Happy Shiny People

Note: For anyone who isn't aware, to view photos in more detail, just click on them to enlarge!

This situation is getting a little out of hand. We're nearing the end of our Australia visit, over six months into our trip, and I'm still blogging about things we did a couple of months ago!

I very badly need to get this blog up to speed so I'm going to fast forward through a bunch of stuff. Basically, after Laos we returned to Thailand and spent a week on one of the islands learning to scuba dive. It's probably one of the most amazing things I've ever done, but I'll tell you about it another time – if not on the blog, defo in person.

After getting our scuba diving licence, we hot-tailed it to Malaysia, where we were due to catch a flight to Indonesia to meet up with Nina and Julia, two lovely friends that I've known since sixth form.

On 7th August, at around midday, the four of us sat in the cafe at the front of our hostel feeling amazed and excited that we were all there together on the other side of the world. Once we'd gotten over this and spent a good few hours catching up on each other's trips (they were nearing the end of a two-month trip to Indonesia), we started to discuss our forthcoming adventure together. You see, we'd signed ourselves up for a three-day jungle trek.

None of us had done any trekking before. In fact, aside from Karl and his kickboxing, none of us had done any real exercise in about six months. Nevertheless, the following day we made our way to Bukit Lawang, a little town on the edge of the jungle. We met our guide, Thomas, who assured us that he had secured us some 'bloody swanky rooms' at a local guesthouse for the night. The rooms were pretty nice, and we made the most of our last shower and comfortable bed for three days. The following morning, we put on our oldest clothes, laced up our walking shoes, packed our rucksacks and headed into the wilderness.

Within 15 minutes, we were a little out of breath and already starting to sweat. Secretly, I was already hoping that Thomas would pause more frequently to explain something about the surrounding wildlife so that I could put on my best 'interested' face while my nostrils did overtime trying to get a bit more oxygen into my lungs. I'm not sure Thomas was wholly convinced by this act.

An hour later we were properly in the jungle. It's essentially a sauna with trees, and for the next three days we spent most of our time looking like this. Happy, shiny people.

Probably the sweatiest I've ever been in my entire life

As if the heat wasn't bad enough, the trekking itself wasn't exactly an easy stroll in the park. The paths we followed generally went either very steeply uphill, or very steeply downhill. Uphill paths were like climbing a couple of hundred massive steps, often pulling ourselves upwards with the help of the vines and tree roots growing across the slope. It was murder on the legs and left us gasping for breath.


Surprisingly, downhill was not easier at all. The paths were steep and often very muddy, so each footstep down was a potential skid so we had to use vines and roots to steady ourselves as we cautiously made our way. With my usual grace and elegance, I found myself sliding down on my arse more than once. By the time we got to the bottom, my legs were weak and wobbly and my bum was covered in mud.

Yet, even though we (the girls) spent a lot of time grumbling about how only absolute mentals could possibly want a hobby such as climbing or hiking, it was loads of fun (in fact, less than a week later we were discussing walking holidays). It was exhausting, but at the end of each day it was also extremely satisfying to look back and think about how far we'd walked, while we wolfed down tea and biscuits like there was no tomorrow. Between the four of us, we polished off four rather big packets of biscuits in three days. We were almost as proud of this as we were of our trekking.

Teatime!

Speaking of biscuits, the food on the trek was incredible. We'd been convinced that we'd be eating the plainest of meals, but for three days Thomas and his three trusty helpers cooked up the best food we had in our entire time in Indonesia. Every meal was outstanding. This is what we ate over the course of our trek:

DAY ONE:

We'd eaten breakfast at our hotel that morning.

Lunch: Nasi Goreng (fried rice with vegetables), with a perfectly fried egg on top, prawn crackers and chilli sauce. All beautifully wrapped up in banana leaf packages.

Trying to disguise a gob full of food with a dashing smile. Is it working?

Snacks: Passion fruit, oranges, bananas, rambutan and pineapple.

Dinner: Chicken curry, vegetable curry, tofu and soy bean in chilli sauce, rice.

