Kalasin, Thailand

It's been a great 2 weeks here in Kalasin (Thailand), home to Nat's parents and many relatives. Last time we were here was a bit of a whirlwind 1.5 years ago when Nat and I had our Thai wedding with over 500 guests from the village here, other parts of Thailand and my friend's and family. This time was a time for us to relax and try to learn Japanese (or at least some), before out next leg of the journey. Well there has been some relaxing but, not as much as I envisaged ;) Actually it's been great fun and I have been learning all sorts since being here. I have wanted to see how rice is cultivated for a while now but always missed the chance. This time was excellent timing as I managed to see the rice being harvested with a superb rice combine harvester. It looks like a small version of the wheat combine harvesters we have in the UK, but this one has tracks to allow it to navigate the rice paddy fields that have raised banks to hold the water in. Superb machine.. I like machines you can probably tell ;)

Other farming activities Nat's farther has got me involved me in are digging holes for banana trees, marking out land that Nat and I own and preparing it for rice planting. We have also been moving cow sheds ready for some soil to be dumped and flattened out for a new house one day. In this area of Thailand, which is relatively flat and a rice farming area, flooding in the rainy season can be quite common, especially with older houses such as the one Nat's parents have at the moment. Newer houses tend to be built on raised land that is laid a year or two beforehand. This was great fun as it gave me the opportunity to go scorpion hunting as I have a fascination with the little mites. They won't kill you here but they do give you a nasty sting like a bee sting. I ate one once and it was pretty horrible. Better to just look at them. other than the millions of mosquitoes and flies, I have managed to avoid the other little critters that are common here like snakes. I do like snakes but they can be quite nasty in this area as cobras are quite common in the countryside. The new house will be built much further back from the previous one which will be flattened to make a nice jungle garden. I shall get quite involved in the design as I will use the opportunity to make the house into an eco friendly house as much as possible with solar water heating for showers and cleaning, recycling water for toilets and a wind generator that will power a water well pump and lights for the cows and even other electrical items in the house. Ahhh finally.. an opportunity to build a wind generator at last!!! Those of you who knew that I co-designed a wind generator at University in my final year, will know I have been dying to do this for many years!! This time it won't be made of foam!!

Nat and I are also sporting superb short hairstyles now of which you will see after the next update no doubt. Nat has opted for a short above shoulder length and I have a lovely short Thai cut which also came free with a cut throat razor shave (something I always worry about ever since I heard of Sweeney Tod - which was a long time ago of course), my ears cleaned out.....hmmm interesting.., my nose hair trimmed with long scissors (worrying and also don't worry I don't have much nose hair protruding normally - I am sure it's just part of the service for everyone), a massage and my arms and neck twisted with a crack!! All for 60p!!

For the past couple of months I have also been suffering with a problem on one of my teeth where food seems to get caught in it. As we had some time Nat and I decided to get my tooth checked out and Nat would get a normal check up done at a local dentist. Having experienced Thai medical services first hand in the past, I thought it's be a great opportunity to get this tooth sorted. The dentist not only appeared to do an excellent job of sorting out two fillings in the end of which a dodgy dentist in Peckham had originally done, but he also sang throughout the procedure. The chap spent longer on one of my fillings now than the dentist in Peckham did for 3. The lady with the sucker pipe was a little too enthusiastic though!! Nat was fine and with a little polish she was all smiles again.

Nat has been learning to take blood pressure here along with volunteers in the local community to assist the medical services. It's quite good as the hospital staff came out to Nat's house and a group of volunteers all received a little kit with torch for searching water tanks for mosquito larvae, blood pressure kit and stethoscope. This is all good for me one day, although Nat did forget to let the pressure down off her dad's arm after taking the reading until I reminder her! Nat also was given the task of being an interpreter for the day at a children's centre for a Swedish couple who have been sponsoring some children for the past 10 years through school and now university. This earned her some beer tokens that I think must have run out now ;)

Nat's sister and her baby have also been here for the past week (they live in Sweden these days), so that's been great to see them. Today, we went to an amazing attraction that is relatively new (and old in a way) here in this part of Thailand. Not many tourists come to this part of Thailand so whenever there is anything remotely of interest, the local government grasp it with both hands. Here in eastern Thailand (Isan), they are blessed with many discoveries of fossils and a superb dinosaur museum has been created at great expense. They had one here for a few years but the one today has only been open for a few months. If anyone is coming to Thailand and happen to be interested in palaeontology, then you could pop by this superb museum. It's name is Sirindhorn Museum and there is even a 5 star hotel in Kalasin which you can stay at for 10 pounds a night!! (UK). Anyway, raving on a bit but hey, it was certainly a highlight of my whole trip :)

The final thing we have been doing here is preparing for the next leg of course. This means South Korea. We have a flight to Seoul on 20th May and have been buying and testing various bits of kit which will hopefully help on our journey. The route from Seoul takes us south down to the port city of Busan where we intend on taking a ferry to Japan. The route come courtesy of Jan Boonstra who, after finding his website after searching the net, very kindly sent me GPS files and carefully prepared maps of the whole route down to Busan. Excellent stuff and if your are interested here is his site:

