I spent the final 2 weeks of my trip in the ninth country, Thailand. We headed up over the border on the south eastern corner and onwards to Hat Yai. We weren’t really sure once we made it past the border where we’d end up that evening. Having eventually decided on a train out of the border town we were flagged down leaving the station for a bus to Phuket. We ended up arriving at like 1am and were bundled into a hotel by the minibus driver which I’m sure he made handsome commission from.
We spent a few days wandering around the Patong area of Phuket. It didn’t really impress so much. This is one of the many areas known for being particularly seedy and people constantly hassle you to go to places of such a kind. Not that that is the only thing they hassle you for. It’s pretty much impossible to walk a block or two without being called out if you want a massage or a taxi. On our final day we took a day trip to Koh Phi Phi. This is a series of islands of the coast which are pretty beautiful. Unfortunately the trip didn’t really do the location justice, and you found yourself just being pushed into certain areas and to spend money there. The town on Koh Phi Phi looked pretty cool and laid back mind, but we only had an hour or so there before we headed back to the mainland.
We ended up heading to the islands of Koh Phangan on the opposite side of the Thai peninsular. The Full Moon Party was on the following day and was the only reason we were heading here really. It took a full day of travelling to make it what was only about 400km in the end, transportation is generally really slow in Asia. In Koh Phangan, Rob and I pretty much ended up doing nothing. Both had little motivation and the places we were staying were very much hotel like and lacking the social atmosphere of hostels. We both went to the Full Moon Party but only wandered around for a few hours taking in the atmosphere before calling it a night. We really weren’t interested in it in truth, and neither of us felt like drinking, we were both feeling a bit under the weather.
We left Koh Phangan a few days later and it took a full 27 hours of travelling to get upto Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. Firstly a few hours on a ferry back to the mainland, followed by a bus taking a couple of hours to the train station, then a 12 hour overnight train to Bangkok, followed by a flight upto Chiang Mai. I managed to get some decent kip on the train but Rob really struggled and was feeling pretty rough the next morning from it all.
Chiang Mai was undoubtedly my favourite place in Thailand. The place was a lot less in your face touristy than other places and a bit more chilled out. The hostel undoubtedly helped, they put on a group event in the hostel each evening which gets you talking to more people than usual, that and they had a pretty huge choice of films to watch too! The first evening we headed out to a BBQ, it turned out to be a huge gazebo which had space for a few hundred people with a huge range of food cooked and uncooked. Each table had its own little BBQ so you could cook the meats yourself too. It was pretty cool even if I didn’t really make full use of the all you can eat deal it was.
We had two full days and spent the first one heading around the city. We hired a Tuk-Tuk driver for an hour or so and he took us to a lot of Temples. They are pretty cool, but there are loads here, and once you’ve been in one there isn’t much of a need to see so many more! We then wandered around various areas, markets and malls. Without finding anything particularly spectacular. That evening we went to the night markets with a bunch of people from the hostel. They turned out to be the same markets that we’d seen during the day. After a while wandering around we headed to a bar and stayed there for a while. I managed to get the Grand Prix on! Then one of the chaps, Fabian, knew of a place with live music and a band he saw the other day was playing. He wanted to go, so we all followed. It was pretty cool in truth. First there was one chap playing acoustic guitar. Then rather bizarrely one chap from our group, Patrick, decided to join in with the guy and found some small drums and started adding his own background beat! Then Fabian was also dragged up on stage to play a song on guitar! The second act was a full band and had a pretty cool sound. Playing various covers with a lot of conviction it was very much enjoyed! It was slightly amusing to see a few of our group just not appreciate the music and ambience of the place at all. They wanted to head off somewhere else quite desperately – that’s how I feel at most night clubs!
