All work and no play...

...would make Anna and Phil pretty dull, so we’ve tried not to just stay in Mae Sot all the time, and have managed to see other parts of Thailand and the surrounding region.

First place (which we should have blogged about a while ago now) was Chiang Mai, the capital of the north, and so much nicer than Bangkok (not that hard though). We spent a few days there doing very little, wandering around and doing a little bit of Christmas shopping.



It all looked like such good fun before the tree caught fire!



The next week was Anna’s NGO’s retreat. Phil had spent his retreat with his NGO in a nearby national park with 15 of them sharing 3 rooms. Much merriment was of course had, including letting off paper lanterns J (one of which had to be retrieved from a tree to prevent a forest fire after some initial miscalculations about flight paths), but Phil did come back with lots of bed bug bites(!)

Anna’s retreat was a little more extravagant, with 170 staff from all over the country going to stay at the Hilton in Hua Hin, a seaside town a couple of hours from Bangkok (and 11-13 hours bus journey from Mae Sot, depending on how much stopping for shopping and sightseeing is done). With only 2 mornings spent doing ‘ice breaker’ type team games and the rest of the time for relaxation on the beach or beside the biggest and most extravagant pool I have ever seen, I don’t really see that the $75,000 spent on it was good value for money. Maybe just an example of how large NGOs can waste money, or maybe it’s more a fault of a donor making sure their money is spent regardless of how? It seems pretty outrageous to me, especially when there are currently large influxes of refugees crossing the border every day from Burma and the staff who may otherwise work on this are instead on an all expenses paid to holiday by the beach. Phil enjoyed it though.

  

The rough conditions NGO workers have to endure in Thailand. For
reference the swim-up  bar is on the left just below the waterslide



After a couple of weeks back at work we had to leave the country for our visa – we only get 90 days before having to cross the border. We had thought that it would be easy to do this in Mae Sot since it’s a border town, with the Burmese border a few km away across the river. The Friendship Bridge still isn’t very friendly these days though and the border’s been closed for months. With the current fighting happening in Burma it doesn’t look like it’ll open again anytime soon... So, we decided to join a visa trip with a Christmas holiday and got a flight to Vietnam with the plan to return overland to Thailand. Anna was told that her office would be closed between Christmas and New Year, so she might as well have a longer holiday, so 2 weeks travelling has been possible J

So, we booked on the night bus from Mae Sot to Bangkok, expecting it to arrive fairly early in the morning, but not sure quite when. So when we pulled into the bus station at 4.15am we were a bit surprised, and of course tired. We’d ended up sitting behind an Irish guy we’d met at a party the previous week, so the three of us whiled away an hour having coffee in the bus station before heading to the Skytrain in search of things to do until our afternoon flight. Breakfast can only take so long, so after some wandering around and still being only 8.30am, we decided to get head to the airport and waste our time there instead. Anna at least got to have a few hours sleep on the seats there J



Getting around in the Mekong Delta



Our few days in Ho Chi Minh were good – it’s a nice city which we wandered round the first day, admiring some French colonial architecture and visiting the war museum, which was not exactly uplifting. Strange how the Americans can perform such horrific violations of human rights to the Vietnamese population, yet no one has ever been charged with any crimes.

We then had a couple of day trips. The first was a boat trip along the Mekong which was good, especially the first 2 hours. The 3^rd was spent mainly napping and the rest of the day was short stops to see things. The second day was mostly spent on a terrible bus - 3 hours of journey to see a temple for half an hour was not really worth it, although the Cu Chi tunnels afterwards were interesting – the original tunnels which the Viet Cong used to attack American soldiers.

A bus journey later and we were in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which is quite a nice city with a very impressive palace and temple complex. We decided not to go to the Killing Fields, but did visit the S- 21 prison, which had been a school, but was turned into a torture centre by the Khmer Rouge and had around 20,000 people pass through before being sent to the killing fields (only 7 who passed through it survived). The whole thing is pretty crazy.

Christmas on the beach :)

Next stop was Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s only seaside resort. After one night at a soulless hotel a long way from where we wanted to be, we then spent a good few days on the beach, which included Christmas day and we spent Boxing Day doing a snorkelling trip.

Our final stop has been to Siam Reap to visit Angkor Wat, which we did today, having also entered the park last night to see sunset quite spectacularly over the surrounding landscape. Angkor Wat itself was pretty impressive, although a bit too big for Phil’s attention span. We then visited other temples around, including Bayon where there are lots of huge stone faces, and the temple where Tomb Raider was film (pretty cool with the overgrown trees taking over the stone temple). One day was enough for us, so we’re heading back to Bangkok tomorrow to spend New Year’s Eve there with a couple of other interns.

