Kanchanaburi... But Not For Long... and then Back to Bangers Again.

We arrived in Kanchanaburi on Wednesday afternoon, and after seeing how damn hot it was, ignored our recommended hotel and went straight to the only guest house in town that has a pool: Little Creek. What a stroke of genius that was!
This place is awesome. The little bungalows even had an African theme and, while none of us had been to Africa and so wouldn't know, we all decided that it was spot on. Kay, the owner of the resort, was a champion (and regaled us with funny stories and plied us with alcohol) and he actually designed all the bungalows and surrounds. Did I mention that he made his name in the restaurant business? The food was fabulous - it even had a proper wood oven pizza and real cheese. We were in heaven!

On Thursday we decided to hire a couple of bikes and drive to some of the destinations around Kanchanaburi, but we thought it would all come to nothing when we could only find one chopper look-a-like bike (and not two). Fortunately, it was only 1,000 baht to hire a car for the day - a much better idea.

Our first stop was the Erawan falls. We spent a couple of hours swimming in most of the seven different levels of Erawan falls - all of which are full of these fish that nibble on your feet/hands/back/arms... whatever you leave floating still for too long. It's quite disconcerting. On level 5, Bol and Tim joined in with the young Thai kids and slid down this massive boulder into the cool green water below. If only I hadn't been in a string bikini I might have followed them.
Apparently, there are a bunch of cheeky monkeys at level 7, but alas, we had to leave for our second stop... the tiger temple!

Tim and Bol after sliding down the rocks in the Erawan Falls.

A beautiful peacock on the grounds of the Tiger Temple.

This tiger temple is run by some monks who, as the booklet would have you believe, one day decided to start looking after tigers. They've been charging 300 baht per person ever since. We did get to do the unthinkable however: pat some live tigers! It was quite an odd feeling... you know they're a dangerous animal, but they're so used to human company that they really don't mind. When we were there they were a bit restless as it had just been raining, and as this helps cool them down they get more active and so wanted to go and play. Since they're chained up, this is impossible, although the monks did have to bring some of the tigers in line by hitting them with sticks and slapping their faces. How very zen. Even though I do feel somewhat jaded by that experience, at least I can say I patted a tiger! Unfortunately, we don't have any photos of that, only video footage... you'll have to wait a while for them.

That night, back at Little Creek, we had another sumptuous dinner of pizza and beer (hey, when you find a wood oven you have to make the most of it) which ended up with Aussie frogs, samsong buckets and live music (thanks Adam and Pete!). Excellent.

On Friday, needless to say, Tim and I were ready for a big day of sweet FA... or maybe we could join in with all the stuff that Bol and Em had planned. Just in case, we thought we would call the Indian embassy (who have been processing our visa request for a week by this point) to see if we could pick up our visas on Monday (instead of Friday like they asked us to)... so that we would have more time to do bugger all. This was the response: "No madam, if the delivery day is Friday then please be picking it up on the Friday. Goodbye". This thoughtful man I spoke to neglected to mention that, despite the particular section of the embassy closing at 1630, you have to drop your passports in at the embassy between the hours of 1200 and 1300.... and not to just rock up and expect to receive them at any old time. "No, no, no. You drop your passports in, sir, and then you can pick them up with your new Indian visa between the hours of 1530 and 1630". I guess we're waiting until Monday.
Just to be on the safe side, we moved our flights back to Wednesday night. Who knows what he might say next: "I'm sorry sir, but did you not see that small sign behind my desk saying that you must wear the colours of the Indian flag when picking up your visa? Please be coming back tomorrow in the appropriate attire".

So we had to say good bye to Bol and Em (at least for a little while) and go back to Bangkok to sort everything out. It wasn't so bad though... we got to meet up with some more of our newly made friends in Bangers and finally go and visit the Golden Buddha!

Tim fiddling with Neil's computer. Apparently, one fine day, Neil is going to
leave Sri-Auyatthia guest house (and Thailand) and go and see something.
We at flashpackers find this unlikely, and are pretty sure that the next time
we go to Bangkok, Neil will still be sitting in the same chair. ;)

Neil getting ready to get up and move... oh, false alarm.

The famed Golden Buddha.

The beautiful scerene face of said Buddha...

... and the intricately decorated feet.

One of the frescos on the wall surrounding the massive Buddha.

Me and the gorgeous Philiy.

Tommy and Philiy holding the bunch of lotus flowers. A jeweller by
trade, but Tommy also taught us how to fold the petals into this lovely creation.

Lia, the champion from Adelaide, who almost didn't make it past day 1 in Bangkok.
(mental note: don't get involved with any gambling schemes... they're all in on it!!)

