Busy in Bangkok

Yesterday morning I arrived back in Bangkok. And for the first time ever I had a hard time finding a room. I usually stay in Rambuttri street, not far from Kao San Road. My train arrived around 6.30 AM, so I was quite early. But not a single guesthouse had a room available, not even the more expensive ones. I think I walked around for an hour with my heavy backpack and then decided to stay in one place and wait until somebody checked out. After about another hour without any progress I checked whether any of the nearby guesthouses had any rooms available yet, and luckily the place where I wanted to stay from the beginning had a single room for me, I just had to wait for it to be cleaned. By 10.30 AM I finally could go to my room...
When I went out for a little stroll, I bumped into Sarah, an Australian girl who'd been staying in Nongkhai for the last 2 weeks. She left Nongkhai a day before me and was doing her last minute shopping before flying home. I joined her for some more shopping and we had some great Indian food at 'Spicy Affair' (this place has possibly the best Indian food in the Kao San area, even though it never seems to be busy). After we said goodbye and she took a taxi to the airport, I got a very nice massage.
Then I decided to check out the dentist since I bit of a little bit of one of a tooth while sleeping a week ago. Somebody recommended 'Dental Time' on Chakrapong road to me. And it turned out to be a good dentist. Since it was only a tiny little bit that had broken of my tooth, they only had to polish it a little bit, but they did a good job and it cost me only 100 baht (2 euro).
This morning it was raining quite hard, so I took a taxi to the Panthip Plaza, the place to buy computers, camera's and game consoles. I bought myself a new external hard drive, because the one I had already is nearly full, and a cheap lightweight tripod for my camera.
Then I walked to Siam Square to enjoy the air-conditioning in the luxurious malls, had some great Japanese food and took the bus back to Kao San...
Tomorrow evening I have my flight to Melbourne, so from now on you can follow my adventures on my Australia blog...

The Good Life

Lunch at Lee's (from left to right: Silvie, Stu, Sarah, Susan and Dave)
I've been in Thailand now for exactly 3 weeks and the end of this stopover in Thailand is slowly coming closer. Friday I will take the train back to Bangkok and monday I will fly to melbourne. Once again I can say it has been absolutely wonderful. Nongkhai is such a nice place. Though I'm sure that a lot of people would think it's the most boring place in the world since there's not that much to see here.
I've been hanging out with my friends here, working on my portfolio and writing job application letters for a job in Melbourne, having lunches at Lee's, who makes the best vegetarian food ever, having fresh coconuts while listening to live performances of The Rubberband (listen to some songs I recorded down below) in the Gaia Bar (a great bar floating on the Mekhong). And I think it was during one of their songs I thought to myself: 'This is the good life'.
But as I said, it's all coming to an end soon, and that's ok, 'cause I'm sure Australia is going to be great too...

The first 4 songs were played by the whole band (Anton on the accordion, Lee on the violin, Christina on the guitar and David on percussion), the last 2 are played by Lee (voice and guitar) and Susan (flute)...

And back in Nongkhai

Jenny and I immediately booked our train tickets to Nongkhai. Unfortunately the sleepertrains were all full for the next few days, so we were forced to take a normal train. The trip to Nongkhai was horrible. I think to diesel engine was located underneath our carriage, so it was very very noisy. I didn't sleep for even a minute.
We arrived in Nongkhai around 5am, took a tuktuk to the Mut Mee Guesthouse and made ourselves comfortable in the hammocks in the garden, since the reception is closed until 8am. I ended up in small double bedroom right in front of the noisy entrance, because all the other rooms were full. And it looks like I wont be able to move into one of the 2 best single rooms because they are taken by people who will stay longer than me :-(
But neverthless it is really nice to be back here...

Jenny en ik hebben onze treintickets naar Nongkhai onmiddellijk geboekt. Helaas zaten de slaaptreinen vol voor de komende dagen, en dus konden we niet anders dan een gewone trein te nemen. De rit was verschrikkelijk. Ik denk dat de dieselmotor van de trein onder onze wagon zat, dus er was heel veel lawaai. Ik heb nog geen minuut kunnen slapen.
We zijn om 5u 's morgens in Nongkhai aangekomen, hebben een tuktuk naar de Mut Mee Guesthouse genomen en ons in de hangmatten in de tuin geïnstalleerd aangezien de receptie nog tot 8 uur gesloten zou zijn. Uiteindelijk heb ik een hele kleine dubbele slaapkamer gekregen juist voor de lawaaierige ingang van de guesthouse, omdat alle andere kamers al bezet waren. En 't ziet ernaar uit dat ik ook niet zal kunnen verhuizen naar één van de twee beste single kamers omdat daar mensen inzitten die nog langer dan mij gaan blijven :-(
Maar hoe dan ook is 't ontzettend fijn om terug hier te zijn...

