HOME AT LAST

The very next day after I went ziplining, it was time to leave Thailand. At the airport in Chiang Mai, I had time for one last green chicken curry, and it was a cracker! I followed up with a pretty damn good pork larb in Bangkok airport. Right at that point I was feeling quite satisfied about everything. Another great motorcycling adventure, another big fat slice of life. Bewdy! It wasn't destined to last. I got a premonition of the torture I was about to endure when I got to the departure lounge. Right on cue the obligatory baby was already screaming its head off. Terrific. People who take unsedated babies on international plane flights should be given long custodial sentences, and be forced to watch Parliamentary question time under bright lights. The nicest thing I can say about international flights is that they are a pain in the arse. And lots of other places. Unless you are a dwarf or a multiple amputee. On the flight from Bangkok to Sydney, I was in a seat which had a metal box of some sort (part of the aircraft) under the seat in front of me. This effectively halved the already miniscule amount of legroom I had in the first place. Why the hell don't they tell you that when you select and prebook your seat off the floorplan, a privelege for which Qantas charges you extra. How about a bit of a warning: Unless your name is Happy, or Sneezy, or Douglas Bader, don't pick this one, you won't fit! The end result was that I got not one wink of sleep on the all-night flight, and every so often my legs would cramp up. Next time, if there is one, I will be paying extra for a more comfortable seat. I fear there will never be any respite at all from screaming babies, only my advancing deafness will save me from that particular misery. Anyway, I was so stuffed that when I got home at about midday, I immediately stretched out on the bed and went to sleep for about 4 hours. After which I got up, took a shower, grabbed a beer, cooked some tea, watched the news on TV, decided I hadn't missed anything by being away, then went straight back to bed and did not surface again until noon the following day. I should have felt refreshed and reinvigorated, but not a bit of it. I felt like twopence worth of cat-crap.

As it turns out, I had a pre-arranged doctors appointment that afternoon. For the previous week or so, I had had an itchy rash on the back of my neck, which by now had become infected and an impressive crop of boils had started to spread to my shoulders. The doc took one look and said I needed antibiotics by the shovelful and a regime of skin treatment. I was actually relieved to hear it because by that stage I had convinced myself it was leprosy. I believe this was a result of sweating profusely for about three weeks. Wearing heavy motorcycle clothing in a hot tropical climate is asking for trouble, and as I was also wearing a Camelback which interfered with what ventilation there was at the back, this was the result. It has happened before, but never this bad. Anyhow, it started to clear up almost immediately once I started treatment. Then it became apparent that I had also caught a cold. Airports and planes are incubators of pestilence. You are a captive, forced into close proximity with the unclean, and contagion is rife, if not inevitable. Lucky I got out with only a cold. Only? Last night I put a doona on the bed, switched on the electric blanket and wore a tracksuit to bed, and I was still shivering like I was in an igloo. I could not have cared less if the house was on fire, at least it might warm me up. On top of that, I have a cough that frightens small children and stray dogs. So it has not been the best of homecomings for me after this trip. The good news though is that once again I was fortunate to survive 3 weeks of eating local and my digestive system is still intact, unlike all my travelling companions who all experienced some degree of Delhi belly. I contend that this has a little to do with being selective, and a lot to do with being just plain lucky. Even though we were nowhere near India, I'm sure the germs are related.

So how do I rate this trip? It was my fourth visit to Thailand and my first to Laos. Thailand keeps getting better and better. Laos, well, I've ticked that particular box, and let's leave it at that. About the only things in its favour are that its cheap, and the beer is good. I almost feel guilty saying this. I mean the people were friendly enough, the hotels were adequate, and we got to see a big slice of the country. Big Bike Tours had put together an itinerary which gave us a pretty good cross section of the culture. With the benefit of hindsight though, I think we all felt a little rushed, and its a tough country to travel in. Not that anybody was whinging about it, we all tried to make the best of it. But the roads were poor, the facilities basic, it was hot and uncomfortable, even when it was raining and the scenery was compromised by all the smoke. When we did get to our destination, it was crash out, recuperate, then back onto the bikes again in the morning. I would not be tempted to describe it as relaxing, and towards the end of the tour I think all of us were feeling the accumulated weariness, particularly those of us who had not been well. And that includes Kay. As it transpired later, he had actually broken a bone in his foot when he ran off the road and hit a concrete guide post, and I think he was lucky it wasn't a lot worse. The fact that we were all simultaneously overjoyed to get back into Thailand is a telling factor, although I must confess that my joy was largely overshadowed by the fact that I managed to leave my prescription sunnies at the Laos border.Ouch! I know its only money. (that's really the part that annoys me.)

