We arrived in Bangkok with big hopes: our hotel, The White Orchid, looked great in the photos, with a jacuzzi, spa and massage room and a roof-top restaurant overlooking the city from the 12th floor. We were tired, smelly (nowhere to wash on an overnight train) and ready to just melt into a pampered, self-indulgent lifestyle for a couple of days. But as the quote goes, “the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.” For us, the “straying” began with the room — upgraded, but still plain, old and under-maintained — and continued as we explored the hotel, ignoring “keep out” and “staff only” signs as, well, there were no staff-members above the second floor.

We were disappointed by the roof-top restaurant — empty, derelict, nice-enough views but nobody up there — but utterly dismayed to find the spa-room (jacuzzi!!) closed, locked and unlit from within. Why advertise this? (Answer: it gets people through the door.) Why have directions to each service prominently displayed in elevators and on signage throughout the hotel? (Answer: cheaper than taking them down.) Frustrating more than annoying, but also annoying enough that we would never recommend anyone stay there; for our final night in Bangkok, as we only booked three and want to stay a fourth, we’re looking elsewhere … and inspecting rooms before we agree to anything.

To escape our dismal hotel, we took a river- and canal-cruise. A tuk-tuk journey — and they are different here to Laos — down to the water, then a couple of hours sailing in a little boat (a “putt-putt”, maybe?) with a smiling but quiet “driver”. We sat and relaxed, enjoying the gentle swell and a beer bought from a canoe that pulled up next to us (on the floating-vendor’s insistence, we bought a beer for our “driver” (captain?) too, ‘though I didn’t see if she drank it while navigating the narrow canals or not). We saw the Grand Palace, the Thai Naval college, a couple of enormous lizards swimming through the water and about four hundred Wats, Buddhist monasteries replete with temples, stupas and enormous gold statues. We chose NOT to stop at the “Snake Park” because, frankly, “…dar[ing] to handle poisonous snakes…” is not our idea of fun — and we can do that in Australia just by setting up camp.

Cruise over and the afternoon well-and-truly underway, we headed for a little cafe for a bite to eat and something cool to drink, avoiding (and after a short while, ignoring) the touts offering cheap suits, cheap silks, cheap jewellery, cheap crap — and of course the ubiquitous and insistent tuk-tuk drivers, “30 baht, where you wanna go sir? Hello sir.” Screw it: doesn’t look that far to the “O’Reilly’s Irish Bar”, let’s walk!

It turned out further than expected, but perhaps if we hadn’t stopped at little shopping malls along the way … anyway, we found another British pub instead, the Duke of Wellington, and ducked in — it was positively icy, in stark contrast to the muggy heat outdoors — for some dinner and a little Rugby: Wallabies vs Springboks at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane. (When Australia won, outclassing the “Saffas” with ease, we quickly scanned the room for the stricken faces of South Africans, planning to remorselessly tease and ridicule them, but if any were present they demonstrated a stoic composure worthy of a Hollywood botox-beauty — not a single tear in the place. Oh well, there’s always next time…)

Related posts:

1. Goodbye Vientiane; Bangkok, here we come!
2. Photos from Scotland

So we’ve made it to Bangkok: we got a tuk-tuk to the train station, just past the Laos-Thai Friendship Bridge, and were happy to find there were first-class tickets left — not too expensive, and after the “hard sleeper” in China and “chicken bus” in Laos we weren’t in the mood to find out what second-class bunks were like in Thailand.

We were, of course, ridiculously early — 2pm when the train left at 5pm — but we figured it was better early than late. We sat on the platform, read our newly-swapped (in Vientiane) books and sorted out the Laos exit stamp once the office opened. It was thankfully nice and cool, as there’d been a bit of rain that afternoon, and before long our train arrived. We boarded for the short hop to Nan Kai, where we were granted free Thai entry VISAs (looking at it we now have until the 5th of August in Thailand — and we haven’t decided whether to go to Cambodia or save that, along with Vietnam, for next time).

