As you might already know, I have decided to travel the world for a couple of months and see what is out there.



You can read the first two weeks of my thailand experience (including pictures) if you scroll down this blog a little bit. I will continue the trip report from where I left off when Matt and Jordan had just left us to go back home after their 3 months of travels of thailand.

After sitting and relaxing on the beaches of Railay and getting our PADI open water diver certification we flew up north to Chiang mai, some days we did alot, some not at all but here is most of what we have done in thailand.

Week 3
Flew from Phuket to Chiang Mai, the pickup at the hotel was very very late and we barely made our plane, after arriving at Chiang Mai we hit up a smoothie place we would frequent alot more in the next couple of days (because it was really good even though it was fairly expensive for thailand prices).

We found accomedation at the VS guesthouse which was really cheap (about $3 per person per night) and went to the airport mall where we played some videogames. They had a guitar-hero version where you had to play with your hands, which was fun but alot harder then on a play-guitar .

We went to see the movie Greenzone, but none of us liked it and I actually fell asleep during the movie.


The next day we changed hotels and stayed at the Eurana Boutique Hotel, which was a little bit more expensive but also very luxurious and had a swimming pool where some very interesting stuff went down later in this trip.

At the checking of the Eurana Boutique hotel they asked for our passports and this is where Vince couldn't find his and remembered that he forgot it on the plane to Chiang Mai... I like vince alot, but he might be one of the clumbsiest persons I know .

So while he went to the airport to see if they had his passport at lost and found, me and steve went to book some of the trips for the next few days. There was advertisement for the 'Gibbon Experience' which was supposedly the number 1 attraction in thailand and well recomended. So we decided to book that for the next day.

It turned out to be pretty lame, there was so much security involved and it was just ziplining down some trees... and the 'abseiling' was just being lowered down...

We convinced them that we could easily go all 3 together:


It was also on this trip where we met 3 german girls (who were in a different group), Steve really liked one of the three girls but before he had a chance to get more info we had to leave... And since Steve loves to idolize the girls that he meets he couldn't stop talking about here. Me and Vince were messing with him alot saying that we saw her walking at the end of the street which resulted in steve running after tuk-tuks (open taxis) and running to other blond girls which gave us lots of laughs

Then strangely enough the next night Vince said again: I think I saw her... and he was serious.. so steve went on another one of his dashes toward the girls and it was actually them!


So steve was obviously all happy, one of the best parts of the night was when we walked home and me and Vince were messing with Steve again because he forgot her name and we refused to tell him.
So he sat on the ground for about 10-15 mins and wouldn't go until he remembered her name (or we told him).


Unfortunately for Steve we had already planned the next part of our trip and had to leave the next morning to go on a jungle-safari for 3 days.

The Jungle-trek:
We had a group of 5 people (me, Steve, Vince, George, Justine) doing the 3-day trek. With on the 2nd and 3rd day a guide called Louie

It started off with 'elephant-riding'. Which was basically sitting on an elephant and riding a little circle through the woods/water:


After that we walked to a waterfall and relaxed there for about an hour, sunbathing and swimming in the fairly strong streams from the waterfall. After about an hour of walking we came to a pit-stop where you could buy water/softdrinks and where they were using sling-shots to shoot empty bottles.

Me and Vince obviously had a competition and I won because Vince injured himself and shooting himself in the hand drawing some blood. (yes, this is why I call vince clumbsy also).

Then after more walking we arrived at the first night camp, which was located below a small village with about 15 houses. We spend the night drinking and one of the locals/part tour guide trying to seduce Justine. Which was just hilarious


On the 2nd day randomly a dog from the village decided to follow us all the way to the next camp where he ended up relaxing in the campfire...


During this second day we walked through rice-fields, small villages and woods enjoying the wilderness. At the second camp there was again a small waterfall and a place to swim and to relax in some hammocks.

At night we build a campfire and the tourguide went out to catch about 10 frogs which we roasted and ate...


