caillou’s blog

lou walking around on a rainy day from caillou on Vimeo.

if you read the two last posts, you might begin to see a pattern. both times we left the hose too late and had to live with some unpleasant consequences. in order to be on time for our trip to Chiang Mai, i decided to pretend that the train would leave 30 minutes earlier than it really did… hoping that lying to myself would get us to be on time

in addition to that, i planned for the trip to the railway-station to take 45 minutes, knowing the station was 10 minutes away from home.

on the contrary to the other trips, this time everyting went as planed. therefor we got to the station 1.5 hours in advance. and the train was 50 minutes late…

“better early than late”, we thought. it was actually interesting to see passing one train after the other through the station, which by the way, consisted of a single lane the first wagon of each train is the post train. packages are loaded through the windows. the diesel locomotives are exchanged. homeless people and straying dogs fight for leftovers, after people get into the trains. Families, monks, soldiers, tourists and businessmen get together and ignore each others. just like everywhere else in the world, but totally different.

Anyway, after bit under two hours there, our train arrived at the Bang Sue railway station. following muriel’s advice, we had chosen a 2nd class lover sleeper in a fan compartment. that means, we took pretty much the best you can get without AC. AC being terrible as it is way to cold.

i just love those trains with open windows and doors. and they are even more likable, when you are lying besides the window in clean sheets… and the way the thai sleepers are arranged is just wonderful… they are parallel to the rails, other to the way we have’em in switzerland.

as opposed to lou and rachel, who seemed to wake each others up all night, i had a wonderful nights sleep. with amazing dreams. in one of the dreams i was a Bruce Willis type of hero and i had to stop the train, for a reason i do not recall… dreams in trains are fun

i was woken up by an exquisite and overpriced english breakfast i had ordered the day before… sometimes it’s just nice to be rich

so, after some 15 or 16 hours in a train train, we arrived in Chiang Mai. we had tried to make some reservations for a guesthouse before leaving BKK, but apparently not a single guesthouse in Chiang Mai was willing to take reservations. they all just said: “when you get to Chiang Mai, you come here. if we’re all booked, we’ll send you to another nice guesthouse”. that was pretty infuriating. but we got lucky. we took a tuk-tuk to the guest house of our choice, and they still had 2 rooms left

this is how we got to the Gap Guesthouse 1. it has got the “1″ suffix, as apparently, when a guesthouse is well known, other guesthouses steal their name. from walking around Chiang Mai a lot, i can say that this might be the best ambiance you can get for that kind of money. you tend to forget you are in the middle of a city, when you are there. with a lot of nature. lovable.

Chiang Mai has a square formed old town, surrounded by canals. it takes you about 20 minutes to walk one of the edges. in there you might find some 100 guesthouses and maybe 25 monasteries (this is wild guessing). taken the fact that Ciang Mai is Thailand’s second city, it’s center feels very calm and relaxing. it has a very high density of tourists, but strange enough, it still feels pretty comfortable. most tourists are either bagpackers or elderly men looking for love… and as you know, this is the type of tourists, that generate many bars and clubs. but most of these facilities are placed on the edges of that old town square. that way, you can easily avoid or find them. depending what you are looking for

in the seven days we spent in Chiang Mai, we didn’t do anything really. we went to the markets. the day market is quite authentic. it has some tourist related shops on its entries, but once you are inside, it’s just regular closing, food, cooking devices, spices, hardware shops, flowers… the night market, on the other hand is a construct for all the tourists that do not party but still want to spend some money. “fun t-shirts”, tourist oriented handycraft, lamps, pillows and all that crap. i just keep wondering, what people do with that garbage, when they get home…

and there is the sunday walking street (and its smaller version on saturday). four streets are made pedestrian and a market is built up. it somehow reminded me of our xMas markets, or the way they should be most monasteries along these streets open their doors for the street food vendors. i can’t describe the magnitude of smells and colors and tastes we got across on these markets. it was simply delightful! i think the most interesting thing i had, was an omelet with insect eggs in it… there are also many street musicians on these two markets, a thing you barely ever see in thailand. most of the musicians are blind or elderly people… and there are artist selling their crap. handicraft. buddhas. on many street corners there are places offering foot massages. form time to time it would rain for 5 minutes, which made everyone panic… i don’t know where to start really. so just believe me when i say, the Chaing Mai Sunday Walking Street is provably the nicest market i have ever been on.

and that is about what we did. eat. sleep. eat again. market. sleep. and some extensive walking around the city.