OK, a few miscellaneous photos follow.

The group reach the Asian version of the Arc de Triomphe in central Vientiane, the Capital of this former French colony. All of Kay's tours stop here for this obligatory photo. This kind of anarchic western ratbag behavior is frowned upon by the police, mainly because we had to ride over a kerb and some steps to get the bikes in here (and out again). That's why Kay carries the flags. You can hardly be arrested for waving the national flag. The guy still thinks like a communist!

Yeah, its pretty big!

These roadworks in Laos provided a bit of entertainment, although they were never likely to impede our progress for too long. The blue truck was bogged, the excavator crawled up spectacularly from way down in the gully to free it, then dumped fresh fill over the wheel ruts. A little tricky, but over we went.

 Limestone karsts near Vang Vieng, mostly obscured by smoke.

 In Laos, the locals enjoy the opportunity of seeing exotic machinery. This guy owned a cafe, and an old beaten up chook chaser. But a biker is a biker!

 First stop in Laos, a few hundred meters from the border post, where we bought insurance. Kay reckons its usually shut! The lady was nice enough though.

 Rural Laos. Spectacular, picturesque even, but pretty basic.

 Kay and Yai love waving flags, especially near officials at border posts. The officials shied away from the cameras though.

 Arrival in Luang Prabang, and our hotel right on the Mekong. Paul looks happy enough for a guy about to get food poisoning!

Alison, me and Kay, visibly elated to be back in Thailand. Also a rare photo of me drinking water.

LONG WAY DOWN

Some of you will no doubt pick up on the intended motorcycling pun in the title. Today I have been swinging around the treetops like our primate cousins who took a slightly different evolutionary route. Quite clearly if we were meant to be defying gravity like that, we would also have arms as long as our legs, hands and feet like vice grip pliers and a brain that could not extrapolate what happens if you make a mistake. Flight of the Gibbon is a tour company that runs a ziplining operation in the mountainous rainforest some 50 km outside Chaing Mai.

The small group of thrillseekers taking on this challenge with me consisted of 4 girls and a guy, all from England. I am older than the combined age of all the others in the group, and should have more sense, but I don't. After getting a safety briefing and signing a waiver, we were kitted out in a parachute type harness with all kinds of mountaineering gear attached, and a silly plastic hat about as useful as tits on a bull.

See what I mean about the hat!


We had two Thai guys who guided us through another briefing, then away we went. The bottom line was this. At all times you have at least one safety line attaching you to something. When you are zipping, you have two safety lines. Don't touch the clips yourself, the guides do it for you. Don't touch the cable unless you want to ruin your hands and fingers, place one hand on top of the thing with the wheels in it that grips the cable, and the other on the sling attaching you to the cable. Then jump. For some reason the guys, who insisted on calling me Mark (its Mike, M.I.K... oh never mind), decided that my gray hair implied some sort of expertise, or out of deference for my age, made me go first. Everybody else breathed a sigh of relief.

I stood on a little timber platform attached to a huge tree, got clipped onto the cable, got my hands in the right position, then stepped out into .....nothing at all. Christ!! Gravity took over for a split second as I dropped until the cable deflected under my weight, and the harness pulled tight, then I accelerated forward with the little wheels screaming. I dared not look down. Down to the bottom of the sag (catenary, actually) then up the other side, slightly decelerating now as I was going upwards. The landing platform that should have come into view was nowhere to be seen, mainly because somehow I had spun around and was facing the wrong way. I made an ungainly contact with the platform as a pair of hands grabbed me and I scrambled to find my feet and searched for a hand hold. Then I got unclipped. Wow, I'm still alive! That wasn't so bad after all. The rest of the group followed, and the young adrenaline junkies made it look pretty easy.

