POSTSCRIPT
These records of our travel before I knew of the existence of Blog are almost direct transcriptions of the handwritten notes I made at the time. In this case it is a retrospective version converted into Blog format in 2017. Joan also kept notebooks which I hope to use in later editions.
However the next stage will be to include photographs a long winded procedure which includes digitisation from 35 mm film or prints.
24 January 1992, Udon Thani
The previous night we had stayed at Geoff's house as he had driven us to Heathrow for an uneventful flight on Gulf Air via Bahrain.
Arrived at Bangkok airport and changed £200 at the tourist desk for 44bhat per £ with a view to going into town to Viengtai Hotel in order to buy an overnight sleeper train to Khon Kaen. Were told that there was a train station straight across the road and we could board a train either to the city or elsewhere. Fifteen minutes later at 09:15 we were on a train to Udon Thani at just 244B for us both. That 's a lucky start! The journey lasted for 8 hours, mostly spent dozing, interrupted by frequent visits from food sellers, we bought Kai Yang for breakfast.
The hotel Paradise was Joan's choice where we settled on 250B for a huge room with a large luxurious bed. That evening we walked into town but had to walk some way before reaching a street on the LP street map, but we did locate the clock tower and ate at a small curry house at 8B each. Back to bed exhausted by 9pm for a twelve hour sleep, after which we felt much better.
Saturday 25 January, Ban Chiang
We decided to go by local bus to Ban Chiang a 7000 year old site. We found a bus with ease and they showed us where to get off after a 40km journey for 12B, where we got a tuk-tuk to a small village with refugees over many years from Laos.
There was a small museum where we met two English girls who had clearly enjoyed Mukdahan, south of That Panom on the border with, Laos but probably mostly because of the Thai company on the bus.
The museum at Ban Chiang was below ground but although there were obvious signs of development activity there was no access or visibility beyond a few holes in the recent covering with wooden flooring. At ground level they were in the process of building a display house which incorporated the Wat. Disappointing - may well be worth visiting one day.
The site predates both Mesopotamia and China in both metallurgy (bronze age) and agricultural development wet rice Crops and is considered as one of the most important discoveries in south-east Asia. It was discovered in 1966 and was still in the early stages of exploration though shortly after our visit in 1992 it became a UNESCO World Heritage site. It got almost no mention in our LP, probably we had been alerted by friends Tony and Esther who supported the education of a Thai girl from Khon Haen our originally intended destination.
With little to be seen we had coffee and got a tuk tuk back to the stopping point where we waited for a bus. A truck stopped and a Swiss girl asked if we wanted a lift back to Udon Thani. She had made friends with a Thai girl whose mother and grand mother were in the front seat, she and her friend were in the back seat though there was plenty of room behind for us in the vegetables.
We walked the last bit back to town and wandered around the market where we purchased two sausages for tea.
Soon after the two girls came passed on a motorbike and I used my newly learned Thai though should have made more of this excellent opportunity. That evening after watching a stall cook mostly takeaways at a furious rate we bought a bowl each for 11B and found it delicious.
Sunday 26 January, Nong Khai
Set out for the bus at 10:30 only to find the stop was at the other end of town, but having refused to pay the 30B a Thai showed us a bus (number 9 yellow) going to the terminus for 2B At Nong Khai we took a tuk tuk to the Mut Mee GH which was full so we went on to the Mekong GH.
That afternoon we walked for hours to get out of the built up area and find a proper view of the Mekong before returning to our GH to sit on the balcony overlooking the river.
We had lunch in o restaurant full of Thais of course, they were eating the same dish so we followed suite with a big bowl of lettuce, mint, coriander, some sausages cut into segments (like tape worms I record!), squares of rice paper, small pieces of vegetables including cucumber and something like 'relish'. The eating technique was to use the rice papers to make your own sandwiches and cover them with sweet and sour sauce, 30B each.
It being Sunday we could not find a restaurant full of Thais and ate dinner at a farang outfit instead overlooking the river. A terrible mistake it was poor quality and 'hot' spice and at 200B including a beer for me.
