…and now the Jungle Flight

21 03 2010

Yesterday I persuaded Elínborg to join me on a trip with a company called Jungle Flight.  The guys at Jungle Fight have set up a zip wire course in the canopy of the jungle in the mountains beyond Chang Mai, similar to the original Flight of the Gibbon.  The course consists of 33 platforms with 26 zip wires, 2 sky-bridges, 4 abseils and one spiral stair case.  The longest wire is 300 meters long and the highest is 120 meters above the ground.

In the beginning (and the whole day before) Elínborg was terrified of the thought of hanging high up in these wires and the anxiety didn’t lessen when we came on site.  The staff was made up of of guys that, already at just after seven in the morning, acted like a heard of calves in the spring – cracking jokes, all laughing and making noise and didn’t  seem responsible at all.

After brief instructions we went for the first zip wire and when in business the guys were very careful and responsible – although continually making jokes.  Right from the beginning both of us were loving the experience and all fright was out the window.  It was so much fun being up in the canopy and sliding over those wires, enjoying the view.

Gradually we learned more tricks and got more frisky and went head first – Superman style, we went together on twin wires, went backwards and without hands.  The distances, height and speed varied greatly so sliding on the wire never got old.  In between they also had the abseils where a rope is fastened to your back and a guy lowers you down in a Mission Impossible kind of style, down 20 to 40 meters at full speed – a fantastic adrenalin injection.

We had opted for a cheaper option, 22 platforms, but midway through we were offered to upgrade, which we gladly accepted.  I don’t think anyone could pass up on that opportunity being midway through the course.  We were in a group with two Taiwanese girls that were doing the big circuit and that made the decision even easier.

So we had a great day in the forest and all in all it was a great experience and a lot of fun that I hope can shines through in the photos – we would highly recommend this to anyone that has the chance!


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Tiger Kingdom and Jungle Flight

20 03 2010

We have just been loving life here in Chang Mai.  First of all it is great to return to some sort of organization after Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.  This time around we really notice how much better off the Thais are – both in terms of organization and money.  Another great thing that we were really missing is the Thai food.  Being back to fantastic red or green curry, tom yum soup and other fantastic dishes is just great!

The first day in Chang Mai we just wandered around the city, trying to get our bearings.  On the second day we decided to take a tuktuk to the Tiger Kingdom, a park with about 30 or so tigers.  We had very mixed feelings going in, you never know how the animals are treated and how things work.

The deal is that you can come and have a peak into one of the cages and then you can buy 15 minutes with one (or many) of four different age groups – newborns, “teenagers” and adults – with the newborns a bit pricier than the others ($15 vs. $10).  We thought long and hard if we wanted to do this, we had seen that if you go in with the adults you are not really petting them, more approaching them from behind and tap on them and it felt very strange to us and not worth the experience – except maybe just getting the thrill of standing next to an adult tiger.

So we opted for seeing the baby tigers since we were there and just to sum up – the experience was amazing!  Once we came into the enclosure where they were kept – by the way they were three 6 weeks old kittens – one of them just ran to Elínborg and right into her lap and he stayed around us the whole time.  The kittens are a bit tricky because they just go where they want and we were not allowed to hold them, fetch them or anything – just be there and if they wanted to play then we could play with them.  Those ten to fifteen minutes with Kankoon (Jack Fruit) were just wonderful and so much fun!

Elínborg with little Jack Fruit

After seeing the baby tigers we were allowed to walk around the part and see the other tigers (through the fence) and what amazing animals they are – so graceful and elegant.

The teenagers

After the whole visit we felt really good and had no second thoughts.  All the animals were born in captivity, they seemed very healthy and well taken care of and seemed happy to us (without a degree in tiger psychology though).

Well this has been long enough, I’ll just post about the Jungle Flight experience tomorrow.


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All the way from Vientiane to Chang Mai in Thailand

18 03 2010

After the fun in Vang Vieng we took the bus down to Vientiane, the Laos’ capital.  Vientiane is a nice and cozy city but we had heard that there are not that many things to do and see there.  We therefore decided to get a room for the night and head for Thailand in the morning.

At the guesthouse we met new friends when we were going to sleep – there were bedbugs in the bed!!!  At first we saw one and thought that it was just some harmless bug but soon there were others that followed.  Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep that night and hurried away from the guesthouse as soon as possible – after refusing to pay the agreed rate.  What got us even more angry was that they seemed to know there were bedbugs in the room and rented it to us anyway …bastards!