First-class ain’t grand, but it was a two-bunk cabin with air-conditioning, and we weren’t really expecting much more. We fell asleep to the rattle and rocking of the carriage…

Then Dee, half awake, saw a cockroach and was startled awake. Not a fan of the little chitinous critters, it was (apparently) difficult for her to fall asleep again … on the top bunk, I was oblivious.

We arrived in Bangkok at 6:30am, then spent a good 45 minutes looking for our hotel (and refusing tuk-tuks — it should just be around the corner, dammit!). We checked in, got a free upgrade (it’s still a bit dingy, disappointing when I was looking for 5-star luxury), ate a quick breakfast downstairs … and now Dee sleeps and I watch Russia TV.

Be happy to get home now. Oh, in the meantime here’s a slideshow of photos from Laos!

Related posts:

1. Goodbye Vientiane; Bangkok, here we come!
2. Big hopes for Bangkok

We’ve been a bit quiet on the journal since we got to Laos, but it is because we’ve been doing a whole lot o’ nothing: days relaxing/lazing at the hotel, reading book after book or watching (often bad) movies on HBO. In the afternoon or early evening, as the temperature dropped, we headed into town on foot or by tuk-tuk to look at shops, swap our books; invariably we would find a place to eat — it is a strange fusion of asian and european, with French restaurants selling Italian food alongside fried crickets — then a place for a quiet beer, if only to wash the cricket taste out of our mouths.

(Actually, that’s poetic license — I ordered fried crickets last night when I saw it on the menu, but they were “out” … or could it be nobody ever eats them, so it’s just on the menu for “shock value”? Nah, I don’t believe that; more likely the tasty li’l hoppers aren’t out in force during the wet-season. Guess we’d have more luck if we see gecko on the menu…)

But today we’re leaving Vientiane, and Laos, for Bangkok in Thailand. We’ve already booked our hotel — The White Orchid, in Chinatown — but haven’t yet got the tickets to get there, so today we’re tuk-tuking (can that be a verb??) into town, then onto Thanaleng where we hope to avoid the high-prices of the “Thailand Bus” and get a night-train all the way to Bangkok. For now we’re smug with knowledge: Internet research (traveller’s tales) suggests this is the best, most comfortable and cheapest way to do it, but none of the locals we’ve spoken too know about this mythical “train 70 from Thanaleng” so we have our fingers crossed it actually exists.

So we haven’t been to Vietnam this trip, and we might not go to Cambodia either (Warrick had a torrid tale of Cambodian border-crossing that Cece endured a couple of years back — lets say it ends with her being hosed off in the street before the hotel will let her in) but that just means we have somewhere to come back to (yes, there are plenty of places we’ve missed on this trip). I’d like to, but then I’d like to visit just about everywhere in the world, twice, so we have to be practical.

The hotel in Bangkok looks nice, and is a 20 minute walk from the train station (please exist, Train 70!). It is slightly more expensive than we’ve been paying (£20 instead of £15) but has a pool and jacuzzi; after the “rural life” we’ve been living, relaxing as it is, it might be nice to be back in the city and indulge in a few creature-comforts.

Well, breakfast is here so I best eat. See you in Bangkok!

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1. Big hopes for Bangkok
2. But yeah, now she sleeps
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Relaxing at Le Leela Hotel in Vientiane, Laos, and it’s time for a long overdue update. Wifi here is fast! Probably because we’re the only guests.

We’ve had a bit of an adventure in Laos so far, largely due to “travellers’ belly” that hit us in Jinghong, near the border on the Chinese side. I think it started in Chengdu, however: one of the staff there was sneezing and coughing, and shortly after rolling out of town I did the same. (It was NOT bird ‘flu, as I may have suggested — or if it was, I recovered remarkably!)

The trip from China to Laos was a long, bumpy day with a whole lot of unnecessary stops — it became apparent early on that the whole purpose of the bus was to transport Chinese goods (tax-free?) into Laos, with humans as a secondary consideration at best. We sat on hard seats crammed between carrots and cabbages, sacks of potatoes and soggy-cardboard boxes filled with I-don’t-even-wanna-know, flying ’round corners and over dirt roads. There were a couple of breaks, of course: the passengers duly disembarked, clambering over the drygoods to disappear for a squat or pee into the trees at the side of the road.

