Just one of those days

Sukhothai is the old capital of Thailand, before Ayutthaya, which was before Bangkok. I wanted to visit some old temples, so I took a bus from Chiang Mai.

I had trouble sleeping my first night in Sukhothai. Somehow I've managed to get more mosquito bites in the last couple of days than I've had since I came here. And prickly heat--on my arms! I've had prickly heat twice before, but both times it was on a (sun or exhaust pipe) burn. This time, it's just my arms! And it's disgusting!

And I woke up really early so that I could be at the gate to Sukhothai Historical Park right when it opened at 6:30. And I was, cranky as all hell. Here's a bunch of pictures:











Smile for posterity--not because I feel it.








I was hungry, itchy, sweaty, hot and prickly heated. I visited all of the temples inside the city walls, and a few to the north. And then I slipped and fell in the mud. After that, I thought it best to retire my cranky ass to my guesthouse.

I showered, ate (oh, yeah! I always forget how important eating is until I'm having a crap day!) changed out of my muddy clothes and ventured to the museum on the park grounds to have another go at the day. I'll show you how it turned out tomorrow.

back home again

I've been in Ban Phe for six days now, but I still have posts from the old capitals for the rest of this week. I love this town, but not a lot happens here. This isn't so bad, since I have such a surplus of pictures from my month away. It's relaxing to be in a familiar place with familiar people.

I missed the ocean, and being able to walk down the street and wave at people I know. At the same time, there is a nagging feeling that I may have crossed into a parallel universe where things are just a little different. Furniture was rearranged. Ryan moved away. Oliver tucks in his shirt!

butterflies and zebras

Sun mentioned that there were pandas at the Chiang Mai Zoo, so with one day in the city I decided to visit. I had good timing, too; May 27th was baby Lin Ping's birthday, and I came on the 28th.



Lin Ping was running around being adorable. She is not particularly graceful, but this just adds to her cuteness. There was a large table and chairs set up in her habitat (remnants of yesterday's birthday party) and she managed to get her head stuck in one of the chairs.



She started whining, and her mother tried to help by grabbing the scruff of her neck and attempting to pull her *through* the chair, which was not going to happen. The zoo staff frantically walkie-talkied one another. When she dislodged herself, we all cheered. Then some men came and took away all of the chairs. See, Lin Ping? This is why you can't have nice things!

Here is a video of Lin Ping and her mother being cute before she lost her chair privileges.



There are other animals at the zoo too.







Lin Ping isn't even the only adorable cuddly-looking baby at the zoo, but koalas sleep too much to get stuck and scare the zoo staff.


The first spirit house I ever saw was at Point Defiance zoo in Tacoma, Washington, where the elephants live in pretend-Thailand. This is the Chiang Mai Zoo spirit house complex.



(Do you like that there's not a picture of a butterfly or a zebra? I saw them both, I swear!)

strike a pose

Chiang Saen is a city littered with ancient ruins, just south of the Golden Triangle.

I am a horrible person because I don't remember the names of these temples.

But here's a chedi. I remember that it's from the fifteenth century.


...in a residential neighborhood.


My guide, Sun, showed off his mango-slaying skills


And... there was a time in my life when I posed like the girl in the Absinthe Robette poster whenever someone brandished a camera. Don't judge me.


Two mangoes!


(I'm impressed with Sun's energy, as well as his mango-slaying. By this time we had visited...everything I blogged about this week.)

And this is at Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Saen. This one was built between the 12th and 14th centuries.

we are golden

The area where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet is called "The Golden Triangle." This area is famous for opium production, and now there is a great Opium Museum with all sorts of interesting paraphernalia.

This is Myanmar, as seen from Mae Sai, which is the northernmost part of Thailand.


(And this is going to be a lot of Emily-standing-in-front-of-things. I was the only person who signed up for this sightseeing tour that brought you the White Temple, and the monkeys, and this, and more tomorrow, all in one exhausting day with a wonderful guide named Sun who took my picture everywhere and gave me a wicked awesome and also kind of ominous Thai name, which sounds like "Deeo" and which means "go alone." He was really hung up on the fact that I'm traveling by myself. Anyway.)

It's Emily, standing (in Thailand) in front of Laos on the right and Myanmar on the left.


It's Emily, being attacked by (and standing in front of) a giant scorpion at the Golden Triangle.


It's Emily, standing in front of a couple of giant elephants!


...and a giant golden Buddha.


And that's enough.

let's see the monkeys

An hour or so north of Chiang Mai there is a temple in a cave called Wat Tham Pla. Below the cave there are monkeys.





