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On Feb 5 we took the overnight
train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in the mountains of Northern
Thailand. The trains in Thailand are clean and efficient.
We love them. Suffering from a bout of cultural and sensory
overload in the land of the golden Buddha and tending to Lisa's
injured neck we abandoned our plan to attend cooking school
and do jungle trekking and decided to just chill out. It was
a good place and timing for us.
Chiang Mai, with a population of 200,000,
is much more relaxed than Bangkok but still has all the comforts.
Ok, so we broke down and inhaled a few BurgerKing Whopper
meals. The taste of yellow mustard on the burger reminded
me of Lake Tahoe for some strange reason. Nostalgia has a
strange way of sneaking up on us.
Feeding our addiction to the internet, we
felt strange watching events unfold at home with the US preparing
for terrorist attacks and preparing to bomb the snot out of
Iraq. In our corner of the world we are faced with our next
two destinations (Laos and Cambodia) having had their own
recent excitement. Crazed soap opera fans rioting in Cambodia
torched the Thai embassy in Phnom Pehn to which the king of
Thailand responded by cutting of diplomatic relations, expelling
diplomats, closing borders and canceling all flights to Cambodia,
including ours. This really happened. link
to story and the follow
up story. Meanwhile in Laos armed gunmen (an oxymoron,
no?) ambushed a bus, killing 14 people, 2 of them tourists
along a route we intended to travel six days later. You know……...the
usual.
After learning of the State Department's
Travel Advisory warning that Lao militia forces have fired
upon boats plying the waters of the Mekong River our original
plan to take the two day trip down the river to Luang Prabang
was sunk like a rock. We shelled out the clams for the plane
ride instead. Anyone ever heard of Lao Aviation? We did our
research and it seems all of their "incidents" have
been due to "pilot error" at night and in foul weather.
Our flight is by day and the weather is beautiful.
We'll be munching our anti-malarial pills
with each breakfast and hiding from the world for a week in
Luang Prabang, another UNESCO World Heritage Site, where we
plan to enjoy the well preserved and isolated Lao culture.
We hope to invest our sacred tourist dollars in some form
of goodwill towards a gentle limbless population upon whom
the US rained bombs by the millions during the Viet Nam war
in an attempt to disrupt North Vietnamese supply routes.
Bailing out on our plans to travel overland
to Vang Viang where the bus ambush took place, we'll be flying
directly to Vientiane, the capital of Laos on Feb 16th. Then
on to Bangkok and catching our connection to Siem Riep, Cambodia,
assuming the rioting soap opera fans in Cambodia has mellowed
out. Siem Riep is home to the Angkor ruins. I'll be spending
the week playing Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom and Lisa
will be playing Lara Croft for the week as we resume our temple
adventure.
On Feb 25th, we fly to Ho Chi Minh City
in Vietnam (everyone calls it Saigon) where we'll spend a
few days taking in the crazy city and arranging a driver for
a month for $400 to act as our guide as we work our way North
toward Hanoi.
On March 25th we'll be returning to
Bangkok by airplane to add more pages to our passports at
the American Embassy and reassess our plan to visit Indonesia.
The US State Department is telling US citizens to defer travel
to Indonesia and for those already there to consider leaving.
We're still planning to visit Bali but that may be it for
Indonesia. We're considering axing Australia from the travel
plan to keep the total price tag for the trip down. Alternatives
we are considering: Sri Lanka, the Philippines, digging in
our heels in Thailand for some immersion in the Buddhist culture
and accelerating our plan to hitch up with the Trans-Mongolian
railway.
From April 1st through the 15th we're planning
to visit some of the islands off the Eastern Thai peninsula
and brush up on our newly acquired SCUBA skills.
We'd love to hear how everyone is
doing at home. Dish the dirt, folks! And if you need any inexpensive
things from Asia gives us a holler.
We have posted some new pictures
and journal
writings for South East Asia.
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