Tough life.

And Anna’s now handed in her notice so we’ll be flying back to the UK on 31^st January J in time for her to start her new job in the UK! Phil is having to take a more seat of the pants approach to work as it seems he’ll only find out if he gets his old job back once he returns to Cambridge…

Election traumas

It's been a while since we blogged (knew we'd struggle to keep it up to date), so what's been happening?

Excitment last week when around 15,000 refugees from Burma came across the border after fighting broke out linked to the elections. A large proportion of them stayed in a Thai government compound where numerous NGOs tried to work with the Thai authorities to provide food, water, shelter and health care to the refugees. Anna went to visit the site where her colleagues were acting as doctors in the make shift clinic. Water and food were being given out and the large water containers which Solidarites had installed were hardly touched as a result. By early afternoon lorries were starting to move people back home to Burma - the fighting had stopped, at least in that area, and so people were returning home.

Anna's otherwise been making tippy taps for handwashing (Phil will be trialing them as we all know how he needs encouragement to wash his hands) and assessment tools for water and sanitation in migrant schools.

Phil's been getting stuck into his teaching, expecially in the migrant high school where he's been trying to learn the students' names (he's not doing so well yet). He's had a lot more freetime this week though since the school's been closed following a small explosion near another school from the fighting over the border on Monday and so all the migrant schools were closed down, but he'll be back in tomorrow.

Yesterday's excitement was a hot shower installed in out house! Mornings of boiling pans of water to warm up the bowls of water to pour over our heads are over :) There's even water all the time in the bathroom! Next stop internet connection...

So what is Anna doing in Mae Sot?

Sorry - this post has been taken off, but you can still admire the view of Thailand!

Arrival in Mae Sot

After another short stop in Bangkok, we arrived in Mae Sot just over two weeks ago now. We flew up to the town of Sukothai, which has one of the best airports I've ever been to. As you climb out of the plane, a little "bus" which looks like it would be better placed giving tours of a film studio in LA, comes to ferry you to the terminal building which is built in the style of a Thai beach hut.

Phil patiently waits at the baggage collection point, for the luggage to be lifted off the cart and heaved not onto a carroselle but more of a table and bish bash bosh, we are in. 

From the “baggage claim” table we can see through the whole terminal and spot our driver ready to drive us the two hours or so from Sukothai to Mae Sot. So as the light slowly fades we watch the paddy fields and banana palms fly past the window of the nice air conditioned pick-up. Thinking of the efforts some people must go to catching multiple buses from Bangkok to reach this place, we relaxed and doze all the way to Mae Sot:)

We were only briefly disturbed at one of the many checkpoints along the road. These have been put in place to limit the number of migrant workers leaving the Mae Sot area, where they are tolerated for their contributions to the local textiles industry (a synic might attribute this to the minimum wage not appling to people without papers). However a quick flash of a torch in our faces revealing that we are farangs (foreigners from further afield) meant that we continued on our way unhindered.



The bustling street scene in Mae Sot



The next morning we set out to explore the town of Mae Sot, one of the main exit points from Thailand into Burma. The town has a bustling multicultural feel with Thai's, Burmese, Karen and Westerners all mingling on the streets going about their business. We strolled around the market absorbing the pleasant smells of lemon grass and coconut milk emanating from the street venders, dodging buckets of writhing eels in the market and occasionally choking on a plume of blue haze buzzing from an aged motorbike. One thing that stood out immediately were the war paint like splurges of pastel yellow on the cheeks of the women in the market. Apparently a form of local sun cream/moisturiser.

So after a quick survey of the town we stopped for lunch at Canadian Dave's. Catering for the local expat community, this place is a treasure trove for someone who has a craving for western food, both as a restaurant and a deli counter, with delicacies such as cheddar cheese and cumberland sausages stowed in the refrigerated cabinets that line the back of the shop.

Under the friendship bridge and about as close to Burma as
one can get in Mae Sot at the moment.

There isn't a huge amount of immediate interest in Mae Sot to talk about, there are a couple of markets, a couple of temples (which are more functional than for show – although very pretty none the less), the all important Rim Moei border market where goods from Burma are imported and sold to Thai's and tourists and of course the “Friendship Bridge” which connects Mae Sot with it's Burmese cousin Myawaddy. Ironically the friendship bridge is proving a little bit of an obstacle to the normally cordial relations between Mae Sot and Myawaddy...it's closed. That might be something to do with a flood embankment built by the Thai's on the Moei river, or might be to do with the security situation in the predominantly Karen area just over the river (nobody seems to be clear why its closed, but it is generally hoped that it will re-open after the elections in November). Whatever it is, it means that cross river trade is not doing so well but there still seems to be plenty of stuff in the markets.