We spent our last day in Chiang Mai just out of the town. We headed out to a Tiger ‘Sanctuary’. Here they have tamed or drugged the tigers so that you can sit next to them and they don’t mind! There was a big blurb in the hostel about how they’re not drugged. That they’re just raised really tame and really well fed before anyone goes near them. I don’t really know enough about Tigers to know which is more likely. Anyway I’ll tell you one thing no matter how tame they are, putting your head on their belly sets so many millions of alarm bells off in your head it’s untrue! Every instinct is just saying get yourself out of there! We got to go in the area with one size of Tiger and then could look at the others from outside their cages. We headed upto an Elephant Sanctuary next where we got there just in time for a show. They had the elephants playing football, basketball and even painting! It was quite impressive. We went for a short half hour Elephant ride after this which turned out to be something I wouldn’t bother doing again really. That ended up being it really, there was a few other things in the area we could have seen, but we both feeling a bit tired, so we headed back to the hostel. I ended up just chilling watching a bunch of movies for the rest of the evening.
Our last move day was the easiest I’ve had in a while, just a simple 1 hour flight back to Bangkok. The hostel in BK was rather clean but really very soulless and we didn’t meet anyone here. For the last few days of my trip I’ve been rather blasé about it all, with little motivation to do much. You end up doing the same things in all the cities you goto, see the various touristy monuments/palaces/temples/museums, see the odd bar etc, after 7 months it’s all got a little repetitive. For what it’s worth we checked out a bunch of temples on one day and also went in a museum dedicated to the Monarchy of Thailand. Speaking of which they’re a bit stricter with what people say about the Thai king than we are with our royals. For instance the National Anthem is played at 6pm every day in public places and people are expected to stop and stand. Same before a movie starts in the cinema! Also we couldn’t go and look around the palace because we didn’t have long sleeves and trousers on. They don’t even let you rent a gown, it’s suicide to where jeans in the humidity of Bangkok!
We got out of the city on the penultimate day and headed upto the old capital of Thailand – Ayutthaya. Here you have remains of the old capital from the mid 1700s and earlier mingled in with the new modern city. Once again we quickly got the ‘it’s just another ruin/temple’ feeling with many of them looking very similar, and the amount of information on the places you are seeing very limited. The places all seemed a bit spread out, but we had a taxi driver take us to a bunch of places all day although I’m pretty sure at 700 baht (£14) we were paying through the roof – but we saved by only taking a 15 baht 2 hour train to the place and a 50 baht 1.5 hour bus back, costing about £1.30 in total! The ruins made for some really nice pictures though and the weather and air here was a lot more pleasant than in the centre of Bangkok, noticeably cleaner and less humid just there wasn’t much variation in the ruins and it was kinda comparable to going round 6 or 7 castles in a few hours!
My last day was a bit of a lazy one. I tried to do some shopping, but I found myself not really bothered. Regardless of stuff is much cheaper here than home or not. The only thing I really wanted was shoes and sandals, but they don’t do my size in Asia! After checking out some of the non descript up market malls we headed down to Koh San Road and wandered around the markets there for a bit. They weren’t as good as the ones in Kuala Lumpur, but I managed to find a new wallet at least. In the end we got tired of walking around and just killed the last few hours at a bar before Rob had to go his own way. He was taking the night train to Laos that evening. Even though I knew I was going home in just an hour or two it was impossible to comprehend how it would feel.
Getting to the airport took an hour trip on the train, where I made use of the facilities to get changed in preparation for English weather! The airport was quite impressive, clean and very new. Disappointingly it only had really expensive shops in duty free. It was even quite hard to just find some Thai Whisky to use up my duty free quota! The 12 hour flight was pretty easy and I was able to get some good sleep. Then I was back in the UK. My Dad and Brother met me at Heathrow and then we drove back upto Manchester, and with in an hour or so it felt like I hadn’t been away with things seemingly the same and very familiar.
The past 7 months are suddenly just a memory and that’s quite an empty feeling really. Not that I would have chosen to stay away longer. The last month of my trip I was very tired and ready for home. In my time I only stayed in 3 places for longer than about 4 nights and that really drains you, especially with the effort needed to talk and get to know new people all the time, going through the same conversations a lot. That said I did of course see a lot of amazing places and met a lot of great people. And well thank you to all of you who made the last 7 months what they were! I’m sure it won’t be long till I’m off somewhere else but I think I’d be unlikely to go for such a long trip unless I was going to spend a long period of time in one place.
