Back to Chiang Mai

Travelling to Thailand looked pretty straight forward. Get a GRAB to our minibus, at the relatively civilised hour of 7.00 a.m., then an eight hour journey to Bangkok. Either a taxi, tuk-tuk or underground trip to Krung Thep Aphiwat station and then a 12 hour overnight sleeper to Chiang Mai.

We would arrive at 8.40 the following morning and spend a glorious five days …in the same place!

Amazing what a luxury that felt : )

Add to that the fact that we knew where we were going and what to expect, that we got to be with people we love …and it felt suspiciously like we were nearly home.

We arrived at the minibus stop and a glorious creature, born to wear a black bomber jacket emblazoned with tour dates on the back, greeted us. I imagined her with a headset permanently on her head and a walkie talkie welded to her hand, giving orders to crew and roadies, managing huge back stage areas all over the world…

Her talents were wasted on us but within seconds we all had lanyards on, identifying us for the drivers across the border, and she had skilfully filled a couple of minibuses with more people than there was room for.

We set off and we noticed that in our bus it was mostly nineteen and twenty year old English lads, and pretty much the only thing they did was complain about how long this journey was : )

The part of Cambodia we were in was entirely flat so no hairpin bends and our driver was in no mad hurry, it was pretty chilled and we watched the world go by…

We had a couple of stops on the way to the border, and then we were there.

We queued up for immigration, got to the front of the line and then the Cambodian border officers refused to let us out of the country because we didn’t have a photocopy of our eVisa …seriously?

…if we needed two photocopies why didn’t the immigration officer who’d helped us on the way in copy it twice? It’s  not like we would have had another one stashed in our bags ready for the way out, we just didn’t know we needed them! …and why was this official wanting $3 each for a photocopy when the first man had done it for free?

It is true that it was our responsibility to read the conditions of the eVisa but we had also never encountered needing to give a copy of it in to leave a country – ‘listen you irritating little jobsworth, you can see it on my phone – it’s right here and surely the clue is in the name – it’s an ‘e’ Visa!’

We didn’t say that.

What we did, was haggle – I told him I didn’t have any dollars he said I could go and photocopy it out on the street …I asked him if could pay in Bhat but I only had 200 (£4.40) …and he said yes (a pretty quick haggle)…Theo was spitting feathers at the corruption of it all, and me? I decided he was going to donate the money to a worthy charity…or maybe it was a very expensive photocopier?

There is a chance they had a pot in the office where they put all the money collected from irritating tourists who don’t read the small print, and they have a party once a year : )

The upshot was that it took us ages to get through immigration and we were at the back of the queue for a bus to Bangkok.

The company was a split one, like in Timor, one half does the Cambodian side and one the Thai side. But unlike in Timor there were lots of tourists here and we didn’t stick together – whoever got thru first was off.

We were scooped up on the Thai side (lanyards worked) but there were no minibuses coming for another half an hour…

We had gone for this minibus because there was three and a half hours between our arrival in Bangkok and our train leaving…if the bus came when they said it now would we’d arrive into Bangkok at 5.30. Giving us two and a half hours…

That should be okay, wind your horns back in Shannon, don’t need to push anyone out of the way…just yet.

It was a bit chaotic and we got on a bus and then had to get off it again, but finally we were on our way…One of the passengers spoke Thai, German and English and she said it was four and half hours to Bangkok not four. So, two hours to get across Bangkok.

I decided to ignore the slightly stressy feelings – they are only useful if I can do something to change what’s happening and I couldn’t so…go away!

…and then we broke down.

As break downs go it was very sedate – my guess is that our driver noticed something was wrong with one of the tyres at our first stop and was on the lookout for somewhere to get it fixed.

However it came about we were now sat by the side of the dual carriageway, the bus pointing in the wrong direction with no wheel on the back drivers side of the minibus and some loud ‘tyre throwing’ sounds coming from a big shed.

