Travellers Stories

The Thai border is only an hour or so away by a good motorway. Malaysian immigration and customs procedures were swift and once over the border things immediately seemed different. English was generally not understood and it was not enirely obvious what offices we had to go to. We were suddenly entering a world where we were not going to be understood for the first time in our journey. The people also seemed to suddenly be a little more darker skinned although the physical differences the Thais and Malaysians (who are a diverse lot anyway) went beyond that and I just can't describe it accurately.

Our immidiate impressions of Thailand were negative as the customs officers refused to allow us to keep the bike in the country for up to two months despite us having visas for two months and taking the trouble to stamp our carnet when I showed it to them. The problem was we couldn't communicate with eachother very well but eventually the head customs officer at the border saw us and explained in reasonable English that he wasn't authorised to give the bike more than 30 days but we could get that extended in Bangkok.

The road on the Thai side of the border is reasonable two lane highway but after being spoiled by Malaysian motorways we were frustrated at not being able to safely exceed 80kph. The road was also lightly covered in dried mud and we were introduced to the Thai habit of oncoming traffic coming straight at us in suicidal overtakes. Our first town in Thailand was Songkhla where we found the traffic a little more hectic than Penang. We tried to buy insurance, change our left over Malaysian currency to baht and extract money from several ATMs but failed. Eventually I went to a branch of the Thai Military Bank where although they couldn't help they instructed one od their customers, an MP, to help me out. We couldn't communicate so I wasn't sure what he was organising. After waiting a few minutes a motorcycle taxi showed up and I was told to follow him and pay him 30 baht when we got to wherever it was we were going. We stopped outside the central market and he asked for 30 baht and pointed to a shop nearby. We were confused. We had no money to pay him other than Malaysian currency. Eventually he was able to explain that the shopkeeper was also a black market money changer and could change my ringet for baht. Brilliant!

Ten minutes later we had found an ok but not brilliant hotel with views over what was probably once a picturesque bay. It still was as long as you didn't look down and see all the rubbish strewn around derelict but still used dock side buildings. Yuk. We spent a bit of time exploring Songkhla and other than seeing our first brilliantly decorated Thai bhudist temple, we weren't impressed. We did manage to get an ATM to work though. Yippie!

Leaving the next morning we had an argument with the hotel reception about charging us for bottled water when a sign in English in our room said it was complimentary. We were only arguing about 20 baht (about 30p) but we felt they were trying to cheat us. Really they probably had no idea what the sign in the room said and were only doing what they thought was correct. That communication problem again.

We had a fairly long ride on reasonably good roads to Krabi the next day. The following day was my birthday and we intended to stay at a beach resort out of town. It was called something like Dawn of Heavenly Peace and we secured a beachfront hut for a very reasonable sum. The beach wasn't so great but was fairly clean. The water was very shallow and so was very warm. We had to wade out about 300m before the water even got up to my chest. Still, we had a good splash about and looked forward to spending my birthday lazing on the beach.

Unfortunately it was not meant to be. That night we found this isolated beach resort had an all night disco for a neighbour which was not only loud, it also played seriously bad music. The owners of the resort were not surprised when we left the next morning. Dawn of Heavenly Peace? Dawn of Bleary Sleepless Eyes would be a more appropriate name.

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We continued north and bypassed Phuket. We were heading for what the Lonly Planet described as an upmarket isolated beach resort called Similiya Resort. It was just what we were looking for. Quiet, very comfortable with a perfectly clean isolated beach and a wonderful restaurant. We were sorted although by now the weather was not playing ball and it would bucket down most of the day after 10:30am. Well, nothing could be done about that. It was the monsoon season in southern Thailand after all. It was amazing to be sunbathing and see a wall of water come around the headland and head straight for us. Once the view of the headland disappeared we knew we had five minutes to get back to our room and discover the delights of playing kanasta and the contents of the mini bar. Mekong whisky really isn't all that bad.

We spent two days there lazing - mostly in our room - and enjoying some excellent food. Probably among the best we had in Thailand. As the weather was bad though it would have been nice to have had a television with a movie channel.

We left the resort on brilliant sunshine. A couple of hours later after dodging storm clouds all the way our luck with the rain ran out and it was a wet ride for the next 3 hours. It was too hot to bother with waterproofs so we just got soaked. The rain stopped soon after we joined the main north-south dual carriageway and we continued for another hour and a half to Bang Saphan, a small fishing town. We found a cheap quiet place outside town and had a leisurely evening after collecting sea shells from the relatively clean beach.

