Thailand

Date: 6th July 2026

Location: Chiang Mai, N. Thailand

Taking us back 50 years.

With our 90 day Malaysian visas due to expire on 22nd June it was time to dust down the passports and set off for Thailand. The sea border was only a dozen miles away but a(nother) misunderstanding meant we would cross the border by land instead.

The now familiar pattern took us by resort ferry to Langkawi big island, Grab to Langkawi ferry terminal, big ferry (pre booked this time!) to the mainland and then another Grab to the train station at Arau.

We bought tickets to the border town of Padang Besar. No problem. The border crossing is actually in the station with both country's immigration actually within Malaysia. We expected to get off the train, leave Malaysia platform, exit Malaysia, enter Thailand, buy our tickets to Hat Yai, get on train. Seems a s⁵⁵ensible order? Oh no. We exited the Malaysia platform but thought we had arrived directly in Thailand. Not good! But no, we're still in Malaysia even though we were then told to go and buy our Thailand rail tickets. That done we were sent back downstairs to the Malaysian immigration desk. It looked liked this was only Malaysia In but it turned out we could also get our passports stamped OUT of Malaysia. Phew. Round a few more bends and there's the Thai immigration booth. Where are our tickets? What tickets? Turns out we must produce the train tickets we have just purchased. But Gill has hidden them somewhere so we spend 5 minutes searching for them. Phew again. We are into Thailand! We thought we had to wait an hour for our train but it turns out it goes in 5 minutes - Thailand is an hour ahead of Malaysia.

At Hat Yai it's absolutely pissing with rain so we we wait a bit in the station before walking with our backpacks to our hotel.

Backpacks because we're pretending to be shoestring travellers like we are only 25 years old. No planes, public transport and a variety of accommodation. We shall see.

So getting to Hat Yai took all day. It's a big city in the south of Thailand famous mostly for food and 'massage parlours'. Apparently it is the go to destination for sexually frustrated Malaysian males! The food though is excellent. Rather like Penang it is a mix of cultures. This time Thai, Chinese and Indian. The big difference though is in religion. Thailand is 90% Buddhist compared with Malaysia where well over 60% are Muslim and it feels like even more. The majority of women in Malaysia wear headscarves. Here in Thailand we have seen relatively few. Strictly neither religion permits alcohol but most restaurants do serve Singha, Leo and Chang beers.

A proper hotel to start and we spend a couple of days here mainly eating and planning our next move. Street food and local cafes and a swim in the pool.

First views of Thailand.

Street food vendor in Hat Yai.

Unidentified food.

And then a full day travelling. Seven hours rattling slowly along on hard wooden seats in an old third class carriage. It's green and lush. Miles and miles of rubber tree and palm oil plantations. Streams and ponds full of water lilies with the occasional big humped cows tied by an old piece of rope to a stake. Bizarrely at one random station a middle aged woman got on the train and started talking to us in very broken English. Finally she turned to me and said "I love you", kissed me on both cheeks and jumped off the train as it departed the station. The other passengers in our carriage were much amused. No idea what that was all about!

Palm oil plantation.

Third class travel. Seats cheap but hard.

Rubber trees. Spot the collection cups.

One of the smaller station stops.

Look carefully. Amazing manual signalling system.

Humped cow on a string.

We arrive in Surat Thani and immediately get a taxi to Ao Khanom a sleepy little coastal town. I really don't know why we came here as it is so sleepy I don't think anything happens here except lots of big trucks take limestone(?) to the dock. We stayed in a tiny room next to a German guy smoking dope who has a Thai working visa that allows him to spend a year in the country. To qualify he has to go on a cookery course. Goodness knows why he chose Ao Khanom as his base.

Ao Khanom on a busy day. Gill on sand spit.

Back to Surat Thani a major interchange in southern Thailand before it's our first long distance bus ride. Overnight to Bankok. Plenty of reclining seat legroom. Our ticket included a free meal at the halfway point. Rice, noodles, chicken, vegetables, beef and pork in any combination. Gill almost got on the wrong bus.

Surat Thani bus station. Man, can it rain!!

Preparing for a long bus journey.

Bangkok as the sun came up was just a drab concrete jungle. Hopefully that was just our view as we changed buses at the bus station and took yet another little minibus north to Ayatthaya formerly the capital of Siam (Thailand) and at the time reputedly the largest city in the world. It's old and it's famous for temples. New ones but especially old ones from the 15th and 16th centuries. We hired bikes for the day and saw seven. That's enough!

