Flying High

Chiang Mai was a subtler city than Bangkok, it had a softer touch. It was more simple, modest. It lacked noise. We wandered its streets, in and out of quirky shops and art galleries hiding untold talents. Packs of lazy dogs sprawled all over the pavement, as if melted by the sun. We took dinner in a riverside restaurant with twenty geckos watching overhead. With our hostel closed by 8, we had a quiet Saturday night, and looked forward to our appointment with Flight of the Gibbon the following morning.

Flight of the Gibbon is a jungle zipline adventure company located in the mountains outside of Chiang Mai. There, they've built rope bridges, wobbly spiral staircases, and strung cables between trees in order to let people experience what it's like to be a gibbon moving through the canopy. Imagine the Ewok village in Return of the Jedi and you've got the picture. After getting geared up, and going over some safety rules, our simian simulation began. We drove to the first zipline, where one girl backed out before even getting started. (Later, much to my amusement, Mia told me that she thought this girl couldn't go on because she was too heavy). The rest of us whizzed over to our first tree, clipped in, and laughed about who'd screamed loudest (that'd be Mia). Over the next 3 hours we did just about every kind of zipline imaginable—solo, tandem, fast, even “honeymoon”—culminating in a huge 1 km long tandem flight that sent us soaring over the rainforest. We finished by absailing down the side of a tree, something I opted to do face-first, Mission Impossible-style; it was an excellent decision. Thai musicians played for us at lunch, after which we hiked up the side of a multi-tiered waterfall.

We returned to town, the sound of palm fronds still rustling in our ears, and explored the night market. After some $10 all-you-can-eat sushi & shabu-shabu, I finished reading The River's Tale and started The Beach, a predictable, but entirely fitting choice, seeing as I was in the country in which it is set, was a huge fan of the movie, and had never read it before. It would prove to be a wildly entertaining read, the perfect compliment to my time in Thailand, time that now amounted to less than two weeks. Our great journey was nearing its end, all the more reason to make the most of every day we had left.

Bang

The bus ride to Bangkok contained about as much bullshit as we'd come to expect travelling through SE Asia, so nothing much surprised us during this day-long trip. Pointless 7am pick up to take us to the bus, wait there for 45 minutes, and then drive directly past our hotel on the way out of town? Yep. Musty old tin can with lumpy seats when we were told it would be a new coach? Mm-hm. Overly-talkative Swedish-Iranian businessman next to me explaining how he divides his time between Sweden and Cambodia, house and hut, wife and girlfriend? Ok. Draining 2.5 hour boarder crossing? Naturally. Arriving in Bangkok during rush hour? Whatever. We were pretty travel-hardened by this point, and none of this second-rate bullshit could touch us. In fact, anything less than a band of bus pirates hijacking our ride and robbing us blind could piss right off. We'd seen it all.

The transition from Cambodia to Thailand, however, was an interesting one. Buildings grew taller and roads smoother. The jungle thinned, then disappeared entirely, until only pavement, billboards and brand names ruled. Darkness gave way to neon light. We checked into a hip, modern hostel just 30 meters from the infamous Khao San Road, a place I'd hoped to find every bit as dicey, debaucherous and alcohol-soaked as I'd heard, but it was completely tame. Perhaps the party scene was played out, people had moved on, but I would have felt a lot better if I'd seen just one drunken shemale puking on a pantless foreigner.

Next day, we were talked into a 20 baht (66 cent) tuk tuk tour, the only catch being that we had to make a stop at a couple of preselected stores, so our driver would get a kickback. So the day whizzed by in a blur of buddhas and Armani suits, glittering wats and jewelery emporiums, a surging juxtaposition of spiritual traditions and modern moneymaking. After this, we visited the Royal Palace, the sparkling centerpiece of Bangkok, gilded to the gills, and bursting with enough bling to make Mr. T blush. But the most striking feature of the Royal Palace were its wall paintings, a series of mind-bending murals depicting warriors, ape-men, and gods in such epic scenes as divine death-matches and elephant battles, in all their glorious gore.

Later, after a great deal of haggling, we secured a tour of the surrounding canal system in a longtail boat; a slender craft propelled by an engine that looked like it belonged to an airplane. We ripped around canals lined with quaint wooden houses bursting with flowers, burnt-out buildings and rusty tin roofs, checking off another wat at sunset. We explored Khao San Road more fully after dark, finding a number of trendy restaurants, shops, and cheap drinks. Unfortunately, around 3am, some drunk, belligerent wankers made a point of proving they were dicks, making a loud, obnoxious entrance into our dorm, and keeping everybody up for a good 15 minutes. Apparently, Khao San had some life left in it yet.