That night neither of could sleep at all - the first time ever. It was hot, with some mosquitoes though they weren't biting because of the repellent but worst of all a powerful fluorescent lamp just outside shining through the mosquito netting, plus some Thais playing cards until 3am. Whilst lying awake I decided we should get the first bus out to Sang Khon next morning bit a 6:30am Joan got to sleep. She had a lot of trouble with her knee and was suffering from a bad cold.
27 January, Sangkhom
Failure with my Thai trying to identify local bus needed but on switching to English immediately told to take number 509, not a great deal of help as we couldn't read the numbers so took a tuk tuk instead to the bus station.
We came across a local industry boiling rice into a soup then thinly spread into circles and left to dry in the sun to form sheets of paper.
On reaching Sangkhom we were soon installed in the D&D guest house in a bamboo hut overlooking the Mekong, it was small with room only for a giant mattress covered by a mosquito net.
Outside on a small verandah were two bamboo arm chairs.
The owner was very friendly and was soon helping me with Thai including ensuring I now knew how to ask for a bus.
That afternoon we walked into the village and then down to the river through small patches being cultivated for crops of lettuce and tomatoes. On reaching the border of the river we met two old ladies with teeth stained deep red from chewing beetle nut who we thought were fishing.
They pointed to the rings on their ears and explained in Thai I could not understand so then they showed me a small phial full of water and pointed to the gold specks at the bottom. They were digging out a pool in the stones at the edge of the river, sieving them through a bamboo basket and threw the stones away leaving a fine silt drain into a big shallow wooden bowl. They then threw handfuls of water over the silt and most times would see and pick up a tiny spec of gold with the cloth stopper of the phial before washing it into the phial for keeping. We watched and photographed for a long time.
Then from another bottle they showed me a nugget of gold which was silver coloured, possibly an impure form of gold which I was allowed to handle though they kept their hands under mine in case I should drop it into the water. Only the penny dropped they got gold in sufficient quantities to make their own earings, no doubt leaving some for sale on a good day.
It's amazing what you find if you quietly observe and question what you see in foreign lands.
That evening we had the communal meal which had originally attracted me to the LP's recommendation. The food too was excellent, a meat soup bamboo shoots in a ginger sauce with meat and holy basil (dissimilar to the European type), a beansprout mixture of vegetables including whole sugar peas. Then a plateful of papaya and pineapple to finish.
The company included an English couple aged around thirty, an English physio who was taking nine months off and expected to spend some of those working in Australia, an American couple around forty who were taking two years off to get away from it all and a Dutch lady. We talked long into the evening with the English couple who operated by buying jewelry they had made to order in Chiang Mai to celtic designs and taking it back to sell in England. They were part of a group of eight who had sold £1 million last year. They sold on to shops including Swansea, one group was at the Birmingham trade fair.
Of particular interest since that is how Lillith and Paul operated in Nepal and they were the ones to convince us at Geoffs house in Swansea in 1989 to try backpacking, arguing 'if they could do it surely 'with all our experience' we could'!!
They were quite adventurous having motorcycled 2000 miles in Asia including the northern boundary track west of the golden triangle. This year they would go eastwards towards Nan perhaps. The main rear was of running out of petrol. The other girl was now beginning to regret having signed up on a trail finders group travel through Indonesia leaving dead line of the start of that tour in a few days time. She had suffered propositioning and felt uneasy in Bangkok before finding the other couple with whom she was now travelling. She now clearly found her feet and confidence in Thailand.
28 January
Woke at 7am after good sleep, no mosquitoes and no noise once the TV program had finished in a nearby hut. A monk and two apprentices were having a huge rice based breakfast at the GH.