DAY TWO:

Breakfast: Toast with tomato and scrambled eggs that had been cooked with onions and chillies.

Lunch: Noodle soup. This was cooked on the spot while we sat by a beautiful little stream.

Snacks: Same fruit as yesterday, with watermelon instead of pineapple.

Dinner: Sardines in a tomato & chilli sauce, vegetable curry, tofu and soybean in chilli sauce, BBQ fish, rice.

Feast. Easily the best food we had in Indonesia.

DAY THREE:

Breakfast: Pancakes (cooked in a wok!), with condensed milk.

By lunchtime we were back at our guesthouse.

After dinner, Thomas would tell us funny stories about the jungle and his own life. He's an awesome guy with a great sense of humour, and he looked after us really well. He and his helpers entertained us in the evenings by teaching us card games and a selection of weird but fun games, including “Lah-dee-dah”, Peanut Marriages and 'This is a cup. A What? A Cup!” Don't ask yet, just remind us to teach you them when we get home. As well as preparing great meals and keeping us entertained, they trekked alongside us each day. Except they were each carrying huge bags weighing about 20k, containing food, cooking utensils, sleeping mats and everything else needed for our trek. And as we puffed and panted, grumbled and fell, they managed to never look tired or complain.

Our guides were hauling these around the jungle
while we struggled just to carry ourselves!

Chillies being ground and fish being BBQ'd for our dinner

The two nights that we were in the jungle, we camped in the most beautiful spots. On the first night, our camp was set up by a little stream with a beautiful waterfall just a few minutes away. I know we've gone on about waterfalls a bit in South East Asia, and you'd think we'd had enough. But this was definitely the best we'd been in so far. After the day trekking, a bit of a splash about in the cool water was just what we needed. Plus Thomas had brought some soap, so we had a good wash too!

Campsite No 1 was at a waterfall

Chilling out at the campsite while dinner is prepared

The next day, camp was set up by a big river. The water was fairly fast flowing, so we just paddled rather than swam. But it was a breathtaking spot, surrounded by dense jungle.

A scenic riverside spot for Campsite No 2

I've got a little carried away and managed to write all this without a single mention of the reason we'd decided on this trek in the first place. Orang-utans. The jungle in Bukit Lawang is one of the only places in the world where you can see them in the wild. The trek was largely about orang-utan spotting. And we saw loads! This fuzzy ginger fellow is one of the first we spotted, and he was more than happy to pose for us before heading off to build a little nest for his afternoon nap:

"Now I'm the King of the Jungle, see, the Jungle VIP..."
Come on, you know the song!

Later we came across Sandra, who had her adorable ball-of-orange-fluff baby clutching onto her. He's only four months old and was getting to grips with climbing:

Sandra and her baby!

We saw a few gibbons and macaques as well, and also a beautiful peacock. And then one of the guides heard a rustling and looked up. “It's Mina!” he shouted “Quickly, go, go, go!” Mina is a butch lady orang-utan who is renowned for attacking guides if they don't give her food. Of the 140 guides that work in the jungle, she's managed to get her hands on at least half of them. We'd read about Mina in our Lonely Planet guide, and we wasted no time in legging it as fast as we could go (not very) while the guides tried to distract her. Her name came up again a few more times on that first day, but beyond a faint ginger blur in the distance, we never managed to get a proper look at her. By the afternoon, we were exhausted from walking and beginning to lag. I wouldn't be surprised if the guides warnings of 'Mina!' were just part of their plan to get us moving along a bit faster...

On the subject of wildlife, we saw some very cool creatures. Look at these guys! I'd like to pretend I wasn't afraid of the green one, but that'd be lying.

On our last day, Thomas could see that our legs were no longer in working condition. Karl could probably have continued trekking quite easily, but us girls were pooped. Thomas took pity on us, gave us the morning off to paddle in the river, laze about in the sun, skim stones and finish the last of the biscuits.

