Reunited in Bangkok

Sleeping in the bustle
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Ron sez:

Guess who’s back? And I brought another travel companion- officially thing 4 also know as my brother in law Don.

we had a great bike ride on some of the worst bikes we have ever ridden

Don and I have traveled a ton in the US linking HAwaii, the grand canyone, the appalachian trail (well at least parts of it for me) as well as in Irelad and Scotland to name a few. Don and I arrived in Bangkok, unbeknownst to us, just for the start ot Sangkreown, or water splashing festival. Essentially, for the next 5 days we were in Nabgkok we could not go anywhere without someone dousing us with buckets of water and smearing tapioca powder on our faces. Needless to say, this altered our impressions of Bangkok a bit. This was fun for the first day when it was very hot and seemed to be a bit more tame. As the festival progessed, things were a bit more aggressive and annoying and began to prevent us from going out as it was no fun to be soaking wet at night, when it was cooler and people were definitely more drunk.

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　During the days many of the shops were closed in self-defense of their goods, so again it was a rather different experience for us than AM first had.  All of that said Bangkok appeared to be a smoothly run city.  It was also suprising to see what an economic pwerhouse Thailand is in the region.

Re-uniting with AM was definitely great-- got teh best sweaty hug I have ever gotten as AM had taken a third class, non AC car top bunk train from Laos to meet us on time, and then biked through bangkok to our hotel.  Never so glad to see somebody.  AM had a heck of a time returnign her bike through the water-splashing festival as she had to return on one of the craziest streets-- wall top wall people with buckets of water-- bikers are not immune and it is a bit dangerous (supposedly many people die every year).

The "fasting Buddha"
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with all of the water splashing we ultimately left bangkok for Chang Mai-- a town which appears to have developed strictly to sell things to tourist-- our first day was mediocre but once we figured out where the locals ate and carried on we had a much better time in the small markets eating pad thai by the ruins of the towns ancient wall and moat. in addition we had a great bike ride on some of the worst bikes we have ever ridden straight up the local mountain to the disneyland esque Watt on the top.  The watt was nice but the surrounding stalls selling to the tourist was a bit overwhelming.  the highlight was talking with onw of the monks about the differences in thai vs tibetan buddihsm.  in addition he told us a gruesome story about one potential origin of the water splashing festival.  we also had a great time biking 12km straight down the mountain.  we were actually moving so fast we passed some locals on motorcylce!

The guys tackle street noodles for the first time.
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after a few day in Chang mia we were definitiely ready to head to the hills.  we went to the town of Chang Dao where there is a national park.  Unfortunately, the off raod trails were officially closed-- supposedly to protect the wild life, but no one was really keen on providing maps as people wanted us to spend $$ on a guide-- the claim was it was too unsafe without one-- when we asked why they answered because of snakes, which they proceed to clam were rare and generally non-poisonous.  Realizing that they had just explained away the reason to use a guided-- they added that it was mainly because of the BEES?