I don’t expect everyone to read all of this, but here it is if you want it!  Also keep in mind that I don’t email out all website updates to everyone every time so you might want to check the SailingSalsa.com time or now if you want to see what you missed!

Here is the Blog / Details of my three week trip starting with my departure from Phil’s boat “Happy Ours” in Phuket to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pai, Mae Hong Son, Doi Inthanon and back to Phuket to Michaels boat “Shayler”.  Not only do I want to share the great experience I had getting off of the boat and venturing inland to Northern Thailand but I want people to see how Cheap, Easy, and Rewarding this kind of a trip can be for an adventurous low-budget traveler so I’ll quote as many prices as I can remember in USD giving a very good idea of what things cost in Thailand in November 2010.

It’s worth mentioning that I was basically persuaded to take this trip (or at least a trip inland) from my good friends that have already discovered the joys of traveling to these areas in Thailand.  I was reluctant to leave the relative security of staying on a boat in Phuket where life is good to begin with and then somewhat blindly travel north into Thailand rarely knowing where I would be going, where I would sleep there, or even what transportation I would take.  I ended up taking boats, busses, trains, cars, vans, tuk-tuks, motorbikes, taxis, sky-trains, subways, and the list goes on.

The initial planning got me to Khao San Road, Bangkok.  From the boat in Ao Chalong Phil took me to shore in the Dingy and then we rented a Motorbike for 24 hours ($3.30) so he could take me 20 minutes up the road to the bus station in Phuket Town.  Then I had a VIP bus ticket to Bangkok ($30) for the first big leg, a 12 hour journey.  The VIP bus is the most expensive bus with only 24 or so seats so you have heaps of room the idea being that you can sleep most of the way to Bangkok and arrive fresh, plus since this is an overnight bus (6PM to 6AM) you save one night hotel costs, and one meal as a dinner buffet stop is included around midnight on the passage.  Once in Bangkok I fought my way through all of the touts, tuk-tuk and taxi drivers who offered me a lift to Khao San Road for around $5 until I found the local public bus terminal where I was delivered within a 10 minute walk of my destination for $.50.  I know, I know you might have just sprung for taxi but we’re doing this on the CHEAP as you will see.  In fact I could have cut the budget almost in half if I wanted to go super-cheap and not drink beer n this trip.  Khao San Road in Bangkok is famous for its cheap and plentiful backpacker-accommodations and unlike hostels where you share a room with 4 or more people, most rooms have only one bed going for about $5-$10 a night, with a shared bathroom.  I really wanted wifi in my room so I checked about 10 “Guest houses” before I found one for $6 a night, no air-conditioning but it wasn’t necessary plus it had a big fan, a big bed (rock hard mattress).  So basically a room, bed, fan, small table and bathrooms down the hall.  Good value I think, I did see dorm type beds for $3 a night.  I mostly ate Pad Thai on the street for $1 a plate made to order.  I often grabbed bags of cold fruit for about $.50, or chewed on various meats grilled on sticks right in the street and probably never spent more than $2 on a meal except for the time I bought an entire roasted chicken for $3 and was almost sick for eating it all!  The average beer was $2 but you could find them for under a dollar if you looked around enough.  One hour massages were about $7 compared to $5 in Bali and not as good so I only got one here.  So with the room, food and say 2 beers a day, you’re spending less than $15 a day.  If you want to go sightseeing the very efficient and slightly confusing public bus system will take you anywhere in Bangkok and back for $1 or for twice that price you can take the faster “sky train” or BTS rail.  Metered Taxis work out to about  $5 for a 20 minute ride or you can take a motorcycle for half the price and get there in half the time as the drivers are seriously insane.  Weaving through traffic, ignoring stop lights and if they can’t fit between the cars parked on the road they won’t hesitate moving into oncoming traffic, medians, sidewalks, etc.   Most of my time in Bangkok was spent hanging out eating and drinking with new friends, both tourists and Thais, exploring markets and just walking around.  But after 3 days I was on night train this time heading to Chiang Mai

You don’t need a plan to travel like this, I only had one medium sized backpack.  I could easily carry all my belongings with me everywhere I went making me very mobile and allowing me to stay flexible.  The night trains to Chiang Mai takes between 12 and 15 hours and mostly run at night so its highly recommended you get a sleeper car for about $25 where you can actually lay down and sleep comfortably at night and during the day it converts to a seat.  The train is great.  You can walk around and since you are in Thailand where they aren’t too big on rules just to protect ourselves you can actually hang out in the space between two cars where you are basically outside and take in the sights.  There’s also a food car with terrible overpriced food that seems more like a small night club after dark serving beer and mixed drinks at night till around 11pm.