Down by the river

Our trekking included a rafting trip back home. At midday, the youngest helper (who looked about 16) appeared in the distance carrying four huge rubber rings. Amazingly, he'd been walking for an hour and a half, carrying these upstream from the village. Karl had a go at carrying them and almost managed to both fall over and suffocate himself, before managing to stagger into this pose long enough for a photo:

How not to carry a stack of inner tubes

The tubes were roped together to form a raft and all our stuff was secured in waterproof bags (so no photos of the raft, I'm afraid!) and tied on board. We all climbed in and enjoyed a bumpy, splashy journey through the rapids on our way back to the village. It was the perfect end to the trek.

The perfect antidote to all this exercise was a week on Lake Toba.

Knackered from our trek, the next morning we all bundled into a minibus and headed to an island in the middle of a lake in the middle of an extinct volcano. It was beautiful and peaceful and relaxing. We stayed in gorgeous little bungalows, which turned out to be the cheapest and cosiest accommodation we've had to date (1.50!!).

Our cosy bungalow

We spent our days reading, lounging around in cafes or on our porches, and swimming in the lake.

Apparently the lake is over 400m deep! The water is cool and clear, and to Karl's delight there was a diving board at one of the swimming points. What better way to spend an afternoon than repeatedly hurling yourself into a lake?

My rather timid jump off the dive board,
followed by Karl's more adventurous attempt.

As much as we'd intended to have a productive week of exploring the island, the only other thing we did on Lake Toba was sample the local jungle juice. Nina and Julia had befriended a local guy called Eddie whilst out on a cycling trip, and he'd invited us all to his shop to enjoy a jug of this strange booze, which is tapped from palm trees daily. So the next evening, we traipsed off, wearing our waterproofs because of the rain and accompanied by a dog from one of the nearby restaurants. We named him Timmy because it felt a bit like a Famous Five adventure, except with alcohol and no baddies. This fantasy was shattered when Timmy abandoned us after half an hour when he got distracted by a lady dog.

Karl, Nina, Julia and Timmy too!

The jungle juice was pretty weird. It's quite a milky drink, served at room temperature (rooms being warmer in Asia than in the UK), and with a yeasty flavour. It took a while to get the first mug down us, and I felt apprehensive before each mouthful as I hadn't decided whether I like it or not. I guess this probably meant I didn't. Luckily, Eddie told us that the addition of a bit of ice-cold beer made it even better – and it did! It then became a refreshing and tasty beverage. Phew.

Mmm, milky beer...

As a snack, Eddie lit a BBQ and cooked up some fish that he'd caught from the lake the day before. After a few more drinks, we all headed off to a bar, and the next morning we slept in and were glad that we had no big plans for the day. Life on Toba was pretty good.

A week after we arrived on the island, it was time to leave. We said goodbye to Nina and Julia, and I felt a little sad on the boat journey back to the edge of the volcano. The two weeks we'd spent with them had been absolutely brilliant, and it was so nice to be around good friends again. And it's still a few months more before we'll have that pleasure again.

After Lake Toba, we visited an active volcano in Java, and then spent a couple of weeks on Bali and the Gili Islands before flying onwards to Australia. We'd flown across the equator, marking our first time in the southern hemisphere, where we'll remain until we fly home next year. Halfway through our trip, and halfway across the globe, it felt a bit like a new adventure was beginning.

Our Best Eats - Thailand

Altogether, we were in Thailand for about 6/7 weeks. We left and re-entered the country so many times that I have almost a full page in my passport of just Thailand stamps.

From our first meal, a delicious red curry on the train from the Malaysian border to Bangkok, I just knew that when I got round to writing it, my food post would be like me: bursting at the seams.

Red Curry – we found an amazing place in Bangkok, near Khao San Road (backpacker district) called apple, which served some of the best Thai food we had on the whole trip. Our favourite was the red curry, filled with yummy crunchy vegetables like Thai aubergine, and so spicy that it made my lips numb.