Chiang Mai would have much more to offer. trekking. river rafting. water falls. a nearby lake. mountain climbing. but we just couldn’t bother. it was too hot. and with the excuse of a child in our arms, we just did what we do best. nothing

well, now that you read all that, you may look at the pictures here.

right now we are back in BKK. next trip to the beach is planed and we leave tomorrow… that’s it for now.

PS: we would like to thank everyone who wrote a comment on the blog… it really is nice for us to see who we are writing this for. therefor, if you read this, why not leaving a comment. let us know what you are up to. how you feel these days.

as always, we left too late in the morning. we needed to take several days off at the sea. muriel recommended to go to Ko Samet. best choice for a short trip to the sea when you live in BKK. it’s only half a day’s ride away by bus and boat… plus, if you know the island, there still are some rather cheap bungalows on the beach available. this said, you need to leave BKK before 10 a.m. …

this time around, the reason for being late was me. i. myself. i just couldn’t get off my behind that morning. felt tired like never before. that way, we only got around catching the bus at 2 p.m. … and, of course, we missed the last boat to Ao Wong Deuan (a beach close to our hotel).

we had to take the boat to the main harbor of Ko Samet, where we got ripped off by the taxi drivers, only to find out that our hotel couldn’t host us for more than 3 nights… “should have gotten up early…. should have called… should have called the hotel… and should have made a reservation… argh…” were my thoughts.

in the end, all was really really good. we loved the place. enjoyed some evenings at the beach restaurant while lou slept… rare moments got sun burned… read books… and took many pictures, some of which can be found here.

and the pictures we took in BKK before and after our trip to Ko Samet can be found here.

not too many word this time, we just let the pictures talk.

enjoy.

on a rainy monday morning, we were ready to leave BKK. we had spent 6 days in the city, which was the time we needed to get used to the city.

lou got used to the fact, that everyone was trying to touch and play with her, to the noise, the pollution, the food and the heat. so did we.

it took us these 6 days to learn about living and surviving in BKK. learning about the different means of transportations (i’ll blog about these another time), about food, about prices. we learned to evaluate the quality aspects of things, meaning, that now we know what quality to expect of our purchases. and at what price.

and finally, we tried to fit in. this, of course is a lost cause.

so, once we were more or less comfortable with the life in BKK, we decided to try something new. a first shy little trip into the wild, one could say.

so we were getting ready on that rainy monday. as we have muriel’s apartment as traveling base point, we could leave most of our belongings there. but still, packing was a tedious job

in addition to packing, i had to exchange some money and tried to find some malaria medicine, taken the fact that our next destination would be in the jungle…

after visiting a hospital and 5 drugstores, i started to realize that finding malaria drugs, was another one of these lost causes.

a short phone call to muriel informed us about the state of things: due to new regulations, malaria treatments are not freely available anymore.

“fair enough” we thought, and left for the bus station. we took a cab, and i have to say, that there is nothing like sitting in an air conditioned cab when cursing trough a rainy tropical metro-pole. all that hot humidity is blocked from you…

once we got to the busstation, there were no more busses for Thong Pha Phum, which was our destination of choice. all that, because i was chasing malaria treatments half a day long… so we chose to go to Kanchanaburi, which would have been rachel’s first choice anyway.

while waiting for the bus, we got to notice once more, how great it is to travel in this country with a one year old. everybody around us would come by to meet us and catch some of lou’s attention. some employees of the bus station people would just take her in their arms, leave with her and pass her around to other employees. after 5 or 10 minutes, someone completely different would bring her back.

the only drawback to letting her off with strangers, is that they keep feeding her anything. this is how she got to taste chocolate for the first time that day.