Arriving in Chiang Mai around noon I found another single back-packer on the train and we split a tuk-tuk ($1 each) into the “Old City” where the cheap accommodations are easiest to find.   I found much better value than Bangkok.  This time I splurged a bit and got a big air-conditioned room with a refrigerator, in room hot showers, Cable TV, wifi, big bed, super clean, and a decent view for the whopping price of $7 a night.  Again I want to reiterate that you don’t have to have a plan, just hop on a bus, go somewhere and have a beer and before you know it other travelers are helping you decide where to go and stay based upon their experiences as in any town you will meet people that have just been to and coming from other places nearby.  Beer and food in Chiang Mai were cheaper than Bangkok too.  I was set on doing the “Mae Hong Son Loop” a 950km  motorbike ride with 1864 bends through the mountains.  Some people spend about $5 per leg on a bus for each of the four legs between popular towns.  But I chose to rent a 125CC manual scooter for still only $5 a day and ride this famous rural twisty turny mountainous road.  Again it took reading guides and blogs plus talking to people to get the courage to set out on a long open country road in Northern Thailand without a reservation and not even knowing for sure what town I would stay in.  This road leads to the North West extreme edges of Thailand just a few miles from Myanmar (Burma) at times.   The little Honda I had did great as you rarely get up to it’s max speed of 80 to 100km per hour.  In fact most of the mountains have you going about half that speed in the lower gears working the bike and yourself very hard.  This route has been conquered in just over one day by very experienced riders on small bikes but most people take 4+ days.  My first stop was the very popular but small town of Pai.  Pai while being interesting enough didn’t excite me too much.  It had plenty of food and bars and best of all it had a nice mix of foreign and Thai tourists but I just found it a bit lacking maybe because I wasn’t feeling up for drinking or shopping, two big activities here and tired from the nearly three hour bike ride.  In fact the best part of this little bike trip was the bike ride itself and the sights on the road.  I feel this blog entry getting long but I have to explain what riding in northern Thailand is like.  While leaving Chiang Mai you will get plenty of traffic and stop lights but once you turn off the highway and onto the two-lane roads into the mountain you seldom see another vehicle until approaching the next town.  You will see what I think is the “real Thailand” little villages that seldom see tourists except for busses flying by that never stop.  Endless valleys of corn, rice and other unidentifiable crops that start in the valley and climb all the way up the mountain, I can’t recall seeing such mountainous terrain used for farming with exception to the even more spectacular terracing in Peru around Montchupichu.

I left Pai around 9AM on the common tourist trail bound for Mae Hong Son (MHS).  I would have left earlier but I was FREEZING.  I already bought cheap shoes $6 and sweat-pants $6 in Chiang Mai for the ride, until then I had only flip-flops and shorts in my wardrobe.  131kms and less than 1 gallon of fuel from Pai I was in Mae Hong Son.  More interesting than Pai and much less of a party town, more like a real functioning town/city I even visited my first Temple (Wat Phra That) on top of a 1500meter hill, (Doi Kong Mu) the views of the city are meant to be great but all I could see looking down was clouds and fog and I was freezing again even with the old second hand jacket I Bought in Pai after fierce negotiating for $5.  Since I arrived in MHS relatively early I was able to check out the town, bars, and an amazing night market with some of the best food I’ve had in Thailand.  My hotel $5 had great views of a temple just across a small lake.  Easy walks to a few bars with overpriced beers but good company and free pool tables.  I still try to do all my eating in the streets and markets even though you can get a really nice meal for around $5-10 I just won’t spend the money when the $1 food is just as good to me and I would rather hang out on the streets people watching anyway.  Its more social and way more fun than a restaurant.  I can’t remember the exact distance but it was a long ride to the next few towns so I left early as soon as I was down from the temple on top of the mountain and showered.