We had a dry ride to Petchaburi the next morning. This is an interesting medium sized town most notable for the huge palace built by King Rama IV (I think) back in the 1800's. Lots of European influences in the palace but the associated temples and stupas are all very Thai. We found a backbacker hostal with a good restaurant that evening so settled in there for a huge tasty meal which was incredibly cheap even by Thai standards. We stayed at a hotel nearer the palace which was reasonable and had somewhere to park the bike.

Now we were within a few hours of Bangkok which we were mindful we needed to get to fairly quickly so we could get in out applications for Iranian visas. Proper sightseeing and hanging around for days would have to wait until we had taken care of business. We settled ourselves in an ok hotel by the National Stadium Skytrain station which was well placed for us to get to various embassies and not too bad for the city centre.

Getting in to Bangkok was a seriously tedious bit of hard work. Traffic built up incredibly on route no. 4 taking us to it. For the last 60kms the

3 lanes leading to the city were effectively two and then one as cars increasingly parked in the inside lane and used the middle lane to manoeuver in and out of their parking spaces. Not a pleasent ride. In Bangkok scooters whizzed through the traffic as fast as they could which wasn't all that fast but certainly dangerous. Cars frequently swapped lanes and we were behaving like a car most of the time by just staying in our lane. That confuses people but we couldn't really do anything else safely.

Our first job was to extend the time the bike could stay in the country. A trip to Customs Headquarters was made and we were advised that it was best to apply nearer to when the bikes permit expired. This wasn't very convenient as we wanted to take time to tour the country while our application for an Iranian visa was being considered. A couple of officers there were able to understand English to an extent and so they agreed to the unusual task of extending the period before they would normally do so. All we had to do was return the following day with photocopies of all the relevant documents. This we did and the bike was duly permitted to remain in Thailand as long as we could. We then set to finding out what was required to make an application for an Iranian visa which turned out to be the completion of a form and submitting it together with photocopies of our passport and two suitable passport photos. For chenda this meant a photo with a head scarf on.

By now it was the weekend so there was nothing more we could do till Monday. Time to see a bit of the city.

The Royal Palace in Bangkok must rank as one of the most amazing places we've seen. It is huge with several palaces and temples, all beautifully designed and restored. There are traditional Thai designs including lots of curves and pointy bits, classical designs and a mixture of both. All are richly decorated with the Thai bits being the most fun. Gold leaf is everywhere and small mosaics of coloured glass and mirrors frequently cover large areas of buildings. My favourite parts were the brightly painted demons and monkeys and a huge painting depicting the story of the Thai Ramakain.

Bangkok has several huge beautiful temples and palaces. Unfortunately the skytrain system doesn't extend into the city centre yet so the trip to these wonderful places involves either a cheap but very unpleasent half hour bus ride sweating and choking on deisel fumes or a longer more expensive skytrain/riverbus route. Yes, for those of you not familiar with the city, it is bisected by a huge river which acts as a major transprot corridor. Once we experienced the bus journey we stuck to the skytrain/riverbus.

One really interesting bit of sightseeing was going to see the royal barges. They are kept in an out of the way dock off the river which we could only get to by walking through a maze of little alleys through a sea of houses. The houses are of a variety of ages but one thing they have in common is they and the walkways are all built on pillars about 1m above what are probably mudflats. Trees and overhanging roofs provide lots of shade and the place has a pleasent feel to it. Just don't look down or you'll see all the rubbish that collects on the mudflats between the walkways and houses. The Royal barges were fun and are as richly decorated as the Royal Palace. Seeing them in use on the river must be an amazing sight.

On Monday we went back to work on getting that Iranian visa. First we got ourselves a visa for Turkey even though we don't need one for stays of 30 days or less. This was to demonstrate to the Iranians that we were serious about leaving their country. Then we photocopied every used page in our passport. We even wrote a nice letter explaining that we were travelling overland to Europe and would very much like to travel through Iran so please please please let us in to your country grovel grovel grovel. We really needed that visa as the only practical route to Europe from Asia is through Iran.

All that done we went to the Iranian embassy where we were we were told we had been given the wrong form to fill in. British and US citizens have a different form. Hmmm. Does that mean applications on those forms are automatically rejected? Captain Paranoia was working overtime. Once the correct forms were submitted we were told to come back in about two weeks as the application would have to be sent to Tehran to be considered. After reading the website for the Iranian embassy in London which said allow 28 days this seemed optimistic. Still, it was really slow compared to the Turkish embassy which issued us with visas in about 2 hours.