A group of Thais were chatting about some old coins and silver jewelry wrapped in a cloth - shades of Nepal- at another table. Another lesson nom may mii naan taan, milk without sugar. Breakfast of meusli and fruit with mugs of coffee'
An American girl from a nearby guest house came to seek passengers for a boat trip they were organising. Until 3pm we lounged around in the sun or the shade, on the floor, in an arm chair or a hammock as took our fancy and for the first time this holiday the diary was up to date. We went into action at 2pm and paddled across to Laos in a long canoe like boat with Paul, Sas and Carol. The current was flowing so fast so we had to head across at 45 degrees to our intended path, Paul made a good job of steering and we ended up going straight.
At 3pm we went out as planned in the same type of boat but one with a long tail engine for a three hour trip, most time spent going up stream. We landed on a rocky sand dune, with patches of cultivation of sweet potatoes and also went in very close to the Laos coast where people were bathing in the river. The main difference between the look of the two countries was that on the Thai side many huts were built close to the bank, no doubt illustrating the preference of tourists to be near the Mekong, whereas on the Laos side we only spotted a couple of huts through the trees. We were a party of six, the two American girls who had organised the hiring, two French and ourselves.
We saw fish traps every few metres on the Laotian side. They were made of bamboo cane and a conical shape laying horizontally. Curiously the wide opening downstream but beware the fish that swim in to investigate for he would trigger a mechanism which closed off the opening with a bamboo mesh gate.
Sas had been feeling ill all day with swollen glands so we had a long chat with Carol, a graduate physio working at Epsom hospital which had opted for trust status, but it wasn't working out well and she obviously felt the NHS was breaking up. Although seeing the need for management she found it did not understand the needs of the various medical specialists. The manager was an industrial chemist from industry his PhD titled is not what they understood as doctor. She was obviously expecting to go private herself or into industry on pay of £17,400 to £24,000 compared to the £11,000 - £17,000 of the NHS
29 January.
A lazy dreading on the verandah. We spoke to a French couple, in French for they didn't speak English. They were leather craft workers with a business in Rouen who worked hard all year except for taking off January, February and March.
Another Frenchman was a waiter in the Trocadero in Paris, where he said meals were around 350 francs, who also took three months off in the winter and had spent the last four in Thailand. He expected to stay here for another 10 days.
I had traditional Thai massage for 90 mins given by an old man 0f 76 who said he was trained at Wat Pho. Quite an experience whilst you laid on your front he prodded firmly but gently over the whole body starting with feet and ankles. A little strange at first because of the pressure, a cross between tickling and hurt though it was perhaps mostly apprehension. Next he sat on my feet, legs bent up whilst he worked on my back and neck. Then lying on one side at a time pressing each bent leg in turn to the floor and then stretching each finger. Next lying on my back, legs, thighs and stomach, one pressure point hurt a little. I recorded it as 90 mins and 100B well spent.
Then an Australian cyclist arrived, an interesting character with a beard wearing an Aussie leather hat who cycled around 100km a day and stayed mostly at hotels. He had been offered unpaid leave by the government and was travelling through Indonesia, Malaya and now Thailand, but thought that Sang Khom was the very nicest place he had visited, though a little too comfortable for him. Not recorded but I seem to have remember that he had ridden up the eastern border from Malaya, thus seeing the least well off area of Thailand, one which few tourists visit. He had set out with his wife but she had to return to her work.
We had another superb meal this time of curried pineapple, to rate with the bamboo shoot curry.
30 January Chiang Khan
Having missed the 9am bus for the first time we walked around the street parallel to the main road and found a hive of activity.For the first time we saw them roasting chicken legs and selling them on sticks, apparently the feet are delicacy but we did not try but we did buy a green pancake like food from the same stall.
Everything was of eye opener interest from the man just sitting on a mat in his garden to the smiles of householders and children alike. Everything spoke of a simple happy lifestyle among the Thai people of this area.
We both slept a little on the bus and passed our destination Chiang Khan having to retrace our way on foot. We got a very large room in Nong Sam GH, a wooden house for 80B run by an Englishman with a Thai wife.
It seemed to running down from the earlier days of a great effort to produce a 15 page booklet on information about the area. It included a couple of pages on his philosophy for travellers, 'make sure your money went to the right people and if it did not to be too mean', eg use local labour of tuk tuks and cycle rickshaws.