South Korea
http://user.chollian.net/~boonstra/korea/cycle.htm

After Korea our plan is to sail to Fukuoka, Japan and cycle our way, as much as possible anyway, to Tokyo. Wish us luck as we may need it due to sheer distance and fact that it's the rainy season in Japan when we cycle there. Can't do much about the weather so hopefully we can manage. If anyone is interested in this route, it was created by a Japanese club and they have done and excellent job of preparing some maps. I have also bought a great GPS Japanese made map system for my Garmin GPS which appears very accurate when tested against Google maps. We shall see how we get on with that. It has to be more accurate than Garmin's own maps as they saw us riding past marine marker buoys in the sea off Malaysia!!! Glad I wasn't using that map for a boat otherwise I would have have been shipwrecked. Garmin said that their world map is only intended be used as a guide when I mentioned this to them. For 100 pounds I would have expected a bit more accuracy than that though! Anyway, here is the Japanese cycle club site for that route and thus our intended route:

Japan
http://www.japancycling.org/v2/cguide/part1/

Anyone interested in joining us, feel free!! We will be cycling in Korea for about a week or two and then Japan.. well we have a flight booked at the moment for Australia on 24th July.

Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos

Firstly, apologies for no updates whilst we have been away backpacking but I have done my best to compile the few weeks into one update. Slightly longer but something to read on the train to work maybe ;) I have also included a few new photos on the website. Some I have burnt to DVD already and sent abroad so can’t post those unfortunately.

Cambodia
Over the past month, Nat and I have travelled in a loop from Bangkok round to Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, visiting Nat’s eastern neighbours and meeting new friends and wonderful friendly people. Starting off in Bangkok we decided against the risk of Cambodia not building the 150 stretch of dirt road into a sealed road and flew to Siem Reap which is the main town outside the famous temples of Ankor Wat. This turned out to be a good decision as the 2 times I have3 travelled here before they have always talked about the road being sealed but have never actually done it. It’s only 150kms from the Thai border but the road is so bad that it takes about 3 hrs in the dry and 8 hrs when wet as its all mud.

Siem Reap, a town that seems to be growing with 5 Star hotels every other day is starting to get quite busy although still keeping its relaxed charm. Although the centre of accommodation for Ankor Wat, with it’s history of the Khmer Rouge there is also some interesting Mine and War museums to visit round there. In one of the War museums we found a whole load of various weapons that the Khmer Rouge used including an M16 with the ‘Property of the US Government’ words ground off (we found one without the words ground off as a comparison), various AK47’s and pistols and dodgy sawn off shotguns etc. After examining each one in depth, comparing weights and pretending to fire them, we noticed a small sign saying ‘Please don’t touch’… Oops! Oh well.. 
An interesting thing about Cambodia is the money. Although they have their own currency (Rials), US dollars still appear to be the main currency and even the ATM’s dispense them. Pol Pot’s ‘wonderful’ idea of year zero and abolishing money is still affecting the country’s financial system it seems.

After a solid day from 0500 to 1800 of seeing Ankgor Wat we felt quite ‘templed’ and set about looking to see how, without our beloved bicycles, we were going to get down to Phnom Penh. Due to lack of water in the Tonle Sap, a huge lake in western Cambodia (now smaller due to lack of water of course), we couldn’t take a boat down to the capital but a very expensive 3 pound, 6 hour bus journey. It actually turned out OK and calmed our nerves slightly about the prospect of more lengthy bus journeys. With our dodgy photocopied Lonely Planet purchased from a small child in Siem Reap, we decided on heading to the backpacker area by a lake. Last time I came here on my own, I found a really nice place by the river but hey, you have to see different places right? Initially it looked nice with a room for us on the lake and a relaxed atmosphere with a restaurant on site. All very nice. After checking it, I noticed that the atmosphere was indeed relaxed.. possibly a little too relaxed as on closer inspection we noticed that everyone was absolutely wasted on various drugs.. oh joy. Not many interesting conversations to be had here then!
The city itself and it’s excursions of the Killing Fields and Royal palaces and a great Army firing range which Nat found a worrying delight in firing an AK47!!! Unfortunately no rounds left for the M16 so we didn’t get to shoot that. My pistol grouping skills need improving but there wasn’t much left of the target to check grouping after I shot the AK47 

Vietnam
After a many a Khmer history lesson of Ankor Wat and Kmer Rouge we headed east to Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon depending on your preference). It seems the southerners of Vietnam still call it Saigon and even have their local beer named as such. I have heard many differing traveler reports of Vietnam, some saying it’s great, some saying it’s full of money grabbers. We had an open mind and as it was a new country for both Nat and I… VERY exciting for me especially! Being an early 1970’s baby, my early years were filled with Vietnam War related programmes and films (or American war as the Vietnamese call it of course), subsequently I have been quite intrigued to see this country for a while now. Initial thoughts were how modern the country is considering it is meant to be a Communist country run by the words of Chairman Mao’s little red book where everyone is mean tot be farmers and all are equal! It was a particularly good time to view the country’s politics as with the run up to celebrating ‘Reunification’ in 1975, there were hammer and sickle flags and amazing propergander posters everywhere. As an outsider it was as if there posters and flags were some kind of historic reminder of what Vietnam used to be but after a while I realized that the posters were more of what Vietnam is meant to be today. Pictures farming and people collaborating together as equals……… errr.. OK.