‘I know it’s in here somewhere, I saw it nine months ago when that last prat with a minibus left it too long to get his tyre changed…’

Okay time to let the stress out of the bag.

‘How long is this going to take?’

‘When are we going to arrive in Bangkok?’

‘Can we get dropped off at the train station?’

‘Don’t know, don’t know…and no!’ Not the answers I wanted to hear.

I was just contemplating suggesting hitch-hiking to my family when a very sweaty triumphant man emerged from the shed clutching a tyre.

Ten minutes later we were back on the road, and our driver was on a mission.

Admittedly he did nearly crash a couple of times when we got into the built up parts of the city but it wasn’t every few seconds and I could feel him concentrating.

He didn’t stop for another break and he made most of the time back from the tyre change. We arrived at the bus station with an hour and a half to get to our train.

It’s fair to say Bangkok is a pretty busy city…and it’s big – bigger than London. We needed to go five miles in the very centre of the city…it was going to take the right driver in the right vehicle to pull that off.

First up we ordered a GRAB – but he was five minutes away and struggling to get through to us …and there, sitting quietly at the end of our little side street, clearly minding its own business, was our tuk tuk. Was I imagining the faint golden glow?

The driver thought our luggage was funny – I offered him the suitcase to keep and that made him really laugh.

Where did we want to go?

‘Krung Thep Aphiwat – the main railway station’ I said in my best Thai accent. He looked blank.

I got my phone out and showed him on the map and precious seconds passed as he played with the zoom in and our function. I gently eased my phone out of his hands and pointed – ‘up there and left.’

He nodded and we set off – stopping almost immediately for him to ask another tuktuk driver where the station was.

My guess is that tuk tuks have quite a small radius in which they operate and this was wild new territory for both vehicle and driver, but what they lacked in knowledge they made up for in enthusiasm – they were going to get us there in time!

Lanes, traffic lights, other vehicles, pavements, sides of the road, pedestrians, motorbikes…all fluid and used or ignored as was needed in the pursuit of the goal!

There were lights inside the back bit where we sat which seemed to come on whenever things got really exciting, adding to the slightly surreal fairground feel of the whole experience.

We had to correct the route for him twice – a spectacular u-turn on a four lane highway at speed being without doubt the highlight – it was a fabulous journey : )

…thanked and paid, tuk tuk and driver sped away back to pastures familiar and we turned towards the sanitised hugeness that is the main railway station. A huge complex of long spotlessly clean, incredibly wide corridors with trains accessible (somehow) from specified points along their lengths.

We asked a couple of people where to go. In Thailand there are lots of people working that you can ask, and, with forty minutes to go we were sat in the seats near our train entrance. A chance to relax and quietly thank the slightly crazy but mostly fabulous driving we had just experienced.

Time to get some food.

We ate some delicious mushroom bauzi (dumplings), had a quick wee, train toilets are never the nicest, and calmly waited for the queue to start for getting on our train.

A friend pointed out to me recently that our travel adventures may not be having the desired affect of encouraging more of us ioto the trains and off the planes. ‘You are not really selling the idea of travelling overland are you?’ ‘It sounds like bloody hard work…!’

Good point.

There is definitely a whole bunch of choice involved in doing this. Choosing again and again, to put yourself into situations that require a level of endurance – why would anyone do that?!

What’s the positive?

For me it’s shown me a different side of myself. A me that has found a way to cope in physically challenging situations in a way I didn’t know I could. A me that gets on with it and loves the view out of the window. A me that is so delighted to simply have a soft bed and a shower at the end of the day. A me that loves the light of the sun on the ocean and going at a slower pace.

A me that has remembered the value of things and that gets to see the in between…

It’s not like I set out to sweat my way through thirteen hours in a third class Thai train (twice) – or indeed endure many of the long hot train and bus journeys we’ve done, but I now know I could do this again – it’s tough but it’s doable, and every single person I know could do this – if they wanted to : )

I’ve had a chance to see ocean sunrises, and dolphins hurling themselves out of the sea, camels and volcanoes out of train windows…get a sense of the culture and the way people live. I’ve watched children playing by the side of the railway track, and chickens picking up the scraps we throw away – and the shower at the end of the day? …  which is sometimes only a bucket of water over the head, is awesome : )

I have loved watching my family make it through and figure out new things, but best of all is the wonder and the beauty that is our world…a world we don’t see when we fly over it.