This last leg of the trip turned out to be VERY long, about 300km.  I didn’t want another town just like the others so I opted for a un-recommended  route on an older but still paved road through even more rural farm area and steeper mountains also saving me a few hundred km off of the popular longer route to Mae Sariang.  Mostly because this detour would bring me past Doi Inthanon the highest peak in Thailand 2565 meters (8500 feet) above sea level.  The 9km road leading to the top was the most challenging and I often had to shift into first gear and hold the throttle wide open to make any progress up these insanely crazy inclines, going down wasn’t much better and this was the coldest I’ve been in years.  I had to put on nearly every piece of clothing I had while the 2 or 3 other motorbikes I saw at this level all with Thai people wearing winter jackets, scarves, and still freezing to death!  I didn’t stay at the peak very long at all and by now the motorbike (that was brand new, less than 2000 miles on it when I rented it) was coughing, backfiring, and even stalling maybe from the altitude, the cold, or me just pushing it so hard.   But as soon as I started rolling down hill it came back to life winding my way to the main road and warmth.  There were a few towns here and accommodations but no markets or anything of interest that I was aware of and I didn’t want to pay an extra day on the motorbike rental so I was full speed back to Chiang Mai and got in well before dark (thankfully) and checked in back to my old hotel.  I wish I could remember all of the things that made the ride so interesting like Oxen on the side of the road, little parks and great little cafes on mountain sides in the middle of nowhere serving perfect coffee for about $1 a cup.  Rivers and OH YEAH, a massive waterfall off in the distance.  It really is all about the views.  I got into riding fast as it was exciting but I also stopped a lot to take in the views so I would often pass several  of the same vehicles several times in one day as they would pass me a few times when I took in my little scenic stops then I would catch up again.

Back in Chiang Mai I found that the sleeper car trains to Bangkok were full for the next day so I stayed one extra night and explored a massive endless market in the old city just a few blocks from my room that was packed with tourists, food, local goods and the list goes on forever.  Oh, it’s worth mentioning that you can get a cheap bus instead of the train or VIP bus for considerably less but I was rightfully warned off as you’ll read about soon.

Back in Bangkok I hung out for another week or so in no hurry to get back to what is truly a much more expensive and even less interesting Phuket.  Why does anyone even go to Phuket?  Ah, for the ocean and beaches that I was thrilled to get away from after nearly 3 years living quite literally on the water.  This time in Bangkok I meandered through Chinatown checking out the street cuisine as usual and exploring one market after another.  Not to mention a few late nights in the tourist packed Khao San Road drinking the cheapest beer I could find chatting up with other backpackers about their travels.  When it was time to head back to Phuket I found the deal of the century, bus fare for only $12, less than half of my fare here.  The lonely Planet Guide (a MUST have for traveling like this) said that the government operated busses from the local bus station were reliable and fairly priced in contrast to the “tourist busses” operated out of Khao San Road where they over-promise and under deliver, not to mention just plain steal from you if they can.  The cheap bus trip took 18 hours instead of 12 on the VIP bus, I had to transfer 4 TIMES and at one point was told that I had to pay an extra $5 or I would sit in this one town all day.  They only let the people who paid the extortion fee to get on the bus and then they pulled the rest of us aside and said they would only let us on the bus if we promised to tell the others we paid too, hah, what a scam.  Then I hid $15 in my back-pack which I didn’t keep on my person just in case my pocket money was stolen, knowing better than to put all my cash and cards in the baggage compartment where they not only rooted and looted they even found my VERY well hidden cash! Wow!  Eventually I arrived in Phuket tired, but very happy to see my old friends so I did manage to put down my quota of beer before making it an early night.

I’m not going to tally up all the expenses but you get the idea that you on about $20 or $30 a day you can travel well in Thailand assuming you don’t go for any expensive tours like elephant riding, trekking, diving, etc.  Plus I want to encourage anyone ever considering doing the ‘backpacking thing’ in Thailand to totally go for it.  I’ve still got another month or two here before flying back to Bali and don’t be surprised if the next blog update is trip 2 to north Thailand, with alternate cities and towns!  Well I’m off to Circumnavigate Phuket Island on my motorbike rental, only 100CC and no electric start but what do you expect for $3 a day?    And hey, if you can here in the next month I’ll show you around!

Oh, pictures from the road trip are here; PhotoBucket.com

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