During the bus ride the nicest scenery had been Pak Chom and at first we wished we had stopped there, but we got to like Chiang Khan.
During our evening meal we had a long discussion with an extremely politically aware Swiss man, he was a hairdresser who now had a business in Cape Town Africa. He was not optimistic for South Africa because the start of the black-white confrontation was showing huge divisions within the black movement. He thought there would be a black president within two years but doubted it would have the authority within the black community to govern properly.
(He was spot on with this prediction for the first multi racial election was in April 1994 and Nelson Mandela was elected president on 10 May 1994, though I doubt if he could have seen such a peaceful positive transition - regrettably not sustained after his retirement in 1999.)
He also felt sanctions were bad because the big multi-nationals had started to withdraw causing the economy to drop. It helped no-one to ruin the economy and thought the west would have been better to extract concessions gradually as the price to continue to take South African produce.
He also spoke of climbing mountains on horseback in Lesotho with the enthusiasm we reserve for our adventures in Nepal.
31 Chiang Khan
We hired mountain bikes, 50B for the day, and set off at 10 to climb Phu Tork from which we had been told there were fabulous views of the river, but in my enthusiasm cycled passed the turnoff and so we did not find it until much later.
However we did go several km on a track into the country where a mountain bike was essential if the state of the track was somewhat frightening with steep bolder strewn descents. I chickened out for fear of falling off and breaking a leg. We passed the correct turn on the way back only to find a paved road - no mention in the diary that we took it!
For the second time we took lunch in a restaurant near the GH, where we talked to the Thai man and wife who lived there. They explained that we were eating Vietnamese style separate salad and soup. He was a mining engineer who graduated at UCLA and in the school of mines in Utah. He had a manganese mine locally and was trying to set up a business in Laos, they also ran the Nam GH - the most expensive in town at 150B where the clientele were mainly Thai, they had first opened it to accommodate friends from Bangkok.
Later we talked with a 60 year old Thai who ran a tailoring shop, partly in English partly Thai with the help oh his dictionary. He had four sons and two daughters, the sons now lived in France, Canada and the USA a big change from his way of life. New Thai words being lan saaw for grandaughter and phi for year and brushed up on describing my family.
Just along the street they were making barrels from galvanised sheet, earlier we had seen a group making noodles from a rice paste pushed through a cylindrical sieve into first hot then cold water before being laid out in neat coils on a plate. A boy was spinning pink cotton using a small electric motor drive, the pink cotton thread was used to make the local mesh blankets which were filled with locally produced cotton use as a kapac filling.
That evening we ate with a world travelling young German couple. I had an excellent hot spicy fish soup with lemon grass eaten with rice, at 50B more than twice the cost of anything else on the translated menu. They were taking a break from work Stefan had just completed an apprenticeship as an engineering technician, she did office work. On return they were intending to go to university, he to study engineering, she to study anthropology.
We assured Verena her that her grasp of English was quite good enough, but although he spoke less his vocabulary was extensive. We exchanged names and addresses.
Stefan Beisel and Verena Fink, Stefan gave his family address as
Rheinfeld strasse49, 6725 Romerberg 2, GERMANY, 06232/82582
They had just spent three hard months in China, which at first they found very difficult, aggressively unfriendly and awful standards of cleanliness and eating. One had to get tickets for un-appetising food. Nevertheless in retrospect it was clearly an experience.
They greatly impressed Joan when saying they had followed the Silk Road for she had read a lot about it. Journeying sometimes three days by train, sometimes by boat and sometimes by bus. Some of the places they described as fantastic, especially the weekly bazaar in Kashgar.
They advised starting in Pakistan, as in Joan's book, following the route he had found impossible in 1984 and then to Beijing returning on the Trans Siberian railway. One practical advice was to buy one way tickets, they were now sorry they were constrained to return from Bangkok since their next stop was Indonesia so Jakarta would have been ideal.
In China they often stayed a week in a location because of the difficulty of getting tickets but had made around twenty stops in their three months.
