Hi All,

Well I'm back from Muang Noi Neua (read a later post for info about that) - and I've had my first case of dodgy stomach... so at the moment I'm taking it easy in Luang Prabang (again) till I feel better... so today I thought I'd take the time to stick a few pictures up on my blog for you all to have a looksie at... so here goes:

China!

Above, the 3 gorges as seen from the back of the domestic "cruise" ship I was on - it was freezing as it had snowed that morning.

The 3 gorges dam project - a huge piece of work, it still wasn't complete when I was there.

The ultimate crusing experience in the 3 gorges, the soviet built (or so I was told) Meteor - you see a few of these round the Chinese waterways - noisey feckers.

The mist covered Karts of Yanshou, though not a good picture (it was raining all the time)  the scenery is very dramatic.

Night time in Shanghai, very vegas.

A group shot in China (Putuoshan Island I think) - from left to right we have: Colin from NZ ('tron), Myself, Charlotte (UK), Jarrad (NZ, Wellington), Ed, Scarlet, Desmond (all UK), Christy & Anthony (Australia) and also Tony Chen our amazing Chinese guide

It's funny - I had some weird proconceptions about monks in China, like they wouldn't use technology, wouldn't secretely have girlfriends and aren't prone to mood swings, grumpiness or fits of being irrational... silly me.

The centre of Xi'an - a very cool (and well preserved) city west of Beijing.

The "courtyard" near Xian, a cool but desolate spot.

The above two shots are of the hanging monestary and just to the left of the monestary the frozen stream - which gives you an idea of what the temperature was like then -  did end up climbing over the whole of the monestary - I'm not sure it was particularly safe... heh

A shot from the great wall, it's um... great

One of the people we were travelling with (Sally) looked quite ill when I hung over the edge like this ;o) the water down below is where you have to walk from to get up to the wall, it's a bit of a haul.. get your fatty developer sweat on.

I actually was in a T-Shirt by the time I got to Beijing, this was a really nice 20 degree day at the Summer Palace.

And last of all, I could've spent gigabytes collecting chinglish signs - but you very quickly reach saturation, however I did like this one that was on the Xi'an wall..  I wasn't sure if it was forbidding the carnal pleasures of madamme palm and her five lovely daughters, or merely suggesting that jumping off the wall was a bad idea? *shrug*

Well, new country.. my third since going on holiday, Beautiful Laos, and so far it's been great - it's such a beauiful laid back place... and any rate I'll try to keep this brief as the internet here is absoloutely bollix - the less content I post the better for it ;o)

So, since my last post I have moved on from Chiang Mai.. basically it went like this:

19th - Jumped the bus to Chiang Khong (Thailand border town to Laos) from Chiang Mai.. that took six hours, and I was stuck in the back of a minivan with 4 grumpy smoking Israeli cyborgs - the bus did have air con, but it only work when you were going down hill... I'm guessing the van was too underpowered with it turned on to run at all unless coasting... mighty ;o)

At chiang khong I stayed the night, ready to cross into Laos (Huay Xai, the sister border town) - this proved a most interesting evening as I ended up meeting a guy from the DPNS (democratic party for a new system I believe?) - who was from Burma/Myanmar, and hasn't been home since he was 10 years old (because they will arrest him at the border) - he's now 24 I do believe.

The border crossing was easy, got the stamps and jumped the slow boat to Luang Prabang - a two day affair, with the first day leaving you in a little place called Pak Beng... there's not much there but guest houses, but it was alright - the second day we
jumped onto the slow boat again (well a different boat, but I digress) and headed for Luang Prabang.

These trips are a lot of fun, the boat ride lasts about 8 to 10 hours depending on how you count it - and is full of locals, you generally just end up drinking beer laos, laos laos (rice wine) or laos caos (said "l-ow cow") ? which I think is thai/laos whiskey (tastes like Sangsom), singing songs and talking rubbish with fellow travellers.  However, I did make a minor miscalculation on the second day as I was talking to an old Laos lady who handed me some "tea leaves" which they stick salt in and roll up and chew/eat - well when in rome.. or Laos..

So I chewed away on these leaves... tasted like salty spinach, and then swallowed it.. and at that point twigged to the fact that they were coca leaves... arse!.. about half an hour later I felt like I'd had 3 beers in quick succession, very woolly headed, but the feeling ebbed away after half an hour thankfully - silly boy ;o) should of spat it out after chewing, like all the other falang did ;o)

At any rate, during the trip on the slow boat I actually met New Zealander's! First time so far in my travels... 3 girls, 1 from Auckland and 2 from Christchurch - it's nice to be able to talk and have people understand my bad NZ english!  The slow boat was a great place to meet travelling friends, and our little group of 10'ish people that as semi-constructed over those 2 days is a lot of fun .. And I've still been hanging out with some of them since arriving in Luang Prabang.

