Too-nice-Thailand
01/Nov-12/Nov/2002

On the night we arrived we were treated to a huge Halloween party on Kaosan rd. Since we were not really prepared for this, and were pretty tired from the long trip, it was all a bit overwhelming. There were more than 30,000 people, forengs and young Thais, dressed in very skimpy clothes (yes they do that too!) on this one, not so very large, street, drinking and partying outside. It looked and felt great but after about an hour we decided to head to a slightly quieter, but very "in" area where most of the young stylish Thaïs go for dinner. I don't think many tourists came there so we got the giggles from the so-called mature, glamorous girlies and had a great time seeing them gulping down Thai Whiskey.

Captain Camel:
The next few days we went around Bangkok using the express boats looking at the various tourist sites. The express boats are a great means of transportation which works basically like a crowded metro but then, well...with a crowded boat.
It works really well until the stations get flooded at high waters and you have to wade through pools of grayish muddy waters to get to the street; which many times was the post office, as we were waiting for all those nice cards, letters, packs of sweets or liquorices, phone cards etc. that never arrived or....were never sent!  After the fourth times however we gave up (well, that is to say we had to go to Laos so we had no other choice really!), and look forward to them on our return.

One of the sites that most impressed us was Wat Phra Kaew, also known as the royal palace which houses the Emerald Buddha and Wat Pho where the huge 47m reclining Buddha is.

Camel in a floating junk
One day we decided to be lazy and go on an organized trip to the floating market, which looked absolutely fantastic on picture. We set foot on a tourist minibus at 7 am looking forward to a nice stroll and boat ride across the super colorful canals of the floating market, surrounded by hundreds of women selling fresh produce from their tiny boats, wearing their conic shaped straw hats; eating a luscious a-la-minute noodle soup on the water, being surrounded by the true smells and sights of traditional rural Thailand. Instead, we got to spend an hour's worth of "sight seeing" on Koasan Road picking up tourists who didn't really seem to know what time to get on the bus, then a nice visit to a sugar cane "market" (read touristy-trap-junk-selling-fake-souvenir-rip-off-shop), joined by another 300 tourist buses, after which we finally went to the floating market... for 7 minutes and a half.
It could still have been fairly nice though - if we were actually going to the market we had been promised on the pictures. But hey, we were only stupid tourists and were therefore taken to a specially designed tourist floating market (selling those highly sought-after antiques such as T-shirts, Sarongs, elephants woodcarvings, incense sticks, copied CD's and original - made in china- Thai hill-tribe textile ...), were ordered to go in a boat that would take us all around in the great generously allocated time of 30 minutes (for which we had to pay the ridiculous not-included-in-the-all-inclusive-fair 300B), after which we were allowed another whole 20 minutes to buy souvenirs (or, in our case, try to find the real market!).

To make things slightly worse on the way back they stopped again at a wood making "factory" (refer above to the Thai definition of "factory"), so we could stroll around the overpriced market and look at things we really didn't want for an endless 45 minutes. At this stage we were so incredibly pissed off and disappointed that we sat down and waited for the bus to take us back to Bangkok and vowed never to go with an organised tour again (which we soon forgot, but that is a different story altogether).

Well, at least this served us as a lesson, and we are now warned that:
a) organised tourist-trap tour are always disappointingly crap.
b) you should not go on markets on Sunday- most "real" locals would actually take a day off.
c) local markets are best  between 7 and 9am -that's before the German tourists invade the place.
d) shouting at the driver, pulling his hair while punching his nose and biting his leg does not necessarily help.

We drowned our frustration of the previous day in the not-so-floating weekend market which was exactly as advertised: bloody busy! Walking between the trillion of stalls, makeshift shops and people was a real - if suffocating joy. We mouth-watered at all the cheap clothes and the home accessories and the decoration materials and the fake cds/watches/bags, promising ourselves to return once we are back on the labour market and can again fill container-loads of gorgeous stuff.

Cast away Camel:
In order to get out and relax from our heavy sightseeing sprees in Bangkok we decided to go to one of the gorgeous bounty-like islands on the eastern coast. We took a bus down to Koh Samet where we expected a half deserted beach, hammocks hangings between tall coconut trees and small bungalow huts overlooking powdery white beaches brushing the transparent turquoise ocean.

