Darren's blog

Up early to go elephant trekking. We eat our breakfast whilst walking to the pickup point. We jump in the pickup and chat to another guy called Darren from Dublin. At the elephant centre we all fall in love with the elephants that are there. We feed them some bananas and get ready to go.

Abby and I are on our own elephant, called, Pom Pen. After climbing up her leg and onto her back we are ready to go. We are riding bareback, so that we can go swimming with the elephant at the end of the day, which means we get sore bottoms pretty quickly. It's an interesting way of riding on the elephant and great fun.

We head up into the forest area. It's not so easy to stay on the elephant when going up steep hills, and even harder when coming down steep sections. We both feel like we are going to fall off more than once. Our elephant guides are funny guys, and they use various noises and techniques to keep the elephants moving when they decide to stop, try to find food or start heading for pools of water.

Once we have descended from the forest we head over to the river. The elephants pick up their pace the closer we get to the river. Once in the river the elephants take great joy in throwing us from them into the water.

We wash the animals and take turns being bucked from the larger elephants back.

We climb back on and head back to the elephant centre where we sit in their hot tubs, which are fed from a local hot spring.

This has been a wonderful experience, something we will not forget in a long time.

We ask the pickup driver to drop us off at the swimming pool. We arrange to meet Darren tomorrow night. We spend the day at the swimming pool relaxing with drinks and good music.

After breakfast we take a walk around town. It's a small town and it doesn't take us long to make a lap.

We decide to take a look at the swimming pool, so we find out where it is and take a walk out of the village. The pool is actually really good. A nice little place with grassy areas, cool music and a bar. We enjoy lounging around and getting wet. It rains quite heavily whilst we are there, which just adds to the fun.

We make out way back to town in the afternoon and book an elephant trekking trip for tomorrow, which we are really looking forward too.

We pack our things and have breakfast whilst waiting for the mini-bus to Pai. We are sad to leave The Britannia guesthouse. We get in the mini-bus, collect other people around Chiang Mai and head off towards Pai.

At first the roads are smooth, but as we get close to Pai the roads turn steep and twisty. We stop for a break and chat to the Israeli people and Dutch girl we bumped into at Bangkok train station. We continue towards Pai and the roads get worse. Abs and I are both feeling a bit travel sick. One of the Israeli girls has to stop the bus to be sick.

We get to Pai and find the guesthouse we have booked is just around the corner. We walk there and settle into our nice Bungalow. We have a drink overlooking the river.

Pai is a nice town, but much more developed than I was expecting. I had envisaged something more traditional, like the places we stayed in Laos. Instead the town has lots of tourist facilities and even a 7-Eleven store. Oh well, the place is nice and tranquil.

After changing guesthouses we take a long walk through the city of Chiang Mai. We stop at several of the Wats and leave contributions for the monks.

We see a lot of interesting things, such as schools and people working. A lot of friendly people give us advice, about where to go, and where to find good shopping. People here are really friendly.

In the evening we head over to the market, which is cheap, but doesn't have much for us. Then we continue to the night bazaar, which although tourist orientated, has plenty of things for us to buy, and we have a great time.

We wake up on the train and call a guesthouse to collect us from the train station, which they do. They guesthouse is OK, but not as good as we had hoped. They have a swimming pool though, which is what we were after. We decide to take a good look around town and try and find somewhere better to stay. We walk miles checking out lots of places with pools, but none are very good. We get back to our guesthouse a bit disheartened. After dinner we try a guesthouse across the road called the Britannia, which is great. So we pay a deposit for tomorrow night.

We head off towards the palace and monuments today but a chap tells us that we need to properly dressed to visit these sites. We decide to just chill out for the rest of the day, as we are catching the overnight train tonight to Chiang Mai.

We relax in a nice local park for a while and kill some time walking around.

We have some dinner and collect out bags from the hotel. We eventually find a taxi who'll use the meter and head to the train station. We find our train and settle in for the night ride to Chiang Mai. The train is comfortable and the staff are nice.

After breakfast we buy tickets for tomorrow nights overnight train to Chiang Mai. We head over to the river to walk to the forensic museum, which has been recommended by friends. The two sketchy maps we have are difficult to follow, and after crossing the river by bridge we ask a tuk-tuk driver for directions. We doesn't speak English, but a chap we had spoken too before tries to help. They don't seem to know the museum, but do seem to know the hospital that the museum is part of. We agree a price and head off in the right direction. Soon though we are going the wrong way. I realise that we are going the wrong way and ask the driver to stop. We can't communicate the problem, he is obviously heading to a different hospital. We ask him to head back to the hotel, but he calls over another Thai man.

The man is really helpful and after chatting for a minute he says he will drop us at the hotel as he is going that way. We accept his offer and pay the tuk-tuk driver. We get into his nice car and chat whilst he drives. He is a book manufacturer and he shows us some of his books. He is a really nice guy and we chat a lot. He calls his girlfriend and I try to chat whilst he drives, but the line is bad and she is difficult to understand. He gives us a lovely address book, which ironically was designed by a girl in Oxford, England, but is published by him in Thailand.

