Author Archives: Julie

Black, White and Gold in Chiang Rai, Thailand

White Temple

From afar Wat Rong Khun, or the White Temple as it is commonly known in English, looked to us like a Christmas cake covered in snowy white icing, but as we moved closer we could see that the effect is created by whitewashed concrete studded with glittering mirrors.

The temple complex is the vision of artist Chalermchai Kositpipat, a devout Buddhist wishing to give something back to the world. Construction began in 1997 but is not expected to be completed until 2070! Eventually there will be nine buildings in the complex, and we saw several of these in various stages of construction from concrete and steel poles, to structurally finished but undecorated. The temple’s mix of modern sculpture and ornate decoration blended into a religious building reminded us of the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, also still under construction.

Looking along the entrance bridge towards the main prayer hall

Statues decorating the grounds look like mythical creatures

The main prayer hall is approached via a bridge across the reflecting pool. The entrance to the bridge is surrounded by the disturbing sight of hands reaching up in seeming desperation and despair. The artist designed this to remind people that “To reach heaven, you need to pass suffering”. Unfortunately it’s not possible to take photos inside the main prayer hall but we had fun trying to pick up all the references in the completed painting on the back wall – everything from planes crashing into the Twin Towers in New York, to Michael Jackson, Superman, Freddie Kruger, Hello Kitty, Predator and Neo from The Matrix films!

Decorative features (clockwise from top left): Figure at the end of the bridge, ‘No smoking!, hands reaching up in distress, movie buffs might recognise some of these heads

Rooftop decoration, in the lower left corner you can see where the back wall of the building has been marked out for more decorative work to be carried out

Black House

On the opposite side of Chiang Rai is Baan Dam, the Black House, the creation of another local artist, Thawan Duchanee. It’s quite a contrast and just as fascinating. Although many of the buildings here are in the northern Thai Lanna style and look similar to temple halls, it is not a religious site. It’s not an easy place to describe, it seemed to be part art installation, part guest quarters, and part creepy collector’s exhibit. Or maybe the sets from some kind of fantasy film with knights and dragons.

The vast main hall is an impressive sight to be greeted by

It’s not just a museum though, this is actually Duchanee’s estate, his home in Chiang Rai, and consists of dozens of buildings spread over a pretty large area.

There are a wide range of building styles in the grounds

Not all of the buildings are open for visitors to go inside but for most of them it’s possible to peer through the window and marvel at them. Some seemed purely to be exhibition spaces, but many were set up like dining rooms, bedrooms or even, in one case, a kitchen complete with stainless steel sink and bright red fridge! We also stumbled upon a couple of bizarrely decorated toilets which seemed to be for visitors’ use. Without exception the furniture and decoration was linked to the natural world and largely the animal kingdom with dozens of different kinds of furs, skins, skulls, skeletons, horns and antlers together with heavy wooden table tops and carvings. Some of the sculptures and carvings looked to have Buddhist influences but others seemed more tribal.

Inside one of the domed buildings we found what looked like a sacrificial altar centred around a crocodile hide

A range of exhibits (clockwise from top left): inside the main hall, some of the wood carving has a clear Buddhist influence, boat outside an open-sided building, toilet decorated with mobiles of birds!

Baskets galore crowd this hall

Many of the exhibits feature dead animals (clockwise from top left): chair back decorated with antlers and skulls, elephant skeleton, wolfskin table runner anyone?, goat skulls mark the edge of a building

Not sure if we were supposed to sit on the exhibits but no-one caught us…

While wandering around the grounds we’d seen a mesh enclosure which on closer inspection we found to contain two huge snakes. Pretty cool, but probably best seen from behind bars… So imagine our surprise when passing in that direction again we saw one of the snakes on the ground outside the cage! Don’t worry, it hadn’t escaped, there was a man watching over it and stopping it from slithering off. After we’d watched for a while and seen a couple of other people touch it, first Andrew, then I, plucked up the courage to touch it too. It felt very cold and dry.

Meeting a snake, after a bit of a google search I think it is an Indian or Burmese python

Golden Triangle

Our guesthouse owner had suggested that after the Black House we should go to the Golden Triangle 60km away. Well we had a full tank of petrol to use up in our rented motorbike so off we sped. The Golden Triangle is the area around the confluence of Nam Ruak with the Mekong River and is where Thailand, Myanmar (Burma) and Laos meet. Historically this was an important trading area particularly for opium. Nowadays it’s just a (nice) view of the river, a large seated golden Buddha and a collection of stalls selling the ubiquitous elephant print trousers amongst assorted other souvenirs.