Well, it wasn't exactly like that!
But still very nice.

We stayed at Tuk's little hut on the second most popular beach on the island and thus not as crowded as Diamond beach, though quickly getting there.
During the day we relaxed our very stressed bodies on the warm sands. At night we would brush on our cinematographic expertise by watching  stimulating movies such as Goldmember, Scary Movie 2 or Evil Woman at one of the many bars/restaurants on the island. The Naga Bar, just  below our guesthouse, was a nice bar with a very lively crowd in the evening, drinking themselves silly, dancing, tossing coins for free drinks, challenging each other at pool and generally having a good time.

Camel on the re-run:
After these relaxing days we decided it was time to head up north to both Laos and Cambodia before coming back to Thailand for Christmas and New Year.
Being a logistics expert Silvia was in charge of getting us to the Laos border in the most efficient, economical and fast route possible. So we bought sleeper tickets for the over night train to Chiang Mai (13 hours), took the local bus to Chiang Rai (4 hours), stayed overnight in this very sleepy little town, took an early bus to Chiang Kong (again 4 hours) hoping we could get on the 2-day slow boat to Luang Prabang, our first stop in Laos, later in the morning.
Well, we indeed made it on time for the boat, only to read (in the exact same book that Ms. Silvia used to decide upon our intricate itinerary) that there was actually a direct VIP bus from Bangkok to Chiang Kong which takes a mere 15 hours and costs less than half the price of the train. Even though it is only a holiday, Silvia is hereby officially fired from her position as Logistics Manager of this tour...

17 dec 02- -03 Jan 2003

Gamal in Bangkok, take 4:
The reason we arrived alive in Bangkok from Siem Riep is not because we had
prayed to the whole panoply of Buddhists, Hindoists, Zaratostrians, and Sufists Gods, but mainly because our incessant "oh-my-God-I-don't-wanna-die" had finally woken the driver from his "get-the-Arton-Senna-feeling" trip.
We kissed the ground, settled in the Nakorn Pink Hotel, checked our mail, did our wash, collected the post (that nobody sent us, thanks a lot), bumped our heads several times against the hotel's low bathroom door; and planned the days ahead which we would spend in Kanchanaburi, just 1.5 hours west of Bangkok.

Gamal-Chanaburi
Most people rush through Kanchanaburi on a day trip from Bangkok with a rip-off- souvenir-selling-organised tour. We wanted to be different, we wanted to be real world travellers, we wanted to rough it, to suffer, to feel what the ancient adventurers felt... So we went for a full 3 days. We even went by public bus -a VIP aircon Express bus mind you, but public nevertheless. And it is amazing how different - how more authentic- things are when you leave the organised tourist trail and take control of your wondering destiny: you have the joy of walking with your 20kg backpack for 30 minutes in stead of 5; you get to choose the first crappy guest house available for no other reason then it being.......the first; you have the honour of being welcomed by schools of touts and hotel reps instead of smoothly settling in; you pay twice as much for everything and finally get the privelege of experiencing the exasperating feelings that the whole world is after your little few spare dollars. All this in the name of authenticity, budget-consciousness, culture- mindedness and a hard-core sence of adventure. We soon made the solemn promise of never watching Discovery, National Geographics or any such evil channels ever again!

Once there, exhausted from almost 2-hours of adventure overdose, we booked an organised tour to take us on the classical Kanchanaburi itinerary the next day...

