Carol Scott

Carol is one of our more recent members. A Clinical Hypnotherapist and Psychosynthesis Counsellor by trade, she has a passion for travelling alone in South East Asia and regularly sends e-mails from far flung places to her friends in the UK. The last time she did this, they were so well received that her friends and colleagues persuaded her to collate them into a book, which she plans to do soon.

Now she’s travelling again in Thailand and Laos and has sent us some of her most recent despatches:

First installment

Dear All,

Here I am in Thailand knowing that it is extremely cold and snowy in the UK. So I hope you are all managing to keep warm and snug.

I arrived in Bangkok and stayed at Happy House again. It’s such a cool backpacker place where it’s easy to meet people. I got talking to John Doyle, a 65 year-old Canadian who'd met a woman on the internet. They dated for a short while then came for a six week trip to Thailand.

It lasted five weeks! He'd been married twice and told me his 2 wives had cleaned him out financially, it seems he hadn't learnt much!

It was 32 degrees in Bangkok and hard to sleep at night with the heat and jet lag, but an hour and half massage for £8 put me right. I ate a bowl of chicken and noodles for
35 baht (less than £1) and managed to sleep for six hours straight through.

I've learnt the best way to travel in Bangkok is on the river, it’s quicker, cheaper and cooler, so I was up and down Chao Phraya on the local ferries over the two days I spent there. There are the tourist vessels, noisy and expensive, or the local ones, cheap and fun, but you have to be quick to step off and on them at the quayside. They don’t hang about.

As I'd already seen the major temples I decided to go to Wat Arun (Wat means Temple) and this was the Temple of Dawn named after the Indian god Aruna. From a distance its cone-shaped marble spire looks rather dull but when you get up close it’s adorned with colourful floral murals made of glazed porcelain. It stands 82 metres high and you can walk almost, though not quite, to the top - which I did. Fine going up, but the stairs are so steep that coming down was pretty scary. I met a Chinese girl there and we went and had lunch together. It’s so easy here to get talking to people, if only it was that simple in UK! I couldn’t pronounce her name, nor her home town, but we had a good chat with her stilted English and sign language!

We then went onto Vimanek Mansion which is the worlds largest Teak mansion and built without a single nail! It's rather grand and opulent in style, you have to remove your shoes and take a guided tour. It has magnificent, octagonal rooms, grand staircases and lots of art from around the globe. It manages to have a rather intimate feel to it in spite of its 81 rooms which were built for King Rama's enormous family in 1868.

Our guide spoke English, of sorts, she was explaining that the black onyx shield made for Rama's birthday was depicted with tortoises which symbolise - and I quote - long lice (life), deep fried no doubt! Plenty of street vendors selling crackling fried insects which I've been too cowardly to try!

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Second installment

I then took an hour’s flight to Chiang Rai in Northern Thailand and stayed at Baanrubaroon guesthouse. Sukhon, the 50 year old who ran it, was helpfulness itself. She steered me to the less touristy temple whereby I arrived to the sound of monks chanting. It was beautiful and I felt privileged to be there and hear their soulful chanting all by myself. It bought a new definition to surround sound.

Then I ventured to the Walking Market, a street market which is a once a week affair on a Saturday, where the whole of Chiang Rai seems to turn out.

Girls dressed in colourful Western/ Thai clothes, high heels, high hair, fully made up, arm in arm with their boyfriends. Lots of giggling was going on when they weren’t eating the street food, which looked quite strange to me. I couldn’t really work out what it was, but all the Thais were tucking in. I only saw a handful of tourists at this market and it was all the better for that.

It took an hour to walk from one end to the other, and along the way various stages were set up for music. First up was a traditional older Thai couple, she heavily made up, he in a white shirt and slightly ill-fitting blue suit, singing in high-pitched voices while standing rather rigidly. Next was a rock group singing The Eagles Hotel California, or as the Thais have difficulty saying R's, Hotel Califolia. So far the funniest rendition I've ever heard, slightly off key to my ears but perhaps not, anyway they played with gusto. Further along a rap trio were doing their thing, it was hard to tell if it was in English or Thai!! But this was obviously where the cool kids hung out, all dressed in 90's rap gear, baseball hats, gold chains, baggy pants and sneering faces.

The following day I took a bus to the Thai/Myanmar (Burmese) border. Customs keep your passport - always a nerve racking thing to leave it anywhere but they assured me all would be fine - and issue you with a temporary passport for a day.

As it was a border town it was rather brash and dusty but the Thais shop there as it’s sooo much cheaper. I bought a flash lighter for two quid, a DVD of Avatar for the same, ate lunch for 50p and was tempted to buy a fake Chanel bag but not really my thing. I noticed one Cath Kidston holdall and the proud market trader informed me it was the first one of its kind, I think if I'd had the space I would've bought it. Took a tuk-tuk and visited a temple which was quite different from the Thai temples, different iconography with lots of flashing fairy lights. I called them disco temples. The mountains of Myanmar were in the distance and I would have liked to have ventured further but was already getting late in the day.
Next time!

Back to Chiang Rai I strolled thru the night market, bought a few trinkets and watched a 50ft kitsch clock tower change colour from red to pink to mauve, blue, green. It was like an extreme version of an oversized cuckoo clock with unfolding flower petals and tinkly music.

The next day I was off to a meditation retreat in the hills outside of Chiang Ria. I overslept and had 15 minutes to get ready. I had to meet a student of the yoga teacher who'd arranged everything for me, and Sukhon from the guesthouse offered to give me a lift. When I got in the car she had prepared eggs, cucumber and tomatoes with bread in a Tupperware box for me. I love the kindness of the Thai people. They are extremely friendly in the North, I've heard it’s not quite the same in some parts of the South but here I'm very touched by it. We could learn a lot from them!

The retreat was in the most beautiful setting and I shall tell you about it in my next email, as off to bed now after a curry with nan bread, no rice as couldn’t stomach it.

Suffice to say I'm having a great time and second time around is no less interesting, exciting and wonderful than the first.

Love to you all
Carol, aka Wander Woman