Whiskey shakes – another tasty offering from apple. When I first saw it on the menu, I’ll admit I was dubious. But when the table next to us ordered a pitcher, I quickly changed my mind. It’s basically a fruit shake (fruit blended with ice) and whiskey. The blueberry and lychee flavours were best, and came with juicy little jelly sweets. We couldn’t resist going back for these again on our final visit to Bangkok.

Pad Thai – for anyone who isn’t familiar with this, it’s a popular egg-fried noodle dish with peanutty-tamarind flavours. You can have it with tofu, chicken or prawns, and Bangkok’s swanky mall Siam Paragon does an awesome one.

Market food – Once a week in Chiang Mai, everyone flocks to the Sunday walking market for dinner. There’s a huge variety of food, and our favourites included barbequed Thai sausage, pork kebabs with a garlic, chilli and green-pepper marinade, and steamed pork buns.


Fruit shakes – Couldn’t get enough of these. At the Sunday walking market we found the most mindblowingly good passion fruit shakes. Meanwhile, the little restaurant round the corner from massage school did incredible watermelon shakes. In both cases, the drinks are made simply by blending fruit with ice until it becomes a thick shake. It’s so simple, but the fruit flavours are so intense that every time I took that first sip, I just couldn’t get over how amazing they were. Definitely on my list of things to recreate when I get home! The only downside was the brain freeze from drinking them too fast…


Mango & Sticky Rice – Sounds dull, I know. But the rice is coconut rice, and it’s topped with a slightly sweet coconut sauce, and the mango is fresh and sweet. We learnt how to make it in our cookery course, so I can (hopefully) prove that it’s delicious when I get back!

Everything we made at our Thai cookery class – if we do say so ourselves. No, seriously though, it was really freaking good.


Deep fried pork special homemade – I love this not just for it’s ridiculous name. It’s chunks of pork, deep fried so that they're crispy on the outside but moist and delicious within. It comes with a sort of tangy mayonnaise-like dipping sauce, a spicy chilli sauce, and a selection of crunchy pickled vegetables. Really really good.

Roast chicken sandwiches – not really Thai food, I know. But the roast chicken sarnies I had in Pai following an afternoon at a waterfall are definitely amongst the best meals I had in Thailand.


Homemade Thai food – On our last night in Chiang Mai, Karl’s kickboxing trainer Krupong invited us for dinner at his house. His wife cooked the best meal we had in Thailand. There were plates of beautifully stir-fried vegetables, pork mince flavoured with Thai basil, bowls of Tom Yum soup (spicy and tangy, our two favourite flavours) and so much more.

Pandan cake – Five minutes down the road from Krupong’s house, our bike ran out of petrol. Karl and Krupong went to buy some more fuel while I watched a terrible Thai soap with his wife and kids (they’re SO cute!). About 15 minutes later they returned with bags of small, light green cakes for dessert. Pandan is a leaf used for flavouring and colouring Thai desserts. The cakes were lovely and soft, and came with a Pandan-flavoured custard too. Plus they’d bought some bags of a hot milky drink – no idea what it was, but it was the perfect pre-bedtime drink.

Wasabi spinach – I had this at Tianzi’s, the macrobiotic restaurant where I went with my massage class on our graduation day. It’s basically spinach cooked with sesame and wasabi. The wasabi was like a punch in the nose, but I absolutely loved it.

Papaya salad – This was one of our favourite Thai dishes before we even left London, but the one we had in Bangkok was mindblowing. It was a dinky restaurant that specialises in this one salad, and it does it really well. Grated green papaya, mixed with green beans and shredded carrot, with a spicy and tangy dressing. Topped with crushed peanuts. This one had salted fish added to it for extra flavour, which was surprisingly good.


Hot herbal drink – Karl discovered this through his kickboxing teacher, who took them to a little stall after their morning running session for a mug of hot herbal drink. We don't actually know what's in it, but it's spicy, and I suspect black pepper is one of the key ingredients. We liked it so much that it became part of our daily routine – we'd ride along for a mug of herbal tea, hop back on the bike to grab some breakfast, and then Karl would drop me off to massage school.


