So Thailand's the world's biggest backpacking cliché, right? We've now loyally both read the book and seen the film of “The Beach”, so we knew what we were letting ourselves in for. As Paul already mentioned – very much the 'beaten track'. So when we came to Bangkok we were looking for the only thing a self-respecting Edinburger would be looking for – Ladyboys. (If you're not an Edinburger, to understand this, you have to understand that Edinburgh plays host to the world's biggest arts festival, and one of the biggest shows in this festival, which is performed without fail every year, twice a day, for over a month, is “The Ladyboys of Bangkok”. Their booming-out pop songs and anthems haunt us from their tent on the Meadows. What could they possibly be doing to “I would walk 500 miles”?)
Anyway, before we got to Bangkok we were on our first epic train ride (training for the Trans-Mongolian at the end of the trip) from Malaysia. It was very cool. We had our own little bunks complete with curtains and proper pillows and everything. And seatbelts to stop us falling out. For the first time on an overnight journey we actually stood a chance of getting some sleep! Unfortunately for us we were sharing our bit with a couple of moany Americans (although it was much better than the moany and very rude – to the staff – English guy we thought we were going to have to suffer). The male half of the double-act was a trainspotter (I've never actually met one of those before!) and was carefully following his map of the route with great concern. 
He was convinced we were going south instead of north, and even though Paul and the guy's wife both pointed out that the sun was on the wrong side of us for us to be going in the wrong direction, he stirred up unrest among us. It seemed they were mostly here for the trains – they were visiting the countries, yes, but the highlight was the various train journeys they would complete. They had many a story of the Trans-Mongolian, and some long-distance Chinese trains. Oh yes, they'd done them all. I'm being a bit harsh. Aside from their moaniness and desire to show us how they knew all about what type of train it was and how it was constructed, they weren't bad company. And anyway, we could shut ourselves off in our own little curtained world if we wanted to.
We pulled up in Bangkok station at a nice sociable hour of the morning, armed with instructions on how to find our hostel. So far the Thai people we'd encountered had been very friendly. The train staff were nice to us (not so nice to the moaners) and were very excited by our ”little guitars” (as is the first guess of nearly everyone we meet). Food good too. And so far no street hassle and not overheated from bag carrying. Promising.... 
We checked into our hostel and decided to take Bangkok easy on the first day. The sun was high in the sky and it's not called the hottest city in the world for nothing. We opted to go for lunch. If there's one thing we know we definitely want out of Thailand, it's food. In the café was a man avidly watching the TV – from the looks of it a broadcast about the Red party (which ones are they again? The one with the protesters?). He was asking us if we know about it, and seemed to be trying to tell us that he'd come from further north for the protests. Or that's what we thought he meant, anyway (this isn't Malaysia with all the good English spoken any more). We hoped that wasn't intended for any time soon!
As I lay inside my mosquito-net that night, I had the distinct feeling I'd put it up wrong. It hung around me weirdly, and I had to lie in an interesting crooked shape in order to avoid touching any bit of it. BUT – at least I'd used it and had thus justified carrying it round the world with me for 8 months. The next morning we woke up to the news of the Japanese earthquake. Paul was once more wedded to the computer and looked up and said, “oh dear, looks like something bad has happened in Japan.” It was a little while before I grasped it was actually Quite Bad. The owner of the hostel was Japanese, so we casually asked his wife (from Burma) if they'd heard about what had happened. 
On went CNN. And stayed on nearly solidly for the next 3 days. It's like a curse is following us. Volcano in Hawai'i just down the road from where we stayed, another Earthquake in Christchurch just after we left, and then Japan. I hope nothing's going to happen to Singapore, Malaysia, or Thailand! (Oops, I wrote that too soon – as I write this, and we've just left Thailand today, there is breaking news of a big earthquake in the north of Thailand/Burma not far from where we visited.) The Japan disaster has been particularly personal to us. It's weird – when you're at home world news seems so distant, but travelling it's very immediate. And this was “live natural disaster as you watch it”, a bit like the 'live war' of Iraq. Luckily none of our Japanese friends were immediately affected, although obviously as things have escalated it has implications for the whole country. Japan has been one of our favourite places so far – we felt so at home there (despite its utter weirdness) and the people are some of the kindest and most polite I've ever met. It makes us really quite sad!
