Tigers and Bamboo Nests - Week 16

Week 15 Thailand (Chang Mai, Chang Rai)
9th to 16 of November

Early morning dawn, announced with the now familiar cock-a-doodle-doo's. I was just savouring the last few winks before little Nina joined us in our four poster, mosquito net covered bed.....followed by her sisters and brother. Another 5 minutes of cuddles turned tickles followed before we really had to get the show on the road!!! 

A 6:30am  breakfast was booked with Thomas (he baked the rolls fresh every morning!!) before  Mr Suchea and his buddy tuk-tukking in. We had to be at the bus company's office by 7:45am to catch our ride to Bangkok.BANGKOK!!! This means we were kissing Cambodia and it's lovely (not!!) southern roads goodbye and crossing over the border at Poipet into country number 8, Thailand!! With a final picture and a last scramble up a tree, we were bobbing about over the single track access road away from our home stay with Channa, Thomas and family.

We booked with the rather expensive NATTAKAN bus company to take us from Siem Reap, across the Cambodia-Thai border to Bangkok. There are various options for this journey, but we decided it wise to stick with one company for the full journey, to cut out loads of walking with heavy luggage and also to a get their assistance in exiting Cam and entering Thai. Luckily the price tag came with full board...so we got some water, breakfast and lunch(very tasty hot fried rice and shrimps, which we picked up from a 7Eleven on our way).

Arno and I a good think about it, and then decided to use Bangkok only as a transit stop. Big cities are expensive and quite hard to get around in if you got limited time. We wanted to get to Northern Thailand to explore the people and mountains a bit more. So our 8 hour bus ride to Bangkok was just half of the journey!! We also made a very brave decision...to wing it!!!! Yep, with the kids in tow... I think coming up to 4 months on the road, we are getting confident that there are not may scenarios left that we would find hard to cope with!!! So we had a plan mapped out, but we had to wait till Bangkok before we could execute it!!!

We pulled into a HUGE bus station, way far out of the city centre, and were basically just dumped there with vague instructions of what way to look to find a taxi. Not much options, so we were a bit ripped off by a taxi company and had to pay 1300 Thai Baht(£25), for a ride, 40 min long, to the central train station. We were still in time to catch the7:30pm sleeper train to Chang Mai( still going according to plan...) .....just that train was full now. Good news....there were another train at 10pm...bad news.... no sleeper bunks left on that one either...good news..... we still could get seats on it...bad news only in 3rd-class... 

Still smiling..............in line to buy tickets......

...ok...3rd class here we come.....Chang Mai!!!!

Ok, so the plan was still in action, maybe not in exact shape and form that we anticipated it to be playing itself out, but at this point we were shutting our eyes and just went along with it!!  Ok, it was a wee surprise to see that third class just has hard benches, and that our booked bum-space on these benches ere not even all together....but too late to moan. We were on a train heading for the northern province!!! Interesting ride. Despite of complete discomfort, all of us actually did manage to sleep a bit ( Alana started her nap on the station floor in Bangkok!!!)

Looks really comfortable??!!!!!!!

Arno needed some Thai massage attention the following day, but once it was morning, we had the best time looking out of the windows and taking in the jungle landscape rolling pass.

(In third class you need to keep the windows open for ventilation...not air con luxury there...

But the warm humid evening breeze brings a lot of little friends along. So we had all sorts of dust and flying things to get acquainted to during our 15 hour trip!!) We became friendly with some local travellers and the children still manage to brighten up the day for many. The latest question we are getting is: two fingers held together, while pointing at Nina and Philippa....No they are not twins!!

Look who slept in 3rd class for one night.....only........

Some other 3rd class travellers......