They were very disappointed with China saying the culture had disappeared. To be educated was frowned on yet the successful students were made to work very hard from 8am to 10pm in rooms with glass doors so they could be seen to work and not play and be in bed at 11pm.
(Their visit would be within the period of Deng Xiaping's successful recovery from the low point of Mao's cultural revolution 1966-76. Fifteen years later we were very impressed by almost everyone we met during a two month journey across China in 2006, mainly by bus with a single rail journey from Kashgar in the west to Beijing in the east. Clearly a huge change as the country moved further from Mao - though one without witnessing the most highly populated south eastern areas.)
These records of our travel before I knew of the existence of Blog are almost direct transcriptions of the handwritten notes I made at the time. In this case it is a retrospective version converted into Blog format in 2017. Joan also kept notebooks which I hope to use in later editions.
However the next stage will be to include photographs a long winded procedure which includes digitisation from 35 mm film or prints.
24 January 1992, Udon Thani
The previous night we had stayed at Geoff's house as he had driven us to Heathrow for an uneventful flight on Gulf Air via Bahrain.
Arrived at Bangkok airport and changed £200 at the tourist desk for 44bhat per £ with a view to going into town to Viengtai Hotel in order to buy an overnight sleeper train to Khon Kaen. Were told that there was a train station straight across the road and we could board a train either to the city or elsewhere. Fifteen minutes later at 09:15 we were on a train to Udon Thani at just 244B for us both. That 's a lucky start! The journey lasted for 8 hours, mostly spent dozing, interrupted by frequent visits from food sellers, we bought Kai Yang for breakfast.
The hotel Paradise was Joan's choice where we settled on 250B for a huge room with a large luxurious bed. That evening we walked into town but had to walk some way before reaching a street on the LP street map, but we did locate the clock tower and ate at a small curry house at 8B each. Back to bed exhausted by 9pm for a twelve hour sleep, after which we felt much better.
Saturday 25 January, Ban Chiang
We decided to go by local bus to Ban Chiang a 7000 year old site. We found a bus with ease and they showed us where to get off after a 40km journey for 12B, where we got a tuk-tuk to a small village with refugees over many years from Laos.
 |
| BAN CHIANG ? |
There was a small museum where we met two English girls who had clearly enjoyed Mukdahan, south of That Panom on the border with, Laos but probably mostly because of the Thai company on the bus.
The museum at Ban Chiang was below ground but although there were obvious signs of development activity there was no access or visibility beyond a few holes in the recent covering with wooden flooring. At ground level they were in the process of building a display house which incorporated the Wat. Disappointing - may well be worth visiting one day.
 |
| Modernisation of Ban Chiang Museum |
With little to be seen we had coffee and got a tuk tuk back to the stopping point where we waited for a bus. A truck stopped and a Swiss girl asked if we wanted a lift back to Udon Thani. She had made friends with a Thai girl whose mother and grand mother were in the front seat, she and her friend were in the back seat though there was plenty of room behind for us in the vegetables.
We walked the last bit back to town and wandered around the market where we purchased two sausages for tea.
Soon after the two girls came passed on a motorbike and I used my newly learned Thai though should have made more of this excellent opportunity. That evening after watching a stall cook mostly takeaways at a furious rate we bought a bowl each for 11B and found it delicious.
 |
| Joan relaxes at our hotel in Udon Thani |
Set out for the bus at 10:30 only to find the stop was at the other end of town, but having refused to pay the 30B a Thai showed us a bus (number 9 yellow) going to the terminus for 2B At Nong Khai we took a tuk tuk to the Mut Mee GH which was full so we went on to the Mekong GH.
That afternoon we walked for hours to get out of the built up area and find a proper view of the Mekong before returning to our GH to sit on the balcony overlooking the river.
It being Sunday we could not find a restaurant full of Thais and ate dinner at a farang outfit instead overlooking the river. A terrible mistake it was poor quality and 'hot' spice and at 200B including a beer for me.