Without getting into any heavy politics, lets just say that the government still clinging onto their Communism ideals with their daily propergander tv specials on how they won the war with the woman fighting as well (seemly having great fun doing so!!??), the people of Vietnam as pretty much getting on leaving all that behind and making US dollars and Vietnam Dong… either accepted but dollars are advertised everywhere for hotels and tours.. how interesting! Another observation is how they seem to have embraced the new relationship with the US (since 1996) with American products everywhere including KFC and Ford cars/pick ups everywhere. Old jeeps from the war have been re-sprayed and being used every day to move tourists and even Police cars!! My favorite US related observation was that a year ago since helmets have been compulsory in Vietnam for motorbike users (everyone basically), the manufacturers have designed great helmets that look like baseball caps and Army helmets to name a couple of designs. One of these has a US flag on the side!!!  I was tempted to get one but opted for a more simple desert camouflage baseball cap style instead for all our motorcycle rental adventures in the country.

Heading north on a ‘open bus tourist ticket’, we went to some beaches north of Saigon and then to an old French hill station named Dalat which was nice and cool. As we hadn’t been on our bikes for a little while we rented two mountain bikes and a van and ‘rode’ for 3 hrs downhill from 1600meters to 150meters above sea level!! Fantastic ride and pretty easy as you can imagine… hardest bit was braking for 3 hrs so you didn’t fly off the cliffs! At the bottom we stayed in a town called Nah Trang which was a little too touristy / beachy for us so we headed for Hue and Dong Ha (the previous DMZ). It seems most people who visit the area do so in a one day see most (but very briefly) trips from Hue. One of the highlights of the trip for me, We decided to get up to Dong Ha and spend 2 days seeing all the sights around that area related to the Vietnam War. We visited one old US base which was still heavily surrounded with unexploded ordnance and had to tread very carefully. It rained a lot that day and with the rain capes very similar to old GI capes, weaving about the mud looking out for old live landmines (of which we found!), the old war films we had seen suddenly came very realistic in our minds. Treading very carefully in the guides footsteps we found old parts of bombs, unexploded landmines and old GI size 11 boot rubber soles. Quite strange after 40 years of the war. Due to the unexploded ordnance, the area has been left alone like many parts of Vietnam for all these years. Apparently this counts for about 20% of the country. We were amazed by the amount of people still searching with metal detectors (home made) for scraps of metal. Many of these are children and many unfortunately die every year trying to defuse some of the ordnance that had failed to explode those many years ago. Also around this area there is quite a bit of smuggling of cigarettes. Whilst on a bridge we noticed some strange balls running along the river banks avoiding the police!!! I have posted a pic of the woman…fully loaded with contraband these people run from Laos to Dong Ha in Vietnam for a living. Before leaving the DMZ we had a couple of casualties ourselves but luckily for us, just our cameras. Nat managed to wash the waterproof camera with the back slightly open and I dropped my SLR onto a concrete step. Nat’s died the next day and mine lasted another 2 weeks until the lens packed in. After a day of misery from Nat not having a camera, we replaced her cam with a nice Canon instead…. all smiles from then on!! Phew!!!

After the DMZ trip we headed north on a flight to Hanoi (avoiding a 13 hrs bus journey of whish we had had enough of by now). A interesting busy bustling city, if a little money orientated (oh sorry I thought everyone was equal??), we headed out for 3 days to see Ha Long bay and the surrounding sights and islands. In the process of trying to be voted a natural wonder of the world (what are they all?.. so many these days!! ;-) ), it truly is a wonder. Definitely worth a visit! We stayed on a boat with some Filipino foresters who had been on a conference in Hanoi. We learnt quite a bit about Philippines in that time with them and would love to visit there one day. Sounds a great place to go! One day… mmmmmm

Laos
After Hanoi we caught a flight to Laos with Jenny (from Oz) who we had mysterious kept bumping into for weeks throughout Vietnam. Nat’s local Thai language is very similar to Laos language so it was plain sailing regarding communication (and subsequent discounts). We visited Luang Prabang up in northen Laos. A few years ago when I rode my motorbike from the UK to Singapore, I came up into Laos but has an accident on the way which forced me to take it easy and didn’t quite make it to Luang Prabang. It was great to see it this time with Nat visiting waterfalls, caves and river boat trips. After a few days we headed back to Bangkok to get my camera lens fixed, buy a new lens (good excuse for a nice pro L lens ;) ) and head up to Nat’s parents on the ‘massage seat bus’ for a couple of weeks in Kalasin (north east Thailand).

Next update coming soon!