Gamel, Tiger and Co:
The thing we were most looking forward to in Kanchanaburi was a visit to a
temple not even mentioned in the Lonely Planet or in any other guide book, nor
offered in the standard tour, but featured in the super-fun 'Farang" Magazine
(TIP:available everywhere on Khoa San Road, www.farangmagazine.com): the tiger temple where one could allegedly see tigers up-close and personal, and even sometimes stroke them. So we set up on our little 125cc motorcycle in search of this place some 50 minutes away from the city. And man it was great!
It was the closest we ever thought we'd get to a big cat, it was a unique and intense experience we could not get enough of..
The monks that rescued the 7 orphan tiger-cubs from poachers 4 years ago had
absolutely no prior knowledge or experience, but hand raised them and turned them into the most beautiful, impressive, cuddly pussy cats in the world (mind you, these are pussy cats that weigh more than 300 pounds, and could tear you to bits faster than you could scream 'mamaaa')!. Their aim is to breed them and release their offsprings back to the wild some day. They run the centre on visitors donations only, are not supported by any governmental organisation, but have managed to resist the tempting offers of zoo owners and private individuals to buy a 'nice' tiger for as much as 3 million bath -usd80,000.
In addition to the 7 tigers, the monks also rescued cows (the type that want to rub themselves against you all the time and never stops licking you), wild horses, deer, donkeys and some 1300 wild boars. They insist that the most dangerous animals on their farm are the horses, not the tigers.
The experience of walking a Tiger on a leach just like you'd walk a dog was incredible. Better still was when they let the tigers loose in the small canyon behind the temple, and allowed us to sit next to one, pet him (cuddle him, even kiss him if we dared) and take lots of pictures. It was absolutely amazing!.
Even more so because we were the only ones there for most of the time, and had ample time to talk to the monks and play with the big pussy cats. (Tip: the monks take the tiger out to the canyon at 3pm everyday. You can reach the temple very easily by motorbike, or can even ask your organised tour to substitute one of the standard activities with the temple visit. It is more than worth it!)

The best of the rest
Although Kanchanaburi is not exactly your typical party town, we had a relaxed evening at 'Apple and Noi's' on the river side, tasted their most delicious Massaman Curry (our best curry by far!) and played Shithead with whoever dared join us.

The next day, bright and early, we boarded the minivan that would take us through a hectic program of WW2 history and nature watching (The hell fire pass, the Ozi WWII museum, a ride on the death railway and on the bridge over the river Kwai, plus of course the classical elephant "safari", the bamboo "rafting", and the unmissable waterfall.).
In the morning, the Ozi World War II museum and the Hell Fire pass were very interesting, if only to see what the Australian, Dutch, American and Thai POW's endured under the Japanese invasion during the last years of the war.
The next activity was a classical Elefant "Safari" which was quite impressive. It is only once you are right in front of them that you realise just how high - how huge- these animals are! That made us a bit apprehensive at first, more so because we had seen a documentary a few days earlier where a "tame" elephant went completely
beserk in a circus and trampled both his trainers to death in a flash.
Anyhow, after 15 minutes of uncomfortable ride, we had pretty much seen it and
were ready for the next "big" thing: the bamboo rafting.
A partially-floating shabby raft is probably the ideal mode of transportation for anyone who likes spiders, creepy crawlies, wet feet and extremely slow rivers rides. We were all unfortunately far too preoccupied chasing away the spiders to really enjoy anything of the surroundings. We left the raft, went to a so-so waterfall (although we have gotten to the stage where waterfalls have lost their appeal and end up being comparing to greater/bigger/wilder ones seen elsewhere, we still go out of our way to visit them, just in case.... Unfortunately, what is marked as waterfalls in maps and guidebooks often turnes out to be just a stream not much thicker than an overflown bathtub), then hopped on our 1.5-hour train ride over the death railway (because so many POW's died while building it) which was, well... just a slow train ride in an oldish train. When it ended on the famous bridge over the river Kwai, we all took out our cameras and clicked furiously to catch that memorable sight; only to
realise a few moments later that it was actually just a grey iron bridge, and that it was not even that photogenic.
So we went back to Apple and Noi's, had another Massaman Curry, and played some more Shithead...

A Camel goes South
Having made plans to be in Ko Lipe, the furthest-most southern Island for New Year's, we started making our slow journey through the christmas period to the
south, and headed to Ko Tao, the diving mecca off the eastern coast of Thailand where we planned to get our advanced PADI. (TIP: it is not necessarily the most beautiful place to dive in Thailand (Semilan Islands and PhiPhi are better), but the diving conditions are extremely good, which makes it a great place to learn to dive or take advanced/divemaster courses).