On the 3rd and final day before leaving they gave me a chance to practice my gun-shooting abilities and luckily I didn't dissapoint and managed to hit the target.


This was our entire group with from left to right:
two people 'living' at our second camp, then George, me, Justine, Steve, Vince and Louie.


On the final day we had some more interesting parts where we had to cross and ended with bamboorafting for an hour down a river.



The bamboorafting was pretty cool, because there were alot of local people down at the river just having fun and spending their day and doing what they do every day.

To celibrate us surviving the thai jungle at night we went out to get a little tipsy. Had to take a picture with my Chang-shirt, Chang-Tower and our Chang-girl who would pour more beer into your mug as soon as it looked a little empty.


Then later that night we went to a bar where we ended up playing lots of games, including Jenga, where we managed to get this sick tower:


Pai

After waking up around 2-3 the next day and doing nothing but hanging at the pool, going to the nightmarket and basically relaxing we planned to go to the small mountaintown called Pai (small = population 5000). George decided to travel with us for a couple of days because he also wanted to go to Pai.

We rented scooters while being in pai:


The next day we went to some hot-springs and the temperature was to hot at the source obviously but a little downstream it was fairly nice bathing temperature.


The rest of the day we spend cruising the roads and managed to get the bikes up to 100 km/h.


We went out to the bars at night but it was clear that the busy season was over since most of the bars where pretty much empty. However George did find a girl to fall in love with and that meant we parted ways when we moved on to our next location.

Last days in thailand
We were in thailand for a total of 34 days, while our visa was only for 30 days, so we had to do a visa/border-run and decided to do that in Laos while going to the north-east of thailand to explore there.

We took a minivan ride during the night to the city of Nong Khai... turns out that the ride was pretty harsh and we didn't sleep much. And the visarun that said to be included wasn't actually included so we had to do that ourself the next day. This whole experience made us all hate imcompetente people/drivers so so much more!

When we arrived in the morning at 06:00 we went to a hotel called the Pantawee Hotel, which was pretty decent (it was supposedly the best hotel in town) and after taking a morning nap we went to Laos to get our visas extended. There were alot more imcompetent people at the border who were unable to tell us what we needed and what not (and it was not because they lacked english, it seemed that they just lacked general competence and barely knew what you had to do to get your visa extended...)

After that me and Steve went to a big statue-park.



It was pretty impresive, and it was actually pretty big all together... and everything was so cheap here.. icecream was for example only $0.10 cent per scoop (and was actually good icecream).

Then at night we went to a place where they spoke no english (in this part of thailand most people barely spoke any english). So we just pointed at pictures but it was a weird kindof bbq restaurant so it took us a while to figure out how to properly eat


It turned out that it was unlimited eating for only $2,50 per person, which was just again insanely cheap if you see what types of meat/shrimps/etc you got for all of that.

The next morning we took the 11-hour trainride back to bangkok where we stayed in a fairly nice hotel with swimming pool again (once we started getting hotels with swimmingpools it was hard to go to places with out it, especially in the thailand heat..)

We went to see the movie


I found the moive pretty dissapointing overall and don't really recommend it.
The funny thing about going to the movies in thailand is that before the movie starts they always play the national song and everyone has to stand up for the king while the song (about 1-2 mins) is being played. Pretty weird because I can not imagine people doing this ever in the Netherlands. I guess this is just another example of how much 'power' the king has in thailand.

We relaxed a day in bangkok and bought some clothes for Japan because we had no clothes at all for colder weather and it turned out that Japan was alot colder then we thought it was going to be.

So we said our goodbyes to Vince:


And went to the airport. We had a stoppover at Beijing but our flight was delayed so we missed our next one and had to crash at the airport lounge for about 8 hours.



All in All was Thailand a very fun vacation/travel land with alot of different options (beaches/mountains/cities) and I can see why people are so enthousiastic about it. With a bonus that everything is alot cheaper then anywhere else I have been sofar.

Tomorrow or the day after I will start with the first days in Japan/Tokyo!

Robin out