Friends, Songkran and the Island Life

After much anticipation, Bol and Em finally arrived in Bangkok!! They copped a massive taxi bill from the airport to Tavee guest house, but apart from that, they arrived happy and safe. We showed them around Bangkok for their first day taking almost every form of transport possible on the way into Khao San and into the city: river taxi, sky train, tuk tuk, metro and taxi... all we needed to complete the set was one of the public buses!
That night we went to see Bol's cousin Chris and his lovely wife Moo Dang who were exceedingly generous to us all. Moo Dang cooked the BEST red duck curry EVER and Chris pulled out all the stops with some delicious red wine from SA. He had a surprise up his sleeve as well: one ice cold bottle of Coopers Pale Ale. Oh my god... you should have seen our reactions, well, specifically Tim and I. We literally fell backwards in total shock. Bol very kindly let us have it as he realised that we were starved of the best beer in the world for the past five and a half months. We were all well and truly spoilt.

Bangkok is a great place, but we were all looking forward to a bit of R & R on the islands (hey, traveling is tough!), so after booking two rooms at Harmony on Koh Pha Nhang and organising our bus/catamaran tickets we were off!
Harmony Beach Club is another place where we feel at home, and we quickly got back into our usual routine of trying to drink the guest house dry. The first night we were there, Harmony had put together a massive bbq with all sorts of delights for 300 baht per head. Of particular note was their calamari rings... mmm so tender.

Songkran is the Thai New Year and is traditionally celebrated by trickling water over loved ones shoulders and head to bring them good luck, and by putting a bit of talcum powder on their cheeks to show respect for the dead. Of course, with time, this has turned into an all out water fight which, in some areas of Thailand, lasts for days. We decided to head into the main town of Hadd Rin to experience the festival, but we ended up hiding in bars to avoid getting soaked by dirty water. My particular favourite is the super soaker charged water stream in the eyes.

In total, we spent just over a week on Koh Pha Nhang, and a couple of days on Koh Tao. We spent some of those days hiring motor bikes and going to different beaches around the island of Pha Nhang. It was Em's first time on the back of a bike, and she loved it... until we hired a trail bike that is. On Koh Tao, we snorkeled with sharks in Shark Bay (funny that) and Tim and I went on a couple of scuba dives, both were excellent fun.

Em, Bol and I stuffing around on a beach in Koh Pha Nhang.

A beautiful rocky cove in Koh Pha Nhang.

Em and I went mental over the cutest dog ever... it's a pom and pekenese mix called Bim bim. It was difficult to be around it, it was that cute. I don't know how the owners got along with their day... see for yourself.

Me and Bim-bim... he's so god-damned cute it hurts.

Unfortunately, we had to high tail it back to Bangkok so Tim and I could apply for our Indian visas... I would have loved to spend more time on Koh Tao!! Believe it or not, "thank you, come again" is a phrase we've heard a lot over the past week, as we have had to go into the embassy about 4 times.

At least we'll get to go to Kanchanaburi...

Back to Bangers

What more to say, other than the title.
While sitting in a guesthouse in Kunming working out our next leg of travel, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Maccau, Bangkok, we realised that basically, we couldn't be arsed to travel such a long way in a short space of time. We had also seen a sign in the guesthouse advertising cheap flights to Bangers, and after adding up the cost of the Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Maccau, Bangkok option we realised that it would be cheaper to fly from Kunming. Even given the fact we would have to forfeit the flight we had booked from Maccau.

"Bollocks to it, can't be arsed" we both said, and booked a flight for the next day.

A lot of interesting things happened in the time we were in Bangers, including the rescuing of an Aussie girl from the clutches of an illegal gambling syndicate, but as I said previously: can't be arsed. Maybe ill write about it later, but its sunny out side, and other assorted excuses.

Ooh Ah Shangri-La

After walking to the eastern end of the gorge, our plan was to take the less used northern road to Zhongdian, via the limestone terraces at Baishutai.
Chinas southern province of Yunnan is very mountainous, especially this part of it, and because of this its quite sparsely populated. This is the southern tip of the Himalayas, with peaks ranging in height from about 3800m to 5700m, getting higher and higher the further north you travel. Zhongdian, in the far north of Yunnan, is the start of the Tibetan world, with the border being only 150k's to the north. The majority of the population are ethnically Tibetan, and have held onto their own language and traditions despite the onslaught of the Han Chinese.

When I walked the gorge four years ago, there was only a dirt track leading down to Daju, the town of at the eastern end of the gorge, but now there's a tarmac road leading all the way through to Zhongdian. For us this was perfect as it made for easy travel, but it is such a new route that it isn't in any guidebooks yet :)
Without doubt, the bus ride from Daju to Zhongdian was one of the best we have been on. The road repeatedly wound its way up mountain sides, through passes, and back down again into villages nestled on hillsides.
At the top of the passes we were sometimes at the snowline, surrounded by grey and white peaks, while the bottom of the valleys were almost subtropical, in between the two the climate and vegetation changed at almost every bend.

This green fairy floss lichen stuff hung from every tree on the higher passes

We reached Baishutai around 5pm, and with only a couple of hours until sunset we set off immediately to see the limestone terraces, which are just behind the village on a hillside.