There’s nothing special about us three, we are possibly a little bit bonkers, but no more so than most of the people we know : )

We all know how great it feels when we come through something challenging, and when it’s REALLY hard …well, then you have a story to tell : )

So where was I…?

About to get on our Thai sleeper train. Three top bunks and a train that liked to dance about to it’s own playlist – it rattled and it creaked but it felt like it was rocking me to sleep, and as soon as I had had that thought, I was  gone…lovely sweet rest!

Cousin Bob met us on the platform the next morning and as he was wheeling suitcase out of the station for us, one of the wheels fell off. So bad a state was suitcase in that neither Bob nor Theo noticed. I bent down and picked up the wheel …something would have to have to be done.

Suitcase aside it was a lovely arrival in Chiang Mai and, as is our tradition every time we visit Cousin Bob in Thailand, he took us out for an incredible breakfast.

The air quality in the city was particularly poor after two months of ‘the burning season’ where mushroom farmers set fire to parts of the forest to ensure a good crop, and this year it hadn’t rained and so the incredibly damaging 2.5 particulates were thick in the air. We weren’t going to be spending much time out and about so better get the fruit and veg in on the way home…

Cousin Bob is good at shopping, not like other people good, ninja good. He has certificates and degrees, probably an honorary degree or two as well…and cousin Bob likes to shop local.

Small market stalls, shopping for two or three items at one stall and moving on. Spending his money where it’s needed – into the pockets of the people who grow the food.

It was lovely to see the smiles of recognition on the stall holders faces when they saw him coming …after ten minutes we had too many vegetables to carry so we took them back to the car and then went back for more.

We finally made it to the house and the shyness Leilah and Zachy had felt when we had first arrived in October lasted about thirty seconds, and then we were playing. They seemed older and more confident – I guess five months is a long time in a five year old’s life. Both of them had started to learn to read and do maths and were loving their (self directed!) lessons each day, such big changes…

That first day was fun and playful, Natascha had cooked a delicious vegetable pie and made a huge salad and our rooms were as beautiful as we remembered them.

Later that day we unpacked all the fruit and veg and we chopped, roasted, froze, diced and sliced …and Natascha showed us how to dehydrate a couple of kilos of mangos to take on our next long journey.

Bob wasn’t quite as busy this time as he had been in October and we got to spend some lovely time together. I discovered that his mum, my beloved great aunt Nancy, had been born in Guangzhou, the very city we needed to go to, to try and get our Russian Transit Visa…l.

We had family in the city. He showed me the places where he and Nancy had visited when they’d gone in search of our Chinese cousins …and I promised myself that if we made it to Guangzhou I would go and put flowers in the river that surrounds the island where she had lived as a child. The beautifully named, Pearl River.

On the second morning in Chiang Mai Bob and I took Rosa for a blood test. As we were leaving the UK Rosa had had a raft of tests for a stomach condition she had had for a long time and they showed up very low levels of B12. She managed to get three injections before we left but she was meant to have six so when her symptoms started to return in Indonesia we decided that Thailand was our best chance to check. Natascha and Bob knew exactly where to go for the blood test, and where to get the injections if we needed them.

It’s not Rosa’s favourite way to spend a morning – she hates blood tests and in solidarity, and because Bob said I should, I had one as well …health tourism is a thing in Thailand apparently.

Blood taken we headed to a suitcase repair shop. It was quite surprising that such a thing existed and even more surprising that Bob, very nonchalantly, knew exactly where it was. The repair man looked at the battered brown thing we bought into his shop, the broken plastic casing on the top held on with one bolt, the string stopping the wheel bracket falling off, the missing wheel…

He stood for a while with his head on one side and then, to my relief, slowly nodded once.