That night neither of could sleep at all - the first time ever. It was hot, with some mosquitoes though they weren't biting because of the repellent but worst of all a powerful fluorescent lamp just outside shining through the mosquito netting, plus some Thais playing cards until 3am. Whilst lying awake I decided we should get the first bus out to Sang Khon next morning bit a 6:30am Joan got to sleep. She had a lot of trouble with her knee and was suffering from a bad cold.
27 January, Sangkhom
Failure with my Thai trying to identify local bus needed but on switching to English immediately told to take number 509, not a great deal of help as we couldn't read the numbers so took a tuk tuk instead to the bus station.
We came across a local industry boiling rice into a soup then thinly spread into circles and left to dry in the sun to form sheets of paper.
On reaching Sangkhom we were soon installed in the D&D guest house in a bamboo hut overlooking the Mekong, it was small with room only for a giant mattress covered by a mosquito net.
Outside on a small verandah were two bamboo arm chairs.
The owner was very friendly and was soon helping me with Thai including ensuring I now knew how to ask for a bus.
 |
| MEKONG at SANGKHOM |
That afternoon we walked into the village and then down to the river through small patches being cultivated for crops of lettuce and tomatoes. On reaching the border of the river we met two old ladies with teeth stained deep red from chewing beetle nut who we thought were fishing.
They pointed to the rings on their ears and explained in Thai I could not understand so then they showed me a small phial full of water and pointed to the gold specks at the bottom. They were digging out a pool in the stones at the edge of the river, sieving them through a bamboo basket and threw the stones away leaving a fine silt drain into a big shallow wooden bowl. They then threw handfuls of water over the silt and most times would see and pick up a tiny spec of gold with the cloth stopper of the phial before washing it into the phial for keeping. We watched and photographed for a long time.
Then from another bottle they showed me a nugget of gold which was silver coloured, possibly an impure form of gold which I was allowed to handle though they kept their hands under mine in case I should drop it into the water. Only the penny dropped they got gold in sufficient quantities to make their own earings, no doubt leaving some for sale on a good day.
It's amazing what you find if you quietly observe and question what you see in foreign lands.
That evening we had the communal meal which had originally attracted me to the LP's recommendation. The food too was excellent, a meat soup bamboo shoots in a ginger sauce with meat and holy basil (dissimilar to the European type), a beansprout mixture of vegetables including whole sugar peas. Then a plateful of papaya and pineapple to finish.
The company included an English couple aged around thirty, an English physio who was taking nine months off and expected to spend some of those working in Australia, an American couple around forty who were taking two years off to get away from it all and a Dutch lady. We talked long into the evening with the English couple who operated by buying jewelry they had made to order in Chiang Mai to celtic designs and taking it back to sell in England. They were part of a group of eight who had sold £1 million last year. They sold on to shops including Swansea, one group was at the Birmingham trade fair.
Of particular interest since that is how Lillith and Paul operated in Nepal and they were the ones to convince us at Geoffs house in Swansea in 1989 to try backpacking, arguing 'if they could do it surely 'with all our experience' we could'!!
They were quite adventurous having motorcycled 2000 miles in Asia including the northern boundary track west of the golden triangle. This year they would go eastwards towards Nan perhaps. The main rear was of running out of petrol. The other girl was now beginning to regret having signed up on a trail finders group travel through Indonesia leaving dead line of the start of that tour in a few days time. She had suffered propositioning and felt uneasy in Bangkok before finding the other couple with whom she was now travelling. She now clearly found her feet and confidence in Thailand.
28 January
Woke at 7am after good sleep, no mosquitoes and no noise once the TV program had finished in a nearby hut. A monk and two apprentices were having a huge rice based breakfast at the GH.