Monkeys are a big part of the reason people visit, so there is a caged stand that sells peanuts and corn to feed the monkeys. The bamboo sticks leaning against the stand are official monkey-poking sticks to be used when the animals get greedy.





The temple is some 200 steps up the side of a hill. The bottom of the staircase is guarded by lions, and monkeys dare not venture past them.



Except me.





Inside there are bats! You can see them and hear them, but good luck taking a picture of them.





I think this gesture is supposed to be "I have survived the cave and conquered my surroundings!"

white room

The Big Important Thing that you're supposed to see in Chiang Rai is the White Temple, Wat Rong Khun.



It is pretty spectacular.





As you cross the bridge to the temple, you first pass over these hands reaching up from hell. There's one painted red fingernail there; my camera didn't do so well.






Visitors aren't allowed to take pictures inside, but the inside has murals depicting good and evil. The evil side has images from popular culture and the news, like the World Trade Center towers and Darth Vader and Spiderman. People were painting the inside walls when I visited, so the mural changes. Today, it also has Jake from Avatar.





Drinking is bad.


Smoking is bad.


My pictures don't convey the way that this temple glistens. It's made of plaster and sparkling glass mirrors. I'm sure it's lovely on any day, but in the sun on this day it was fantastic.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore

After two whole days on boats, I looked forward to some overland travel (no I didn't! I looked forward to someplace pretty where I could stay for a few days and *not* be on a bus or a boat or a train or any other seat for hours at a time.) I had to get to Thailand, either way.

The ferry from Huaey Sai, Laos to Chiang Khong, Thailand takes maybe five minutes. It just crosses the Mekong.



Thai immigration guy: why did you put my entry stamp on the right side of a brand new page halfway through my passport? It would have looked so clean if you had put it below my Lao entry stamp.

When I arrived in Chiang Khong, I took a tuk-tuk to the bus station to catch a bus to Chiang Rai.

THIS:


This is the beautiful, shiny, majestic public bus from Chiang Khong to Chiang Rai. It's near the most beautiful bus I've ever seen, I'd say.

I listened to some Elton John on the bus. "Your Song" reminded me of karaoke with Alan, and "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues" is kind of my favorite karaoke song (even though I've only sung it twice,) stolen from Annie.

But then.

"Tiny Dancer." It was perfect.

This could have happened,


but didn't.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river.

I do a lot of things so that I might look back one day and say, "I endured that." This is one of those things. Isn't it romantic to take the slow boat up the Mekong from Luang Prabang to Thailand? For awhile there, the water level was too low for the slow boats and they stopped the service altogether. I was quite pleased to learn that the boats were running when I wanted to leave Luang Prabang. I had heard horror stories about wooden benches with no cushions, so I was prepared to endure.

This was my first glimpse of boat 008, which would take me from Luang Prabang to Pakbeng.


But can you imagine my delight when I saw that instead of hard wooden benches, I would get to sit on a re-purposed bus seat?


This is a luxury riverboat if ever there was one. It looks like a shiny new camper or something. I can sit for 8 hours in a car seat. I've done that plenty over the last few weeks.

The water level is still quite low, and there are some nifty rock formations visible poking out of the water, like this:


And other, invisible ones scraping the bottom of the boat. The boat chugged along, though, slowing to a crawl as it navigated up rapids and taking me all the way to Pakbeng.


(I like to think that this is a family who decided to build their house on a barge, just because. And then they adopted a baby elephant for each of their children, and when they're not taking things up the bank of the Mekong, the elephants run and play on the barge like it's their own big backyard.)

It was not a eight hour ride. It might be eight hours downstream, or eight hours when the water level is higher. Today, it was not eight hours. Today, I was very ready to get off of the boat after ten hours.

Pakbeng is where the boat stops and you have to find a guesthouse. As usual, there are representatives from various guesthouses at the dock, or the top of the rocks you climb up when you get out of the boat.

There is nothing else in Pakbeng. There is no Internet. There are no karaoke bars. There are no bookshops. And the only way out in either direction is 10 hours of death. (Death is a boat, Guildenstern!)

The boat out of Pakbeng was this:


Here were the wooden benches with strict, tall backs.

Early in the ride most people abandoned the benches and built nests on the floor with backpacks, stolen cushions, and (thank you, Past Emily) travel pillows.



Maybe it was the different speeds that the water, land and clouds were moving, or maybe it was the fact that I had had my face buried in a book most of the day, or maybe it was that I had been dead for two whole days, but my eyes started playing tricks on me and the planks of the boat started moving. I didn't feel remotely nauseated, but I was pleased for my sanity to arrive in Huaey Sai, at sunset on the second day.


The ferry to Thailand wasn't running anymore, so I stayed the night and woke up bright and early to come back "home" to Thailand.