That day we went to a big weekend market, filled with our kind. The white plague or whatever tourists in this part of the world get called. We'd started to feel a bit listless. We're constantly asked (by immigration forms) what the purpose of our visit is, but now we realised we didn't even know. Not just, 'why are we in Thailand', but 'what are we doing on this trip anyway?' What do we want out of it? Surely not just to reach Moscow without being robbed. It was time to sort out our agendas. We'd both been really looking forward to the SE Asia leg of our trip, but we realised that we don't really know why. All we know about this part of the world is compiled of backpacker clichés. So, for example in Malaysia we sat on a paradise beach on a paradise island – and the reason? Because its AMAZING, man! Everyone else was there sunbathing – but why were we? We're not that into spending time on beaches and swimming in the sea – you get all sandy and sunburnt (obviously a different story in Scotland). And we don't care about getting an all-body tan because, frankly, when is anybody going to see it? It's too cold to bare that much flesh in Edinburgh and in SE Asia it would be culturally inappropriate.
So what DO we actually want out of SE Asia, if not paradise beaches and lots of cheap booze?1. We like food
2. We like people
3. Sometimes we like old things like ruins and temples.
In short, perhaps we're not actually natural backpackers. We just happen to be travelling with our things in backpacks. So, before we get sucked into the backpacker sightseeing or lounging about on beaches routine (eg. Melaka in Malaysia – worth it for the architecture? Not really) we should do things we actually want to do on this trip, not the things we think we should be doing. We think Japan sort of spoiled us for the rest of the trip because nowhere will live up to its awesomeness! So – Thailand. Why come here?
It was a logical route on the map, and everyone comes here so it seems obvious. It's difficult to escape the image of this place as decreed by backpacker culture. Not being natural or comfortable backpackers, we've realised we need to travel with a purpose. Perhaps the moany Americans from the train had the right idea. They may have been moany, but they had a purpose. They were train enthusiasts, so they were taking interesting train journeys in foreign countries. We admire them.
We've started to get sick of the phrase 'off the beaten track' – it's so tedious. We associate it with annoying pretentious backpackers (like in The Beach), who may be looking for something else, but at the end of the day they're still backpackers. A lot of people seem to be looking for something that doesn't exist with this phrase. They long for the “real Thailand” which seems to be expressed by this ethnic clothing all Western people wear (Thai pants?!), but no Thai people seem to wear. But Thailand doesn't seem to be like this. They're looking for peasant life unspoilt by tourism (remnants of what things might have been before the backpackers came) – and the locals try to give them this, but they're not satisfied because it's obviously a tourist-targetted thing. But this version of Thailand doesn't seem to be real. From all we've seen – the way people dress, advertising – they want to be like Japan. They want the modern world.We can't help but despise other travellers when we see them out in their droves. It automatically sickens us – but what right have we (or anyone else) to feel that way when we're exactly the same? We met a Dutch backpackery-type-guy who was looking for something else, beyond the normal touristy travelling, who complained that Thailand was 'so touristy' (he was on a tour himself at the time). Everyone we meet (including us!) complains when we find ourselves going to a place that is as touristy as the bits of Thailand we visited. But perhaps it's not the fellow foreigners that are the real problem – it's more the way we're treated by the locals. We're offered all these things we're not interested in, we're herded about like cattle, they often have clear contempt for us, and we feel dissatisfied. We're tourists because we see what we came to see (ladyboys, anywhere?), and we expect to see it because that's all we know about Thailand. So now it's time to forget about all of that and try and discover Thailand on our own. Not sure how successful we were.
As for looking for ladyboys – so far we've seen a fair few highly made-up guys in girl's clothes. At supermarket checkouts, on the skytrain, things like that. One of the things I find really surprising about Thailand is that it's a very conservative country (women should wear leg-covering and shoulder-covering clothing as a general guideline), but being gay or being a transvestite is perfectly fine. In fact it seems pretty much part of the culture. They wouldn't be happy for men to kiss in public – but then they're not big on any public displays of affection. Lonely Planet reliably informs me that there's no gay rights movement in Thailand because there's never been any need for one.
The next day after the market and our philosophising, we wandered into Bangkok to have a proper look around. Unfortunately it was Sunday, or a holiday or something, and everything was closed up. But we did find some terrifyingly packed markets, an Indian fabric sector, and a flower market. We tried to make it to the Palace, but it was closing when we got there and we already had the oncomings of heatstroke. You just can't drink enough water! Tuktuk drivers slowed down to hail us in horror and shock that we were trying to walk around the city. Surely foreigners can't do this? Surely it's bad for their health? Hmmm, perhaps it's time to admit that it is bad for our health. We left the busy and dirty streets (but not as dirty as KL) and retreated back to our hostel in the cool airconditioning of the skytrain.