Dive Camel, Dive
As we had already organised our accomodation and dive course from Bangkok with
Deep Blue, we quickly settled in and were able to take our (mandatory) refresher dive the same aftertoon. The ideal diving conditions, the one-on-one attention of our Instructor Michel and the interesting sites made for a great Advanced course. We are now armed with enough knowledge and skills to face the most fearsome monsters and roughest seas (well, almost...).(TIP: 6300bath per person for the advanced course incl. accomodation is quite a bargain, we were just the two of us in a group. However groups tend to be of 5-7 people which could make it a bit frustrating to learn/dive as you constantly have to wait for other people to perform their skills...) (TIP: you can also organise everything on the spot, though it is handy to have the bus/boat/truck/course all ready for you when you get on the island)
On Christmas eve, Chris got sick, first on the boat, then on land, during the night dive and then again during the whole night, with high fevers and the feelings that he was the most miserable suffering man on earth. Once he was asleep, Sil managed to sneak out and have a good Mexican X-mas dinner with some of the diving crowd.
On Christmas day we chilled on the islands' most beautiful beach (rocky beach) and went out for some snorkeling. Just 10 minutes off the coast, we spotted a bunch of large fish, swam enthusiasticaly in their direction, got really close, and realised that they were adult 1.5m long reef sharks having a snack on a small school of fish. ("blub blub blub...Oh my God!, Oh my God!, blub blub, there are sharks, there are so many sharks...and they are sooo big!!" Sil managed to scream between two large sips of salty water.)
The same night we boarded the night boat to Surat Thani, on our way to the National Park of Kao Sok.
We had already been on Thai night trains and had experienced their lush luxury -
you are served a three course dinner at your seat and the steward makes up a comfi bed for you upon request, but had never travelled by night boat before. It was like entering a huge dorm with two long rows of matrasses scattered on the floor. There were no chairs, no tables nor any other ammeneties; just simple comfort, and a great invitation to sleep..

Scam the Camel
Arriving in Surat Thani at 5am, we were greeted by a regiment of dubious looking taxi drivers offering us onward transportation from this little commercial sea port town. Having decided to take the regular bus service to Kao Sok, we asked to be dropped off at the bus station. "No problem, only 10 bath for 2 people!" reassured us the least dodgy driver. Silvia immediately commented on the affordability of the ride and the friendliness of the driver (sil//"it's almost too good to be true"). BIG MISTAKE!
We were draged from breakfast stalls to travel agencies, were told that the public bus would not go before 9am, were advised that we would not be droped to the bus terminal and that we'd better buy the mini-bus ticket with them... for 3 times the price of the regular bus.
There it was!. Finally the proof that Cambodia does not hold the monopoly for unscrupulous obnoxious scam artists! So we got angry, we almost got physical, we complained and walked away, but eventually, against Sil's wish, came back when they substantially reduced the price and promissed to leave immediately.
At 9:30am, after being moved another 2 times, the mini-bus finally left on a very beautiful ride to Kao Sok, amidst dense rainforest and tall limestone mountains.

Jungle Camel
For two days, we stayed at Art's Little Lodge, a small cosy well-run place with lovely elevated little rooms, and a restaurant overlooking a waterhole where monkeys come to feed every afternoon. We spent our days trekking in the national park on jungle paths and in bamboo forests towards far away waterfalls. (TIP: The trail leading to the XX waterfall is gorgious. You cross many rivers and streams, so expect to get wet, but are rewarded at the end of the 2.5-3 hour walk by a lovely waterfall in which you can refresh and swim. The path is much more beautiful - and less travelled - than the one heading in the other direction to all the other waterfalls).