Buddha hidden in tree.

Big temple.

Nicely framed temple.

The head of an enormous Buddha.

More temple decoration.

Decapitated buddhas. Damn those Burmese invaders.

Golden icon. Active buddhism.

So I remain confused by Buddhism and unfortunately we didn't find anyone to explain things to us. My limited knowledge understands that it is all about making yourself a better person. Material things aren't important. You are trying to eliminate suffering and the better you do during your life the higher up the chain you are when you are reincarnated. They've invented a whole lot of deities that you look up to to help with all this. It actually sounds quite appealing and self focused. And yet then everywhere, and I mean everywhere, they go and stick up some incredibly ornate temple. No expense spared, beautiful prayer rooms, big buddhas. It all seems anathema to the inward looking, ascetic soul searching of the religion. I wish I understood more.

So instead we went to eat something. A lovely restaurant overlooking the river. Yet again we were the only customers. Within our generally vegetarian diet we've been as adventurous as we can. We have sampled all the famous dishes and here for example we ordered a mystery dish with rotis (that weren't rotis as we know them) and a delicious freshwater shrimp dish in spicy sauce. These shrimps are the speciality of Ayatthaya. [Sidenote: although we've tried most things we've so far avoided the deep fried hogs thighs and fish stomach.

Delicious freshwater shrimp in spicy sauce.

There you go. There's always another temple...

Anyway next it was north to Chiang Mai. Another all day journey by bus. We book into a family run hostel in the middle of the backpacker quarter. We arrive late in the evening so I defeat the security lock (unscrew a shackle) and we're in. We're on the edge of the northern mountains here and it's our favourite place so far. The hostel is like a home from home and we're the only guests again. What's to do here? Well, more temples of course and the usual yummy food. Day 1 though and we're off up the Monk's trail. Tuk tuk across the city and the climb begins. Hot, sweaty and up. Most people stop at the first temple. We hacked on up to the very top where the crowds magically appeared. Another tuk tuk took us back to the hostel.

Tuc Tuc Driver: "Where you go?"

Me: "Libra Guesthouse."

Tuc Tuc Driver: "Where you from?"

Me: "England."

Tuc Tuc Driver: "Arry Cane!"

Tuk tuk at your service.

Hostel entrance.

Some of the rooms.

Elephant ribbon.

The route celebrates an elephant that died during construction of the lower temple.

Up we go.

First temple dragons.

Small riverside shrine.

Approach to the upper temple.

After several hard uphill kilometres another 320 steps was just what we needed!

The top. A golden stupa.

Yet more gold.

Oh dear.

Unfortunately my trusty shorts finally succumbed to an excess of UV. So back at the hostel we sought out a seamstress who will make me an identical pair and mend this pair for a very reasonable price.

My bespoke tailor.

Of course we needed a massage. Next door to the guesthouse were four massage beds. We had an hour's full body massage each. Very nice indeed particularly as the morning had been spent shopping for tea and the ubiquitous elephant pants in the Chinese market.

Two entire stalls where we are unable to identify a single item.

Compulsory Thai purchase.

Back at the hostel we got chatting to Pui and her sister Dao. They explained how the Chinese are gradually infiltrating Thailand. Many of the guesthouses are now Chinese run but when Covid came they scarpered. Whilst the European guests can sometimes be challenging they find the Chinese guests are rude and condescending. Consequently if they get requests to stay from Chinese they are always "full". Better to be happy than rich they told us.

Anyway they've been running Libra for fifteen years. A large extended family they are from the northern Karen tribe with the family now split between Chiang Mai and their remote village up in the hills. The guidebooks all say to be wary of visiting the hill tribes and also to be aware of potential exploitation of the remaining elephants in Thailand. I found this a useful summary of the elephant situation. So it was with some unease that we booked a two day trek with Nu, one of the many cousins.

Well, what a trip it was. On the way we asked Nu about military service. It seems every region has to provide a small number of 21 year olds each year. If enough volunteer they are the chosen ones. If not then the remaining young men all have to draw cards. If you draw a red one you are excused but if its black you need to do two years conscription. Nu drew a black but didn't seem too phased by it. We also asked him if there were any predators like tigers in the jungle. His reply was "No tigers but some - bigger than cat, smaller than tiger. Eat cows." The trip started tamely with a visit to a touristy waterfall and then another tourist hot spot of concrete hot springs.

