Intrigue for the eyes in Chiang Mai

And now playing fast and loose with chronology I will bring you some of the top stuff we saw mooching around Chiang Mai for the day. Tales of Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam will follow at some point.

Scrapbooking Interlude

It has been quite some time since I updated you with news of our travels and i'm afraid i'm not going to attempt to retrace over one month and 3 countries worth of movement just yet. Instead i'm going to fill a gap until I have the time and inclination to play catch up with some well chosen pictures. This time round why don't you enjoy some of mine and Natalie's scrapbooks, starting with selected pages from mine covering Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

 And a few of Nat's too.....................................................................................................

And a Happy New Year!

We ventured to the mountains of Pai in the North of Thailand to see in New Year with Sunny and Jim (a couple of friends from back home now situated in Melbourne, Australia with the rest of Manchester). Pai is a beautiful town which I will tell more of later from our second trip there after the lads had left. With this being New Year the night consisted of much jovialty and a bit of debauchery, ending with Sunny and Jimmy helping clean a bar at 9am and us sitting round a table of Thai's struggling to communicate much before finding a swimming pool to cool off in. Highlights were letting off lanterns and watching them disappear into the night sky (or into a nearby tree in Jimmy's case) and crashing an open mic session at a hippy commune and clearing the place out with some bastardised grime/2 step music featuring me on drums and Jimmy and Sunny grabbing the mics. It is a massive shame that we didn't actually film this as we thought we had as i'm sure it would have made good viewing. "Tell Your Mum To Put The Kettle ON!

Merry Christmas

Angkor

A few years back I remember quite clearly watching Gordon Burns on North West Tonight saying that Preston College wanted people to enroll on the creative stone masonry course as it was a dying art. It was then that I decided this was my back up plan in life and at some point I would finish this course and become a master craftsman. For some reason i've always been attracted to stone carving, so it was with excitement (and groggy red eyes) that I set off on bike at 5am to see the temples of Angkor. I'm not here to give you history lesson so follow the link, parouse some photos of the sights and listen to the sounds I recorded throughout the day.

We arrived at Angkor Wat just before sunrise along with Aki and Mervin who had rode with us. Aki is a 27 year old Finnish restaurant manager and one of the few people i've met who likes food more than me. Mervin is a 20 year old German who loves Angelina Jolie a bit too much and has a penchant for body popping, which we found out later that day. The sunrise was nice but the lake was swarmed with tourists and "photographers" whose utterly miserable faces killed the buzz a little. We tried our hardest throughout the day to take decent photographs with a camera that broke in the jungle and now rarely turns on and only comes in to focus occasionally. Whilst spying the pictures from the rest of the day, listen to this clip of an orphan band playing traditonal music that I saw near the first temple.

Pagoda band at Angkor Wat by LogaMcr

I also took some photos in black and white in an attempt to look arty. For this I would suggest listening to a clip of a band of landmine victims playing Khmer music.

Angkor Landmine Victim Band by LogaMcr

This wasn't the end of the music either as on our bike ride home I chanced upon a brass band rehearsing outside a youth club.

Siem Reap Youth Brass Band by LogaMcr

After getting home and washing an unthinkable amount of dirt and dust off us we joined Aki and Mervin again for some beers. The highlight of the evening was ending up playing pool in a tiny bar that we thought was innocent and sweet but was actually a front for a brothel as Natalie found out when she went to the female toilets upstairs. It was here that she drunkenly asked the barman to play 90s RnB before putting on a Shaggy CD that the madam quickly turned off. All in a days work ey.

Thailand - Koh Chang

In summary, more youths, not as spectacular beaches but a bit more chilled and enjoyable. Didn't feel like we were gatecrashing a Russian wedding party on a beach. This is how we passed the hours.

Full Moon Party

Not as large in scale as the famous ones in Koh Phangan but enough to convince us that this is definitely not our bag. It was a parade of whoppers on the grandest of scales, like someone had threw the contents of the Printworks on to a beach at closing time and assaulted them with a barrage of iffy dance music. Nat said it looked like someone had vomited a Hawaiian shirt and we spent most of the time watching peoples spectacular dance moves and borderline rapey chat up moves. I now can confirm that Psytrance needs no further airtime in my life.

Sloppy Covers Bands

The place above had a nice driftwood interior if you will allow me to go Llewelym-Bowen for a moment. This said, the band were pretty dire and I will be happy if I don't hear another cover of No Woman No Cry for the remainder of my living days.

Shadow Fun

Elephants

Stumbled across some elephants bathing and Nat was invited to wash and ride the two baby elephants. Undoubtedly one of her travelling highlights to date