WIANG HAENG AND DOI ANG KHANG, THAILAND
Thai campgrounds are pretty awful, unless you don’t mind pitching your tent on a lawn next to a parking lot two feet away from someone else. I get it, it’s a social event, but when I go camping I want to pretend I’m tracking mastodons or sneaking behind enemy lines or one of those other manly things I’ll never get to do.

Luckily, it turns out you can pitch a tent and start a fire pretty much anywhere. It’s hard to get used to, because where I grew up that’s a great way to get arrested, but as long as you don’t eat endangered wildlife or leave trash like a dickhead you can get away with pretty much anything.

So we rented Honda Phantoms (for when you’re broke but want to look like you’re on a Harley) and drove through the mountains. The 1322 to Wiang Haeng dead-ends in one of Burma’s black zones, but before that it’s wonderfully paved and is full of crazy hairpin turns on something like a 20% grade. Doi Ang Khang is often glibly referred to as “The Switzerland of Thailand,” and that’s all I have to say about that.

KOH PHRA THONG, THAILAND
(Part 1) (Part 2)
There aren’t exactly motorbike rental shops on Koh Phra Thong, but the guy we stayed with let me take one of his to cruise around the island. There’s one paved road that goes from the north side halfway down the island and back up to a town in the northeast corner, but the rest is loose sand a foot deep and completely impassable. Luckily, you can drive on the beach.

KOH PHRA THONG, THAILAND
(Part 1)
The day after Christmas, 2004, the third largest earthquake ever recorded struck Indonesia and sent thirty meter high waves barreling across the Indian Ocean. The west coast of Thailand was devastated, killing thousands of people and destroying much of the infrastructure. Popular tourist destinations like Phuket and Khao Lak quickly recovered (even seven years later all of Khao Lak’s tourist literature proclaims that it’s ‘completely rebuilt!’), but more out of the way destinations are still struggling with the economic, environmental and social consequences of the wave.

On Koh Phra Thong, the tsunami swept five kilometers inland and destroyed everything on the west side of the island. One village was rebuilt by a Lions Club and two others were unaffected, but much of the rest of the wreckage was left untouched.

KOH PHRA THONG, THAILAND
Koh Phra Thong (เกาะพระทอง) isn’t a typical Thai beach destination, but if you’ve ever been to a typical Thai beach destination you’ll probably agree that’s a good thing. There are no dance clubs, no beach chairs, no internet cafes and almost all the electricity comes from generators. It’s just miles and miles of empty beaches.

Unfortunately, a lot of Koh Phra Thong’s atmosphere is thanks to the terrible 2004 tsunami that swept across half the island, wiping out several villages and killing at least a hundred people. If you look at the satellite images, you can actually see the wave patterns it left coming in (on the left side):

There’s only one paved road, but I rented a motorbike and cruised up and down the beach for a few hours. We’ll take a look at what I found over the next few days.

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
I’m back in Thailand (though there are still a few more India posts) and everything completely hit the fan last week. The protesters’ rogue military commander was assassinated and Bangkok turned into a warzone for nearly a week – all told, 52 people died, 407 were injured and 34 buildings were burned, including the stock exchange, a major news channel and the second largest mall in SE Asia. On Wednesday the violence spread and three major city halls were burned in the Northeast.

Chiang Mai is a little tamer than the rest of Thailand in most aspects, but there were still a bunch of drunk rioters camping out on a bridge. They set up a barricade, destroyed a police box, burned a pile of tires and eventually blew up two fire trucks while taunting the police line on the other side of the river. The fuzz made a few attempts to drive into the camp, but they never got closer than about two hundred meters thanks to one crazy motherfucker with a fire extinguisher. Two dipshit foreigners destroyed street signs and threw tires on the fire, after which I hope they were arrested and summarily executed. After a few hours the military marched in with machine guns and stood there until everybody left. I heard some buildings on the other side of town were burned too, but nearest I can tell no one was injured.