A group of Thais were chatting about some old coins and silver jewelry wrapped in a cloth - shades of Nepal- at another table. Another lesson nom may mii naan taan, milk without sugar. Breakfast of meusli and fruit with mugs of coffee'
An American girl from a nearby guest house came to seek passengers for a boat trip they were organising. Until 3pm we lounged around in the sun or the shade, on the floor, in an arm chair or a hammock as took our fancy and for the first time this holiday the diary was up to date. We went into action at 2pm and paddled across to Laos in a long canoe like boat with Paul, Sas and Carol. The current was flowing so fast so we had to head across at 45 degrees to our intended path, Paul made a good job of steering and we ended up going straight.
At 3pm we went out as planned in the same type of boat but one with a long tail engine for a three hour trip, most time spent going up stream. We landed on a rocky sand dune, with patches of cultivation of sweet potatoes and also went in very close to the Laos coast where people were bathing in the river. The main difference between the look of the two countries was that on the Thai side many huts were built close to the bank, no doubt illustrating the preference of tourists to be near the Mekong, whereas on the Laos side we only spotted a couple of huts through the trees. We were a party of six, the two American girls who had organised the hiring, two French and ourselves.
We saw fish traps every few metres on the Laotian side. They were made of bamboo cane and a conical shape laying horizontally. Curiously the wide opening downstream but beware the fish that swim in to investigate for he would trigger a mechanism which closed off the opening with a bamboo mesh gate.
Sas had been feeling ill all day with swollen glands so we had a long chat with Carol, a graduate physio working at Epsom hospital which had opted for trust status, but it wasn't working out well and she obviously felt the NHS was breaking up. Although seeing the need for management she found it did not understand the needs of the various medical specialists. The manager was an industrial chemist from industry his PhD titled is not what they understood as doctor. She was obviously expecting to go private herself or into industry on pay of £17,400 to £24,000 compared to the £11,000 - £17,000 of the NHS
29 January.
A lazy dreading on the verandah. We spoke to a French couple, in French for they didn't speak English. They were leather craft workers with a business in Rouen who worked hard all year except for taking off January, February and March.
Another Frenchman was a waiter in the Trocadero in Paris, where he said meals were around 350 francs, who also took three months off in the winter and had spent the last four in Thailand. He expected to stay here for another 10 days.
I had traditional Thai massage for 90 mins given by an old man 0f 76 who said he was trained at Wat Pho. Quite an experience whilst you laid on your front he prodded firmly but gently over the whole body starting with feet and ankles. A little strange at first because of the pressure, a cross between tickling and hurt though it was perhaps mostly apprehension. Next he sat on my feet, legs bent up whilst he worked on my back and neck. Then lying on one side at a time pressing each bent leg in turn to the floor and then stretching each finger. Next lying on my back, legs, thighs and stomach, one pressure point hurt a little. I recorded it as 90 mins and 100B well spent.
 |
| FIRST THAI MASSAGE |
We had another superb meal this time of curried pineapple, to rate with the bamboo shoot curry.
30 January Chiang Khan
Having missed the 9am bus for the first time we walked around the street parallel to the main road and found a hive of activity.For the first time we saw them roasting chicken legs and selling them on sticks, apparently the feet are delicacy but we did not try but we did buy a green pancake like food from the same stall.
Everything was of eye opener interest from the man just sitting on a mat in his garden to the smiles of householders and children alike. Everything spoke of a simple happy lifestyle among the Thai people of this area.
 |
| Catching bus at Sang Khom |
We both slept a little on the bus and passed our destination Chiang Khan having to retrace our way on foot. We got a very large room in Nong Sam GH, a wooden house for 80B run by an Englishman with a Thai wife.
 |
| Stuffy mosquito net |
During the bus ride the nicest scenery had been Pak Chom and at first we wished we had stopped there, but we got to like Chiang Khan.
During our evening meal we had a long discussion with an extremely politically aware Swiss man, he was a hairdresser who now had a business in Cape Town Africa. He was not optimistic for South Africa because the start of the black-white confrontation was showing huge divisions within the black movement. He thought there would be a black president within two years but doubted it would have the authority within the black community to govern properly.
(He was spot on with this prediction for the first multi racial election was in April 1994 and Nelson Mandela was elected president on 10 May 1994, though I doubt if he could have seen such a peaceful positive transition - regrettably not sustained after his retirement in 1999.)