Mountainous countryside and farmland from highway 1, heading north from Chiang Rai

Monuments at the Golden Triangle

Looking out at the point where three countries meet

It would have been good to have had a full day to explore the region, the small town of Chiang Saen where we stopped for lunch had some historic sites to investigate and there is a museum of opium which might have given us a bit more context. As it was it seemed like a long way to go for a view especially as there was a surprisingly cold breeze on the bike.

Evening light and an empty road ahead for the long ride back

Illusion Art in Chiang Mai, Thailand

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Art in Paradise introduces itself like this:

An illusion is a sensory perception that causes a distorted or altered impression. Since illusion is not the opposite of reality, the effect of illusion one experiences is neither true nor false.

The illusion of depth in paintings and installation art are presented on two dimensional surfaces by combining a variety of art elements, special techniques and professional skills. This transforms ordinary artworks into extraordinary three-dimensional interactive environments.

Art in Paradise Chiangmai welcomes you into the world of fantastic illusion art, where you can create your own activities and be fully immersed in the interactive 3D artworks.

That makes it sound quite serious but this is not so much a museum as a playground. We had a great time playing around with the various pictures and setups. For some it was obvious how to put ourselves into the picture, but for others we had to be a bit more creative. The museum was really quiet when we visited (apart from a group of schoolkids at the beginning but they soon overtook us) so we had loads of time to take photos and act silly without a queue of people waiting. On the down side it meant that there wasn’t usually anyone around to take a picture with both of us in.

Remember that everything here is flat – including the ‘picture frames’.

Andrew fending off Jaws

Sharing a coke with a polar bear

Giraffe escaping from her frame

Julie making friends with a panda

Wiping a window…

Van Gogh’s sunflowers

Us with a very up-to-date shepherdess

Andrew meditating in a lotus pond

Julie on a rope bridge

Looking at the rope bridge from the ‘wrong’ angle gives an idea of how these are set up

Andrew and a giant toilet roll

In the 3D room

Magic carpet

Puppet Andrew

Angel Julie

Target practice!

Snowboarding

Andrew on the cover of Time magazine

Giant Andrew and tiny Julie in the final exhibit

Top tips for getting the most out of a visit… Be willing to be silly, take a full size tripod if you have one (my mini gorillapod didn’t work for most of the scenes as the perspective only works when looked at from eye level) or a big group of friends.

9 month summary

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Another 3 months under our belts.

Drinking fresh beer at a street bar in Hanoi, in front of the Reunification Palace in Ho Chi Minh City with Jo, Angkor Wat, Releasing a lantern into the sky on New Year’s Eve in Chiang Mai

Countries visited in the last three months (1st October to 31st December)

Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand (total visited to date on this trip = 10)

Have you managed to stay within your budget (£70 per day)? And what has been the expense breakdown?

Easily within budget, our average daily spend over the three months has been £55.89. Our daily spend to date since we left home has been £66.09.

Accommodation is the biggest expense at 28% – a lower proprtion than the previous two quarters as it’s incredibly easy to find reasonably priced accommodation in SE Asia. Indeed you can usually find a VERY nice room for about £30 per night, and a clean, ensuite room with air-con in a guesthouse is only about £10-15. We’ve generally mixed between the two.
Food is the second highest at 23.7%, much higher than previously. I’m not entirely sure of the reason for this as eating out has also been very cheap. My suspicion is that we’ve been a lot more relaxed about stopping off for a mid afternoon coffee and cake or refreshing fruit smoothie as we knew how under budget our spending was. We’ve also splashed out on a few meals at very nice restaurants, notably Les Jardins de la Carambole in Hue, Xu in Ho Chi Minh City, and Haven in Siem Reap.
Intercity transportation is also up from the last quarter at 13.4%. Over half of this is accounted for by our flights from Hong Kong to Hanoi which cost £180 each.
Living expenses is quite a big proportion this quarter at 6.4%. Quite a bit of this is the cost of an upgrade to our website hosting to give us more space for photos, but it also includes a new pair of walking trousers for Andrew and £20 for one month’s internet usage at our apartment in Chiang Mai.
Entertainment and entry fees – 5.5%. Almost a quarter of this is our week long passes for Angkor at US$60 each.
Guides and tours – 5.2%. Quite a lot of our activities in Vietnam fell into this category, from the Street Food Tour in Hanoi, to the Ha Long Bay cruise we took from Cat Ba island, and all of the activities that we did in the Mekong Delta

What has surprised you most in the last three months of travel?

