it's been a while!

Sorry for the delay folks, I’ve been meaning to write this for ages (as Beth keeps nagging me) but never seemed to have time! It seems to make most sense if I start with where we are now, then try and fill in the story of how we got here (as I’m not too sure myself!). Am currently sitting in a wooden hut in the Lahu village of Huay Nam Rin, in northern Thailand, somewhere between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. The village is very basic – bamboo huts on stilts scattered on the dirt-caked hillside - but the local Lahu hilltribe are friendly and will always offer a smile or a “dub-you”, a word that trebles as hello, goodbye and thankyou. Since I’ve started writing this 3 local kids have climbed through my window to play (Na-Ha, Na-So and Cha-Pu - all Lahu boys names begin with Cha, all girls begin with Na). With no point of reference, as Lahu is not a written language and doesn’t include a concept of time, conversing is tricky but not impossible (my vocabulary is mainly restricted to identifying farm animals). Earlier I taught Na-Ha, our ~8-year-old neighbour (ages are unknown even to them), how to use a laptop and mouse – she found drawing shapes in Paint absolutely hilarious! 

This remote village is the setting for Beth’s Thai Massage retreat, an intensive 90-hour course over 12 days including Tai-Chi at 6.45am every morning and Vipassana meditation in the evening at 8pm. I have it slightly easier as I’m here as a guest, staying in the village and being fed 3 times a day for the princely sum of £4, however I am welcome to join the Tai-Chi and meditation whenever I like (as the teacher says, dharma is free). 

Morning Tai-Chi

I also had the opportunity to accompany some local Lahu for a trek into the jungle yesterday, staying overnight in a bamboo shelter and sharing whatever they caught. Our little group consisted of 4 farangs (foreigners), a Native American massage teacher who lived in the village, 3 Lahu men and Cha-To, a 4-year old Lahu kid. Plus a selection of village dogs, 2 of them young pups, felt obliged to accompany us.

Walking the forest ridgeline

After a few hours hard uphill we arrived at the small shelter, covered in old banana flower leaves which were used on a fire before collecting the new roof and bedding. While we collected wood the Lahu went out hunting, arriving back later with a couple of squirrels and some kind of (mangled) bird, which once gutted and boiled up in a banana-flower & chilli stew (HUGE quantities of chilli) weren’t too bad! (although the bird intestines are probably an acquired taste!).

Not much sleep but hugely peaceful that night, and despite the hoards of inquisitive bees and all manner of small insects finding their way into your clothing I avoided being bitten at all J The dogs, being from the Lahu village where you’re tripping over all the dogs, pigs, cats, ducks and chickens roaming the streets, have grown up in very harsh environments and are used to pretty bad treatment by villagers – the 4-year old Cha-To, despite being hugely playful and inquisitive, would whack and kick the dogs a lot of the time in between hugging them. I thought this fairly cruel until I saw the kids play fighting – they kick and punch each other just as hard and carry on laughing! These kids are tough.

Breakfast consisted of more sticky rice and stew, this time flavoured with a couple of wood-smoked frogs that were hanging over the fire all night, and another delicious squirrel (I have to say despite being French I prefer squirrel to frog any day).

Mmmmmmmm

Before all this we had spent a while in Chiang Mai, and after meeting Maggs & Joe (from Exeter of all places), we had rented a pickup truck to drive the fabled Highway 1095 to Pai. The girls were particularly in favour of a pickup rather than a couple of motorbikes as it meant they could sunbathe in the back the whole way there, attracting some bemused looks from the locals, and arriving a crispy red colour in Pai. The 134km drive winds over jaw-dropping mountains with the occasional spectacular viewpoint.

Pai is truly the hippiest town you’ve ever seen, almost everyone has dreads or braids or fisherman pants or psychedelic clothing... clearly there’s no-one around here telling them to get a job! Strolling down the quaint streets is a favourite pastime, as is lazing around in hammocks on the banks of the River Pai (or floating downriver on an tractor inner-tube). We found out pretty quick that they were pedestrianised streets after finding ourselves driving the pickup down the middle of them at peak market time, trying to avoid crushing various market stalls. Pai is a very cute place at night too, with live music in pretty much every bar although with the occasional ear-piercingly bad busker.

The walking streets of Pai

Pai sunset

Having a pickup at our disposal allowed us to explore the surrounding area with ease, so after a couple of days of ‘la dolce far niente’ on the banks of the River Pai we discovered some nearby waterfalls and a pretty stunning cave called Tham Lot. The cave itself is immense and houses several ancient caverns in the roof with other-worldly rock formations, several sacred burial grounds and is now the home to 200,000 swifts and bats which stream into and out of the cave at sunset.

Pai also offers its own canyon, a treacherous but beautiful path looking out across the valley – you can probably tell how high it is from the look on Beth’s face!

Just a little terrified...

The drive back offered several more little gems hidden down side roads, including some picturesque hot springs and the stunning Mok-Fa waterfall, which we had all to ourselves!

Mok-Fa waterfall

it took a fair bit of convincing on Beth's part

Our plan was to make it back from Pai to Chiang Mai in time to attend the local reggae festival, set on the edge of Huay Tung Tao lake just outside Chiang Mai. It was a fairly small festival at around 1000 people but had a great vibe with loads of open bamboo huts dotted around the festival site. The highlight was definitely the Easy Star All Stars who headlined at the end of the night – once the sun went down we had to keep reminding ourselves we were in Thailand, such were the similarities to an open-air gig back home.