After getting through border control,  over the border, and mostly over the head-cold, we stayed at a small Laos village called Luang Nam Tha — “area near Nam Tha (river)”. We had two nights here, and didn’t really do a lot — just spent the time recuperating from the first hit of “travellers’ belly” either of us had experienced. Something about the water, perhaps?

We checked into the biggest, most fancy-looking hotel we could find, the Royal. Showered, shaved, cleaned and relaxed, we headed out for dinner. There’s not much to see in LNT, but the food at Panda Restaurant was good. We filled our boots and retired for an early night — I couldn’t even finish half of the bottle of Beerlao that we were to find ubiquitous throughout the countryside.

From Nam Tha we took a short 5 hour bus to Oudomxay, a little town with not a whole lot going for it, but halfway between Luang Nam Tha and Luang Prabang. Our one night there was spent at a karaoke bar down the road (our guest house was plain, but right near the bus station).

Once we got to Luang Prabang we were old pros: negotiating with the tuk-tuk drivers, pointing out our chosen guest house on the (often wrong) Lonely Planet map, even attempting to pronounce the streets and temples nearby. Tuk-tuks are ubiquitous here, even more so than the infamous “Beerlao” beer, and for a small fee (we were happy to overpay at £4 for a few dusty miles) they’ll take you right to your door. In our case, it was the Lane Xang Villa, directly across from a “Wat”: we watched young monks in orange robes play football in the rain; wandered around wooden buildings, elaboratively carved; and looked at ancient stone stupas and archways.

All in all a relaxing time, although the nights were sometimes too hot to sleep!

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1. Goodbye Vientiane; Bangkok, here we come!
2. Northern Line canned at 8:50am this morning; took me another 40min on the bus to get here. It’s 45min walk from home!
3. But yeah, now she sleeps

So you’ve probably noticed it’s been rather quiet from us of late, and you may have guessed why: the lovely Chinese government decided to block this website with their beloved Great Firewall. They also blocked Facebook, Blogger, Flickr and a whole bunch of other sites at random.

But we’re in Laos now, so I can post what we got up to in China and upload a stack of photos from the nearest wifi-enabled pub (this Internet cafe is expensive). See you soon!

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1. Slideshow: Terracotta Warriors

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1. Slideshow: Pandas in Chengdu

A soft-sleeper from Beijing brought us to Xi’an, a Shaanxi city which has expanded past its ancient walls with the same flurry of activity and industry that we saw in the north. Once the capital-city of the region, Xian is now most famous for the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors nearby.

And admittedly, they are pretty cool. Row upon row of individual, life-sized statues inexplicably standing to attention in three covered (roofed & walled) pits. There are different ranks, different weapons, horses … apparently there are even the different “facial types” present in China at the time. I don’t believe anybody really knows why they were built, but one tour guide suggested that the emperor wanted to rule an army in the afterlife — I prefer the much more plausible hypothesis that an ancient army was turned to stone by a mountain shaman, and will one day fight again for the new emperor … feel a bit bad for the soldiers without heads, ‘though, not to mention those entirely destroyed.

Our hostel in Xian was nice, set in the last Ming-style (or is it Qing?) building in the city. As we opted for their most expensive room (to spoil ourselves), it was a proper little palace! Furthermore the grounds were home to three cute little kittens — funny, the Chinese word for cat is “mao” — who we nicknamed Black & White, White & Black and Little Lion. They would fight and play, as kittens do, and liked to sneak into our room and stretch out on the enormous bed…

That night there was a “dumpling party” in which we rolled dumplings (gyoza, is that Japanese?) into various different patterns and styles — or attempted to at least — under the watchful eyes of the locals. Once made they all went into a pan, were cooked and served up to us … for free! It was a good chance to chat to people, and we ended up having a bottle of wine with a couple of Aussies who had just travelled from Vietnam and Thailand.

Want more? Try the slideshow of all Beijing photos.

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