Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Northern Thailand



19 February, Chiang Mai

This is a very laid-back city, despite, or possibly because of its large population of back-packers. The world moves at two speeds here. We are in the old part of the city, narrow streets, few through roads serving the more modern parts of the Chiang Mai and a place where the day, for most, seems to start sometime after 10:00 am. On the other side of the old city wall, the pace is way more hectic. We ventured out into this other world this morning to find the train station so we could buy tickets for the next leg of our journey, towards Bangkok. Despite the heavy traffic, we didn’t hear a single horn blast or see any aggressive driving. The streets were clean and we were able to walk on footpaths for almost all of our 5-6 km stroll. Now this last comment may seem odd, but anybody who has spent any time walking around Asian cities will know what an amazing feat this is.

Buying rail tickets is a breeze in Thailand. The system is all computerised, almost as slick as Japanese Rail and the staff spoke good English. Sadly, online sales are not yet possible. Our 6 hour, 2nd class air-conditioned express train trip will cost around $20 AUD each.

As the day heated up to the forecast 34C, we sought shelter in a triad of historical and folk museums clustered just inside the old city walls. All were interesting, well-presented and, above all, air-conditioned. The heat here has been accompanied by low humidity, nowhere near as draining as the oppressive humidity we have often experienced in Asia, but a good dose of aircon in the middle of the day is always appreciated.

Last night we ate at a small café where the food was good, if not great when the price is taken into the calculation. As usual, when we eat in these sort of places, we shared our table with a nice young fellow traveller from Sweden. The poor guy was in a bit of a state because his girlfriend was in hospital with a serious infection, but without going into the gory details, she was being well looked after and because they had travel insurance. He was living at the hospital with her. After a long discussion about the comparative merits of the Scandinavian and Australian education systems, we wished each other the best and went on our way. He was 21, we are three times his age, but we connected, as we have so many times in our travels.

20 February, Chiang Mai

“Many Chinese”, said the cleaner in the lift at our excellent Chiang Mai hotel. His face actually said, “Too many Chinese.”

The cleaner’s comment was in response to a clamour, like a flock of angry birds, that met our lift as it hit the ground floor. Chinese tourists are everywhere in Thailand. Family groups on tours predominate, but young couples and singles are abundant as well. The latter group travel independently and generally speak some English. Many of these may come from Singapore, Hong Kong or other Asian countries where English is widely spoken.


Today we grabbed a share taxi truck to Wat Doi Suthep up in the mountains to the north of the city.  With the exception of a lone young European woman, we were the only non-Asians. What is interesting about this is the increasing mobility of the Chinese. As our cleaner friend in the lift said, “Many Chinese.”

Doi Suthep is an interesting experience and, as usual, much of the fun is in getting there. Our research clued us up to the cheap way to get to the Wat. “Go to the North Gate, grab a red share taxi, wait until the driver has a load and off you go. “50 Baht Up and 50 Baht Down” is the deal. The little sting is that when you line up for a taxi back it becomes 60 Baht back. Seems the 50 Baht deal is if you can find your original taxi amongst the scores of identical cabs AND you are prepared for the others in your original group to return. Good luck! Stay grounded, however. This little scam will cost you about $0.40 US and being able to have a joke about it with the tout when you get back is worth the money! The trip takes about 30 – 40 minutes and it can be a little hard on the bum and back, but drivers are good and the roads are excellent.

Tomorrow we take the train to Phitsanulok, then a bus to Sukhothai.

21 February, ‘Sprinter’ Express Train 8

Off exactly on schedule, Train 8 belts along at a fair clip. We were racing past cars on the highway running beside the line as if they were standing still. Our carriage is a little worn but clean, with the exception of the windows. What is it with Asians and windows? Even Asian shops back in Australia sport cloudy, grimy windows. We booked our tickets a few days ago, but it probably wasn’t necessary as the train looks to be about half full. Our fare for the 6 hour trip from Chiang Mai to Phitsanulok converts to about $20 AUD each.



The smoggy haze that the locals like to call “mist” persists out into the country. Visibility is less than 1 kilometre and the sky has that yellowish tinge that we associate with big city smog.
Chiang Mai province is in the far north of Thailand and this time of the year it is extremely dry, so the countryside is probably not at its best. The rice paddies stretch as far as the eye can see, which in this haze isn’t that far!  Mango trees and banana plants provide some green relief, but the scenery is not at all attractive. A few traditional wooden houses survive in some villages, but concrete block constructions of two floors with an open lower level, predominate.

Later the same day

As the day draws on, the fairly desolate landscape of the north has given way to much greener plains. Many of the rural villages here still have a few traditional wooden houses, but they are more often used as storage sheds than as homes. The rice fields now are bright green, quite a contrast to a few hours ago further north.

Our train pulls into Phitsanulok just a few minutes late which isn’t a bad effort over such a distance. Before we are even out of the station we are grabbed by a lady tuk-tuk driver and loaded up with another couple for the short trip to the bus station. This performance is repeated at the bus station, where we are herded to the right ticket booth along with all the other travellers and, before we know it, paid our 50 bt each for the tickets and been directed to the platform for our next 60km, 1 hour, leg to Sukhothai.