Suitcase was going to get a complete makeover, for only slightly less than we bought it for, and of course we were going to pay, suitcase was part of the family now and we couldn’t dream of just throwing it on the suitcase scrap heap and getting a new case…

(Loyalty to inanimate objects eh, how does that happen?)

Suitcase in safe hands it was tme to go home and play!!

Zachy and Leilah are little creative geniuses when it comes to playing and they found a way to get the best out of each of us…AND we got to watch the ‘Rock Dog’ movies…what’s not to love?

As the afternoon moved into evening Natascha and Bob told us they had booked a massage for one of us and after a heated discussion I was sacrificed to the torture.

It was of course possible that a two and a half hour Thai massage in Thailand was going to be utterly wonderful – but experience said otherwise …IF the masseur could be persuaded not to go in harder when I said ‘stop that’s too much’ then I might be floating to bed rather than crawling.

Natascha had a word and this time when I said ‘noooo!’ she actually softened a little (although she did still laugh each time). It went by remarkably quickly and I did float up to bed, an entirely different shape after her clever squashing and stretching. I woke up feeling different as well…I was so grateful, I had no idea how much I had needed it until afterwards…

I was ready to face the future a little that next morning and looked afresh at our Laos train bookings and our Russian visa application.

We couldn’t book the Laos train tickets until three days before according to all the internet info I found, and for our visa we needed to book the train from Atyrau to Astrakhan, it needed booking on the same website as the bus I’d already booked and I’d even got the app now so I could do that another day. I couldn’t book the Laos tickets now either so no need to do anything – back to songwriting…

Bob had texted before we arrived to see if we wanted to have a recording session while we were in Chiang Mai? He really wanted the children to be involved so that was a big yes for us and got the creative juices flowing nicely. Both Theo and I had been thinking about writing a sea shanty, him because he knows so many and is great with words and me because while I was encouraging Theo to write one I had a good idea, and that’s usually enough to set me off! I had half a chorus and a couple of verses …maybe we could do that? It also inspired me to get the guitar out which the twins loved, always asking me before they touched it and then treating it like it was utterly precious.

It was lovely to see their delight in the sound it made …and of course ‘Rock Dog’ plays a guitar. Strings of some kind are definitely going to be part of the future for Leilah and Zachy and I suspect so are drums…loud, full on drums. Such fun…if you don’t live in the house, or next door : )

The studio went better than any of us thought it would – everyone got involved, singing, shakers, tambourine, drums and tinkly bells. Leilah enjoyed singing so much she sang the whole song three times, into the microphone with headphones on! She learned the words and the tune so quickly and was completely at home singing her heart out! She had struggled in the first five minutes arriving into the studio and watching Natascha gently allow and then encourage her daughter was wonderful to see; patience, love and making a big space had allowed Leilah to thrive…

And for me it was great to be in a studio where what mattered most was how much fun everyone was having rather than how perfect it all was. (Note to self, might need to remember this when I get home…)

Zachy got to play a real snare with a real drum stick – his sense of rhythm delighting us, and we all came out feeling proud of ourselves …and with something that made us smile when we listened to it

The days passed quickly and when the blood test results came back Rosa’s B12 levels were miraculously in the normal range, mine however showed high cholesterol on all three markers.

Hmmm! Bloody peanut butter lifestyle…might need to lean towards marmite on my crackers on those long train journeys and have a proper look at it when I got home (…if slowing down on eating peanut butter by the spoonful didn’t cure me).

We had such a lovely time those first four days, a trip out to our favourite cafe on the day when the air quality was a little better and a walk along the canal, listening to Natasha and Leilah doing one of their reading lessons…eating lots of delicious locally grown vegetables, watching Zachy race along the obstacle course I hade made him : )

It was probably exactly what we needed to prepare us for what were to be, the worst three days of our trip so far…