Trekking in the jungle

Well, I'm knackered. Three days of climbing straight up muddy, forested hills only to clamber back down again. How that elephant I was riding managed to make it up a 45' mud slide I don't know, wherever it put its feet (paws?) down they stayed. The white water rafting was great - about a class 3 rapids if that means anything to you. We then had to take the life jackets off, put the comfy inflatable dinghy away and get on 10 sticks of bamboo, and carry on down the same rapids! The raft nearly sank the moment we got on it. There were 9 of us in the group, just the right number. We didn't so much visit the hill tribes so much as see 3 shops in the middle of nowhere - it was so wet the first 2 days the villagers didn't want to come out. I was completely soaked through and muddy all over for the entire trip. It was great. Did I mention the mud?

Don't know what to do now! Carry on in the north, which is cheap, cooler and interesting, go down south to the beaches, travel through Ayuthera / lopburi / lam phun -all the capitals of various ancient Thai kingdoms... I'll relax today and maybe pinch a full Thailand guide book, my S.E Asia book is a bit thin on this.

Chiang Mai

I'm off trekking north of Chiang Mai for the next few days - going with Lenna guesthouse's organised trek. If I'm not back by wednesday, I've been eaten by an elephant. I sincerly hope these remote hill tribes I'm going to see do not have internet cafes, that would really spoil things.

Bangkok

Bangkok is absolutely full of temples ("Wats"). There are temples with 40 foot high swings, temples with 47m long reclining gold buddhas, temples with yaks, temples within temples within palaces. And then there's patpong road, which shall we just say is about as far away from the religious life as you can get.
Everyone stays in Khao San road, there must be over a hundred cheap hotels here. By the way, don't trust any spelling while in thailand, there's at least 47 different ways to translate thai script into english - thai is a tonal language, the same word spoken high pitched/ low pitched/ rising pitch/ falling pitch can mean different things.

Loy Kratong

I was quite impressed. Here's a local festival with huge oppurtunities to fleece tourists wanting to see something cultural, and no one would tell me a thing about it! They all light candles on decorative floats and set them going down the river. Something to do with appeasing river gods, dunno. Also lots of beauty competitions.

I'm now off to Chiang Mai, up in the north to do a bit of trekking. Even though the buses are cheaper and faster than the trains, with air conditioning as standard and free drinks (water/coke) being served regularly, I'm taking the train.

Thailand

Well, I flew into Bangkok, took one look at it and thought "I need a week on the beach". So I went straight to Ko Samet, a little island 3 hours away. Its a bit like greece, only cheaper, nicer, friendlier and hotter.
A couple of people have been badgering me for photos, and being lazy, I've turned to google. So here goes: Ko Samet beach
I'm back off to bangkok pretty much right now. Thailand is great, I love it!

No more India!

India is just about OK. I think the telling thing is that I've spoken to about 20 other travellers, 15 of whom -all first timers- hated it completely, couldn't wait to get out. The other 5 hated it first time, but found themselves coming back (one guy was on his 5th trip). That makes sense - its getting easier to do simple things now (I actually caught a rush hour train into delhi! The sleeper dropped me at delhi jn which wasn't even on the map, must have been the equivalent of croyden). Now I know to ignore everyone who initiates a conversation (contrary to their opening line, they do want your money), and only talk to people on trains/restaurants/tourist sites.
Its a real shame, because you come over here with a smiling face, wanting to talk to people. Its not that the scams against you are particularly ingenious (taxi drivers telling you your hotel's burnt down, gem exporters, people not giving change/ deliberately giving wrong advice etc), its that they are 100% persistant. You can't do anything unless you know how its done, which you can't the first time around. Someone will work this out, and deliberately set out to confuse you. I can't really blame the Indians - the average wage is $350 (US) - so there must be 500 million people on less than that. Quibbling over 50 rupees (about 70 pence) seems silly, but if its your average daily wage and you can double it by lying to a foreigner (who can put together $1000 for the air fare, so isn't exactly badly off), then why not?
I really wish I had more positive things to say about India! Shimla was nice, so was Udaipur - watching Octopussy on the lakeside and seeing the same views as in the film was great (how that rickshaw driver got past the Jagdesh temple I'll never know).
Its cheap - I've spent under 200 pounds and I've been living in hotels, eating in restaurants and travelling around for 4 weeks. No complaints there.
A couple of impressive temples, forts (Jodphur especially) and the Taj Mahal, a few conversations with students (one precocious 10 year old who'd already learnt english and wanted to talk to me in french was good fun)... that's about it.

Thailand tomorrow. I've survived India, what can they possibly do to me in Bangkok?

Udaipur

Ok, ok, that last post was a bit sceptical, possibly a bit of venom in there even. I've now recovered from a nasty mugali, had 10 hours sleep in a reasonably clean city and India seems a whole lot better. Everyone I've spoken to agrees that the further a place is away from the main trains / buses, the nicer it is. Which is a shame, because it makes it really hard to get to. For example, we actually had a travel agent actually help us book a ticket here (I know, didn't believe it myself). We walked past a market and didn't get hassled by vendors, who weren't annoyed and angry with us for not buying their goods.

Udaipur is a city on two lakes. Its got a huge palace, a ludricously expensive 5 star hotel in the middle of the lake, a couple of impressive temples and lots of good accomodation. Its quite pleasant. Things are tailing up quite well -I'm off up to Jaipur tomorrow, and then back to Delhi Wednesday to fly out Thursday to Bangkok.

Temple of the Rats

Aparantely, there's a temple dedicated to the Rat god (one of 330 million Hindu deites) somewhere around here. Of course, you still have to take your shoes off. There are thousands of rats swarming all over the place. Its very auspicious if one runs over your foot. The luckiest thing of all - and pilgrams come miles for this - is to eat food that one of the rats has salivated on.

I don't know exactly where this temple is, and I might not try too hard to find it.

Diwali

Diwali in Delhi - sounds like it should be good. It actually sounded like 6 hours of fireworks, firecrackers and other assorted gunpowder devices going off at close proximity (they even let them off inside the hotel). Not much on the streets, I suppose its really a family thing. No booze - 95% of india seems not to drink. It was OK, worth seeing just about.

I'm currently in Jaipur, and its the filthiest, noisiest, most comission hungry rickshaw/persistently annoying beggers/ slimiest confidence scamsters I have ever seen (and I've been to Eqypt). They call it the pink city -pink is the colour of hospitality over here, but I reckon its more apricot. I'm off to Udaipur (where they filmed Octopussy) tonight, just killing time until the train gets here. I'll be glad to get out of India (14th Nov) - there are only so many "bustling" and "vibrant" (copyright- Lonely Planet guides) cities I can take.

Taj Mahal

This is awesome. A stonkingly huge marble mausoleum to hold the remains of Muntaz Mahal, the emperor's wife. Five storeys high with a huge onion shaped dome on top - 500 years ago. Just for decoration it has four big minarets, two mosque-like buildings (one is completely usless as it faces away from the holy land- just for symmetry!), gardens, everything.

The same can't be said for the surrounding polluted city, the agravation from the touts is extremely annoying. One guy followed me for half an hour, refusing to take no for an answer. My advice to anyone coming is get on a tour - turn up at the train station, on a coach, see everything, back to the train station. You are not missing anything in the city.
BTW, the wonderful people at blogspot let you put images up here, as long as you pay them 20 quid or so. I'll think about it - I need an internet cafe with a scanner before I can upload images anyway.