We effortlessly get us to the hospital, pointing out a political demonstration on the way. We doesn't just drop us nearby, but drives inside the busy grounds, asks the guards and delivers us as close as he can. Situations like this prove how something that can good bad (the tuk-tuk ride) can have such a nice ending. We thank him very much, and he does us. We exchange bows and I take his photo.

We enjoy the museum, but it's fairly gruesome. Preserved infants and photos of serious accidents are a bit hard to stomach. Some of the displays are interesting, especially that of the Tsunami and malaria.

We leave and grab a taxi back to the hotel.

Up early and we pack for the bus to Bangkok. I have read many horror stories of this journey. Apparently an airline has been paying a Cambodian official to stall the modernisation of the road to the Thai border. So the road remains unsealed and slow.

Our guesthouse tuk-tuk drops us to the bus at 08:15. The bus is packed, and everyone's luggage is in the isle running down the bus, as there is no proper luggage storage. We jump in and find seats; at least they haven't over sold the tickets.

We get going and we find the road isn't actually too bad. It's a bit bumpy in places, but is nowhere near as bad as the roads in Nepal or India. In fact the worst bits are where the bus makes a detour around the works where bridges are being constructed.

We stop several times on the trip, maybe a bit too much. We get to the border and we make it easily, albeit fairly slowly, out of Cambodia and into Thailand. This is our last land border crossing, and our last country of the trip.

Through customs we find our bus company and wait just over an hour with drinks and sandwiches. It's quite pleasant to be in Thailand, sitting in the shade. The time goes really quickly. We notice a young Thai boy, about 10 years old, collecting plastic bottles and cans. We give him ours, and notice he has ink on his face. He is a funny lad who catches my attention. We watch him interact with a few people, and it seems he may have some learning difficulties. I notice the staff from the bus company looking out for him. I them realise that he looks quite similar to my nephew at home. This makes me feel very sad. I have seen so much poverty on this trip, from Nepal, India, Indonesia and Cambodia, but I haven't found it so difficult to deal with. Yet today, when a young lad reminds me of my own nephew, I feel very affected. We watch the lad and see that many of our fellow travellers are giving him food; chicken, biscuits, noodles and water. He is well looked after I think. I don't know his story, but he seems to be here on his own, and whilst his clothes are old, they look fairly clean. He doesn't hang around with the big gang of kids we have seen fighting for money when people give them coins. He collects bottles and sits with the western travellers. He comes over to us and we share smiles with him. We notice he has quite a large belly, a good size for his age, and especially a Thai. We give him our drink and he smiles, walks away and has his drink.

I'm still feeling sad when we get onto the bus. I think about the lad and my nephew some more. I also think of the monthly donation I make at home to the NSPCC. I am looking forward to going home and seeing my family again.

It's good to be back in Thailand, where the buses are modern and clean. But, we have loved Cambodia, it is sad to leave there.

The bus gets us to Bangkok in good time. We ignore the touts and find a nice hotel room.

A 4am start to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. When we get to the sight the light and colours are starting to come through. It's a little cloudy so some effect is lost, but it's still a great sight. There are a surprising amount of people around, but still nowhere near as many as on our previous visit a few days before.

We grab some breakfast after Angkor Wat and head back to our favorites. We stop at Bayon, where we discover a bit we had missed before. After chatting to a local guy for a while about the restoration projects we head over to Ta Prohm, my favorite temple in the site. The first time we visited this temple it was raining, so now we get to visit in the dry. We find and notice several things we missed the first time, in particular several more massive trees that are engulfing the temple, which are probably more spectacular than the other trees. There are several tour groups visiting whilst we are there, so we take our time and wait for them to thin out a bit so that we can get some good photographs.

We're feeling pretty tired and templed out by the afternoon, so we ask the tuk-tuk driver to drop us into town. We grab a drink and head into the market. The market here is a pleasant mixture of shops, and a much more chilled atmosphere than the markets in Phnom Penh. We go shopping crazy and by a lot of things to take home.

An earlier start today as we head back to Angkor and explore more of the many temples. We start by taking the long ride out to Banteay Srei. It's a great temple with a different style to others in the complex.

We stop at the landmine museum and take a look around. The work done there is very impressive. They have cleared tens of thousands of landmines in Cambodia, that were laid by Khmer Rouge during the civil war. Amazing almost all of the landmines have been cleared by one man, using a stick and a screwdriver. His costs are a few dollars each day, whereas international groups and military forces charge about US$1,000 per landmine. Impressive stuff. We make a donation.

We head to more temples on our way back to the main sight. We stop in a cafe for a drink and the heavens open. We wait about 30 minutes before the rains finally stop.

We explore more temples in the main sight before heading back to the guesthouse.