after that, we took the bus for Kanchanaburi. we didn’t like it there so much, taken the fact that it has become a regular place for “Party Tourism”, as i call it. as parents, you are a different tourist, than most other people our age we don’t care about dance floors and bars… so the next day we continued, took a train and a bus, to end our trip in Thong Pha Phum. we spent several nice and clam days in that little village… got to know some people with children… went to the hot springs of Hin Dat… did nothing… walked around… but see for yourself (click)

by now, we are back in BKK and plan our next trip. but this is another story…

one thing you gotta love are contrasts. if you don’t, bkk might just not be the right place for you. among all contrasts you see in bkk, the one that stroke me most today, was the contrast between chaos and organization. it is almost cute, how organized bkk is trying to be.

take crossing a street in bkk as an example. it is s.th. you need to get used too. it resembles a deadly arcade games. or tetris. you need to carefully plan it. you need to be prepared to stay in the middle of the road having cars, busses and scooters driving on every side of yours. you plan and plan and plan… and run. and stop. maybe change direction. walk some more… that is what everyone does. exept maybe that thais do not run, that’s just me what i am trying to say is, that people crossing a street in bkk tend to look like ants in a vast apartment full of food… but then, when you look at a crosswalk here in bkk, you might think things are completely different. see for yourself, click on the picture. little arrows, indicating on which side you have to walk and all

there are many examples for this contrast between chaos and organization. everywhere you go, there are people and indications telling you how to behave. in what queue you have to stand for the sky train or in the department store. at some stage i got whistled at, because i was standing too close to the railway lines. i really love the “Please hold the handrail” in front of the stairways there are people “helping” you everywhere.

all this organization comes in a the most chaotic city i have ever been at. it’s cute

after a several hours of flight with our child, we landed in bangkok (bkk). night had already replaced the day, when muriel picked us up after immigration. after a little bit of fighting off private taxies, we got into a queue for the public cabs. these are, as every bkk guide will tell you, about 5 times cheaper than the private ones. but who need a guide, if one has a local friend

we were pretty amazed to hear muriel speak thai as if it was her mother tongue. at least, that is what it looked like. one thing is for sure: we do not understand any of these sung words and phrases.

we rode the cab over the highway and ended up in muriel’s flat, on the 25th floor. on the way i noticed one odd thing: every car on the highway was rather new and shiny as hell. it seems that thai, even more than others, spend a hell of a lot of money, in order always have the most recent pickup that is around. not only are the cars new, but there are no small cars. never saw a nissan micra or a toyota starlet, as i would have expected. there are only mitsubishi trucks and lexus limousines. that and a hell of a lot of scooters and motorbikes.

once we were at muriel’s flat, we got our first thai meal. the food came from a small restaurant close by. this is where i saw carbon paper for the first time in years. this is the kind of detail, that can save a day!

that, and the fact that for 10 baht you can get a quarter a pineapple… fruits here are so damn cheap and good. that alone makes you want to stay here for ever.

now, maybe you already asked google how much 10 baht is in chf or euro. but what is more interesting, is the evolution of the exchange rate over the last years. since 4 or 5 days, the baht is cheaper to the chf or to the euro than it has been for two and a half years. muriel tells me, that the bath currency charts are equal to the political events here in thailand. and a lot of political changes are expected in the next 2 or 3 weeks. this means, that for once politics will really decide, wether i’ll end up rich or poor

today we spent our first day in the city of bkk. we visited madly huge malls and department stores in contrast to street sellers, that’ll sell or fix anything for you. just like that guy that built up his mechanic sawing machine in the middle of the street and fixes clothes (my pants if i’ll find him again). or the one that sells fake underwear. and the one that exclusively sells hard boiled eggs. and all the others…

this all comes in an unbelievable noise. music, cars, buses, scooters, more scooters, the sky train, people and and and… ti’s more than different sounds. it’s more like one big, fat noise. and it’s everywhere you go. except maybe the parks. we spent several hours in the lumpini park. an island of peace and freedom, in which tourists try to expose as much skin as legally possible to the sun. people of every age do all kinds of sports. running (sometimes backwards !?!), rollerblading (which, in bkk, is not possible anywhere else than in a park), badminton, weightlifting, tai-chi and among all, aerobics. suddenly, out of nowhere, there were about 300 people gathering in the park. cheap techno music was balsting out of a huge subwoofer and 3 girls were leading the group… and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