The first night I arrived in Luang Prabang (21st) I went out to dinner and then drinks at a bar called "hi-ve" - not a bad little spot, and the following day we get our "temple on" and visited the Wat on the hill (I forget it's name) and Wat Xieng Thong, which has a great tree of life mural on it's side. However I did get attacked by wasps (nasty buggers) and then stubbed my toe while trying to escape.. thankfully the bites hurt but didn't swell up.

Today we got a group of 10 together to hire a minivan, which we took to Pak Ou caves (basically a cave on the waters edge, where thousands of unwanted buddah images are discarded... something I'd never thought about till today... I mean you can't just "dump" a buddah image, if your a buddhist at least) and after that we headed to the Tad Kouang Si, a beautiful waterfall... where we spent the rest of the day escaping the heat - it truely is a beautiful spot, and hopefully I can post a few of the pictures I took soon - as it's close to a monastery, and all the young monks head up there to play at lunch time... very cool, if a little surreal...

Probably the coolest thing though is that my guesthouse (Chaliny I think it's called) is about 10 foot away from the mighty Mekong river, so I can scratch that one of the list of things to see (along with the Yangtze of course from last month) - though I'll no doubt see more of the Mekong as I approach vietnam.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and get a local bus in the morning to Nong Khiaw, where I'll spend a night/day/night then head back to Luang Prabang, and off to Phonsavan the following day (to see the plain of jars) after that I do believe it's going to be Vang Vieng, Vientiane and eventually Si Phan Don (way down the bottom of Laos, where I can cross over to Cambodia).

I may not be updating as frequently over the next 2 weeks though as some of these places have no internet, and often the power is run off generators which they turn on and off at funny hours (they get up early and go to bed early) - when they say this is one of the most underdeveloped countries in the whole of Asia, they do mean it... in a funny way, bits of it remind me of the bush up north in NZ.

Well I had my first Thai cooking lesson today, one of two before I leave for my slow boat to Laos - I decided on the oldest cooking school in Chiang Mai, which has a very good reputation - downside being it's a couple of hundred baht more expensive ie. $10 NZ, but what the hell says I?) and the head tutor/chef is a popular TV personality... he popped in to show us how to make a few dishes before handing the show over to a couple of ladies, both very funny - you spend most of your time laughing, when your not fretting about burning your curry
paste.

Loads of fun and quite interesting, I got to make a few dishes.. from fish, pork, chicken, vegetable salads, noodles, papaya salad, steamed banana, soups.. all sorts, tomorrow I'm not sure what I'll be making, but no doubt it'll be fun and educational...though I'll have probably forgotten half the stuff I learnt today by the time I get home, so I wont be making any cullinary delights without alot of practice (and a decent wok 'n gas burner) - I still find it hard to get used to the fact that a lot of food here isn't eaten with chop sticks.. they
just work so well that your frustrated when they aren't available!

Last night I had some pahd thai at a local streetside restaurant (yummiest I've had so far, probably had msg in it ;o)
and then was going to walk home when I heard ninja tunes playing in the rooftop bar, kid koala in fact, so I stopped in and had a
beer and a gander at the stars while enjoying a bit of quality scratching seldom heard elsewhere on my
travels (hardly anyone I meet even knows the label, let alone the DJ's signed to it... or Tom Waits... meh) -
ended up talking to some people and scooted off to a disco (Bubbles, pretty tragic joint and it closes at 2am?) with some
Canadian girls to do some dancing - which provided some entertainment for the evening, one was a therapeutic massage
student studying Thai massage and the other a personal trainer - odd company for someone such as myself now that I think about
it... ended up spending most of the time watching the locals dancing away and making merry with their bottles of thai whiskey.

At any rate, tonight will be a rather quiet night in.. reading a book I do believe while I digest all the food I made..and then consumed today. Mmmm.. :)

Alone again, again.  Or perhaps for the first time, who knows?

I must say I'm relieved as well (to be alone, that is) - the problem I've found so far with the random people I meet travelling is that you often have common interests when it comes to talking about future plans and swapping a few yarns over a drink, but in essence they are people I would never develop a friendship with, basically it's like going to a party and talking to random individuals.. and then meeting them for 3 days in a row, very much rinse and repeat.