There was nothing more we could do so after a few more days seeing the sights of Bangkok an enjoying going to the cinema we set about seeing the north and east of the country. We headed east first to see the ancient Khemer ruins at Nang Rong and Pai Mai. They are some of the earliest remaining ruins of the various ancient kingdoms which ruled large parts of Thailand. Those at Nang Rong are particularly impressive being set on top of a hill with views towards Cambodia. We really liked the huge carved nagas (seven headed serpents) either side of landings on the stairway leading to the main temple entrance. The experiance was made all the more memorable by our stay at a guesthouse which was more like living with a Thai family. The guests ate with the owners, a couple in their 50's, who cooked what must be among the tastiest food we have eaten. Well, the wife did all the work really as the husband was too busy finding any excuse to have a drink whenever he was awake.

From Pai Mai we headed to Sukhotai on some excellent roads, especially around Lam Sok, stopping for a night at a roadside hotel about an hour from Lam Sok. At Sukhotai We spent a couple of nights at a hotel 15 minutes walk from the extensive and very impressive ruins there. These ruins were quite distinct from the Khemer ruins. They were far more recent and were dominated by a plethora of stupas and temples with large statues of Bhudda. They are brilliantly set often with artificial lakes with lotus flowers (we think) around or next to them. After an afternoon and a further day wandering around the ruins we were becoming riuned out again. This reminded us of seeing no end of Inca ruins in Peru.

After a couple of days we headed north to Chaing Mai passing through lots of villages and the occaisional town. For about an hour and a half the ride was a little tedious but then the towns and villages gave way to nothing but jungle. The landscape became hilly and the road was brand new. Riding along that twisty perfect road with hardly any other traffic was one of the best rides I had in Thailand but for some reason I was feeling a little paranoid. I eventually worked out it was the Larium. Normally I allow a full day between taking the weekly dose and riding the bike but this time I'd taken it the previous night. Once I worked that out it wasn't a problem but for half an hour, with nothing to think about except enjoying the ride, a drug assisted Captian Paranoia was making me feel very weird.

A few hours later and some more interesting roads we arrived in what must be tourist heaven. Chaing Mai has excellent cheap accommodation, lots of internet cafes one of which only charged 15 bhat an hour and most importantly, a variety of good cheap restaurants which puts Bangkok to shame. After 6 weeks of Chinese/Malaysian/Thai food we adopted a middle eastern restaurant and gorged ourselves on falafels, pitta bread, homous and salad. If you are ever in Chaing Mai check out the Jeruselum Falafel. It's closed on Fridays but there's an Aussie pub a few doors away which does a great bangers and mash.

We spent 4 days in the city wandering around temples, exploring the market at night and, best of all, going on a trip to a couple of hill tribe villages which included an our long ride on an elephant, a swim by a waterfall and a spot of river rafting. The elephant ride was uphill and it seemed our elephant was turbo charged or something as it kept overtaking the others whenever it could. It seemed to reflect the manic character of the young mahout in charge of it. After the ride we bought a few bunches of bananas to feed the elephant. The waterfall was pretty sad after some fantastic ones in Australia but we tried to hide our thoughts from our enthusiastic guide. Rafting on the other hand was a close second to the elephant ride. My once a year go at punting on the River Cam proved very useful here.

Although we were getting tired of ruins there were still plenty more to see so our next destination was Lopburi which like all the other ruins once served as a capital. The offering here was much smaller scale than that of Sukothai which was just as well as we were not quite so enthusiastic. On the way to Lopburi we met another overlander travelling by bike, the first we'd met since leaving Australia. Steven Raucher and his sister Ariella were a couple of South Africans travelling around the world from the UK on a seriously overloaded BMW 1150GS with extra large fuel tank. Steven was a really lively character and Ariella, who had joined him in India, was much quieter. Steven was able to reassure us that the road from Quetta to Taftan in Pakistan would be no trouble for our bike. His website www.rauchertour.com is very good.

After a day at Lopburi were off to yet more ruins at Ayutthya. Sure we'd had enough of ruins but these were important ruins so how could we miss them? We settled into a guesthouse by the Chao Phraya River which passes through the city and spent a morning taking lots more snaps and then trying, with no success to use a Thai phonecard to phone family back home. That afternoon we were chilling out by the river when we met a Dutch woman, Crystal. We decided to share a boat with her for a sunset trip along the waterways through the city.