Banana fritters – why don’t we have these at home? I had them on two occasions. We made them in our cookery class, and I also bought a batch for breakfast one morning in Pai. Slices of banana, battered and deep fried, then sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds.

All Pai Myself

Ever since booking our trip, Karl had been toying with the idea of spending a few extra weeks in Thailand to learn Muay Thai kickboxing. It's not something he'd done before, but it seemed like it'd be an amazing thing to learn whilst in the country. When he was handed a leaflet in Chiang Mai for a local kickboxing school, with a two day trial period available, it seemed silly not to give it a try. He loved it (as we kind of knew he would!) and decided he wanted to stay in the city for a few weeks to train. It's very intense, with two training sessions a day, seven days a week. But a week's training costs just 2200baht (45 pounds), which is fantastic considering a kickboxing lesson in London can cost around 10 pounds per session. All in all, it seemed like an opportunity way too good to pass up.

This was all well and good for Karl, but it did leave me in a bit of a pickle for a couple of days. What the hell was I going to do for three weeks?? I didn't fancy just hanging around waiting for Karl to get home from training every day. After uhming and ahhing over my various options (volunteering, solo travel, a course etc) I packed my bag and set off on my own to spend a week in a town called Pai – it's in the north of Thailand, three hours drive from Chiang Mai.

Naturally, I was very nervous about the idea of travelling alone. I needn't have worried, because I actually ended up having one of the best weeks of the trip so far.

Pai is an amazing place. It's nestled in the hills (as all the best places seem to be!) so the weather is cooler than in the city and the views around town are stunning. It's a small town, with just four main roads, a bunch of little lanes, two traffic lights, and a river running alongside. It's very peaceful and chilled out, and the people (locals, tourists and expats) are incredibly friendly. So while Karl punched and kicked his way through the week, I kicked back and relaxed.

I really lucked out when it came to the guesthouse I stayed at. I chose a place called Happy House, which is run by Fritz, a Dutch Australian who retired here a year ago. He runs the place with his partner, a really lovely katoy (ladyboy) called Arnon. Fritz is a great guy, who really looks out for everyone staying at the House. He worries if anyone has been out all day and not returned by sunset, is always happy to give guests a lift into town or to local sights, and he always makes a point of introducing everyone to each other.

I met a truly great bunch of people at Happy House. There was Kali and Linda from the UK, who were staying in the big bungalow. A Swedish couple Erik and Sandra were in the little bungalow. Later that week, we were joined by another couple from the UK, Tom and Kate.

Happy House has an open-air living room upstairs with dining table and chairs, sofas, free tea and coffee, a stove if you want to cook your own meals, and great views of the hills. It's very homely and I spent a lot of time just lounging around with a book or my journal. It was a bit like being back at uni, where all your friends live close by, and there's always someone hanging around to have a chat and a cup of tea with. And before you know it, three hours have passed and the rest of the gang returns home in dribs and drabs from wherever they've been that day.

Living room with a view

In the evenings, we'd all gather at the bar, where Moo the resident guitarist would play for a couple of hours and we'd join in for a bit of a sing song if we knew the words. Then we'd all go out for dinner together, before ending up either on Kali and Linda's balcony with a bottle or two of Sangsom (Thai rum, always a welcome guest at any Pai party!) or at a bar listening to some of the town's great live music.

Towards the end of the week we hired a few motorbikes and went for a long drive through the hills. I know I keep saying this, but seriously, the landscape in Pai is just incredible. Look!

Our motorcycle convoy!

Our drive ended with a trip to the waterfalls. You'd think I'd be sick of waterfalls by now, but this one was super cool. It'd been quite a sunny day, and the water was cool and refreshing.

After a bit of a swim we sat on the rocks with a couple of beers, and later on our way back to the bikes we met a guy who recommended a mini hike up to another part of the waterfall. The walk up there was like an adventure playground. We made our way over rickety bamboo bridges, hopped from rock to rock over little streams and gripped bamboo railings as we inched across sloping walls of rocks with little nooks for footholds.