this almost beats what we saw after leaving the park, at 6 p.m precisely. suddenly the national hymn was to be heard and every one around us (which was a lot of people), just stopped moving. it was magic. lou was sleeping in my arms, the street noise was just the same, but no one was moving. until, 15 seconds later, they all continued their way. as if someone had pressed pause. but with the soundtrack still on

first day, with many impressions! we are loving it. we are dead tired, about to go to sleep. lou already sleeps. so good night to you all!

how did it happen? how did we become homeless? what’s next?

the last thing i was regularly blogging about was lou’s birth and the several months that followed this life changing moment. then life went back to it’s usual movement. little circle, where days followed days. little circles within bigger once, in which weeks followed weeks. and suddenly, we were homeless

it all started with a crazy idea. lou was in our life. and we realized that from that moment on, life would go by very fast. before we could say “boom”, lou would go to school and have brothers and sisters. we’d be old farts with a mortgage, living off our memories. with that picture in mind, we decided to make some drastic changes in our lives, before getting rusty in our habits.

so we sat in our kitchen and tried to find out, what our next adventure would be about. maybe hitch hiking through europe? with a child? really? or moving to canada? hmm… we instantly loved that idea. montreal seemed like a city we could live in for a while… the job opportunities seemed ok. and we had watched several french canadian movies that really made us fall in love with that city.

montreal.

i don’t quite remember why we changed our mind back then, but over time  montreal was replaced by auckland, new zealand. we stared talking about it in our families. with our friends. filled out application forms. i started reading the new zealand php user groups mailing list and looking for a job.

and a bit over half a year ago, i told my bosses about our intension to leave switzerland.

so things got pretty serious. but the more i thought about it, the more i saw myself in a foreign country, working my ass off while my girls would be  bored at home.

and this is where we started thinking about something different. about a real vacation. maybe a long one. fortunately, my boss agreed to give me a 3 months vacation. rachel was inclined to quit her job. the only thing we missed, was a location we could agree upon.

i still felt like visiting down under, but came to realize that our kind of salaries would not allow such a destination. same thing with the US of A and canada… rachel started talking about south america. i was more into morocco or eastern africa.

so it went for a while. at the same time, muriel, a coworker of mine, was planing to move to bangkok, thailand. she already had found her apartment, and offered for us to visit her.

as we just did not seem able to decide upon a country to visit, we simply accepted her invitation and bought the plain tickets. i told our landlord that we’d leave our apartment by the end of february, applied for a thai language course (which unfortunately never took place). and went on working and living for several months.

a bit over a week ago, rachel and i had our last work days. lou just made her first steps. we moved out of our apartment. tried to see all our friends one or two more times.

right now, we live at rachel’s parent’s place. tomorrow, we will be boarding for bangkok.

i do not realize what is happening to us. neither does rachel. things just happened. and in the end it was much easier than expected. even if the last four days were very tiring.

so. stay tuned. things will get exiting here

we did the impossible. we moved out of our apartment and are now officially homeless! this would never have been possible without the help of some devoted friends.

claude, damian, alain, pitt, thierry, laure, nico, david, yves and peter helped us. they put an effort into this, as if it was their stuff they had to pack, their furniture to move and their toilet to clean.

so here we say: thanks. and much more!

tomorrow is friday, november 30th. and there is only one good reason not to attend the the liipero.

scout niblett plays at the bad bonn.

therefor, you will be expected in our office (map) at 5pm tomorrow, should you not attend scout niblett.

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somehow, when getting to work this morning, the fact that it was Sunday didn’t bother me as much as the dust we found in the office. see for yourself:

we did spend quite some time cleaning up table, keyboards, cables…

… screens, computers, cables …

… and chairs. here’s a chair with a print of thierry’s new shoos… actually he took these pictures.