Chiang Mai, being the hill-tribe trekking and esoteric learning centre of Thailand, is very well kitted out for even the fussiest of eaters (as you’d expect), and we feasted daily on such delicacies as real (!) butter cinnamon French toast with wholemeal croissants from the our local deli/restaurant, where we breakfasted religiously.

The old town is encompassed by a moat on all sides, and within the walls strewn with tiny side streets full of quaint shops. Street bars are everywhere, with locals kitting out a large open window with a bar-top and bottles, then adding a few stools out in the street – a very social affair. Mobile bars are common too, which are often old trucks that have been stripped down to just the cage with a bar fashioned in the middle, wheeled into the streets by hand or motorbike at sunset.

Beth had managed to come down with some kind of feverish illness on the day of my birthday, so we postponed it for a day, then 2, then 3, as the illness spread first to Joe then Maggs (avoiding the birthday boy of course). So the day was spent trying to keep her soaring temperature down (it was over 39 at one point!) and generally playing nurse, as she was in a very bad way.

We did celebrate it eventually, and even met the intriguing “Jesus” from Hawaii.

what a guy...

And even the cheapest room we found (£4/night) had a rustic charm about it, with its curved walls, floor and ceiling completely covered with bamboo.

Determined to learn how to cook a Pad Thai properly before leaving Chiang Mai, we booked onto a cookery course for a half day one morning. Probably the best part of the course was the teacher Sutt, who spoke like a comedic drill instructor and who’s love of cooking and particularly the chilli is admirable. Bearing in mind the chillies we were using are incredibly potent, in his opinion the scale (per person) went as follows:

	No. chillies for the English	No. chillies for the Thai
Mild	1	5
Medium	3	10
Spicy	5	15-20

Flaming morning-glory (spinach-like veg served with oyster sauce)

We had booked the “VIP” bus to Chiang Mai from Ayutthaya (as the sleeper train was fully booked), but I’m pretty sure the acronym has been hijacked in this case as the bus was a ramshackle old coach with metal bars digging into your back all night - it did have ‘VIP’ scrawled on a cardboard sign in the front so they were trying at least. Ayutthaya is one of Thailand’s original capital cities and studded with 10-15 stunning wats (temple complexes) within a fairly small area. Many of the wats were trashed by the Burmese back in the day where Kings would duel on elephant-back for the right to rule a kingdom (in those long-forgotten days when rulers had honour), but many still retain their original glory, and take on a mystical beauty when lit up at night.

We happened upon an elephant show whilst cycling around where Japanese tourists applaud to elephants balancing precariously and dancing to blaring Thai music – humiliating for any animal. Not stopping any longer, we headed to a wat just outside of town for sunset.

Our trip north to Ayutthaya proved very eventful, using a diverse range of transport in roughly this order - songthaew (pickup), ferry, coach, night train, day train, boat, and finally walking, with the total journey time at 29 hours! The only sizeable delay was a 6-hour wait until 2am for the fabled night train, stuck because of water on the tracks (sound familiar england?), although we managed to while away the hours drinking beer with Tony the American (who spoke perfect Thai) and Erin his girlfriend, and moving from food stand to food stand as they all slowly closed, finishing by laughing at a young thai kid who pissed on Erin’s bag then screamed his guts out as his mum washed him in the street!

The night train was as amazing as promised, even down to the full english breakfast delivered to your bunk! At every station locals selling food will jump on and off – and occasionally even when the train is already moving, so fast that they have to start running before they hit the ground! Just one of the reasons they keep all the train doors open all the time.

Our trip north had originated in Ko Samui, the largest of Thailand’s islands and probably too ‘resorty’ for the likes of us, although some of the beaches were beautiful. Not that we had much chance to enjoy them, as it rained non-stop pretty much the whole time we were there. Undeterred, we rented a ‘ped and went to see some Thai boxing, which can be a sight to behold – occasionally vicious but always evident was the mutual respect between fighters.

And before that, we had traversed southern Thailand from where we last left you – Phuket. The ride from Phuket to the east coast turned out to be rather unpleasant, as it is deemed necessary here to fit huge bass speakers into the rear seats of even the most run-down buses, and we were right in the back. Plus the guy standing next to Beth was using a bag resting on her seat to regularly store his hacked-up flem! We did eventually find a spot of (relative) luxury on the night boat over, which are simply old cargo ships with some mattresses thrown in - slow but very cheap & chilled. 

In the couple of days after New Years (and once sobering up) we saw a little more of the island, visiting the bustling night market a couple of times and discovering a new fruit (well, new to us!) – the mangosteen. Dark brown and round, once inside the hard outer shell you have what looks like several cloves of garlic, but are actually incredibly juicy and succulent pieces – so much so that we found we could devour 1kg in under 5 minutes between us.

Anyway, back to the present - we’ll be in this village for the next 10 days and hopefully get to see the Lahu New Year - a date chosen every year by the village shaman, but indications are the night before we leave! Already the kids in the street are amusing themselves with bangers and fireworks, putting the streets dogs and pigs even more on edge! Then we need to get out of Thailand quick as our visas expire, so Laos awaits. I’ll leave you with a couple of amusing signs we spotted...

A clear reminder the edge of the waterfall is dangerous

At Phuket Orchid Farm