Helsinki and Tallinn (Mon, 4 April)

The flight from Bangkok to Helsinki passed quite smoothly. The plane had some hick-ups with starting the personal entertainment system at first, but once they got it running, there were several recent movies to catch. I could get some sleep despite the choice of movies, but Felipe was hooked by the movies the whole flight.

The security check in Helsinki was painfully tedious. Taking into account that it was early in the morning and we were tired and didn’t have all that much time to catch the connecting flight, it felt quite irritating, especially because there was no way we could have obtained a bomb from somewhere while hanging in the air between Bangkok and Helsinki, but well, that’s the achievement of the terrorists after 9/11 – posing obstacles to enjoying the fun of travelling. Fortunately, we still caught our connecting flight to Tallinn.

The weather was not extremely welcoming in Tallinn (not to say it was really bad), but it still felt good to be back home and besides, it really didn’t make much difference what the weather would be for sleeping. All was nice and well with our apartment, thanks to Madli who had taken good care of it.

We unpacked and made a pot of Salvest seljanka (what a change from our previous two months menu!) and took a good nap.

One more fairy tale was over for this time, but I guess it was about time. And, as Pipe’s Argentine friends say, we were back to the elves’ fairy tale land of Estonia…

Bangkok (Sun, 3 Apr)

I woke up in the morning with the idea that I wanted to go to the Khao San neighbourhood, where we spent our first days in Bangkok last time. Khao San street is basically a backpackers’ ghetto, with loads of cheap tourist oriented stuff. Felipe was not particularly thrilled of the idea, but as I was really determined to go there and it was likely that we would find some decent offers for massage there, he agreed.

After spending a lazy morning at Antonio’s place, we took a cab to Khao San street. We walked up and down the street and located the place that seemed most enticing for massage. There was yet another treat for an antitrust lawyer – the price lists of all massage shops proudly quoted that the prices are unified across the street J.

I chose a herbal massage this time –this included pressing a hot compress of herbs on the Thai massage spots. At first it felt a bit weird, but was quite nice all in all. Felipe chose classic Thai massage – it was quite strong, but apparently quite good.

We then went for lunch and of course, the good old green papaya salad seemed perfect for the last day in Asia. We succeeded in negotiating the right level of spiciness with the chef. So we really enjoyed it.

We then had manicure and pedicure done. It was cheap, but the technique was a bit brutal for my taste. So I wasn’t all that happy with this in the end.

Once having had enough of the tourist stuff, we headed back to Antonio’s place. Felipe took a final sunbathing and swim at the building pool, while I prepared my bags for leaving.

When Antonio got back home, we had a great cheese fondue on his balcony overlooking Bangkok for the last time and it was soon time to say good bye to Antonio and to SE Asia.

Bangkok (Sat, 2 Apr)

In the morning Antonio took us to see his boat, which he is building at the outskirts of Bangkok. He has been building that boat for ten years already and he hopes to have it ready by the end of the year. It was impressive to see his dedication to this project and the boat will surely look nice once it is ready.

We then to the nearby Pangplee (or Bangphli) market – an old market in what used to be a remote small riverside village. According to Antonio, Bangkok has grown exponentially within the time he has lived there. Hence, what used to be remote villages amidst rice fields are now densely built up outskirts of the city. This market had been preserved quite nicely in its old style, but it looked a bit out of place taking into account the nearby new developments.

Antonio stayed working on his boat we went on to do some final shopping at Chatuchak market. According to its webpage, it is one of the world’s largest weekend markets: It covers an area of 27 acres and contains more than 15,000 booths, selling goods from every part of Thailand. As we are not very fond of the markets, shopping, crowds and filth that usually come together in SE Asia, we were prepared for the worst. But we were in fact very nicely surprised. The place was big enough not to feel overcrowded and as we didn’t happen to step into the food sections, it didn’t smell badly or look filthy. But they really have a lot of stuff there and it’s a great place to buy nice souvenirs at good prices. We spent a good three hours there until they started to close the place down at 6 pm. In the end, we got quite a lot of thighs – e.g. shawls, ties, a handbag, wooden decorative items for our home, pillow covers, etc., but didn’t spent all that much money. So, good business for us, good business for the vendors.

In the evening, Antonio took us to a nice pizza restaurant in the vicinity of the Thai prime minister’s residence in the Sukhumvit neighbourhood. In that sense, it was also kind of continuing the sightseeing, especially because Antonio had interesting stories to tell about all the places around.

Ayuthaya (Fri, 1 Apr)

We had planned to make a day trip to Ayuthaya this day and so we headed through the city to Bangkok northern bus station and caught the 9 o’clock bus there. It took about 2 hours to get to Ayuthaya, because even though the distance is only about 75 km, the bus stopped here and there to pick up more people.

Ayuthaya is a centuries-old town with a population of 137,000. It was the Thai capital for 417 years between 1350 and 1767, and it was an important trading city, as its centre is located on an inland island at the meeting point of 3 navigable rivers. Owing to the trade it used to be a very prosperous city and had a lot palaces and temples. Unfortunately, most of its grandeur was heavily damaged and looted during the Burmese attack in 1767, which was fatal to the great Ayuthaya kingdom of that time. The survivors that rebuilt the Siamese (now Thai) kingdom moved the capital south to Bangkok instead of rebuilding it in Ayuthaya.

A considerable amount of the old temples or the ruins thereof have been restored to some extent by now. We rented bikes and rode around the city from temple to temple. We started from Wat Phra Mahathat. The most remarkable feature of this temple complex is a Buddha head embedded among tree roots.