We had seen tickets from Vientiane to Chang Mai in Thailand for 1,100-1,500 baht ($33-$45), which felt way too much for us – the savvy travelers :) so we decided to go on our own.  We had seen that everything seemed to be overpriced in Vientiane and felt sure we could do better when in Thailand.  We went to the local bus station and got a ticket to the nearest big Thai town (Udon Thani) for 80 baht – a good start.  Going through the border was extremely easy and straight forward …and no payment to get the Thai visa, which is nice :)

For some reason most towns around here have at least two, if not more, bus stations and it is not uncommon that you have to get your self from one station to the next if you have to change busses.  On top of that the bus stations are often outside the towns and that doesn’t make things easier.  Anyway we had to take a tuktuk between bus stations and got a ticket to Chang Mai three hours later for 525 baht.  By showing a little initiative we saved about 50% or 600 baht on the fare, which is huge in backpacker terms, and arrived in Chang Mai 3 hours sooner than if we would have taken the Vientiane-Chang Mai bus so we saved both time and money :)

I have to admit that the 14 hour bus ride was no luxury ride, we had one stop after seven hours and that was it.  Twenty minutes to pee and eat.  Apparently we had a toilet on board but that wasn’t really accessible because the bus was completely full with about fifteen people standing in the middle without any seats – some of them were standing for hours.

We were very happy to reach Chang Mai where we knew of a great guesthouse in the middle of town waiting for us.  Chang Mai is the main city in Northern Thailand and offers a lot of tours and activities that we are now trying to decide between so stay tuned!

ps. we have not been taking enough photos recently as you can see by the crappy photos in the last few posts but I promise that we’ll shape up here in Chang Mai ;)


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The Damage Done by Warren Fellows

14 02 2010

DamageDone The Damage Done – Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison – is a written by Warren Fellows, a former heroin smuggler that was caught smuggling heroin from Thailand to Australia.  After a long trial he was sentenced to life imprisonment and he was to remain in a Thai prison for the next twelve years.  Fellows accepts that he was guilty for the crimes he was sentenced for but the punishment seems way too harsh.  Fighting cockroaches, sewer rats, the other inmates and the sadistic guards seems as inhuman as it gets.  A grave warning for anyone wanting to break the Thai laws.

Obviously Fellows is not a seasoned writer, I think this is his first and only book, but the story is really interesting and it is difficult to to put it down once you have started and therefore it is easy to look past the faults in the storytelling and language use.

The story has its disgusting parts so keep the light on and be happy that you are where you are and remember all those that might not have it as good as you – be that self inflicted or not.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Thailand, planning to visit Thailand or has been in Thailand.  Especially I would recommend the book to anyone thinking about smuggling drugs in or out of Thailand.


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Cambodia

3 02 2010

Later today we are going over the Cambodian border.  We have read a lot of stories from people going this way.  It seems like there are a lot of scams to be aware of and dirty border guards as well.  I haven’t seen that it is dangerous, more that there are a lot of scams where the people are trying to trick you out of our money by over paying for the Visa in several ways or tricking you into exchanging money with a ridiculous rate or setting you into a guesthouse where the drivers get paid for delivering the guests and everyone gets angry when you, the paid for guest, don’t want to stay at that particular guesthouse.

We decided to go on our own to the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet and go by our selves to the border.  I’ll post later how that goes.  We are quite excited after reading all the stories and we better get going….


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Different Bangkok

2 02 2010

We experienced a very different Bangkok than last time around.  Last time we were in the old city, which is both dirty and filled with cheap stores and markets and at the same time magnificent with her temples and the Great Palace.  Now we stayed close to Siam square where all the fancy malls and expensive hotels are located.  You could see the growth everywhere, new office buildings being built and traffic everywhere you look and people shopping, shopping, shopping.

It was much easier to see how big the city really is than in the old town, which felt like a little cozy village after a few days – not a neighborhood in a city of 6 million people.  The traffic at Siam Square at rush hour was endless and people everywhere.  To accommodate all this or keep up with the rapid growth the Thais build a pretty impressive Skytrain on top of the regular traffic which fitted perfectly.  The Skytrain has two tracks so far and is fantastic to use.  They do also have an underground in some parts of the city and a lot of busses that are very hard to figure out when you don’t read Thai.

We went to Lumphini Park, a public park close by, and lounged for a few hours.  The park had a lake that was filled with some sort of swimming dragons that were about one and a half meter in length and tortoises and fish.  In the afternoon the park started to fill up with runners and ladies doing aerobics and Tai Tsi that was open to everyone.  Twice during the day they stared playing the national anthem and everyone stopped what ever they were doing and just stood straight to show respect.  This happened as well when we went to the movies, before the movie started everyone stood up and they played a movie showing the king’s life under the national anthem.

When we were in one of the malls we started hearing intense screaming coming from the other side of the mall.  Curious we ran to the other and and saw hundreds of young girls trying to see a group of guys on a stage below.  Supposedly it was one of the hot boy bands in Thailand and you can just imagine the noise when hundreds of young girls between fourteen and twenty scream of excitement over those guys.  We were just surprised that the glass in the shopping windows didn’t shatter.

We were happy that we decided to stay in a different neighborhood and were able so see the diversity of the city, at least to some extent.  We will probably stay either in Chinatown or close to Khao San road when we come back after our journey through Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos – but who knows?


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