He also felt sanctions were bad because the big multi-nationals had started to withdraw causing the economy to drop. It helped no-one to ruin the economy and thought the west would have been better to extract concessions gradually as the price to continue to take South African produce.
He also spoke of climbing mountains on horseback in Lesotho with the enthusiasm we reserve for our adventures in Nepal.
31 Chiang Khan
We hired mountain bikes, 50B for the day, and set off at 10 to climb Phu Tork from which we had been told there were fabulous views of the river, but in my enthusiasm cycled passed the turnoff and so we did not find it until much later.
However we did go several km on a track into the country where a mountain bike was essential if the state of the track was somewhat frightening with steep bolder strewn descents. I chickened out for fear of falling off and breaking a leg. We passed the correct turn on the way back only to find a paved road - no mention in the diary that we took it!
For the second time we took lunch in a restaurant near the GH, where we talked to the Thai man and wife who lived there. They explained that we were eating Vietnamese style separate salad and soup. He was a mining engineer who graduated at UCLA and in the school of mines in Utah. He had a manganese mine locally and was trying to set up a business in Laos, they also ran the Nam GH - the most expensive in town at 150B where the clientele were mainly Thai, they had first opened it to accommodate friends from Bangkok.
Later we talked with a 60 year old Thai who ran a tailoring shop, partly in English partly Thai with the help oh his dictionary. He had four sons and two daughters, the sons now lived in France, Canada and the USA a big change from his way of life. New Thai words being lan saaw for grandaughter and phi for year and brushed up on describing my family.
Just along the street they were making barrels from galvanised sheet, earlier we had seen a group making noodles from a rice paste pushed through a cylindrical sieve into first hot then cold water before being laid out in neat coils on a plate. A boy was spinning pink cotton using a small electric motor drive, the pink cotton thread was used to make the local mesh blankets which were filled with locally produced cotton use as a kapac filling.
That evening we ate with a world travelling young German couple. I had an excellent hot spicy fish soup with lemon grass eaten with rice, at 50B more than twice the cost of anything else on the translated menu. They were taking a break from work Stefan had just completed an apprenticeship as an engineering technician, she did office work. On return they were intending to go to university, he to study engineering, she to study anthropology.
We assured Verena her that her grasp of English was quite good enough, but although he spoke less his vocabulary was extensive. We exchanged names and addresses.
Stefan Beisel and Verena Fink, Stefan gave his family address as
Rheinfeld strasse49, 6725 Romerberg 2, GERMANY, 06232/82582
They had just spent three hard months in China, which at first they found very difficult, aggressively unfriendly and awful standards of cleanliness and eating. One had to get tickets for un-appetising food. Nevertheless in retrospect it was clearly an experience.
They greatly impressed Joan when saying they had followed the Silk Road for she had read a lot about it. Journeying sometimes three days by train, sometimes by boat and sometimes by bus. Some of the places they described as fantastic, especially the weekly bazaar in Kashgar.
They advised starting in Pakistan, as in Joan's book, following the route he had found impossible in 1984 and then to Beijing returning on the Trans Siberian railway. One practical advice was to buy one way tickets, they were now sorry they were constrained to return from Bangkok since their next stop was Indonesia so Jakarta would have been ideal.
In China they often stayed a week in a location because of the difficulty of getting tickets but had made around twenty stops in their three months.
They were very disappointed with China saying the culture had disappeared. To be educated was frowned on yet the successful students were made to work very hard from 8am to 10pm in rooms with glass doors so they could be seen to work and not play and be in bed at 11pm.
(Their visit would be within the period of Deng Xiaping's successful recovery from the low point of Mao's cultural revolution 1966-76. Fifteen years later we were very impressed by almost everyone we met during a two month journey across China in 2006, mainly by bus with a single rail journey from Kashgar in the west to Beijing in the east. Clearly a huge change as the country moved further from Mao - though one without witnessing the most highly populated south eastern areas.)
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