And so today I'm back by myself as Anna, Allan and Kerryn are all off on the slow boat to Laos (which I'm also doing, but not till the 19th, I still need to pack a day or two of Thai cooking school in and maybe some sight seeing :) - I must say it's a relief, as I dont really feel like I've been by myself for more then a day or two in the last month and half since I started travelling, and well it's been fucking me off to put it bluntly - I may live in a flat, but my work, the job at the council (where their aren't too many young people) and my hour's meander too and from work on public transport offer me a lot of time to just mull things over by myself, I dont think I've been getting enough of that time so far while travelling - like a cat needs sleep, I need time alone.

Good songkran...

Anyway, Songrkan just got better and better, the second day was great - had loads of fun, and the expressions on some of the kids faces were priceless, indellible memories (but alas no photographs, too much water to take me camera out) though as the sun goes down you get a little bitter about being hit with a high pressure blast of freezing cold water (they love filling 44 gallon drums with big blocks of ice, and topping it up with water.... brrrr!) - that night we settled in with a bit of a meal then headed out to the roof top bar, which is close to the city gate on Chongklan road - full of idiots, but amusing.. I left here with Anna however when a band started up down on the stage by the gate, "silly fool", who are apparently very well known (i.e. big!) in Thailand.. they seemed like a linkin park crossed with creed type combination, but it wasn't that bad ;o) watching the Thai teenagers getting right into it was highly amusing, though they dont seem to do encores.. maybe it was just because it was a festival thing.

After that I headed back up to the roof top bar, had a rather pointless coversation with a drunken air brush artist hippy who just imigrated from Perth, Australia - though he was particularly harmless, at one point he seemed like he was about to burst into tears - It just reminded me of too many conversations I'd had with drunk people back when I lived in the Tomarata with my parents... heh

...and um.. oh yes, then another longer conversation with a girl from Brazil, who had been travelling for over a year and could not wait to get home and see her maid... interesting, I could not quite figure out if her maid was her best friend, or just a mother substitue - probably both, she was an only child with both parents being rather busy private doctors - having the financial hardships of Brazillian locals explained was a rather sobering experience, much like learning the details of China's working class - it generally just makes me bitter when you're sitting in some stupid tourist bar full of idiotic twenty somethings trying to give their end away, alot of people come away to see "Thailand" and then go out of their way to avoid it at every turn... What I really dont like about tourist bars though is that they seem inherantly unsafe, I really dont trust young white people drinking to excess... I'd far rather sit down and have a few beers with the locals.

On the third day we headed out a bit later, there were less people (I suspect alot of the domestic tourists head home to get back to work after the second day) but every was really into the swing of things.. lots of people drinking, dancing in the streets.. and a massive parade that took about 3 hours to go past through the town gates - loads of fun, and I spent quite a bit of time perusing the various food stalls and trying different random things.. most good but not great (all the fruit juices are too sweet that I've tried so far)

Bad Songkran...

We did see some strange (bad) things happen during Songkran too though, and it offered a little insight into something you don't see very often - Thai people getting angry.  The main incident happened on the second day, wandering around the square.. then suddenly there's yelling and running, then somebody throwing a bottle (which instead of hitting the person in question went through a ute window and hit a little girl on the noggin, she was alright but did have a bit of a lump and graze on her head...  and then a guy legging it off up the road through all the traffic... pursued by 5 or 6 young Thai guys (from 2 different utes)... at which point you get an appreciation for just how fit these little guys are, in jandals they were sprinting after eachother through a foot of water at break neck speed (faster then I could probably run down a hill, but that's not saying much hehe!) - deadly serious looks on their faces... we were walking in the opposite direction and after a couple of minutes everything resumed as per usual... but I would imagine they metered out justice in a fairly "practical" way on this guy once they got him, I certainly wasn't going to hang around and watch.

Though I didn't see it on the 3rd night, some western guy who Kerryn (the Aussie we were travelling with on the Trek) bumped into, fell down the stairs from the rooftop bar and hit against a door in hallway, which was the entrance to someones room we suspect.. the guy came out really angry and started squabbling, then another guy (I may be getting the story wrong..?) turned up and pulled a knife... all a bit scary, Kerryn managed to calm them down and walk the drunk out of the bar... but then when on the street the drunk guy was set on by another Thai guy who punched him right across the cheek, laying him out for 6 - some other Thai people came over and appologised and Kerryn left it at that, the guy was too drunk to know where he was staying, and had lost his keys and wallet... There really isn't much you can do for some people, apparently he'd lost his keys the night before as well too... he's probably been doing similar things everywhere he's travelled.