Speedy Camelzales
On the way back from Kao Sok to Surat Thani we had a really freeky experience when, tired of waiting for the inchallah-bus, we hitch-hiked on the back of a van with a man who not only suffered from an accute case of speedygonzalesitis (140km/h on a one-lane road...) but who also had a rare disease never before spotted in a big Thai city. This sickness, 'generositeria' was manifested in its worst form when the ailing subject repeatedly and categorically refused the 100 baht we offered as token of our appreciation (a double donation actually: to him for making the 3-hour journey in a mere 70 minutes, but also to God for allowing us to live another day).
We were lucky to just make the bus from Surat to Hat Yai, the last big Thai city before the Malaysia border, as we needed to hop into Malaysia to renew our Thai Visa which was soon expiring.
After having spent a night at the horribly shitty Cathy GH (TIP: the LP says that it is a good place to get info from. It is indeed, the girls at travel agency are lovely and helpful. But the guesthouse is really crap. There are plenty of chinese run hotels around the corner offering much better value for money with TV, hot water etc...), we headed to Pak Bara where we could take the Boat to Kho Lipe the next morning and join the group with which we were going to celebrate new year's eve. (TIP: to go to Kho Lipe, Tarutao or Adang, better sleep in Hat Yai and take the earliest bus to Pak Bara to catch the 10am ferry - there is really nothing to do in Pak Bara!)

1 Camel, 2 Camels, 3... 2003 Camels
We did not know many of the people with whom we were going to celebrate new
year. Except Jerome and Berthy whom Chris knew well, we only had had some email contact with some of them.
It however all turned out fantastic from the moment we met on the pier in Pak Bara.
We all came from different backgrounds and places, and the melting pot brought great discussions and lots of fun.
There was Claude (Italy) & Marion (France) who lived in Holland and are on a 6
months sabatical in Asia, Nicolas and Justine, both from France but had been living in the US for many years and are also on a 1-year round-the-world tour, Stephane, their French friend who was on a flying visit to Thailand, Berthy, the french techy-turned-photographer who shares his life between Singapore and Bangkok, Jerome (France) and Cheryl (Singapore), the organisers of the whole thing, plus some 20 of their singaporean friends who shall remain nameless.
Jerome had done a wonderful job organising the whole event- that is, on paper at least. We should never forget that Jerome comes from a world where "paper"
is extremely important: in his Cisco-IT-blabla environment, everyone prides himself for having at least once been a "paper" millionnaire, and now that they
are all broke, continue to brag about the "paper-value" of the company...)
The problem was that although Jerome had received email & sms confirmations for
his booking for 8 over-priced bungalows on Ko Lipe, and although he had already made a down-payment covering the complete period, the staff of the bungalows did not seem to know anything about it. The sour smell of scams soured sky high...
Many heated conversations with the 800-pound Sicilian owner of the hotel and 14 telephone calls to Singapore later, we were faced with the painful bare fact that we had been ripped off like the bunch of amateurs that we are: the owner of the hotel had indeed not been paid anything, and Malek, the singapore-based Malaysian "agent" claimed that the usd500 deposit was just a "reservation fee"...

We swollowed our pride, tried not to think at how expensive the bungalows would end up being, then opened a fresh bottle of thai whiskey to celebrate our coming together. During the next 5 days we opened so many bottles of whiskey, Pastis, fresh
Russian Vodka (thanks Jerome for bringing it all the way from freezing Moscow) and Champagne that we totally forgot what we were celebrating; but we had a wonderful time lazing around the beach when the sun shined, spending hours at the restaurant's terrace when the rain poored, playing net-football (and realising that we totally sucked at it!), throwing freesbees and eating the most delicious barbecued squids in the world.
We even found time on the fourth day to go diving and snorkling in the beautiful Adang National Marine Park.

03 Jan-23 Jan 2003

Hung over Gamel meets Mr. Shitface:
Marion and Claude, being the only ones that were as vague as us about their
itinerary, decided to travel with us and head towards the North.
On the night train from Hat Yai to Bangkok, we had the privilege to meet the
person who -by a large extent- deserves the number one place in our top 100 of
most obnoxious annoying, galling, unfriendly and inhospitable people we have
met so far.
Although Mr. Shitface had first been quite welcoming when we made an early
reservation in his dining-car, he quickly doctor-jackeled into a stressed out
irksome man when he saw us dealing the cards for a customary game of Shithead.
From his little counter, 5 empty table away, he screamed: "No play! Eat!". A bit intimidated, we ordered beers and spring rolls as aperitif, and made the solemn promise to order more a tad later. Ten springrollsless minutes later, Marion made a courageous attempt to approach the monster and enquire about the state of our order. A harsh "No game, order food" slapped her full in the face!. "But but, but we have ordered already spring rolls" replied Marion in her best travelers English. "No have spring rolls. Order food. No play!". The little restaurant was quickly filling, so we placed a large order hoping that it would calm the Beast for a while. It was wishful thinking. Service got worst, beers took longer and longer to be served and dishes came at 10 minutes interval until Sil received a plate a plane white rice with the friendly comment of "No chicken for you, only rice! Eat quickly, no game!". It
took a good 15 minutes of hand signaling, excuse-me-pleazing, finger-clicking, Sir-
Siring and plain shouting to get him to pay some condescending attention to us
and bring Sil something to put on her cold rice. "Fast fast, restaurant full,
eat, no more play, no game" were his final words. We figured we were not
so welcome anymore. So we slowly finished our beers, and played Shithead until
closing time!