Julie – Everything that I’d read said that it’s ridiculously easy to live cheaply in SE Asia but the reality of it didn’t really hit home until we started travelling here. And while we’ve continued to monitor our spending, we really haven’t had to try to stay within budget – there’s been no penny pinching on food or accommodation so that we could afford to do some of the big experiences that we wanted.

Andrew – The sheer number of motorbikes and scooters. Yes, I know south east Asia is densely populated – especially in the major cities – but it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder how everyone would move around. And not only for the daily commute, we’ve seen motorcycles and sidecars configured to sell all manner of tasty street-food such as noodles, fried rice, dried fish, grilled fish, kebabs, phad thai, fresh fruit smoothies, tea, coffee, and banana pancakes.

Apart from family and friends, what are you missing most about life in the UK?

I know it’s cheating a little bit but we really feel we’ve missed out on family related celebrations in the last three months. We’ve spent Christmas away from home before, but never without having a ‘Christmas Day’ on a different day before we left, and although we had a lovely day and fantastic meal here we were both a little homesick. In addition to that, both of our nephews had birthdays in the last three months (Scott was 3, and Olly was 1) and we’re hugely excited about the imminent arrival of nephew (or niece) number three but also know that we’ll be sad not to have a cuddle.

What’s the most memorable sight that you’ve seen in the last three months?

Julie – I loved the old town in Hanoi. The different craftsmen grouped together, the twisty alleys, the motorbikes with unlikely loads, and, oh, the food…the world’s best spring rolls, freshly fried prawn cakes, bowls of delicious noodle soup and 21p glasses of bia hoi (fresh beer). And, although there were lots of tourists, I loved that there didn’t seem to be, it was just lots of locals getting on with their lives and activities that didn’t have anything to do with tourism.

Andrew – I’m going to eschew the first and obvious sight that springs to mind, and instead choose the variety of things carried on motorbikes – the most memorable of which needs the stage setting so here goes: Julie, Jo and I are in a regular taxi on the ring road heading out of Saigon to the bus station, when I happen to glance across the 6 lanes of busy traffic to the on-ramp of the opposite carriageway, where the pillion on a 125cc semi-automatic scooter catches my eye because he has his arms fully outstretched like he’s on the bow of the Titanic. “Why are his arms outstretched?” I’m thinking. Then, as they join the 60km/h carriageway I see it. He’s holding upright, a full pane of glass, without a frame, about the size of a patio door.

Tell us a funny story from the last three months of travel.

We were eating crabs in Kep. After watching our crabs go from kicking to cooked in the space of 10 minutes, we’re just tucking in when a passing Chinese looking man told us to be careful. He prodded at one of our crabs and said they would probably be OK, but that they might not be fresh. Thankfully, he mistook our look of complete incomprehension for misunderstanding, whereupon he felt the need to explain he was French.

Who is the person you’ve met that you remember the most from the last three months?

That would be David from our day trip in Battambang. Not only was he great fun to be with because he was always joking, but his relaxed, unhurried demeanour put us at ease which meant we enjoyed the sights around Battambang more. He also arranged for his friend to meet us in Siem Reap, and when we got off the boat Mr Sokha was waiting for us with our name on a card and a big smile.

Finally, what have you found to be the greatest challenge so far?

Julie – Surprisingly, finding good accommodation. Because it’s so cheap, it’s very difficult to filter anything out. Whereas previously we have been able to look at the handful of options within our budget and then make a decision based on location and online reviews, in SE Asia we’ve found that restricting price really only excludes the 5-star resort places, and so it’s become much more about trawling reviews and deciding what level of comfort/local experience we want. On occasion this has worked well (we found an incredible deal on a hotel in Hue, and the family-run guesthouse where we stayed in Kampot was great) but it hasn’t always worked out so well.

Then when we arrived in Chiang Mai we’d thought it would be easy to find an apartment to rent for two months, but for various reasons it just seemed to be really difficult – we’d see an advert for a place and it would already be gone, or they wanted a six month minimum contract, or it was miles out of town, or there was no kitchen/swimming pool (OK, I know that sounds like a luxury, but after the place we stayed in Bangkok it was something we were both keen on). By the time we saw the apartment we eventually rented we didn’t care that it was 50% more than we’d hoped to spend or that the wifi was extra, we just wanted to move in.