As a result we spent our last Bangkok day floating from airconditioned shopping centre to airconditioned shopping centre, exploring the culture there. I couldn't believe how many shopping centres they'd managed to fit into one district! They were huge, and of varying degrees of poshness. There was even a weird sort of temple to Chelsea Football Club in one of them. We spent a while hovering around feeling strange and wondering what was going on, until we found the English Premier League cup and realised it was on tour. Never underestimate the popularity of the EPL in other countries. We're constantly surprised. Anyway, we went to the cinema. We're beginning to like these shopping centre/burger/cinema days (a tradition started in KL). Nice and airconditioned and relaxing. Did I mention airconditioned? (NB take a jumper for the cinema.) We'd heard about the national anthem before a film thing. Shivering in our seats, we waited for the title “Please stand to honour his Majesty”. Everyone stood (not many of us there) and watched a film of all the King's 'best bits' a la Big Brother, with a calming and melodic soundtrack which I assume was the anthem.
Next on our itinerary was a stay in Kachanaburi – a bit to the left and north of Bangkok, and made famous by the Bridge over the River Kwai. The whole leaving Bangkok and getting there thing was suspiciously simple. As was finding lunch, and finding a surprisingly good museum to tell us all about the Japanese occupation of the area. For those of you who haven't seen the film, the Japanese had loads of Allied prisoner of war camps in the area and were famous for a) being completely brutal and b) building the “Death Railway”, including a railway bridge over the river Kwai (WWII). This seems to be one of the main source of tourism in the area now. We planned to journey the railway the next day.
That evening we discovered a night market (very fortuitously it seems, as it we never saw it again) where we found a fantastic dinner thing. I'm not sure if it was a “steamboat”, or just something like it, but it was great. It was a bowl with coals in it and a dome for frying meat on, which ended in an area to collect liquid. Water went in that bit, and various veg and noodles and yummy things were cooked in it making a soupy stock (contributed to by the meat juices). It was an all-you-can-eat-cook-you-own buffet. Perfect. We didn't really know what we were doing, and the staff seemed to be laughing at us, but we didn't care. I think we handled ourselves quite well. We sat there as the rain suddenly came bucketing down. When it rains here it really does rain (does seem to be following us, this rain). Everyone's (save ours) feet were getting flooded, and it was interesting to see that we were the only non-locals there. We felt a little bit smug. Great discovery – but we went back every night and it never appeared again. We sat in our room that evening watching Dr Who and listening to the rain. Later, singing frogs.The next morning presented us with a very suspect breakfast. Thinking purely of cost vs. nutritional value, I ordered baked beans on toast. We're getting a bit sick of the same old “Western breakfast” menu, and ordinarily we would avoid the Western option, but I didn't fancy rice soup. The beans for some reason tasted of pond – and I soon found the reason. A nice big bit of mould stirred in. Yum. I fought the urge to be British about it and took it to the cook.. He said it tasted fine to him (worrying!) and then found all the ways possible to put the blame onto his wife. Good grief.
Anyway, we waited a very long time for the Death Railway train, probably due to flooding from the torrents of the night before. There were legions of tour groups in weird hats. The hats were unnecessary, it was freezing (in Thailand? I ask) and raining on and off. We crossed the bridge. We sat on the train for a further 3 hours. We didn't have time to do anything at the other end, we came back. As we waited people shouted the usual 'taxi!' at us. Paul replied “no, human”. Taxi is not our name or our species. He's also started replying, “no, I don't have one” to the hail. Oh dear, what have we become? On the train back again we got bored after stopping for a long time for no apparent reason, so took stupid photos. You've probably been confused by them on Flickr. Now you know. It was all a bit reminiscent of the Curitiba train.
With all the rain (which came back again with a vengeance) Kachinaburi was like a ghost town. Whilst we went to have a look at the bridge on foot, the locals sat around shivering in their blankets. There wasn't much else going on, so we decided to do some much needed research. This is the stage of the trip where we have to start coming to terms with the 3 big scaries – China, Mongolia and Russia. We had quite a big fright when we looked up Russian visa requirements and found we can only get one from our home country. Since that was impossible, we spent quite a long time working out whether we could afford to change our final flight from Moscow, and where we should fly from instead. Panic was over quickly, though, as we found we could get a transit visa and still do the Trans-Mongolian (phew). Then the embassy in Hong Kong told us that being British meant we could probably get our Russian visas there. Yay! Now options – do we really want to stop in Russia?