Approaching the waterfall.

In it!

A less than impressive but very warm hot spring.

But then we began a pretty hard walk through the jungle to Nu's village. Along the way we stopped to boil eggs in a geyser.

Geyser. 95°-100°C.

Egg boiler. Soft or hard boiled?

After that we saw no one as we slowly climbed up into the jungle. Nu pointed out the banyan trees. When you are born your umbilical cord is taken to a tree as an offering to their animist gods. No one is allowed to chop down these strangulating trees. He showed us bees' nests and macheted bamboo walking sticks for us.

Big tree.

After a couple of hours what comes crashing out of the undergrowth but two elephants! They are sisters, each around 50 years old and now owned by the village. Nu's cousin's sole job is to

look after them. Most of the time they roam free in the jungle but this guy, the sirdar, goes out every morning to find them and bring them back closer to the village. Sometimes he has to walk up to seven kilometres to find them. In the evening he does the same. Anyway they followed us down into the village - VERY close I might add!

Here she comes.

That's scarily close.

We were shown our quarters and then it rained. Man, did it rain. But we were given big baskets of bananas to feed the elephants and then slopped through the sodden jungle leading them back out to their new patch of jungle.

A little snack.

That trunk is SO weird.

Tropical rain.

Wet elephants. Wet tourists.

Bigfoot was here.

Then it was dinner, dry clothes and goodnight in our bamboo walled hut.

Our hut.

Our bedroom.

Dinner.

Chilling out.

Daylight dawned and we're up early. More bamboo craft as the coffee percolator and cups are made out of it. The coffee is grown in a small plantation just outside the village and sent to town where the beans are ground.

Bamboo coffee set.

Then it's another seven kilometres through the jungle on ancient Karen tracks. The highlight for me as we got to the highest point was hearing a family of gibbons on the other side of the valley. I should have made a recording but it was a magical bubbling 20 minute song up there high in the forest.

Looking back to our overnight village. Shortly before the gibbons.

It seems there has been a bit of friction between the tribes people and the National Park authority. They wanted to move the tribes out of the area when the park was established but they fought hard to remain on their ancestral land. I think the elephants are also causing a bit of an issue as they each eat 250kg of jungle a day!

We passed through just one other village on our way to the last part of the trip. It really feels medieval. Weaving, wood chopping and cows tied up under wooden houses with chickens and dogs running around freely. Apart from the village people we saw no one all day. At one stage Nu chopped down some more bamboo canes and spent 20 minutes whittling away. The result? A pair of chopsticks for each of us together with a stoppered tube to keep them in. 

Bridge into the village.

Low tech weaving. More bamboo tools.

Our chopsticks with holder.

Our final leg was a 2 hour float 18kms down river on a traditional bamboo raft. As we floated downstream we tumbled down rapids and around rocks with the forest towering up above us on both sides. Magical.

Our raft awaits.

Travelling in style.

Muddy river as a result of the recent heavy rain.

First sign of civilisation.

The raft marina at the end of the road.

A final vegetable rice dish and we drove back to Chiang Mai via the more touristy white rapid rafting zone and the famous elephant sanctuaries of the Mae Taeng river. These elephants can't roam free like those we saw but Nu said that they are still good for Thailand as they bring in a lot of foreign currency to the country. I know which elephant I would prefer to be though.

So now we are back in Libra Guesthouse in Chiang Mai. In complete contrast the the days in the jungle we've just watched England defeat Mexico in the World Cup. A cracking match!

Watching England beat Mexico.

Tomorrow we head south to Bangkok as we start to head back south towards Rebak and Mehalah. Meanwhile our thoughts are with Kevin and Shawna our former buddy boaters on Meraki 2. Having made their way north through the Philippines and Japan they have had a storm interrupted passage to the Aleutian Islands hunkering down in Russian waters where they have been made most welcome. Now finally in US waters they are assisting a French yacht that has blown its head gasket hundreds of miles from civilisation.

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Recreational cannabis use was illegal until the middle of last year when it became legal to use. And then just this month they have decided to make it illegal again. We smelt plenty in most places we've been.

Legal or not?

Very tasty I'm told.