Andrew – We were getting quite proficient in Russian, picked up enough Mongolian to be polite, and our good friends Isaac and Rebecca gave us a crash course in Mandarin, but I’ve found it really difficult to learn the south east Asian languages: Vietnamese, Cambodian and Thai. On reflection I think there are two reasons: firstly, like Mandarin, they’re quite hard for western minds and mouths to pick up – they have tones or intonations (4 in Mandarin, 6 in Thai), and the written word is, at first glance, impenetrable.

Secondly, and quite possibly a consequence of the firstly, it is too easy not to speak the native language. Since hitting Vietnam, we’re on the well-travelled tourist circuit and as most people we would interact with speak enough English, so it’s too easy for us to be lazy. Indeed, most of the Thai wats have a regular thing called “Monk Chat” where we’re encouraged to help Monks improve their English!

Bangkok, Thailand

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Our final few days in Cambodia were spent back in Phnom Penh applying for our Thai visas, and then it was time for the journey to Bangkok. We had thought of flying, but in the end decided that we preferred to go overland. Not so much, however, that we were willing to buy the ticket direct from Phnom Penh to Bangkok (15+ hours bumping along Cambodian roads in a single day wasn’t our idea of fun). So we broke the journey with another night in Siem Reap and discovered that splitting the bumpy roads over two days into a combined duration of what turned out to be about 18 hours was scarcely any better…

Border crossing out of Cambodia – Angkor Wat again!

By the time we arrived in Bangkok it was dark and we weren’t entirely sure where the bus had dropped us off so we flagged down a local taxi, made sure he turned on his meter and showed him the map that the hotel had sent us. I don’t think the map was very helpful because he rang them up for directions before we sped off. After about 15 minutes, a bit of a wrong turn and another phone call we arrived, exhausted, hungry and in need of a shower.

We decided to tackle the hunger first as it was getting late. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any restaurants close by our hotel. Eventually we found somewhere that looked open and what a surreal experience that turned out to be… The decor of the restaurant was like a standard local diner except that it was decorated for Christmas with a small tree and tinsel hanging from the ceiling. The waitress brought menus across but they didn’t have any English translation (or pictures) so, as we have learnt is usual in such situations in Asia, she drafted in another diner who did speak English to take our order, he tentatively went through a few of the dishes but we jumped on fried rice and ordered two plates with beer. As we were waiting for the food we noticed the TV in the corner was showing a Pirates of the Caribbean film but this was quickly replaced by a very drunk man singing karaoke… Seemingly for our benefit he was choosing songs in English. Our food was brought across by the young waiter and I have never seen anyone mince as convincingly as him except in TV comedy sketches! The food was tasty, but by this stage everything was just a little bit too strange, and we refused their offers of more beer, or for us to join in with the karaoke and hastily paid the bill!

Proof that we didn’t dream up the strange karaoke bar restaurant

The next morning we’d arranged to meet up with Khun, a friend we’d made in Mongolia, who was back in his home country of Thailand for a holiday from his studies in America. Originally he’d hoped to take us on a tour of the Grand Palace, but due to the ongoing political protests in Bangkok we decided to change plans and head away from the centre to the weekend Chatuchak market. To get there was a crash course in Bangkok’s public transport – fantastic! First up was the San Saep canal boats. Khun explained that Bangkok once had hundreds of canals and is known as the ‘Venice of the East’. Henceforth, Andrew christened these ferries Bangkok vaporettos after the water buses in Venice.

‘Bangkok vaporetto’, outside and in!

The market was great. It’s one of the world’s largest outdoor markets and was full of clothes, souvenirs, Buddhists charms and trinkets, as well as food and just about anything you can imagine in the shape of an elephant.

A mish-mash of colours in the Chatuchak market

We must have been more worn out than we’d realised from the long bus journey because we spent most of the next few days chilling in the apartment that we’d rented for the remainder of the week. Catching up on sleep, cooking for ourselves and swimming in the apartment block’s pool.

Blissful, usually empty, but very cold swimming pool

On our final day in the city we ventured out to visit Wat Pho. A wat is a Buddhist monastery and this was our first experience of a Thai one. From a distance it looked somewhat similar to a Cambodian wat with curled roof eaves, white walls and orange tiles, but as we got closer we realised that there were differences. Wat Pho was much more extravagantly decorated than any wat we saw in Cambodia, the eaves and gables were decorated with mirrors and shimmering metallic paints, and the stupas here were covered in floral tiles rather than the plain white paint that we’d seen before – quite a visual assault.

Wat Pho – huge tiled stupas and glitzy roofs

Wat Pho is also home to Thailand’s largest reclining Buddha statue – 15m high and 43m long

Buddha statues everywhere!