On a side note: once awake in the morning, Nina had a burning fever. This was the first real health issue that we needed to deal with. She was vomiting a  few times and very sleepy. We just tried to keep her hydrated and cool, with a wet cloth behind her neck. I've got some Nurophen medicine with me, but no point really, in giving it to a child, who can not hold anything down. So we were just trusting God for wisdom and praying for her speedy recovery. (The fever lasted a day and by the following morning she was well again. Praise God!!) 
We did some research, before setting off, a put the issue of Malaria. We decided to go with the advice of the international health board- no place that featured on our itinerary is classified as a " malaria area". Another fact is, that we are travelling in South East Asia for an extensive time with loads of different strands of mosquitoes, so taking one specific drug may also not even be relevant to all the different areas we are visiting. There is another fever, called dengue fever, which is something that travellers sometimes pick up in these areas. You just need to be vigilant and wise. Unfortunately, no preventive medication available for dengue. I've printed off a sheet with symptoms, which we are carrying with us, so we use this as our guideline. 

We arrived round 1pm in Chang Mai and was whisked away in a new type of pick-up truck taxi thing. We were booked into a backpackers hub, Julie Guesthouse, in the inner city. Chang Mai is a rather big city.

The old city is is squared in with a moat and remnants of an old city wall. Innumerable guesthouses, cafes, laundromats and more with a VERY wide variety of price options!! Most travellers use CM as a stop-over destination to take the slow boat into Laos, or to go on 1 to 3 day jungle trekking trip. Around CM is also many options for interacting with elephants...elephant shows( Ellie's painting pictures on canvas(??) and playing soccer) to rescue centres and elephant jungle riding. We left it a bit too late to get space to visit the famous Elephant Nature Park, but manage to got booked into the Happy Elephant Home. No elephant riding here, but just interacting with rescued elephants, feeding and bathing them. More about this later.

 So initially we were staying in CM for two nights before leaving for Chang Rai, even further north, close to the boarders with Myanmar( former Burma) and Laos. 

Since there were no places left to visit the ellies on our day in CM, we had another trick up our sleeves....Researching Chang Mai, way back in Scotland, I found out about the Tiger Kingdom. With mixed reviews about rumours that the tigers were sedated with drugs, we did not really knew what to make of it. Once in CM, we research this park a bit further, using the wonderful service of TripAdvisor and then made the decision to invest into this encounter. It was not cheap, but I can tell you, we had the best time ever!!!!!! Since little people are not allowed to go into the cages with bigger tigers, we just bought the Small-tiger package. This included entrance into the park and then a hands-on 15 minute encounter with two 3 month old baby tiger cubs.

The one baby was really active and playful, while the other one was having one out of his 18 hours per day nap. After our time with the cubs we were free to walk around amongst the other bigger tiger cages. We were watching other tourists having cuddles with giant cats and just marvelled at their beauty!! 
We can vouch for the authenticity of this experience and to our knowledge the tigers are not drugged, but well trained and very well looked after.

Since we were in the vicinity of the snake  park, Thomas and Alana begged Arno to take them there. The little girls and myself were very happy to entertain ourselves outside the "snake theatre". We could still hear the shrieks coming from the viewers...and congratulated ourselves with our excellent choice of opting out!!! The snake charmer invited guests to hold a python and Alana and Arno's got the picture as prove of their bravery!!!
Enough excitement for one day!!

(Jammer Ouma Leta.......)

We were booked onto a minibus for the 3 hour journey to Chang Rai. In travel-day standards, this was a pretty short journey...actually the shortest to date!! We had to be at the old bus station in Chang Rai by 4 pm, to hitch our complimentary ride to our next destination...the Bamboo Nest. Together with 3 other couples, we were picked up and continued to our destination, 23 km towards the Myanmar border. The hour's ride gave us enough time for introductions to our new travelling companions. The French honeymooners were sitting with the driver up front, Canadian couple, Alex and Matt and the Spaniards, Maria and David, with us and the luggage in the back. The road got quite steep, so much so that our luggage had to be transferred to a 4x4 double-cab bakkie (pick-up) and we had to go on foot for the last 500m to our accommodation!!! 