At the end of the day for us, after so long on the road we are just happy to be in one place and are looking forward to getting to know our new home!

Wat Chom-Pol

Back at the hotel that night Phil ate an inhumanely hot lemongrass soup which, as he was delicately slurping said fiery water from the rice spoon, managed to create a kind of aerosol effect in his mouth, spraying the back of his throat with what felt like napalm. Phil struggled to hold his composure, desperately trying not to let slip his inability to eat the local cuisine, but three things gave him away. Firstly the scarlet colour in his cheeks, secondly the tears of pain streaming from his eyes and finally the muffled giggles coming from his wife watching him try to come to terms with the injury he'd just caused himself! Recovered from that misadventure and now armed with the concrete knowledge that anything prefixed with the word “spicy” on the menu, is beyond Phil's eating abilities, we retired, ready for something even more daunting. Our first “Monday morning” for about 4 months...

Beaches

We spent quite a bit of time on honeymoon on the beach, or more likely for Phil, in the sea. Here's a picture of our beach :)    And our lovely bungalow :)

But it wasn't all relaxing on our beach, we also took a boat tour (through a huge thunderstorm!) to some islands (aka Ang Thong National Marine Park) - very pretty. First stop was an island where we went out on canoes, then did a bit of snorkelling. Then on to another island with a lagoon in the centre (where we decided against making a backpackers paradise and where Swedes get eaten by sharks) and has some good snorkelling. Even Anna enjoyed the snorkelling!

Elephants and Monkeys

After a couple of days lazing around on a tropical beach we thought we'd get out and see what else Koh Samui had to offer. Turns out there's quite a lot, so we booked onto an 'eco' tour. This claimed to include 'monkey training' and Phil spent the night before it unable to sleep with worry that we'd signed up to support monkeys juggling with fire and other monkey cruelty...

The tour turned out to be really good though with apparently no animals hurt in the making of the tour.

First stop was elephant riding (actually we arrived early so were entertained by hundreds of catfish being fed by the next door monastry, but then there was elephant riding). Much fun:

Afterwards we got to feed the Elephant! This involved holding up a bananna which was taken out of our hands by his dexterous trunk and dropped off in his mouth to be gobbled up, skins and all!

Next stop was thai cookery. Unfortunately we didn't get a photo of that - we were too busy eating. Yum.

Then off to the coconut plantation and finding out how to make coconut milk (not the coconut water as we'd previously assumed), and then it was time of the MONKEY! He very cleverly (and seemingly without animal cruelty, and definately without a shiny suit such as the monkeys on the fliers for monkey circus which is well known as the home of monkey cruelty on Koh Samui...grrr says Phil) spun the coconuts with his hand a foot until they fell from the tree. Apparently each monkey can harvest up to 200 coconuts per day!

Then we took a trip to the Namuang waterfall and whilst it was too murkey to swim (because of the previous night's monsoon downpour) it was very pretty...

Arrival in Bangkok

We had the most hassle free flight I've ever had on a very nice Jet Airways plane, arrived in Bangkok, straight onto a bus which then dropped us off outside our hotel in Bangkok. Amazing! Quick plate of Pad Thai before a stroll around the legendary Khaosan Road, before hitting the hay. Nice.

This morning we woke up all bright and breezy (apart from Anna who was tired, but Phil managed to resist the temptation to bounce up and down on the bed like tigger - and not in a dirty way!) , got breakfast and ambled around for a while. We were going to head to Wat Po and see the reclining budah but that plan was thwarted by a combination of a Thai public holiday and Phils inappropriate attire (Anna did tell him not to bring the mankini but he just doesn't listen).

So we are now just relaxing in an internet cafe near the hotel waiting for 4 o'clock to tick round when we will head for the airport and the beaches of the southern Gulf of Thailand...

Getting ready to go...

So we're getting set to go - passport in my new name (I've been Anna Le Gouais on it since even before getting married! Not very hard to change your name these days), visas obtained (taking 15mins in Hull for 1 year multi-entry visas), flights booked, and even honeymoon booked! Just a little bit of packing to do, and a decision to be made on where to stay in Bangkok for our first night... Plenty of time though - we leave on Sunday.

The plan is for a week or so honeymoon in Koh Samui (it's monsoon season so hopefully it won't be very busy, and won't rain ALL the time), then a couple of days in Bangkok for induction before going to Mae Sot, the border town next to Burma/Myanmar where we'll be living during our time in Thailand. Exciting stuff!

We'll try to keep this blog updated on what we get up to, but previous experience of blog writing suggests we're likely to require some prompting. Feel free to prompt if we haven't written in a while :)