Once in Bangkok, we went through the well rehearsed routine of calling, internetting and emailing.
Wicked Geeky Chris, using the pretext that he had to get a keyboard to fit the new Palm that Jerome brought from Singapore, escaped to the Computer Mall (Pentip Plaza, the undisputed Mecca of electronics, gadgets, copied dvd's, cd's, mp3's, vcd's and software’s) for 3 hours of endless mouth-watering erection-generating window-shopping (but still came home without keyboard!).

Gamal goes North
Another night train brought us all 4 bright and early in Chiang Mai.
Despite being Thailand’s' second biggest city after Bangkok, Chiang Mai retains the charm of a small provincial town, with its colorful streets, busy night market and many gardens and parks.
By that stage, Sil had convinced the French-Italian duo to stay a few more days with us in Chiang Mai then to go trekking in Pai; and Chris had totally brainwashed them on the virtues of digital cameras. So we spent our first day walking around, discovering the city, and shopping for a new gadget.
The lovely Rendez-Vous guest house having real satellite TV (and hot water as well! all this for B280), we also spent many hours lazing around, catching up on the news and the latest HBO series, preparing ourselves mentally for the delicious pizza's at Da Stefano.
Not wanting to come back home completely empty handed, we all enrolled in a 1- day Thai Cooking Course at Gap's. After the local market visit, we learnt the inside-outs of green curries, Pat Thai, fish cakes, chicken in cashew nuts, spring rolls, fish soufflés in a basket and pumpkin/coconut custards. Preparing these dishes was super fun. Eating them afterwards was even better!
When the time to move on came, we went to Pai, just 4 hours away on a hairpins-
filled mountain road. And Pai was exactly how people had described it: relaxed, chilled. A bit of Laos in north Thailand.
We settled down at Duan guest house (B200 for large room with hot shower), shopped around for a trekking company, spoke with all the guides, found our happiness with Backtreks, made the final arrangement, then stuffed ourselves with the best toastis and French fries in the world at Pai Blues Cafe. It is the people and the scenery that makes Pai so attractive. It has lots of arty-farty little coffee shops and restaurants, many art galleries, plenty of hill-tribe artifacts, and one jazz cafe where local musicians come jamming every night from 9pm onwards - Not that we have seen/heard any of it. By 9pm, we would be so stuffed with good food, so drunk on Thai Whiskey and so high on Shithead that we'd have only one thing in mind: more food, more drinks, more Shithead!.