Nok and  Noi has started this mountain resort 5 years ago and YES, everything was made from bamboo, even the beds, doors, windows(with the exception of the toilet and bathroom sink and hammock!!!)

Since they find the Laoh tribe pretty lazy, they undertook this project knowing that they might need to run it on their own, with not much help. Wow, with 8 bungalows, cleaning, cooking (3 meals per day available on menu), doing the daily pick up and drop off run into town AND accompany guests on excursions....they are working VERY HARD.

During our 3 days/ 4 nights at this gorgeous mountain retreat, we hiked to a strong waterfall in the Thai jungle, met some of the Aka hill tribe people in a high village and walked to a Chinese village even higher up in the mountains. Arno took the older children there, while I stayed with Nina and the feverish Philippa. Jip, she got the same illness that Nina suffered of, a few days earlier. It took her as bit longer to recover, but praise God, on day 2 she started being herself again....just like that!!!! We did not do too many touristy things here. Just used the hammocks in front of our bamboo double roomed cottage to get acquainted with the tiresome process of harvesting rice on high hilly terrain.

 I went wandering in the rice fields one afternoon. Man, I was feeling for the men who were thrashing the sheaves of rice. It was a hard hot itchy job. Once the rice grains were lying in a heap on a spread out tarpaulin, the job was still very far from done. Now all the little bits of stalks and grass stems had to be removed, before the rice could be scooped into big sacks. Last, but not least, these huge sacks had to be transported, one by one, on a moto or on the back of a man, to the closest village. The group that I went to visit had their rice terraces quite a distance from the village.

 After taking a few photo's I followed the single track moto jungle path to the village. There I saw a lady working away on her own, cleaning the rice and filling the bags. I ended up helping her for an hour or so. You could see that she was totally not enjoying her job on this afternoon!! After a good while, I was pleased to see that she excepted my company and help...at least I made her smile. I was contemplating the lonely hard life of a lady like her. I imagined that the idea of travelling to Bangkok might not even be an option for her....not even going as far as to think if she ever could have imagined to be zipping off on an aeroplane?? Quite far fetched. And that made me put my life versus her life in perspective. She did not had any control over where and to whom she was born, neither did I... How can I ever look down on anybody and their circumstances? I was created for an specific purpose, and so was she...all that is required from us both is to be excellent in what we are supposed to be doing. We are so different, but also so alike! No place for judgement, but loads of space for admiration and respect!!! Day in, day out..putting rice in a bag...I can only imagine. By the way, after an hour of helping her I was rushing back up the hill for a nice hot shower to get rid of the itchiness and dust. She had an outside cold tap for rinsing off (and washing the dishes) and on top of that she had to get going with preparations for dinner over and open outside fire!! Man alive, my life is so easy in comparison. Respect!!!

Besides loads of imaginary play, swinging in hammocks, going on forest and rice-plantation walks and stuffing our faces with the amazing Thai curries created by Nok (and Noi on Nok's day off), we also had the luxury of sitting around the bamboo fire in the dedicated pit and watching the bright galaxies and stars. The kids absolutely doted on the attention of Maria and David, played UNO and story-cubes with them. Our new Spanish friends were leaving one day before us and we were so sad to see them go, but so happy that our paths have crossed. We can not wait to introduce you to our beautiful South Africa, hopefully we get that opportunity VERY soon!!!

Hard to say good bye to David...

Beautiful Maria braving it into the waterfall with A and A

Adult time around the campfire...good memories!!!!

The Bamboo Nest gave us all plenty of time to relax, catch up with journals and schoolwork, hanging out with a constant stream of new fellow travellers and breathing in plenty of clean Thai mountain air. 

The children had ample opportunity to chat to all the other travellers and as parents we are starting to really marvel in their confidence and ability to interact with people of all cultures, ages and walks of life. Another one of our initial aims and visions for this trip starting to be accomplished...

......and we have still more than a month to go!!!!!!!