranda of one of the bigger hotels, and the Christmas cakes sold by the local bakery. 

Here, as in most other places I see in Sri Lanka, the tourist industry is well developed, making me feel more like the unmistakable tourist I am. Because I visit mainly small towns, and couch surfing is not popular outside of the capital, I don't meet many locals. It is harder to meet 'normal' people. Almost everywhere I go, I only meet people working in the service industry, and they see you as a source of income, which makes the contact less real. This leaves me feeling like I am walking about in a fascinating historical museum where all the signs and descriptions have been removed. It all looks very nice, but I am missing context and explanation.

But walk a bit outside the main streets and a way from the guesthouses and western eateries, and you will meet the real locals. One of the walks I did went along the railroad's single track through the jungle. The tracks are also used by locals to get to their houses, gardens and schools.Walking here, I met such nice people who just want to have a talk, ask you where you are going and where you are from. They thank you after you make a picture of them and show it to them. Sadly, it is hard to communicate with people. Most people I meet speak a few words of English, but not more than that. 

I decide to rent a scooter. I have never driven a motorized two wheeler before, but its easy. Automatic gears, feet firmly in the middle, accelerate with the right, brake with both hands. At the tiny grocery store next door I buy a wine bottle filled with petrol, a piece of newspaper rolled up in stead of a cork. I set off on a small mountain road up into the tea plantations. Almost no traffic and wide open views. After I get the hang of it, I roll up and down the hills, deftly avoiding the numerous potholes and overtaking the occasional bus. This is one of the best things I have don in Sri Lanka! Never going faster than 50 kilometer per hour on the few straight stretches, I nevertheless feel the wind tugging at my shirt, adrenaline rushing through my feigns whenever a car comes towards me around the next bend. On the downward stretches I release the accelerator, and with the engine cutting back to almost zero and gravity my only propulsion, I slowly and quietly roll down the road, taking in the waterfalls and the vistas.

I am stopped twice by policemen at check posts, but both times they only want to know where I am from and where I am going. Never do they want to see my papers, which is good because I only have my Dutch (car) drivers license with me, and the rental guys seemed just a tad too sure that that should be enough, for a foreigner.

Leaving Ella, our rickety full bus drives south, from the mountains to the beaches. I couldn't get a seat, but I managed to secure a bit of space on top of the engine housing, sitting cross legged, right next to the driver. This gives me a panorama view of the surroundings. Once we come down from the hills, the roads are in really good shape. I notice that the bus drivers here are just little less certifiable insane than their Indian counterparts. My driver even keeps distance from other cars when he overtakes them. 

We drive through a wetland nature reserve, stopping to let a group of water buffaloes cross the road, followed by a small boy with a stick urging them on. Some of the huge black animals, now wading up to their legs through the water plants on the other side of the road, are gracefully ridden by delicate white birds. They look so otherworldly clean and sparkling white in this muddy terrain, they must go into the dishwasher every night at dusk.

031 Green Green Paradise

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A completely uninformed traveler with a lack of historical, cultural and religious insight, like yours truly, might be forgiven for thinking that Sri Lanke is a more compact, greener and cleaner version of India. Portuguese and Dutch colonizers left clear marks on the seemingly endless shores, with fortresses dotting the coastline. The highlands, never truly subjected to these earlier alien powers, carry a more British feel to them. They brought tea plantations to the highlands, and sew the seed for the friction between the Southern Sinhalese and the Northern Tamil peoples, resulting in the civil war that was ended by the Sri Lankan army a few years back by crushing the Tamil terrorists/freedom fighters (please circle the option of your preference).

Covered in light green forest and deep green tea plantations, the hill region in the centre of the island also carries a Scottish stamp, with plantations named after Edinburgh and Inverness.  Mr. Lipton was also a Scot, who started up his tea business here. Interestingly enough, I also met some real-live Scots; first on the beach in Negombo two Scottish guys who had just returned from a scooter tour all around the country; later four volunteers who teach English (Scottish!) in a government school on the south coast (I met them during their Christmas holiday in the mountains).

I spent my first day in Negombo, a beach town with an astonishing amount of elderly European tourists (more white people in one day than I'd seen in a month in India). The town has few attractions to offer, except for the fact that it really close to the airport. It was also a good place to get my bearings. I was poorly prepared for my Sri Lankan leg of the trip. This being the only place for which I had not brought a travel guide; this left me feeling, in a peculiar way, lost. So the program for the first day was: getting a guidebook and deciding where to go. I only have two weeks here, including Christmas and New Years Eve, so it was obvious that I would only get to see half of it.

I first went to Kandy, the capital of the hill country, and the country's second biggest city. It got me on my way to the mountains, but as a destination, Kandy severely underwhelmed me. Noisy, dirty and not very pretty, I left the town after one night in a crappy guesthouse. The only thing making this stop worthwhile was my visit to the Shrine of the Holy tooth Relic, this Buddhist country's most sacred place, allegedly housing a tooth of the Buddha himself. It is believed that whoever holds this relic holds power over the island. Set in a huge complex, pilgrims and tourists shuffle by an open door granting a view on a golden shrine that houses the tooth.

After Kandy, I moved on to Nuwara Eliya, a small town higher up in the mountains. On the bus here, I met the second batch of Scotsmen (and women), with whom I spend a lazy day in this cold and rainy village set among beautiful hills. With the cold and climate, walking down the hill from the pleasant guesthouse towards the village, hearing their nice accent, a light drizzle descending on us, I could have sworn I was in the Scottish highlands in stead of the Sri Lankan ones.

When I write this down in my travel notebook, one day before Christmas, I am riding a train towards another mountain village. The ancient train, with only third class carriages and stopping at every tiny group of cottages along the way, is a riding party. At the back of my carriage, a group of girls is singing and clapping their way through the mountains with an impromptu Christmas concert; kids all over the train joining in. Passengers share food, and insist that foreign tourists sit down on the few available wooden benches. Locals tell the tourists to make pictures of their children and the absolutely stunning landscape slowly tumbling by (they do). Each time we go into a tunnel, all the kids in the train scream and yell like they are in a rollercoaster. On this four hour trip, we go through 23 tunnels, my ears are still recovering. Currently we are standing still at a tiny station named Pattipola. If they train is broken; we are waiting for another train; or if the driver is just taking an extended brake, nobody knows.