The day we left the rain finally stopped and the sun came out. Bastard. It was still nice and cool though, and even in Bangkok. We were feeling a little too smug about our handling of public transport and taxi negotiation. It was bound to come back and bite us. We spent a very tedious time in Bangkok's Southern Bus Terminal looking for the illusive 507 bus. We'd taken it on the way there and knew it went past the train station we wanted to go to. I'd also seen a few driving around. But, damnit, where did you catch it from? It never came to its allocated bay, and the staff all just waved vaguely whenever we asked them. We even found the place where they all go to sleep, and waved at some that were driving around. But could not catch the damned bus! How could it be so hard? We caught a different one instead and had to do a lengthy skytrain/metro journey to get to the train station in time for our Chiang Mai train.
Chiang Mai was a place everyone had said was AMAZING, man. And we had another cool overnight train to get there. And yes indeed, it is a backpacker paradise, but it's also a bloody nice place in its own right. But its backpackery-ness hits you like a brick wall. I've never felt so catered to. Anyway, apart from all that it was lovely and peaceful with lots of pretty temples and good food. It wasn't unmanageably hot either, and it was nice to see the sun again.
Our “private room” in the hostel turned out to be one big room (bamboo hut) with a thin bamboo partition down the middle, which we shared with an old German man and his family of toddler and Thai wife. Them coupled with a mattress which seemed to be made of concrete didn't lead to much sleep at night. The kid would scream for ages which wasn't overly horrific, but then much later the man would start up this loud malicious whisper and berate his wife for hours on end. It was difficult to tell what the story was with those two – it stank quite strongly of the “buying a Thai wife” industry, or from the way he was treating her she could have been a former prostitute. He would swear at her in German, then say things like “I brought you out of all that – you want to go back? This is your life now. I go out to get money, and you have to stay at home and make Thai. All you do is make trouble...” etc etc, plus hours of poison into the poor woman who was not strong enough or intelligent enough to defend herself. Some part of me would have been happy to eavesdrop to find out what their story was, but not at 2am. I told them to shut up through the partition. They'd already had the light on half the night. Not a happy bunny.
The next day we decided to do a cooking course recommended by my cousin Emma (also on a round the world trip). I've never eaten 3 meals before midday before. The chef was extremely eccentric and we shared the course with a lovely Austrian couple. The chef was almost as legendary as Freddie of the Inca Trail. It'll take a while for Paul to learn a good impression of him to add to his very fine Freddie and one-man-Kabuki. We were presented with a nice colour recipe book to keep, from which we had to choose the meals we wanted to make. Then a shopping list was compiled and the chef took us to the market. It was so much fun, but by lunchtime we were completely stuffed and we'd paid for a whole day! We were inspired to book one of the many advertised tours for the next day. Something of Chiang Mai's touristy atmosphere must have got to us. Besides, we hadn't been on a tour since Cuba.
We took the cheapest option, and were picked up in a minibus but a very surly man in make-up who seemed to think that tourists were cattle to be herded about and otherwise ignored. We had a schedule of many activities. First we were all puzzled by the orchid and butterfly farm (where were the kittens? Surely that was a logical next step?). Then we were taken to a park full of abused elephants which we were to ride. It was quite exciting riding an elephant, but they clearly didn't live a happy life. The guys there again didn't talk to us except to try and sell us bananas for the elephants. We weren't surprised when one of the elephants made a break for freedom and managed to get quite far. From there we were herded onto some bamboo rafts for a trip down the river, and then to lunch. After lunch some bright spark thought that this (the hottest part of the day) would be an ideal time for a jungle trek to a waterfall, and then we were brought to a whitewater rafting centre. This was definitely the best bit of the tour. The rafting guys at the centre were really friendly (in that they actually deigned to talk to us and didn't look at us like we were just a necessary evil) and the scenery was amazing. We actually did enjoy the things we did on the tour, even though it all felt a bit weird. And the aim had been to get into the countryside, which we did. But then they did one of those, “and now you come to this hilltribe village and buy things off them.” We parked in the village and all got out of the bus very reluctantly. We didn't really have any desire to poke our noses into people's homes. A woman greeted us with the demand, “you lookie lookie.” Nice. I know these people rely on us buying things from them, but none of us were expecting to go there in the first place and I just didn't want to join in on that game. It felt very uncomfortable. Later we were taken so a couple of the people in the group who had paid extra could look at people with long necks. All in all it was very educational about the Thai tourism industry.Our last day in Chiang Mai we decided to go for broke with the tourist experiences. We went for a Thai massage. No-one's ever scrubbed my feet with a lime before! It felt very professional and clean, actually. Paul had a man and I had a woman, and they pushed and pulled us until we thought we'd snap. Sometimes it felt like a series of Judo holds and armlocks. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it, but I actually did. And actually felt pretty good after it. I'd have a Thai massage again. It was a nice preparation for our overnight train back to Bangkok.
We had received a bit of money in the form of presents from friendly people – so we'd decided to treat ourselves to a night in a 4 star hotel and a cabaret show. A ladyboy show, to be precise. We were very excited. This was our last day in Thailand and it was bucketing it down with rain. We arrived at around 6.30 in the morning, so had a pretty long day in which to enjoy all the luxuries that were on offer. I had a long bath for the first time in a while, and we also sought out the free gym and free swimming pool. At lunch we went out to a cheapo place because we were planning an evening meal at the hotel. Paul ordered something called “preserved egg freckles power turbo”. The eggs were black and jelly-like, and reminded me suspiciously of something I'd seen in the market of Chiang Mai. Especially the strange ammonia-taste that came with them. They looked awfully like some things which had been labelled “horse piss eggs”. I'm not saying Paul ate horse piss eggs, but...
Anyway, we had a fun day messing around at the hotel followed by a really good meal at the restaurant. Then icing on the cake – our much anticipated ladyboy show. To my surprise, the audience turned out to be about 80% Japanese – and not your usual coach tour group either, they were all girls a bit younger than me, and families with small children. Weird. Anyway, we must have been a dead audience for the performers because the Japanese didn't react much except with a polite smattering of applause now and then. It was very glitzy and glamorous, and I spent almost the whole show anatomically examining the performers just trying to work out if they were actually girls or not. Some of them must have been. I was full of doubt and confusion. One of the obvious transvestites (he didn't have any surgery, unlike a lot of the others) ended up in Paul's lap on more than one occasion. Well I suppose that's what you get for being the only man on the front row! He survived the night with a bright red lipstick mark on his cheek. The show was so much fun. Definitely a worthy project for our “mad money” from Mum. Thanks Mum!
It was an early start the next morning to catch the bus to the Cambodian border. We adopted some Australians with the intention of getting a shared taxi on the other side, but first there were a series of tests to make it through. Welcome to the Cambodian Border Game. We'd been given a map to get through the game un-scammed, but it wasn't as straightforward as it initially seemed. Test one: get off the bus at the right point and avoid the tuk-tuk to the border scam. Fail. We were too late off the bus and were forced to get tuk-tuks back to the first bus-stop. Test two: avoid the fake visa point. Pass! They tried to order us into a building to get our visas, but Paul told them no, and we ran away. Real visas are at the actual border. Test three: don't get picked up by anyone with a fake ID. Fail, we got adopted by a “government worker” whose ID was very much fake and who said he'd guide us through the border. Nothing we could do to shake him off. Test four: pay the correct amount for the visa ($20 each). Pass! They tried to get us to pay them a lot more, but we evaded it. Test five: find a shared taxi rather than take the government “free bus” to the expensive government-controlled bus station. Fail. We still had out “government” shadow who put us on the bus and made sure we got one of their scam-taxis (he probably was from the government – it's a police scam). These guys have been known to follow tourists into the town and prevent them negotiating a taxi price. He then had the audacity to ask for a tip. I don't think so! It's so frustrating to know you're being scammed and not being able to do anything about it. All the money will go to the scammers and almost none of it to the actual taxi driver.It was a two hour drive to Siem Reap and we stopped halfway to wash the car. For some reason an official had demanded to know where our hostel was so he could “tell the driver”. But the driver was never going to take us to our hostel. When we got to Siem Reap he parked up and let us out, where a grinning man handed us over to tuk-tuk drivers, assuring us it was all included in the taxi price. We were ok, because we'd booked a hostel (they didn't try too hard to dissuade us). But the Australians were subjected to test six: don't get taken to the hostel where the driver is hoping for a commission. Fail. They wanted to come to ours (which is a beautiful clean place full of beautiful helpful and friendly staff. So welcome after our exhausting border game), but the tuk-tuk guy refused and took them somewhere else. (We'd already been lied to quite extensively about the location of our hostel in an effort to persuade these guys to go somewhere else.) When they asked to be taken to our hostel, they were told it was too far away and they'd have to pay extra. They were so pissed off with the scammers they got out and took a different tuk-tuk. Not the best introduction to Cambodia! Nice to know you can trust the government.
Oh well, on with the show.
PS So apparently we're at war with Libya – Iraq II? Scotland should stay out of it – we released their bomber so we're friends, remember?