Rickety bridges and dodgy railings - at least there wasn't far to fall!

Eventually we came to a magical little cave with a little opening at the top through which the waterfall cascaded down, bathed in sunlight. My camera couldn't quite cope with the light, but Linda got a great shot:

The swim and the walk had made for quite an energetic day (especially for Pai, where an entire day can pass by without you actually having done anything at all), and we were starving by the time we returned home. A feast was definitely in order. We popped out to the market and bought some salad, and a whole roast chicken flavoured with garlic and herbs. Some mayonnaise, drinks and baguettes from the shop completed our spread and we had the biggest and best chicken sandwiches I've had in a loooong time.

Earlier that morning we'd decided to book ourselves in for a Thai massage. I've always thought of massage as being something relaxing, but Thai massage is something else entirely. I asked the woman if I should take off my dress and lie on my front. She looked at me strangely before double checking that it was a massage I wanted. It turns out that clients stay fully clothed for Thai massage.

It's basically a bit like having someone bend and twist you into different yoga positions, while occasionally doing some sort of acupuncture with their thumbs. Once I'd gotten over the fact that there are no scented oils or gentle hands, it was actually brilliant. She pulled and stretched my arms and legs every which way, and kneaded my muscles with her elbows, knees and feet. By the end of it I felt limbered up and good as new. Although there was one scary bit when she stood on the back of my thighs and pushed all her weight on my lower back. If I'd been able to breathe I might've told her that I was worried about throwing up my sandwich.

I'd looked into massage courses amongst other things (Tai Chi, Thai language etc) before I'd left Chiang Mai, but at that point hadn't really known what traditional Thai massage was all about. Now that I'd had one, I decided that it would be a great thing to learn. After some research, I picked an accredited place called Sunshine Massage School in Chiang Mai. My ten-day beginners course would begin the following Monday!

The next day was Fritz's one year anniversary of being in Pai, so after a day at the swimming pool we set about organising a bit of a celebration. Another feast was in order! Fritz whipped up some homemade crisps to eat with our beers while we prepared a huge batch of fried rice flavoured with pineapple and bacon (sounds weird, tastes great), a plateful of sausages (they'd run out of chicken) and an enormous salad.

Tom fries the bacon (top), while Fritz makes homemade crisps and
Erik cooks up a batch of sausages (bottom).

We also had a bash at making balloon animals to decorate the place. Animals proved a bit difficult and while Sandra managed a three-legged, multicoloured giraffe, the rest of us settled for abstract shapes.

Sandra and her fabulous 'creation'!

Eventually at around 10pm we all sat down to our meal. Fritz opened his presents – a novelty hat, and a glass decorated by us with gold stickers. We had a great evening that started off with food and drinks in the bar, while Moo entertained us with his guitar playing. Fritz very kindly opened up a free bar for the evening, but we also bought a our own bottles of Sangsom from the shop to prevent drinking him dry!

Fritz with his gifts

Later on the party moved up to Kali and Linda's balcony. Some of the others had purchased harmonicas earlier that day, and it was only a matter of time before these were brought out for a bit of a singsong, which eventually turned into an impromptu 'jamming' session. We acquired a tambourine from behind the bar, Kali had a little rattle and another girl who had joined us for the evening brought along her flute. I was on 'percussion' with the rattle – I have no musical ability so I couldn't really be trusted with anything else – and we played and chatted until daylight slowly began to creep over the hills.

I hope you like jammin' too...

The next day was a Saturday, and time to head back to Chiang Mai. Pai is one of the only places that I've actually felt sad about leaving, it's one of those places that really gets into you and makes you want to stay forever. It's beautiful and peaceful and safe. For such a small town it has an wealth of interesting and talented people – musicians, jewellery makers, Reiki experts, artists, writers, everything. As I left I decided that I would definitely return again some day for a longer stay. But for now, it was time to head back to the city for my first day at school.


Note: Some photos courtesy of the lovely Linda