And so it went for another 16 stations, as we became accustomed to how it worked and felt, and got the directional stability under control. A couple of tricky bits though. The longest ride was about 800 metres. Think about how far that is, its half a mile in the old money. I thought I was never going to get there before the wheels melted, they were screaming like the knock-off whistle at Holden's. Then there was the station where they clipped you at the back. That means there was nothing to hold onto at all, totally hands free. This was just like bungee jumping or parachuting. You just had to throw yourself forward into space. This was the most difficult station for me. There is a huge psychological block meant to protect us from such folly, and it must be overcome. I kind of froze, I had two attempts at leaving and checked myself at the critical moment both times. The mind started to doubt, I thought for a second "I can't do this", then somehow I just shut my eyes and  jumped. As the cable and harness tightened, I opened them again, and I was rocketing towards a large rope net hanging from a tree about 100 meters away. I grabbed at it like a man falling off a skyscraper and after a rather ungainly exit, got to the platform and hugged the tree. My heart was racing fit to burst. Bloody Hell! After that it was all relatively easy. There were a couple of stations where you descended vertically on a rope. These were slow, and not the least bit scary after all the zipping.

At the completion of all this, we returned the equipment and there was an opportunity to get hold of some photos in various formats. Here are a few of mine and some of the professional shots.

 The locals looked slightly bemused.

How about this then?

 Going down, vertical descent.

 Still going down.

Final approach on a section of the high speed zipline.

Landing gear down.

 Flaring for touchdown.

 The landing area on one of the short sections.

 A few rickety bridges thrown in to keep us honest.

 The view of this long section is a little scary prior to jumping. Only the first part is visible.

 Ok, it's really scary. And if you could see all of it at the same time, it would be terrifying.

 Great big tree, tiny little platform, tiny people.

Long Way Down, but its the finish, and its another easy vertical descent. I SURVIVED!!!

ITS NOT ALL BLACK OR WHITE. ACTUALLY IT IS!

I had actually planned to hire a bike from Kay and ride up to Chiang Rai to see the Wat Rong Khun, aka The White Temple, but decided to hire a car with Alison, and we got chauffeured up there instead. Glad to be off the bikes for a while, and as the recent rain put out the fires and cleared the air, we were able to enjoy the views. Unlike just about every other temple in Thailand, this one is a mere few years old. Construction started in 1997, and according to its creator, artist Ajarn Chalermchai Kositpipat (got that?), it will not be finished until some 60 to 90 years after his death. His stated goal is to build the most beautiful temple in the world, and to show the glory of modern Thai Buddhist arts. He is on the record as aiming to create something on a par with the Taj Mahal or the Angkor Wat. I have visited both of these, and its a lofty goal. I'm not sure he will do it, but he has still created a mind blowing building. He also raised funds for the construction on his own. He did not wish to be dictated to, or even influenced, by governments or wealthy benefactors compromising his artistic freedom. This is his baby. I get that, but I can't say I really understand why the guy has to make such an over the top statement. Isn't less supposed to be more? But I guess that's why he's an artist and I'm an engineer. People aren't queuing to see my work, but then I never expected them to. (But if anyone is interested....). I can see that the point of this artwork is to reinforce the notion that all the bad stuff in this world exists down at our level, and that through truth and beauty we can aspire to, and indeed reach, a state of greater understanding and fulfillment, which may well be the definition of enlightenment itself. Very Buddhist. And to challenge us to take the task on. So the sooner we recognise this and get started, the better for all of us. Wow, heavy, man!

The project suffered a setback last year, when it was significantly damaged in an earthquake. Much of this damage is still evident and is currently being repaired, but I fear the structure will always be susceptible to such events. This is a shame. He should have got a structural engineer on board in the early design stage, but try telling an artist anything, they'd be worse to work with than architects!

