Today we move on to country number two in the South East Asia bit of our trip. We’re flying from Chiang Mai in Thailand to Luang Prabang in Laos. We got here by overnight sleeper train from Bangkok, which was a great experience. Very civilised and a pretty good night’s sleep to boot – all so much easier (and cleaner) than Indian rail travel – take a look at Bangkok main station:
We had the option of taking the backpacker route in to Laos and doing the journey by the two day route involving bus, foot, boat and doubtless other means of transport but we’ve plumped for the plane.
We’re very much not part of the backpacker world here and we’ve decided there’s no point us trying to pretend otherwise!
Chiang Mai is chock full of tourists and they seem to fall in to one of four categories; full-on 20 something backpackers, grey haired single men aged 55+ (most often seen with a young Thai girl on one hand and a bottle of Chang in the other), middle aged folk like us just passing through (mainly French) and then Westerners of indeterminate age who’ve opted out and are living here now. Fascinating. We’re clear where we fit and we’re happy with that!
We’ve been staying in a guest house here in Chiang Mai – All in One Guest House.
There are hundreds of them and while it’s far from smart western standards it’s a great spot and very friendly (tag line is ‘hostel prices with hotel comfort’). Perfect. Just like everywhere else on this trip, the city is deceptively bigger than the maps would have you believe.
You head off for what looks like a 300m walk and it turns out to be 3km.
It’s been the same everywhere on this trip. The good news is that we’re walking miles (definitely clocking up our 10,000+ steps each day) and that’s helping keep the weight down. We need that because there’s ice cold beer and great food everywhere.
We’ve eaten really well on the trip at every stop and Thai food hasn’t disappointed.
We did the classic thing a couple of days ago and had a few hours learning to cook proper Thai food. 
We’ll hopefully now be able to whip up a mean Pad Thai, Papaya salad etc when we’re home. It was good fun and was just part of an excellent day experiencing life out of the city. Mr P our guide was a real character who is putting his time and money in to maintaining traditional Thai ways of life in Ban Thi village. He takes tourists there and re-invests the money in schemes including organic rice growing – here I am up to my knees in mud planting the rice –
plus weaving and other traditional crafts (including cock fighting).
They would all otherwise be dying out as people leave the villages and head for the cities.
And they’re doing that in their thousands here – just as is in China and elsewhere in the developing nations.
That means loads of people and loads of cars, bikes, trucks and buses; the pollution is horrendous – even in a relatively small city like Chiang Mai. Bangkok was really bad and it’s hard – especially for a wheezy asthmatic like me – to be in the back of a tuk-tuk or open sided taxi for too long. We’ve been longing for that cleanest of air in Tassie and wondering how long the era of the petrol fuelled car and bike can continue.
These places and thousands more like them are grid-locked and so polluted. I give it 10 years max before something changes. There’s no evidence of electric vehicles here or indeed of anything that doesn’t belch out fumes so there’s already room for improvement if only the economics work. And it’s going to need to because this is just not sustainable.
We took a Song Thaew open taxi this morning up to Wat Doi Suthep – one of the most impressive and important temples in Northern Thailand.
It was a good spot, high up in the National Park and a perfect place to look down on the city. Not sure what was cloud and what was pollution though.
Reminded us both that we’re happiest in the wilds and open countryside. The cities are great but we feel most alive climbing a mountain or hiking through the forest.
I don’t know what to expect in Laos. I assume some of the same crowd, lots of folk passing through and a good collection of monks. Should be fascinating.
So it’s onwards to Luang Prabang and our first views of the mighty Mekong river (very excited about that).
too old for dreads 