Despite doing a lot of cooking for ourselves while we were in Bangkok we had managed to find a local street restaurant serving fantastic Pad Thai, the local stir fried noodles. Before departing for the train station and the overnight journey to Chiang Mai we got a couple of portions to takeaway for our dinner.

These disappeared so quickly we wished that we’d ordered double!

Julie’s temple highlights of Angkor, Cambodia

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The sheer variety of temples around Angkor is just incredible. Here are some of my highlights.

Bayon

From afar, Angkor Wat‘s beauty is apparent but the temple of Bayon in the centre of the ancient city of Angkor Thom, in the Lonely Planet’s words …looks rather like a glorified pile of rubble from a distance

But as you move closer and climb to the upper levels you begin to see some of the faces looking out from every tower. Altogether there are 54 towers and 216 faces and I loved their slightly enigmatic Mona Lisa like smiles.

Faces of Bayon

Kbal Spean

The landscape at Angkor is dominated by temples with five towers. Kbal Spean made an interesting change, its name literally means ‘bridgehead’ which refers to a natural rock bridge at the site but in English it is often referred to as the ‘River of a Thousand Lingas’. The linga is an ancient Hindu representation of the god Shiva and there are indeed at least a thousand of them carved on the riverbed here as well as numerous other Hindu carvings along a short stretch of the riverbank.

Linga carvings on the riverbed

Hindu carvings of Vishnu, Shiva and Uma on Nandi the bull, and more lingas

The site is about an hour and a half tuk-tuk ride from the town of Siem Reap and then a further 1.5km uphill walk through the jungle from the car park to the carved riverbed. You won’t find coach loads of Chinese tourists here! As well as being a lovely change from the other temples it was great to see some wildlife in the forest.

Overtaking an ox cart on the road to Kbal Spean

Clockwise from top left: forest path to Kbal Spean, Yellow Striped Tree Skink, there were so many termites munching next to the path that we could hear them!, pretty butterfly

Banteay Srei carvings

We combined our trip to Kbal Spean with a visit to the tiny temple of Banteay Srei. The temple’s carvings are incredible. Breathtakingly intricate and seeming to cover every available surface.

Banteay Srei is so small that it looks like a model of a temple after seeing the huge scale of Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, Bayon, et al.

I loved that the carvings covered the whole building and that each building was different

Beautiful carving details

Gates of Angkor Thom

The ancient city of Angkor Thom is surrounded by a wall 12km long. It is punctuated by five gates – one each on the north, south and west sides and two on the east. They have huge faces atop their towers, similar to those at Bayon, but also incorporate stone elephant heads and other carvings.

The busy southern gate is on the main road from Angkor Wat into Angkor Thom

The east gate can’t be reached by tuk-tuk or bus, you have to come under your own steam. Some of its faces are starting to fall apart.

In front of each gate on either side of the causeway crossing Angkor Thom’s moat are 54 gods and 54 demons taken from the story of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk. They are battling to extract the elixir of immortality from the ocean by playing tug-of-war with a giant serpent whose middle is coiled around a mountain, turning it to churn up the water.

Andrew with the remains of the battling gods outside the southern gate

Trees

I think I inherited my love of old trees from my dad. There are magnificent specimens all around the area with huge buttress roots, dangling aerial roots and sprawling branches.

The roots of this tree had completely engulfed the east gate at Ta Som

I love the tree! – hugging a huge root at Preah Khan, roots breaking through a temple wall, looking up a buttress root into the canopy at Ta Prohm

Meal at Haven

I know it’s not strictly a temple highlight (OK, it’s got nothing at all to do with temples…) but I felt like the meal that we had at Haven should get a mention as it is definitely on my list of memorable experiences from our week in Siem Reap. Not only was the food amazing and the service friendly, but by eating there we were supporting a good cause.

Many children in Cambodia grow up in orphanages. When they come of age they are basically turned out to manage on their own. And so this training restaurant was founded (by a Swiss couple) to help give these young Cambodian adults a start in life by providing life support alongside a training in catering and hospitality.

A meal to remember: vegetable tempura to start, Khmer chicken curry for main, incredible chocolate cake for dessert, and rounded off with coffee and a shot of infused rice wine (this one was mango and green chilli)

If you’re planning a visit to Siem Reap we would highly recommend a meal at Haven, and it’s a good idea to phone or email ahead as when we just turned up one evening it was already fully booked on that night and the following night.

two year trip

Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures