All, Destinations
11 months in the making, Tag has been our most ambitious project to date. Now spearheading STA Travel’s global Blue Ticket campaign, our project of love throughout our 2014 Epic Journey from London to Sydney has quite a few Easter Eggs hiding in it. Without further ado, find out some interesting facts about the shoot and see what you can spot:
1) Quick fire facts:
Total millage covered in production: 40000km
Total countries covered: 19
Total destinations and activities filmed: 34
Total featured destinations in the final cut: 19 across 10 countries
Total featured activities in the final cut: 8
How many can you name? Travel buffs are required to accept a handicap of -4 points to level the playing field 🙂
2) Cuts:
To make it to two minutes we had to cut Tallinn, Penang, Roppongi, Kyoto, our friend Wu’s Kung Fu demonstration at 798 Art District Beijing (spot him in STA Travel’s Insider Intel film!), temples in Ubud, Bali (check out Ganesh in the Tag lowdown) and Uluru. Talk of killing your darlings…
3) Locations:
Unlike a lot of movie magic, most scenes in Tag were shot in sequence, though there are some fun exceptions. Surfing Bondi was actually shot at Spot X, the epilogue was shot in a public park in the middle of Joetsu, Japan. There’s one scene that’s shot on the other side of the world to where it’s set. Guess which one!
4) Oufits:
Our two outfits (before and after swimming) stay the same throughout production, so we needed to cart them around for 11 months through all sorts of climates. An exception are our shoes. How many pairs do Nic and Sax get through? And what country does Nic change her hairstyle in?
5) Planning
Some things, such as our longtail to scuba shot, were carefully planned and took several takes to get right (see how Nic goes from dry to wet hair?). Some things, on the other hand, were complete coincidence, but we just had to include them. The Chinese dude spitting on Tiananmen Square gave us the same feeling a wildlife photographer gets from capturing the perfect shot of a majestic eagle catching salmon. Can you guess another one that was complete pot luck?
6) Crew
Production consisted of a skeleton crew of 2 people, plus local assistance for knowing the best places to shoot and guarding our kit of Canon DLSR x 2, Hero3 GoPro x 2, Lenses: 50mm 1.8, 18-55mm, 50-300mm, Sennheiser mike, Zoom recorder, Tripod, Slider and compact steady-cam.
7) Stars!
Finally, we could not have produced Tag without our unsung heroes. Kahori and Yumi-delux, two of our best mates from Japan, nailed playing professional patty cake in front of snowy Joetsu’s Takada Park samurai castle. Nicola’s brother J is in the background on Koh Phi Phi doing what he does best: adding tone. Paul, Kate, Honorata and Rob at the Victoria STA Travel store – thanks for your lunch breaks!! And Celina, Saxon’s sister, (who’s a professional actor!) and boyfriend Ryan presented an outstanding emotional performance as the perfect UP couple with a happy ending! For a cheeky side-track, can you spot the ‘porn’ star?
Tag was indeed a monster to create, but we’re stoked that so many people will be seeing this little piece of epicness as part of STA Travel’s Blue Ticket campaign. Whilst we’re mega busy at the moment (watch out for Oz road trip films and TLC adventures coming soon!), we can’t wait to get our hands on our next Epic Project.
All, Inspire
We’re staying in a tiny Lao village among the pigs and chickens and water buffalo on the Eastern bank of the mighty Mekong River. Thailand’s identical-looking jungle is lapped by turbid waters on the opposite bank, a short – but treacherous – swim away. From what I could manage to understand from a local guide, Ped, Laos people here believe there are 32 individual parts to the human spirit. When we experience moments of extreme excitement, fear or trauma, some of those spirit parts can detach from us and stay in those places where we experienced it. An ancient concept of a horcrux if you like. This makes us spiritually incomplete. We’re missing something.
After playing football and games with the kids, night falls over dinner and the generator gives up the ghost. Everyone busily sets up candles around the huts so the village elders can invite us to a Baci ceremony to call back our lost spirits. The moon is missing only a sliver of its own self. It will be complete as a full moon tomorrow night. The rest of the sky is a deep, sapphire blue, chinked with facets of the stars. There are lots of candles. The village shaman is chanting to call the wayward spirits. I’ve had so many extreme and profound moments recently that I find it very easy to imagine that my spirit is missing a few important bits. I think of some of those extreme moments of elation, fear, loss and joy.
The flickering lights illuminate a centrepiece of flowers, bamboo sticks, items of spiritual meaning and cotton threads. The atmosphere lulls us all into a feeling of being looked after by the dozens of faces inside the house and many more peering in through the windows. When the shaman is satisfied that the spirit pieces are all present, the village elders all help to tie the spirits back onto us. All the elders form a circle around our outward facing circle and, taking turns, chant as they tie a cotton string, first to the left wrist, then to the right, until our wrists are wrapped in bundles and bundles of white cotton strands and knots. Each one of us gets each of the elder’s individual well wishes, blessings and smiles.
Ped explains that the idea is to keep the cotton stings until they come off by themselves, and by the time the last strands naturally fall away, the spirit will be fully intact again and healed together. Alternatively, if you do want to remove them, we were told we could take them off and leave them by one of the millions of Buddha statues that you might come across in Laos, or tie them to a tree, or release them into a river, or on a mountain, or some other beautiful natural place. You wouldn’t want parts tying your soul back together to end up somewhere unpleasant.
After all the elders tie all the strings and mumble the chants, we all eat morsels of delicious pre-prepared offerings and drink the village rice whisky with our re-united spirits (never an uneven number of shots of rice whiskey – we are also drinking for our spirits, of course, and it would be rude to have just one shot for yourself). We are so full from dinner, but we must feed our souls nonetheless. It is at this point we realize that both the beautiful centre piece of the ceremony as well as all our individual offerings are all newly hand made. Even the individual banana leaf plates, incense and candle holders and flower chains have been freshly made that day by the village. An incredible amount of work and love has gone into our experience this evening, and we don’t even know how we can start to thank the villagers for their kindness.
It’s now been a couple of days since, and we’ve already released a couple of strings ourselves. Some were left in a Buddha cave, set into a cliff at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Ou rivers, overlooking the Y-shape of the two vast rivers and beyond to rice fields and hills studded with water buffalo and working elephants. Ped told us how to pray to the Buddha in the cave like the locals do. Even though we’re not really Buddhists, we follow his instructions. We knelt in that cave, brought hands together and bowed our heads, wishing good wishes on a bunch of people very dear to us, and hoped that we could feel whole again.
We’re not sure if it all worked, our souls still seem like they’re floating around in the ether getting distracted by cats on YouTube and salad. But we did feel quite peaceful in that cave in the cliff face above the river. And the fact that everyone had made such an enormous effort for complete strangers was magical. So even if Buddha is not your bag, I think you’d like the spot, if only for the human good will poured over us all by this little village somewhere on the bank of the Mekong.
All, Destinations
Returning wide-eyed and open mouthed from our 3 day mind-warp to the Field of Pots, (sorry, Plane of Jars), the Pot People (i.e. Ricky, Jodie, Matt, Toto, Dragon and Rat) met our new travel companions at the left turn off that gravel road by the tree. 4 hours windy bus ride later we drifted down the Nam Song River at Vang Vieng, in inflated tractor tires, beverages in hand. It was the perfect activity to align our hugely expanded minds with Amy, Evelien, Harriet, Matt number 2, Jay, Lilly and Chao, who did a fabulous job catching up with the help of river-flavoured Beer Lao.
Whilst rope swings and spring break bars have shut down due to health (/death) issues, tubing is still a lovely thing to experience as the surrounding scenery is breathtaking and our fantastic group took the party way through dinner and beyond, turning our riverside restaurant platform into a dance off competition with another table in the bar next door. Cue the re-birth of gangnam style.
The capital lay ahead of us the following day, but as anyone who has been to Vientiane knows, it’s large and industrial with a quaint city centre, but there’s not that much going on. Apart from the very impressive COPE centre (must-see organization dealing with the ongoing effects of UXOs from the Secret War), some temples and the picturesque riverside night market, we were most amused by our guide Chao’s smug giggles at explaining the origins of Laos’ own Arch de Triomphe. American funds and cement intended for a new airport (read: increased US military access) were appropriated somewhat differently by the Royal Laotian government, who had Patuxai Gate constructed in defiance. Locals still repress proud smiles and refer to the Victory Gate as the ‘vertical runway’ to this day.
Far more exciting was our next stop at Kong Lor, where we stayed for two nights amongst impressive karst mountains and rice fields. In true ‘middle of nowhere’ style, the electricity gave up after 5 hours, which lead to a collective loss of inhibitions as we bunched up to hand-wash our dirty clothes in a large bowl ‘borrowed’ from a nearby shed. Local legend has it that a farmer, many years ago, lost his flock of ducks whilst he tended to his far too full bottle of LaoLao one afternoon. Confused yet laissez-fair, he proceeded to explain the concepts of time travel and multiple dimensions to his wife that evening, just to find his ducks being sold at a market on the other side of the mountain a week later. Inter-galactic teleportation aside, the ducks could not have crossed the mountains un-aided, so after frenzied exploration on the farmers part, a huge cave was discovered hiding behind a nearby bush, with a gushing river leading 7 km through the mountain and out the other side. Just goes to show how much attention people sometimes pay to their nearest surroundings.
Pumped up by tales of legendary duck-courage, we split into groups of 3 to board individual longboats, and set off into the vast cave with an incredibly skillful boatsman each, who found his way through the pitch black, around submerged jagged rocks and up underground waterfalls armed only with a flimsy torch. Chao proudly pointed out the electrical cables that lead to a small but impressively lit 5 minute walking trail in the heart of the mountain, where we could see various stalactites and stalagmites before jumping back into the boats. This was indeed the height of technology in these parts. Topped off with a BBQ, swim and Ricky’s own fishing show, we all had a fantastic day.
A long drive brought us to Thakhek, where we persuaded our driver to drop everyone off and then take two laps of the small town with our kitted up Dragon perched on the back of a borrowed motorbike, ridden (by our Rat) precariously close to the bus, other vehicles and at one stage the police. The mission for the perfect bus-exterior shot raised a few local eyebrows, as did the amused hollers of the rest of the group, camped out in a nearby restaurant. Mental scaring ensued as four of us (who shall not be named) accidentally paid for a massage in a brothel. At least Chao, who swore he has ‘always told every other group to not go there’ thought it was hilarious. Which in itself was hilarious.
After Thakhek’s somewhat seedy border-town charm, we had a real treat lying ahead of us. After several hours of singing East 17, Hanson and 50 Cent at full pelt we took a right turn off the main road and the driver got his revenge. Our buts got the best massage in weeks, but the potholed dusty paths we hurtled along lead deeper and deeper into amazing countryside so no one paid much attention to the fact we were being turned into Schnitzels. A quick stop at an unassuming pond with a small temple in the centre brought forward 5 huge soft-shelled turtles who were lucky enough to have been born in a lake they were considered sacred (not supper). “Beautiful little buffalo, come to me, aye aye aye” sang the driver and Chao in unison, coaxing the creatures out of the murky water with crackers sold by one of the more entrepreneurial locals just outside the park gates. We decided it wise to not enquire further about the local attraction to little buffalo. While everyone tried to get his or her cameras right into the turtles face and feel its soft leathery shell, Amy made a friend for life in a local, white and brown-patched dog.
Back on the road to Xe Champhone, we drove tantalizingly close to our home stay, but dropped by the local temple first, where a monk happily chatted to us about his life in Michigan until we all hooked up on facebook. The temple was also home to a 200-year-old Buddhist library full of thousands of Sanskrit scriptures and bamboo tablets, all crammed into three small wardrobes in a tiny stilt structure in the middle of a lake. A huge white Buddha statue on the other side of the lake, that had been donated by the Thai government after the old one was bombed in the war, provided a great photo opportunity, as did the monkeys in a nearby forest our group eagerly fed bananas to. Monkey porn ensued.
Our second home stay, whilst less integrated with the locals as the last, was a great communal experience for our now rather large group. We had left the Dutch behind in Vientiane, but four new faces, Tanja, Mary, Claire and Kelly had joined. Tanja and Chao united to become the driving force behind dinner, creating huge amounts of curry, vegetable dishes, bamboo sprout dishes, sticky rice and other tasty treats whilst Ricky and the boys tended to (i.e sporadically and expertly poked) the barbecue. Our Rat was even fortunate enough to try some of the drivers special chilly sauce which, without further ado, made her head explode. Without this core team’s efforts, we surely would have died of starvation. Sitting around the campfire after the fantastic meal we once again reminisced about the joys of travelling, meeting new people and telling the rat race to go eff itself.
Nursing our hangovers over omelet and coffee breakfast, we couldn’t believe there was so little left to go. On the way to Pakse, our group declared a mutiny and, despite what our driver and Chao recommended, jumped straight into the freezing waters of the spectacular Tad Ngeuang waterfall. A hangover cure if there ever was one was followed later by a massage and Indian feast in Pakse’s city centre.
And so, dear readers, we arrive at the final part of this trip through incredible and unsung hero of a country. Scaling the heights of Wat Phou, an ancient temple complex built as the capital of the Khmer empire before Angkor Wat, we marvelled at the amazing views, the intricate carvings of the temples and calm serenity of its hillside setting. It was even better than Bonnie Doon. Little old ladies chanted prayers as they bound cotton bracelets around our wrists and a clear stream of water emerging straight out of a gigantic overhanging rock cooled our sun beaten faces.
A few hours later saw our bus board a river ferry made of a rickety bamboo raft supported by floaters made of old war plane fuel tanks and packing our bags into our final little longboat, we sped through the Mekong’s 4000 islands on the way to Don Det. Cycling through the sunset past numerous bamboo hideouts, some scattered hippies swaying to their private head-raves and a mid-street local cock fight was the perfect round up of this incredible trip with awesome people we can’t wait to see again soon. Laos, you’ve enchanted us, and grown our appetites for adventure in the next stop on our TLC project: Crazy Cambodia.
All, Inspire
Act 1. Overnight ‘sleeper’ bus from Hanoi to Vientiane, March 2014. Amongst other fellow travelers sharing our insomnia, we get chatting to a slightly eccentric English dude with a ginger afro, who tells us he’s off to find this mythical place. A field of pot, somewhere in northeast Laos. He’s asked the driver to give him directions, but after nearly being left by the roadside in the middle of nowhere at 4am, he decides to try from Vientiane.
Act 2. April 2014. After completing a loop of Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, we overhear ginger-afro’s Scooby-doo voice on Beer Hoi corner in the old city. Vientiane was a no-go. So was Vang Vien. He had hitchhiked to some village with a snake farm high in the mountains but was forced to return after the small windy road over the pass was blocked for the third day running by a couple of overturned lorries. As so many before him, he had given up and gone tubing.
Act 3. Rumors skitted around just out of earshot in Luang Prabang as we visited this time around, November 2014. What was it, who has been, and how had they managed to get there? We felt like Richard at the beginning of The Beach, we even met a dude who looked like Robert Carlisle, but he turned out to be Dutch, excessively boring, negative and worst of all, sober.
Our imaginations stretched to their limits, 6 of our bravest decided to take the plunge into the unknown and hire a minivan to give us the best shot of actually making it to the Plain of Jars.
Within 5 minutes of meeting our driver ridiculously early in a misty morning in Luang Prabang, we were stopped dead in the road. Our driver was picking up his breakfast. 20 minutes later, we were tearing past our first turned up lorry on the windy mountain road south. This is starting well, we all thought to ourselves, and decided for the first time in 2 weeks to use our seatbelts.
As the morning got warmer, the scenery unfolded itself in the most spectacular way as we wound higher and higher into the mountains where, in fitting fashion with our adventure into the unknown and possibly paranormal, it suddenly got colder and colder.
6 hour of windy driving brought us to our third stop of the day, the tiny village of nun-chuck. Things went from curious to surreal when of the 4 ordered chicken soup lunches only 3 were served with chicken. Dr Rick and Mr. Yuen started acting strangely after conversing with a passing rooster and enquiries about plain-clothed men on mopeds carrying assault rifles were brushed off by our driver. “For security. So if anything happens, there is always someone for safety”. What happened? Safety of whom?
We arrived in Phonsavan that evening, our driver first reluctant to take us to site 1 for sunset, “it is too far”, “it is closed”, “there are daemons who invite themselves to dinner”. 150000 kip apparently shooed the daemons away. We set up time lapses between the eerie looking megalithic stone structures. The sunset bathed the fields and hundreds of jars blood red, and more than once did we get the feeling of someone nudging our shoulder, just to turn around and see there was no one there. Two other tourists and a couple of villagers with dogs shared the scene with us before the sun finally dropped below the horizon and we scampered back to our golf buggy.
We all had our theories of course. Our on board criminologist Dr Rick has it on good authority that the giant stone jars were used for keeping buffalo safe from sabre-tooth tigers. He enthusiastically pointed at foot long tooth marks at the mouths of the pots. Ms Jodie MSc PHD from the world renowned university of Maidstone presented her paper arguing her theory of pre-historic human giants leaving only LaoLao cups behind, as they became extinct along with all the dinosaurs.
Ancient Siam historian Dr Yuen brought forward his well-documented book on the iron-age giant peanut, and the locals’ need for large storage containers for their staple of peanut butter. Prof. Toto took photos and looked confused, whilst whackjob Nic wouldn’t shut up about aliens and manic Matt just stood there shouting “MEEEERica”.
We slept uneasily that night, probably due to the freezing cold, reading about theories of jar burial sites and our attempted nerve remedy of LaoLao. A deserted Stonehenge (built around the same time) hours drive from anywhere at night would give even the sturdiest shivers. Especially after watching ‘The Descent’ with no popcorn.
Site two and three proved even more intriguing, and after a good half an hour of persuading our driver that it wasn’t too far, there was a functioning road, and that the sites weren’t closed (and a little help from head office regarding payment of his fee), we were on a rocky but adequate road further west. Warning signs detailed the presence of land mines and cluster bombs that had been dropped throughout the area during The Secret War, so we kept well inside the marked ‘safe’ perimeters, that is where you could see the markings.
A friendly cow lead our way through rice paddies to site three in a hillside field, which, perched amongst some pretty trees was a lot more inviting until Dr Rick found a cluster of huge spiders in one of the jars. Site two was equally if not more impressive and the view from the hilltop setting was so wonderful that not even the jar that made everything in its immediate surroundings spontaneously levitate freaked us out.
We had made it. This ancient, mythical place had finally been conquered by our little group of 6 adventurers, henceforth to be known to the world as The Pot People. As we gazed over the serene landscape we felt a sense of accomplishment but also a slight niggle of apprehension. Were we here of our own accord, or had this magical place called us and with it, conquered us?
All, Destinations
The mother of water. The cocoa coloured wonder. The Mighty Mekong. Call it what you like, this river rich in history, legend and adventure had us awe struck from the moment we set foot on our long, slim slow boat to begin our 2 week trek from the Northwest to the deep South of Laos.
More Stray adventurers had joined our group (check out our Thai trip!) over the last day to now collectively gawp at sunny rays softly illuminating the incredible scenery of lush green rainforest covered hills, elephants being bathed nearby little villages and kids back-flipping into the rushing river. Apart from filming, there was little to do but take in the scenery, and it was so spectacular that even after 5 hours straight, we got off the boat and still stood staring in wonder at our surroundings.
Our first night was to be spent in a homestay village right on the Mekong. We arrived around 4pm, just in time to join the local kids for a few games of football and some singing and playing tag at the local school. Newcomers Rick, Jodie, Matt, Paige, Brian and Anna did us proud by jumping straight into the fray with everyone else as we ran, hollered, laughed till we cried and rolled around on the floor with equally enthusiastic local kids from three to 20+ years old. It was HUGE amounts of genuine fun and luckily for everyone there was a head teacher monitoring that all kids (he included us in this definition) played nice.
We also had two groups of older and way wiser Dutch (Ellie, Michael and Jolien) and Kiwi (Amanda and Kayla) travellers with us, who had kept mainly to themselves (we can’t blame them as we’d turned into a bit of a rowdy bunch), but joined in in full swing, which was fantastic. Playtime ended when Ellie was hit by a near scoring ball but it was getting dark and everyone was hungry so both teams decided to call it a draw – apart from the goal Rick scored, but for some reason this still made it a draw. It struck us over amazing candle lit dinner under the stars (the generator had kicked the bucket after the entrée) that everyone was so uncomplicated, that there was no resentment or “that was definitely offside” or arguing at all – everyone’s sheer joy at playing together was so infectious that the usual dinner conversations that, at least in the UK, inevitably involved complaining about something were replaced by everyone chatting about how amazing life was.
The power cut had other positive effects as we sat on the floor in one of the small houses, our tummies full to bursting with delicious food, and were treated by the village elders to a Ba Si Soul Calling ceremony, that was rendered all the more magical by the necessity of being candle lit. The villagers had spent hours that day painstakingly preparing a small offering of sweet banana sticky rice, an egg, a bundle of flowers, a candle and incense in a small banana leaf tray for each one of us. In the middle of the room stood a beautifully decorated centerpiece of fresh flowers, banana leaves and white cotton threads – 32 per person to symbolize 32 parts of the body – that the elders proceeded to tie around each person’s wrists individually in order to call back lost fragments of the soul and tie them back together for peace and harmony. Even describing the ceremony as magical, moving and thoroughly wonderful wouldn’t do it justice, as every one of us agreed it was one of the most beautiful things we had experienced on our travels.
After a good nights sleep in bamboo stilt huts, we headed further down the Mekong and stopped off at the Pak Ou Cave filled with Buddha statues (where our hand made flower, candle and incense bundles came in handy) and amazing views across the river. Soon after we arrived at the shores of one of the top destinations on our wish list: Luang Prabang.
Unesco world heritage site (we keep on bumping into these!!) since 1995 and originally founded in 698 AD, Luang Prabang is teaming with history, art, awesome food, great markets and saffron clad monks. You can get the best view right from the centre of town, after climbing aptly named ‘Phu Si Hill’ (*cue giggles from our Rat & Rebecca*), and we can see why people get stuck here. Most things are within walking distance, and there so much to do, including marveling at over 30 distinct temples, mountain biking to nearby turquoise-coloured Kuang Si waterfalls, learning how to cook amazing food at Tamarind and enjoying the most talented of the South East Asian movie business show off their latest projects at the yearly Luang Prabang Film festival.
One activity we most enjoyed during our short visit was visiting the Living Land Farm where assistant manager and all-around small, nimble and smiley guy Sia Lee walked us through the numerous stages of rice farming. It was an utter joy watching Sia, who was incredibly knowledgeable, humble and sweet as he showed us in true hands-on Laos style how to germinate, plant, plough, weed, harvest, dry and process rice plants and the entire group relished getting stuck in the knee deep soft and squelchy mud whilst singing planting songs, clearing space for young rice saplings and steering ‘Suzuki’, the obedient but massive water buffalo through a flooded paddy in need of a plough. Sia told us all about the project, that he had set up with his brother Laut, to employ locals who would otherwise not find work due to their low educational background and supplies Luang Prabang’s restaurants with organic rice, vegetables, herbs and salad greens.
After all the planting, dodging Suzuki’s horns and breath, grinding rice flower, squeezing juice from sugarcane and picking salad fresh from the pristine gardens, Sia instructed us on using all sorts of ingenious contraptions made out of bamboo, including steamers, fish & rat traps, irrigation systems, bowls, baskets and most fun of all – a crossbow. As we took aim and mostly missed at a flaming yellow flower perched on a haystack, an incredible smell seeped through the hut – the food we’d been gathering was cooked and ready to feast upon. And what a feast it was. Refined and flavoursome as a high-class restaurant, we munched on deep fried rice crackers, coconut waffles, chili & buffalo skin sauce, garden fresh salad and carrots. It was incredible and we’d visit the Living Land Farm again in a heartbeat.
Time was pressing on and, over an amazing dinner only reachable via a small bamboo footbridge that gets washed away by monsoon each year and subsequently re-built (fairy lights and all), we said goodbye to most of our group who continued to Vientiane. We on the other hand had heard rumors floating around Luang Prabang of a mystical and long-forgotten place: The Plane of Jars in North-East Laos. The magnitude of one of our most surreal trips to date simply won’t fit into 5 lines, so check out the lowdown here.
****** short break due to possible alien abduction******
Go! Grab a quick pee-break, a cup of tea or stiff drink. For you insatiable spirits, we continue our travels in TLC: Southern Laos.
All, Destinations
6 months ago we were in a rice field shouting “Nam. You weren’t there! You didn’t know what it was like!” with full conviction of telling the whole world what an awesome place this was. We’d just finished filming Stray Asia’s brand new tour from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and were exhilarated by the beauty, madness and resilience of a country that had spent the last decades re-building its fascinating identity out of the rubbles of war. Then the phone call: “Hey, d’you guys fancy a project through Northern Thailand and down the Mekong through Laos to Cambodia?”. “We are a fan of rhetorical questions” replied team R&D, and *poof* appeared on our second flight of 2014.
Bangkok – one night here makes all sorts of things your oyster. We’ve been here countless times before but it’s baffling how you can discover new aspects of this crazy city all the time. We’re not talking new sites to ‘do’ (Bangkok can be seen as rather mundane in comparison to other tourist destinations), but how everyday life sprouts out at you from every corner. Street art and the trendy urbanite scene were our discoveries in April, cute family weekend markets and the embassy network in May. This time around we discovered the river and canal boat system as incredibly handy and thoroughly enjoyed hanging out in a park under Rhama 8 bridge, where groups of teenagers and families with small kids congregated at night to eat grilled quid, enjoy the river view, practice their skateboarding, drumming and acrobatic dance routines.
Starting in Bangkok, Thailand’s simplified reputation as a cheap, health & safety free and 3rd world charming backpacker’s stomping ground was to be challenged many a time throughout our trip. As we headed off with a group of Stray adventurers next morning to Thailand’s old capital and historical landmark Ayutthaya, we discussed the countries unique status as the only South East Asian country to have never been colonized by a European power, the strong presence of its university educated middle class, and its resulting hipster culture.
Ayutthaya was founded in 1350 by King U Thong (nope, we’re not making this stuff up) to escape a rather nasty smallpox outbreak just down the road, and lay the foundations for the royal courts Australian sandal making business. Declaring it Siam’s capital and the construction of some gigantic monasteries made the place a rather happening spot on the map, so by the year 1600 AD its 300,000 inhabitants (or 1 million inhabitants by 1700 AD if you believe the census manager Sober Bob) made it one of the largest cities in the world at the time.
Guided around by local Rita (who was awesome, and may or may not have once been a dude), we boarded a cooling river boat and visited several temples including Wat Chai Wattanaram (“fall down steep steps”), Wat Phra Chao Phananchoeng (“huge gold disapproving buddah”), Wat Phutthai Sawan (“Khmer mismatched tower”) and Wat Mahathat (“that one with head thing coming out of that tree”). Jokes aside, the temples were fantastic to view and showed off Ayutthaya’s incredible mix of historical cultural influences that were unfortunately all bashed to pieces by the Burmese army in 1767. Ruins of temples, monasteries and Thailand’s first church (pesky Portuguese building churches everywhere!) are now protected by UNESCO world heritage status. Beers and dinner lead to various bonding experiences, none of which was stronger than our overnight journey to Chiang Mai via sleeper train. We are constantly astounded at the ingenuity that goes into land travel outside Europe, and so new friends Lindsay, Sarah, Rebekka, RV, Saya, Sujan, Toto, Rat, Ped and Dragon emerged refreshed and giggling in Chiang Mai the next morning.
Mountain air and chilled out vibes greeted us in one of Trip Advisor’s 25 Best Destinations in the World (2014), not that we pay TA much attention, but we thought it would make our mates there proud. Founded in 1296 this city has had more time than others to develop an astonishing richness in architecture – especially of the surrounding temples, of which we visited two stunning examples. Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep (1383) is the most well known of Chiang Mai’s temples and offers panoramic views of the city whilst you snake past beautiful gold stupas and lots of colourfully clad tourists, monks, street vendors and workmen. Our especially arranged Thai guide explained the temple was built of a site that a white elephant carrying Buddha relics lay down to rest. Or may have outright died, no one was quite sure. Poor little Nelly.
Wat Pha Lat, (great instructions on this blog) on the same windy tuktuk ride through the hills, was a different story altogether. Built integrated within the forest, not despite it, we marvelled at the serene and stunningly beautiful carved stupas, statues, walkways and serpent staircases that melded into their natural surroundings. And by ‘we’ I mean just ‘we’ and some monks. No one else. We marvelled at the city view from the middle of a waterfall that, even in dry season, rushed with little streamlets of crystal clear mountain water and listened to the birds and bugs as they hovered around this piece of paradise. In fact, we shouldn’t be even telling you about it. It’s that special. Peer into the light at the top of my pen. We’re not the Men in Black. Who are they? There are of course many other temples to explore within the city limits, some of which date back to 1297. Yep, we’re going rather heavy on the dates here, but things are just so impressively old. As we said earlier, this ain’t no country of newly built bamboo beach huts and westernized cocktails.
A somewhat different experience awaited us later that afternoon, as we signed up to our first ever Thai boxing class. The teacher wasn’t as committed as he should have been, but one of the students (really cool girl with a half shaved head – spot her in the film!) picked up the pieces so we ended up having a good time. And as film makers, the golden hour light was to die for. What the class did do very well was put into context the actual fights we saw later that evening in the arena in town, and it was fantastic to see so many people engaging positively and respectfully in a sport that requires a huge amount of discipline.
For the templed out, Chiang Mai has a wide array of alternative activities to offer, one of the most famous being the Flight of the Gibbon zip-lining experience. And for good reason. With state of the art equipment and a world class guides, it was a fantastic way to see the jungle whilst flying through the canopy at the perfect height to grasp the immensity of the trees as well as the beautiful details of leaves, branches and flowers around us. That evening, we feasted our eyes on a stall after stall of useless but beautiful things at Chiang Mai’s Anusarn market (cue *giggles from our Rat & Rebekka*), some tourist tat, some really amazing jewellery, bags, clothes, scarves and knickknacks we would have happily paid a good price for at Westfields. The evening was rounded off by one of the most fun nights we’ve had out at a show: The Chiang Mai Cabaret Ladyboys. Bring tip money, it’s well deserved.
Our final stop before heading over the border to Laos was the white temple in Chiang Rai. You may or may not have heard of it – one of the most surreal and theatrical places, a huge sparkling macaroon of a temple that could have popped straight out of ‘The Never-ending Story’. Adorned with all sorts of references popular culture, it was crowded, kitsch and anything but serene, and we loved it. You can’t take pictures of the mural inside the main temple, you’re just going to have to see it for yourself.
And so we headed off to Laos, over one of the most relaxed border crossings in the world, and were rewarded with a tantalising glimpse of the mighty Mekong, on which we were to continue our journey floating down it the following morning. And what a journey it would be.