Really it's no worse then any other new years at home, I'm sure my brothers seen worse up the mount ;o) it's just we don't normally mix kids, teenagers, parents and grandparents into the same spaces - so it just seems worse.

At any rate, I can't say enough good things about this holiday, bad things included, I'm really glad I came here when I did, but I'll also be just as glad to get away and move onto a new place.

Well what can I say... this place is amazing (at this time of
year), Songkran, is without a doubt, the most friendly and
pleasant festival ever -... I'm absoloutely soaked from head to
foot and just sat my big black 45 baht bucket-with-string next to
me in the internet cafe - brilliant, I cant really describe the
atmosphere here, but I wish we had anywhere near as much fun and
energy on a public holiday at home.

At any rate, lets cover what I've been up to... My trek for 3
days was really fun - my first night in Chiang Mai I met 2 of my
fellow trekers, A girl from Finland (Anna) and a guy from England
(Paul) - Paul is great, a very very interesting fellow who in his
30 years has a great deal of life experiences to share, not all
of them pleasant, but all the more interesting... Anna has a
wonderful command of the english language, and has studied
psychology and is a transient..and vid people watcher (like
myself) - so we get on quite well, we even got up to a bit of
drunken urban exploration as we wandered home last night.

First night of the trek we headed out and stayed a night with a
Karren (sp?) hill tribe - they dont speak standard Thai in these
regions, and as part of the "eco" tourism push they have been
oddly converted (no feed lines, but the tribes have solar panels,
T.V. aerials and catholic churches - catholicism in Thailand is
very interesting, I still haven't quite got the "measure" of it,
as they still celebrate budhist events such as Songkran and
generally are a little.. umm.. Odd.  Missionaries have a bit
of answer for ;o)

Second night we headed to a little village that had a waterfall,
very scenic... just kicking back and having a few drinks with our
trainee guide, Mr Bad Boy.. who's birthday apparently it was, but
wether it was true we're not quite sure.  Mr Ken (our main
guide), was hungover (among other things... hehe) from the night
before and let us be.

The last day we went bamboo rafting (and it was the first proper
day of Songkran) so we got very wet.. and then went for a half
hour ride on elephants at the elephant camp, which was definitely
an experience.. riding on an elephant is really quite something,
especially when they start scrambling up an eighty degree
incline..

My Trek was great, but the variety and amusement derived from the
people I met on the trek was even better - the social dynamics
are hilarious (the group consisted of a bunch of british girls
ranging from 18 through 22 and one english lad (Tom) who had been
teaching english in Thailand for the last 3 months, 2 Australians
(both pretty cool), Paul, Anna and Myself being the solo
travellers.  I can't really be bother putting it down into
words right now, but it's been a lot of fun, and the food was
great.

Today I had a lazy start, as we went out to the riverside bar and
grill for drinks and food last night and I was felling a little
run down (Honey coated pork spare ribs with spicey papaya salad
with prawns and a 2 litre pitcher of chang beer, so good!) - so I
had breakfast at 10:30 then read a book till 12 (Trigger by
Arthur.C.Clarke, which isn't a bad load of bollix) - and went
wandering with Paul.

Since then I've just been getting sprayed with water by kids and
old people alike (it's good luck to wet westerners :) almost
continually... there are people everywhere, and they're all
smiling... it's just amazing - you really have to be here to
understand, but you're very greatful for your Typhoid
shot!!  Everything is covered in the local water out of the
ping river and surrounding areas, deli belly central I'm sure...

Tonight I'm meeting up for drinks with the Trek'ing gang again at
8pm, which should be fun - I have the advantage of not really
having plans till after Songkran, so I can have a bit of a fun
without worrying about needing to move again the next day.

Once Songkran is over I'll book a thai cooking class for a couple
of days and arrange my slow boat to Luang Prabang in Laos (I've
already got my Visa being processed now) - and I take back what I
said about Chiang Mai weather, it's miles better then Bangkok
because the nights are a lovely 20 degrees.. just dont get out of
bed till lunch time and you have a 5 hours heat and then the
temperature eases off, I actually wore a pair of jeans last night
comfortably.. first time in Thailand.

Hope everyones doing swell, whats the weather back home like :?

 - Alex