We used to fret about making complex transfers like this in Asia, but not anymore. It just happens. Even people passing by will somehow know where you are heading and point you in the right direction. A French woman who shared our “share taxi” (read tray-back truck with a roof) told us that she had been driven 25 kms by a local lady to catch up with a bus she had missed on her day trip.

22 February, Sukhothai

Our hotel in Sukhothai is a little out of the way, up a side alley off the main street, so, we were caught in the dreaded “Resort Trap”. Not that our hotel was a resort, nice as it was, but we had no option but to drink at the hotel bar and eat at the restaurant. Everything in our area of town looked like closed-up workshops. It was Sunday, so that was expected, but next morning we discovered, on our long walk up town to the local bus station, that many of these workshops were actually little restaurants. The next thing we discovered was that it was a special Buddhist holiday and, to our glee, that meant parades and fire crackers. As we were to find later in the day, there was also a major down side to Buddha’s special day.

Our reason for coming here was Old Sukhothai, the seat of one of the early Kingdoms of ancient Siam. The old city is about 30 minutes by share taxi from New Sukhothai and it is set in a special Historical Park. The park is well laid out and extremely well maintained. Vehicle traffic is restricted, so we felt safe to wobble along on our hire bicycles (30 bt each). The bikes were a good call, because once we got our bicycle legs back, we were able to cruise into the slight breeze and offset the oppressive heat and humidity. These ruins are on a similar scale to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Bagan in Myanmar. We would rate Old Sukhothai 3rd, with Angkor Wat and Bagan sharing first place.


We finished our visit at the National Historical Museum which was air-conditioned and after returning our bikes, we waved down a passing share taxi and headed back to town.
The big sting in the tail of the holiday was that alcohol sales are banned. Never mind, we managed to find a local street stall where they had no qualms about selling us beer on such an auspicious day.
So far our travels through northern and central Thailand have been a real eye-opener for us. Everybody knows about Chiang Mai, Phuket and Bangkok, but we had never heard of the places we are now discovering. Most tourists here are Thai and European, mostly French. Australians are very few on the ground, which is unusual for Asia. There are organised tours through these parts of Thailand, but most of the people we meet are travellers, rather than tourists. These places are not necessarily on the list of those looking to have a holiday in Thailand. They might be a little bit more hard work, but well worth the effort.

23 February, Train 8 Phitsanoluk to Ayutthaya


Travelled most of today, leaving our very nice Sukhothai hotel for the bus station by luxury Landcruiser, then the local bus to Phitsanoluk, and tuk tuk to the Train station.

Thailand State Rail, TSR, is a fairly popular choice for the locals. The trains we have been on have been fairly well patronized. The network is extensive enough to get us fairly well everywhere we want to go, or close enough for us to connect with a bus. Looking at the TSR timetable this morning we noticed that it is possible to travel by train from Singapore, through Malaysia and Thailand, to the Laos border. That means that with one bus connection from the Thai-Laos border to Hanoi, it would be possible to go by train from Singapore to London. There is a train from Hanoi north to the Chinese border, the one that we have taken to Sapa in fact. From there it is plain sailing through the Chinese High Speed network into Beijing, then the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Siberian lines to Moscow which has connections to many western European cities. We calculate that we have already covered 60-70% of this journey on previous trips. One day we might give it a go?


The missing link between Thailand and China was close to being closed in 2012 when the Chinese proposed a High Speed link from southern China through Laos to Bangkok. It was never made clear why the project stalled, but it might have had something to do with concerns about increased Chinese influence in South-East Asia. The same fear still lingers for the Mongolians who refused the offer of a Chinese built standard gauge line to Ulaanbaatar. As a consequence, trains crossing from China to Mongolia still have the bogies changed through a painfully slow process at the frontier.


24 February. SilQ Hotel, Bangkok

Ayutthaya is the third seat of the ancient kings of what is now Thailand that we have visited, so as you might imagine we are getting a little Wat fatigued! This condition was exacerbated today by high 30s temperatures and unbelievable humidity. To make matters worse, we decided to walk around the old city, ignoring the calls of tuk tuk drivers who must have thought we were mad. Shunning the touts outside our very flash hotel this morning, we plodded up the street to the little ferry that whisked us across the river for just 5 bt each (20c).

 We persist with our explorations of these ancient ruins, because, despite some repetition of styles, there is almost always something different to discover.
Ayutthaya’s ruins are concentrated on an island at the confluence of two major rivers that eventually flow out into the Gulf of Thailand. This strategic trading location supported and enriched the kingdom for over 400 years. Traders from China, Japan, Indonesia and several European powers traded here. By the 18th Century, Portugal, Britain, the Netherlands and Japan had established enclaves in Ayutthaya. All this came to a rather violent end in 1767, when the city was sacked by the Burmese. In their frenzy of destruction, the Burmese lopped the heads of most of the Buddhas in the city’s temples. One of the interesting sights for us was one large Buddha head that had been over grown by the roots of a large fig tree.



By just after midday, we surrendered to the elements and hailed a tuk tuk back to our hotel to collect our bags for the train ride into Bangkok. Given the heat and humidity, we forked out the extra $4 each for the second class air-conditioned carriage. All up our journey from Chiang Mai to Bangkok cost us the princely sum of $45 AUD each.


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