Anyway, it's hard to capture the scale and grandeur of the whole catastrophy in a few shots. Equally, it's hard to document the mind boggling attention to detail at the micro level. I bought a book of photographs for that very reason. The exterior of the main building is covered with tiny mirrored glass tiles, cut to shape and embedded in the rendered coating. The inside is covered in hand painted frescoes, which are about as far from traditional as you can get. I spotted Batman, Superman, Elvis, Kung Fu Panda, some of the thingies from Despicable Me, the burning twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and lots of others. No photos were permitted inside, but here are a few snaps of the exterior anyway.

 EEEyew.

This is the toilet block. I kid you not.

Even the traffic bollards out in the street are weird, but I want one!

Now, here is where it gets even more weird. Across town there is another structure called The Black House. Hannibal Lector House might be a more appropriate name for it. Its not a temple, but it is to some extent a counterpoint to the above. All black, dark, evil and generally horrible, and designed by a real nutter. It's where Satan would go for a holiday.

I'd like to say no animals were harmed in the making of this exhibition, but that would just be telling porkies. Just have a bloody look at the joint, talk about the Bone Collector! Creepy Central. I have even more trouble trying to work this one out artistically. Someone must have left the gate open at the local psycho ward. I would rather I hadn't seen it after The White Temple, I thought it was a real downer. We hurried back to Chiang Mai for a drink.

BACK TO CHIANG MAI

Uttaradit was, I thought, unremarkable. We stopped overnight for no other reason than we had to stop somewhere. I think by this stage, weariness was starting to set in for the group as a whole, particularly after a tough day crawling through the fog on the previous day. The ride back to Chaing Mai was mostly via main roads, ie high speed motorways, with a bit of drizzle thrown in just to keep us on our toes. Kind of dull riding, until you realise that nothing is ever dull for too long with Kay leading. Wherever we got a red light, Kay lane filtered to the head of the queue, we followed, spread out, and it was on for young and old when the lights changed. At one point there was a cop car parked in the median along one stretch of dual carriageway motorway. What they were doing there is anyone's guess. When four screaming motorcycles went past them at 160 kph (and I was backing off!) and they did absolutely nothing, I presumed they were not enforcing speed limits.

This ride was punctuated by two stops, the first being at a temple built into a hillside, featuring a very large reclining Buddha, and the second being an elephant park.

 This is a large scale temple, that's a mighty big statue

 As usual, its the details that add to the fascination.

 I don't know either, maybe they're playing leapfrog.

A nasty customer indeed. The good versus evil thing is a recurring theme in Buddhist temples.


The elephant park raises a few uncomfortable issues. Elephants were traditionally used as motive power in the logging industry. Since being replaced by machinery which finished off most of the remaining trees, there is not much of a logging industry left in these parts. Although they appear to still be doing a fair bit of it in Laos. Replanting is under way in Thailand, but that will take 50 or 60 years before there is much yield. Anyway, the result is a lot of unemployed elephants, so rather than have them running around causing mayhem while they eat their 600 kg of foliage per day, many of them are kept in National Parks, or in purpose built sanctuaries, where they can be looked after and raise a few bucks as a tourist attraction (especially if they stomp on cars!). While the elephants in this park appeared to be docile and well cared for, its hard to say whether they are better off. Do they know that they are safe, and in return for performing a few corny tricks for the tourists, they are guaranteed food and health care for their lifetime? Does that make them dole bludgers? I've got a hunch that they are smart enough to know when they are onto a good thing, but as for the old argument of whether they should be exploited by humans at all, I'm not so sure. It raises the whole issue of circuses, zoos, Seaworlds, feral animals and even domestic pets. Nobody gets too upset that people have domesticated horses, or own a dog that can fetch a ball. Well, what the hell else are we going to do with them? Keep out of their way until they're extinct, just because we can't eat them?

 Taxi !!

 Why can't I eat a camera?

 Bathtime. Should have read the fine print, suckers!

 Sit on my head will ya? Dive, dive, dive!

Periscope depth.

And with that, we headed back into Chaing Mai, and large amounts of congratulatory beer. Just for something different. I now have a few days here to unwind, shop, repack and write stuff like this. I will be going up to Chaing Rai to see the famous white temple, the Wat Rong Khun. This is unfinished business from last year. I'm also going ziplining before I leave. Stay tuned.