Its always hard for us to know if were going to like tourist attractions like Baishutai's limestone terraces, as there's never much in guidebooks about out of the way places like that, and the tourist information literature is always biased. The LP will have one paragraph saying something like "The terraces are easily accessible from the village, are X years old, and cost 30RMB to get in", the tourist literature will say something like "Come and marvel at natures wonderful gifts at the amazing Baishutai.... etc etc", and after the Lugu Hu episode we were a bit wary.

Fortunately, we did marvel at natures wonderful gifts at the amazing Baishutai.

The terraces look like they were ordinary rice terraces once upon a time, but a mountain spring rich in dissolved calcium at some point started running over them and caked them in lime. The result is truly stunning. Unfortunately we didn't take that many pictures, but we did take plenty of video, so we can get some from that later.


The whole place was like a fairy grotto, with impossible ancient looking trees, twisted, gnarled and stunted, often covered with moss and lichen.


The locals believe that if a woman drinks from the spring she will become pregnant.... With a population of 1.3 billion, you wouldn't imagine that the Chinese would need any lessons in reproductive biology, but there you go, apparently there is no need for men any more, just drink from the spring.
Needless to say, I kept a pretty close eye on Traci, just in case she felt the need for a drink!

I wasn't going to write about the following episode, but enough time has passed for me to get over my wounded ego :)
On the way back out of the park I noticed a very inviting looking highly polished, steeply sloped concrete wall..... Of course, I couldn't let it pass..... I had to slide down it, despite Traci's all too valid protests of "that's a bloody stupid idea". All went well until I gathered a lot of speed and had to jump off the end. One badly twisted ankle, probable broken rib, and bruised ego later I had to admit that it probably was a stupid idea. Fortunately, Traci captured the whole thing on video for posterity.


As we drove further north, the villages started to change, gradually showing more and more Tibetan influence. As we came over the last mountain pass, we dropped down into a large grassland plateau dotted with Tibetan villages, gompas, and herds of yaks.

They use these racks to dry things, anything from hay to yaks skins

A typical Tibetan house

Tibetan architecture is a little bizarre to look at, houses have sloping walls about 50cm thick which are coated with mud and painted white. I suppose it would be pretty good to have half metre walls in the Himalayas though!

We arrived in Zhongdian around lunch time, and after dropping our bags at our hotel and putting on nearly every item of clothing we had (yup, it was bloody freezing.... literally) we set off to explore the town.
Zhongdian is a weird place to say the least. We wandered around a food market among hanging Yak carcasses, Yak heads, Yak feet, and Yak skin blankets (Yaks are bloody huge by the way, and Yak meat tastes excellent). We drooled at the amazing variety of mushrooms they have in that region (fresh shitake mushrooms for about AUD 50c a kilo.... A KILO!!!!), and generally did a good job of working up an appetite in preparation of our first Tibetan meal.
Having now tried quite a lot of Tibetan dishes, I think the best way to describe them is coronary inducing. I'm not sure which ethnicity has the highest rate of heart disease, but I'll bet the house on the fact that which ever one can claim that title can only do so because the Tibetans haven't been tested. This can be the only explanation.
One morning we were treated to a typical Tibetan breakfast: Yaks butter, fried in Yaks cheese (I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be Yaks cheese fried in Yaks butter, but that's not the way it looked); Tibetan crispy pork with chilly (the fattiest bits of pork belly, fried in.... yes you guessed it, Yaks butter) and to wash it down there was a large pot of Tibetan tea. To make Tibetan tea, you take a large pile of Yaks butter, dilute it (very slightly) with Yaks milk then add tea and spices. FOR BREAKFAST FOR GODS SAKE. It took us nearly an hour to recover from that.

The highlight of our visit to the Tibetan world was definitely visiting the gompa (Tibetan for monastery), a little way out of the town.
I'm not usually very interested in places like that, being a militant atheist, but this place was very different. The second we stepped into the grounds we were debating whether we should extend our stay, just so we could spend more time there. Unfortunately photography isn't allowed in the monastry, so we only have a few pics.

The side view of the monastery

It was an incredibly calming place to be, which is something to be cherished when traveling through China. We didn't get past the courtyard for the first hour, we just sat watching and listening to the monks debating, chanting, and philosophising.
The younger monks sat around an older one, and by the looks of it, the younger ones posed questions or arguments to him, which he dutifully answered. On getting an answer, the younger monks would chant in the low guttural tones that Tibetan Buddhists do and roll beads through their hands.
Being up high in the mountains with nothing but the squalks of birds, chanting monks and chiming bells is a great experience. We just sat and soaked it up.

A chicken, reflecting on the life of Buddha described in the fresco

part of the monastery complex

Tibetan is much prettier to look at than Chinese

The view from the monastery courtyard

In the end, half a day was enough at the gompa and we made our way back to town, just in time to catch our bus back to Lijiang.