Hill Tribe Gamal
We all immediately liked Mister Tan: ex-school teacher turned trekking guide, he touched us with his honesty, his friendliness, his genuine warmth and a great sense of humor - even irony - that is rare amongst non-fluent English speakers (proof is that Chris hardly understood a single joke).
Accompanying us on our two days trek thru Karen, Lahu and Lisu hill tribes territory were Mr. Tan's second wife (a charming hard-headed women 30 years his junior), his brother in law (every respectable woman commands a chaperon, doesn't she?), and a hoard of canine body guards: Toto, Moo and Rudie.
We walked for 2 days through lovely sceneries of dense forests, wide fields, green rocky hills, numerous rivers and picturesque little villages inhabited by very characteristic and friendly Burman tribes. We ate in their village, slept in their houses, and got some feel of their lives and customs. We do say "some feel" because we had relatively little real interaction with the people whose places we visited: they were used to receiving guests every two months and did not display any interest or curiosity towards us. They would approach us with a cold beer, a few knickknacks to sell or a quick chat, but nothing like the amazing cultural experiences we had heard about from other travelers (or from Bea) about villages that had not seen any white face in years and that were jubilant at the sight of their new guests...
Mr. Tan & Co, a proud Maltese couple and us, the italo-dutcho-franco-lebanese loud quartet, shared the extremely basic accommodation which was nothing more than a windowless large room with a soft bamboo floor, a fireplace for cooking and a small fountain of freezing cold water. Just short of sleeping in the middle of the pig's stall, we slept right above it, under us lived the hundreds of chicken, roosters, ducks, piglets and cows that performed a most fascinating symphony all night long, and whose muddy excrement-filled territory we had to brave every time we wanted to go to either the shower or the toilet. Our nights were thus rather short, although it is amazing how quickly one gets used to sleeping on the bare floor, with a small blanket as only protection from creepy crawlers and creepier flyers, and above an infantry of noisy pigs and noisier roosters suffering from acute insomnia and a severe jet lag.
Mr. Tan's anecdotes, good humor, hospitality and wonderful food, plus the ultra fun time spent laughing and fluffing around with Claude and Marion made the trek one never to be forgotten.
On the afternoon of the third day we headed to a very remote village where the franco-italian duo got their 1st ride ever on a real elephant (the pinkish ones at Amsterdam were apparently not enough for our city Tarzan'n'Jane). They rode around the village, across the river and in the nearby countryside, took zillions of pictures, sat on the back, the neck, the ears and even on the poor animal's head, until they finally begged us to get them off the wobbly pachyderm and give them a double dose of Panadol.

A flying Gamal
Back in Pai, we rented motorbikes and explored the surrounding temples, the hot springs, a spa, and, you've guessed it, a waterfall. On the way back, as we were passing an elephant riding camps, we spotted a tiny little baby elephant attached to a tree. Armed with nothing but a few bananas and our cameras, we approached the cute little thing and started feeding her. Although Chris had noticed the big sign warning not to come closer than the length of the rope, his need for good photographs seemed to have a higher priority. -"I can't see you!... a bit to the left... yes, back...yes, look at me now... good, smile, a bit more forward... I wanna see you with the elephant... good, one little step more..." he'd say in his best fashion
photographer jargon as Sil was feeding Joy, the 1-year old baby.
What followed was the most elegant, gracious tackle ever seen in the history of world animal sports: "Sil slowly gets closer, she has a bunch of bananas in her hand, she moves in careful little steps, Joy reciprocates, she shifts her body weight slightly towards Sil, she grabs the bananas, takes one step back, shoves the fruit in her mouth in a flash, but she is coming back, she is coming towards Sil, Sil has nothing left to give, Joy extends her tromp, she makes one more step forward, her chain is preventing her to go any further, she places her trunk on Sil's tummy, shifts her body a little more forward, she can now almost touch Sil with her big head, and.. she is extending he trunk, she is pushing Sil back, no she's not... YES... Oh my God, Sil is flying, she is still flying, still in the air, coming down, she's flat on her ass... lots of people running towards her... is she going to stand up?, yes, she seems ok, a bit
stunned, nothing broken... That was a beauty.. Let's look at it again in slow motion; such a perfect takeoff, a good two meters flight, a bit of a nasty landing, but Sil seems to be fine. She's up now, she walking towards Joy... is she going to try to tackle her? No.. she grabs something from the ground, is it a stone, a rock? is Sil looking for revenge? She's extending her arm... showing her fist, staying well clear of the chain's lengths, she opens he hand... and...aahhh, it's a banana...what a generous move from our lovely Sil!"
At night, back in the safety of our favorite restaurant, we celebrated Sil's survival, two weeks of great fun and our last evening together with heavenly toastis, crispy "frietjes met mayo", a few bottles of Samson Thai whiskey and a last game of Shithead.
The next early morning, Marion & Claude made their way to Laos, while we took our motorcycles and headed towards the Golden Triangle.