It’s all over now. Nothing was solved. I could complain at length about how the Thai establishment asked for this, how the red shirt leaders let their legitimate political grievances take a backseat to rhetoric and senseless rioting, and above all how the international media completely misrepresented the situation and jacked themselves off over a fantasy about class warfare and “Democracy”, but in the end I’m not sure anybody really wants to hear it. Thais, expats, the media and the rest of the world already know what they think.

JORETHANG -> YUKSOM, SIKKIM, INDIA
Sorry about the hiatus, things have been a little scattered. Let’s go back to Sikkim, shall we?

Jorethang isn’t a big town, but it’s still the main transit point through West Sikkim and has a lot of restaurants, hotels and other amenities. As soon as you leave though, you’re in the boonies. The road to Yuksom is serviced by only one jeep a day and climbs up through the Himalayas for about six hours, mostly along nightmarish drops into ravines you can’t see the bottom of. In most parts, cars have to slow to a stop to negotiate a way around each other while all the passengers throw up out the window.

Then you get to Yuksom and things start to get interesting, but we’ll save that for Wednesday.

JORETHANG, SIKKIM, INDIA
Sikkim is one of those places you come across while looking at a map and wonder “what in the world is there?” It’s a misshapen polyp of the Himalayas that juts up between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, with snow-capped peaks and not a sliver of flat land. Barring Kashmir and Ladakh, it’s probably one of the most out-of-the-way places in India.

Sikkim wasn’t really a part of India until fairly recently – India controlled its defense and external affairs from 1947, but it retained de facto and de jure internal autonomy until it voted to join the Indian Union in 1975. Before that, Sikkim was an independent kingdom ruled by a Buddhist monarchy and Himalayan traditions that stretch back five hundred years.

I wanted to go check it out before leaving Darjeeling, so I hopped in a land rover and made my way to the border town of Jorethang. Entering Sikkim, as a foreigner anyway, feels like leaving India for an entirely new country – you need to arrange permits beforehand and guards stamp your passport on arrival. Jorethang itself doesn’t feel much different from any of the whistle-stop towns in the hills around Darjeeling, but after waiting around in the jeep lot for three hours I caught another one north to Yuksom. Then things started to get weird.

More later.

CALCUTTA, INDIA
I’ve been stupid-busy lately, so today you’re going to have to settle for these pictures of a dog fighting some crows for a pile of raw intestines. Calcutta is always a party!

There’s still plenty more of India though, so stay tuned. Next up is an expedition to Sikkim – a secluded Himalayan Buddhist kingdom that only became a part of India in the 1970s.

DARJEELING, INDIA
There are very few Muslims in Darjeeling, but when they have an excuse to make themselves seen they certainly go all out. This is the parade (procession? march? party?) for Mawlid, Muhammad’s birthday. Islamic scholars are actually divided on whether or not it’s appropriate to celebrate the occasion, but, I mean, who cares. Look at how much fun these dudes are having:

(sorry about all the broken pictures lately; my internet sucks)

MIRIK, INDIA
From Wikipedia:

Mirik (Nepali: मिरिक) is a picturesque tourist spot nestled in the serene hills of the district of Darjeeling in West Bengal, India. Mirik has become a tourist destination for its climate, natural beauty and accessibility [...] A 3.5-km-long road encircles the lake and is used for walks with the view of Kanchenjunga on the far horizon. Boating on the quaint shikaras and pony riding are available.

Mirik is that place that your parents would drag you ever summer even though you were sick of it five years ago and just want to stay home and play video games. Except there isn’t a beach. Tourism is almost entirely Bengalis from the lowlands, but I’m at a complete loss to explain what they actually do here – the lake isn’t swimmable and there are only so many times you can ride a pony or paddle around in a boat. Everything closes at 7pm, so we just sat in a gazebo and drank beer the whole time.

But I got to ride an Enfield there.