At the appionted time our boat arrived and us together with 3 young Israeli women climbed in. The Israelis were shocked at the small size of the boat and were very concerned to make sure they hadn't paid more than the rest of us for both the trip and our rooms. For us the boat trip was the high point of our time in Ayutthya. We were taken from one Wat to another, each more interesting than the last. At the next to last one we enjoyed a good sunset and Crystal commented that the Wat seemed particularly strange in the fading light. I decided this was because we had an ancient Thai monument before us under a typically northern European sky giving our poor brains conflicting messages about where in the world we were.

Our trip now progressed in the dark and the Israelis, who hadn't eaten all day, were not happy bunnies. We passed by lots of riverside houses where people often waved at us as we passed eventually turning off the main river an heading through some sort of strange thick weeds. The boat woman wasn't worried but the Israelis were concerned. They were right to be as eventually the boat got stuck and no amount of rocking and pushing the weeds aside would free us. Us and Crystal thought this was really funny but the Israelis were quite upset and talking about asking for their money back. Luckily for all of us a man who lived nearby decided to stop laughing at us and help get us out. He jumped in and cleared the weeds enough to free the boat and set us on our way. A few minutes laer we stopped by the side of the river and the boatwoman asked us to all get out. It was very dark and we couldn't understand why. She couldn't speak English and we all assumed there was some problem with the boat but she led us to a road and indicated there was one more temple for us to see somewhere in the darkness on the other side of the road. Clearly the tour had to go on no matter what. It turned out this was an elephant temple and as we made our way along it we eventually came to a point where we could see the silhouetes of a herd of elephants. We took some snaps in the hope our camera could see more clearly than us. The Israelis never ventured beyond the entrance to the temple and by now were thoroughly miserable. That was the last stop and half an hour later we were back at the guesthouse having sucessfully made our way back through the weeds. It was a close thing though.

The next day was Friday so with the weekend coming there was no point in us going back to Bangkok to see if our visa application had been successful. This gave us time to go to Kanchanaburi to see the infamous Bridge Over the River Kwai on the Death Railway. During World War 2 about 100,000 forced labourers from India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma and Thailand together with 16,000 allied POW's died during the construction of the railway by the Japanese army. That is about half of all those who worked on it.

The River is in fact very beautiful. The place doesn't give any immediate indication of the suffering and death which took place in the area and while the bridge, one of many on the railway, is still standing, the plethora of restaurants and floating discos nearby gives the area the feel of a theme park. The town is a very popular weekend break destination for people wanting to get away from the pollution and pace of life in Bangkok. We settled into a very leisurly couple of days but did spend a morning at the JEATH (Japan, England, America, Thailand, Holland) museum which does an excellent job of getting across the conditions labourers had to endure under the Japanese. For us the museum completed the storey which we had started to find out about in Darwin and was continued in various exhibitions in Singapore and Malaysia.

We got back to Bangkok in time to go down to the Iranian embassy first thing on Monday where to our great surprise, not only had our visa applications been approved, we had been granted 30 day tourist visas valid for 3 months. Fantastic!! We now had all the necessary paperwork to get on with our journey and could get stuck into aranging to get us and the bike to Nepal.

The assassination of most of the Nepali royal family did have us a bit worried but we were reliably informed by Barry Crawford of East West Air Services that things were safe for tourists and there was no problem travelling along the main highways. His wife, Susan, had been living there for the past 5 months so we couldn't have hoped for more reliable information than that. Barry arranged the freighting of the bike but warned us we may find it difficult to get ourselves to Kathmandu when we wanted to. As it turned out, all the tourists had been scared away so getting a flight was no problem. In total we spent a further 10 days in Bangkok, mostly lazing around in the artificial environment of various shopping malls and enjoying the swimming pool at our hotel. If you are thinking of staying in Bangkok I can recommend the Reno Hotel, right near the National Stadium Skytrain station.

We left Thailand excited we could, in theory, complete our journey. Thailand was fun but we were there at the wrong time of the year to see it at its best. December we hear is the best time. One thing that has really impressed us though it the depth of culture found all the way from Singapore to Thailand. This part of the world has also got to be the best value for travellers anywhere and, have I mentioned the food?