Easy Camel Rider
During the next five days, we drove around the beautiful scenery of Northern
Thailand and the Burma border.
On our brand new 125cc bikes, we drove, never more than 5 hours a day, through what is by far our favorite part of Thailand, both in terms of indigenous population and landscapes. The best parts of the ride were:
- The rice fields and the breathtaking view points from the high hills of Soppong between Pai and Mae Hong Son
- The mystical "Long Neck" Karen village and the long conversation with a lovely young lady, who, once the horde of annoying hard-bargaining loud Israelis had finally left, told us everything about the traditions and customs that lead this Burman tribe to place heavy copper rings on the necks of their women, pressuring down the upper ribs and the shoulders, thus given the illusion of really long necks and denigrating silly nicknames such as "giraffe women".
-The spectacular drive on the superb mountainous road between Mae Hon Son, Khun Yuam and Mae Chaem which is every fast driver's dream: in perfect condition, well sign-posted, smooth, deserted, full of long nice winding curves that can be taken really fast, and with precipice-edging hairpins that need to be approached really carefully. For more than 4 hours, it felt like driving a rally, and we were both so much under the adrenaline rush of our mad fast driving that we even forgot to break for lunch...
- The fabulous evening in Mae Chaem, an almost never visited village, first enjoying a local Chinese-fondue-like specialty, then drinking too much Samson with a group of villagers until the wee hours of the morning.
- The numerous forest treks and waterfalls of the Inthanon National Park on the way to Chomthong and Lamphun.
- The colorful Saturday cattle auction in Sanpatong, just 1hour drive from Chiang Mai.
- The delicious luxurious breakfast at Bella Villa, a paradise-like weekend resort in the middle of a banana plantation in Huai Rai.
- The lovely ride to Mae Ha, the huge royal botanic garden in Mae Sa (which was actually a bit dull as none of the orchids were in bloom) and the fantastic show at elephant training camp: we did not have high expectation as we knew that it would be super touristy, ultra commercial, packed on a weekend day, probably quite sad, and anyways surely corny. But it turned out to be very well done, lots of fun, and ultra cute. All the elephants, babies as well as adults, seemed to be genuinely happy to perform tricks, play football, swing their trunk in circles while playing the harmonica, and bow and trumpet asking for more cheers and more claps!.
- The festival of colorful umbrellas in Bo Sang which, while not at all meeting our expectations (nor the published official festival program's either), was still quite ok. Bo Sang, the umbrella making centre of Thailand, is today nothing but a great touristy fair with 50 or so small factories all claiming to be the "only, official and original" umbrella centre.
- The long ride back to Pai through Doi Suthep National Park, on the most motion-sickening winding mountainous road ever.

<TIP: for the Golden Triangle tour, chose your motorcycle carefully:
125cc is ok if you are alone, 200cc is better, 400cc roadster is best, especially for 2)

Gamal has left the building:
After 55 days, it was finally time to leave Thailand and head south to Singapore. We spent a last night in Chiang Mai, emailed and internetted so much that we missed our night train, begged the travel agent to get us in Bangkok any way possible, struggled to catch the last local bus, met with Miranda &Marloes, our two friends from Nepal for a few hours, then rushed to the airport.

Con-Gamal-usion:
Thailand was the country we were most looking forward to when we were planning our trip: It met all our expectation, and even more, by the diversity of its sights and landscapes, the friendliness of its people (particularly in the north where the tag line "Thailand, the land of 1000 smiles" really becomes true) and the wonderful food, everywhere, all the time, from the chiquest restaurants to the shabbiest food stall. Thailand is now certainly a first world country, a "richer" country where the people are not desperate for a few farang-dollars that they become over-exaggeratingly welcoming to the point of seeming false. Everything seems genuine, real, and we really loved that in Thailand. We know that we will be back to see all the things we have missed (Krabi, Phi-Phi, Sukhothai, the North- East and a million other marvels) as well as to stock on all the things that our limited luggage space -and our guilt feeling- prevented us from buying: cloths, artifacts, furniture, home deco, cd's, videos, software, electronics, books, bags, shoes, t-shirts, spices, sunglasses, woks, cooking utensils, a standalone wok station, a big screen TV, motorcycles, cars, a house, a small 40-seater plane, a yacht, or maybe even a deserted island if Sil would allow it...