Back in Thailand

Tuesday evening I left Belgium. My flight to London was quite frightening. At first it was delayed for 45 minutes because of too much wind in Heathrow, but then we did leave, and the landing was awfull. The airplane was shaking very badly, and I was really happy when were back on the ground safely. My flight to Bangkok was really nice. I flew with EVA Air, a Chinese airline that I had never heard of before booking my ticket. I was a bit scared it would be some dodgy airline, but it turned out to be really good., with a very friendly service on board and the food was good too.
I arrived in Bangkok around 3.30pm on wednesday. My friend, Jenny, from Switserland arrived about half an hour earlier on a plane from Frankfurt. And somehow we managed to get through immigration and bagage collection at exactly the same time. It was nice being back I Bangkok with her.

Dinsdagavond ben ik weer uit België vertrokken. Mijn vlucht naar Londen was nogal beangstigend. Ze was eerst al 45 minuten vertraagd omdat er teveel wind in Heathrow was om veilig te kunnen landen. Uiteindelijk zijn we toch vertrokken, maar de landing was verschrikkelijk. Het vliegtuig zwenkte uit in alle richtingen and ik was heel blij toen we weer veilig op de grond stonden. Mijn vlucht naar Bangkok was wel heel goed. Ik vloog met EVA Air, een Chinese maatschappij waar ik nog nooit van had gehoord voor ik mijn vlucht boekte. Ik had een beetje schrik dat het een slechte maatschappij zou zijn, ,maar het viel dus heel goed mee. De service aan boord was heel goed en 't eten was ook lekker.
Ik ben woensdag om 3.30u in de namiddag geland in Bangkok. Jenny, een meisje uit Zwitserland die ik uit Nongkhai ken, was een half uur voor mij geland met vliegtuig uit Frankfurt. En op de een of andere manier zijn we erin geslaagd om op exact dezelfde moment uit de luchthaven te komen. 't Was echt leuk om samen met haar terug in Bangkok te zijn.

The Naga Fireball Festival

On the 26th of october, at the end of the buddhist lent and on the full moon, the Naga Fireball Festival takes place in Pon Pisai, about 45km from Nongkhai. The guesthouse organised a trip going there by bus and returning on a late night river cruise with dinner on board. So a big group of us decided to go there and hoped to see some of these mystical fireballs. Three years ago I also went to Pon Pisai, but that night we didn't see any fireballs, apparently they saw some the next day, when I had to do a visarun.
I was quite excited to go back. There were thousands of people, mostly Thai, sitting on the banks of the Mekhong, having a picknick, enjoying some (rather disappointing) fireworks and simply having a good time. People were lighting rice paper lanterns and watching the show on the river with thousands of candles floating down the river and many with fire decorated boats going by. But the fireballs once again didn't show. The Thai people didn't seem to mind though, they were just there to have good time and thats exactly what they got. Around 9PM we boarded the boat and began our long journey upstream to Nongkhai. We had a nice dinner on board, but I think we were all happy to get off the boat when we arrived back in Nongkhai at 3.30 AM...

Dragon Boat Races

Yesterday the festival season officially started in Nongkhai with the Dragon boat races. Today there isn't much happening, but in the next few days it should become pretty crazy with more boat races, parades, markets and the Naga Fireball Festival on the 26th.

Nongkhai

I arrived in Nongkhai a few days ago. Nongkhai is a town on the banks of the Mekong and on the Lao Border, close to Vientiane. I was here in december 2004, when I did a 7 day intensive yoga course. And that's why I'm back here again, to do some more yoga. Nongkhai has been upgraded a bit since I was here last time. There were only a few places where you could see the river, but now they have built a beautiful path with sitting areas next to the Mekong. And the Mut Mee Guesthouse where I'm staying has a new bar, floating on the river. For the rest it's really still the same quiet, laid back town with not too many tourists.