We continued our tour with a visit to the Ayuthaya Historical Study Centre – a museum that gives an overview of a life in Ayuthaya Kingdom as it once was.

We then went to Wat Phra Si Sanphet, which used to be the largest temple in Ayuthaya and it was used by several kings. It houses three huge chedis (stupas) and it used to have some huge golden Buddha statues, which were melted down by the Burmese. Next to Wat Phra Si Sanphet is the beautiful Wihaan Mongkhon Bophit. This temple has been nicely restored and it houses one of Thailand’s biggest bronze Buddhas (17 metres high).

It was burning hot by the time we were there and we were really hungry. There was a market right next to the temples and there were all kinds of local delicacies (dried fish, deep fried waffles, pickled fruits, cosmic looking sweets and pastries). Nothing of this seemed too promising, but I noticed the ingredients of green papaya salad in one stall. I had been missing the green papaya salad all the time since leaving Laos and was happy to have it again, together with some refreshing cold beer. We had a first one that was too spicy for us (even after 2 months in Asia!) but we asked another one with no chilli at all, and that levelled it out… It was really nice to have our new favourite Asian dish!

In the afternoon we went on riding around different old temples or ruins (Wat Chetharam, Wat Lokaya Sutha, Wat Na Phra Meru, ending up at Wat Ratburana). Really nice pass time…

We had thought of doing some souvenir shopping in the evening at the central local market, Chao Phrom Market. But it appeared that it was oriented to locals – no souvenirs, only foodstuff and hideous apparel. So, no shopping there.

We took a boat across the river to go to railway station on the other side. The boat ride took about 2 minutes. I was determined to use a train at least once during our trip. So, we headed to the railway station and got tickets to the next train to Bangkok. We didn’t have to wait for long, perhaps only 15 minutes. It took about 2 hours to get to Bangkok. The train was a bit crowded at the beginning, so that Felipe had to stand for a while, but soon people started to alight and we were almost the only ones left by the time the train arrived to Bangkok central station.

We ended the day with a nice dinner at Antonio’s balcony chatting with him about the day.

Bangkok (Thu, 31 Mar)

As we had already done the “compulsory” sightseeing of Bangkok in our previous trip three years ago, we decided to skip the main tourist attractions and just do whatever we felt like doing.

Our agenda for the first half of the day was to go to Pantip, a huge 6-floor shopping centre full of all kinds of IT-related gadgets stores (e.g. computers, mobiles, cameras, hardware, (pirate) software, dvds, cds, etc.). I was a bit tempted to get a new laptop, but as all laptops had Thai-Western alphabet keyboards, but not Western alphabet-only keyboards, I decided that my dear old IBM is good enough. We also looked around for mobiles, but at least the price of HTC phones did not seem to be too much cheaper than in Estonia. So I decided there was no point in getting it from here. They also had quite cheap fake iPhone 4, but as it lacked GPS functionality and we were not quite sure what other possible functionalities, we decided we didn’t need that either. So we ended up just getting an extra battery and an extra memory card for our photo camera.

In the afternoon, we shopped for some spices needed for Asian cuisines and also for some sweets to take home with us. As we had decided to cook a Lao-style dinner for Antonio, we looked around for the groceries as well.

Our Lao-style cooking worked out quite nicely, except that it had proved very difficult to find rice paper for spring rolls and what we thought had been rice paper appeared to be something different and unsuited for spring rolls. So we swiftly turned the content of spring rolls into a salad, but that was nice enough too. We enjoyed the dinner at Antonio’s balcony with the view.

Bali / Bangkok (Wed, 30 Mar)

We had agreed on the airport ride with a taxi driver the previous day. He picked us up from the hotel at 8 in the morning as agreed. The ride took about 1.5 hours and then there was the regular formalities and waiting at the airport. The flight was quite long – 4.5 hours. I hadn’t realised before that Bali is that far from Bangkok, but I checked now and apparently the distance is about 2,300 km, i.e. a bit more than from Tallinn to Rome.

Once in Bangkok, we headed to Antonio’s place. After all the immigration formalities and transport connections, we got there by around 6 in the evening. We shared some of travel stories with Antonio and then went for dinner to a nice seafood restaurant by the river. We ended the day sitting the balcony of Antonio’s apartment with the panoramic view over Bangkok, chatting with Antonio – he really has a lot of stories to tell. Very nice!

Ubud – cooking experience vol. 2 and Balinese dance (Tue, Mar 29)

Inspired by the great cooking class at Luang Prabang, we thought it might be nice to learn also a bit more about Balinese and Indonesian cooking in general.

We met our chef Desak and four other students at 9 in the morning the centre of Ubud and headed to the nearby market. Interestingly, the market operates as a food market in the early morning and as a souvenir market during the rest of the day. We got there right about the time before the shift occurs. The market was probably a bit less interesting than the one in Luang Prabang, but we still learned about some new vegetables (e.g. bitter melon) and spices (e.g. turmeric, which is one of the central spices for Balinese cuisine). One of students of the cooking class was eager to try durian and we thought it was a good idea to give durian a second chance for us. Desak helped us to choose a good durian – she asked vendors to cut durian open and checked whether it looked fine. Several durians proved not to be good enough, but we as non-experienced durian eaters wouldn’t have known that without her insight.

The cooking venue of this class was, again, not as nice as Tum Tum Cheng’s in Luang Prabang, but we still learned to make quite a few dishes: “saffron” sauce (actually yellow turmeric), Balinese sauce, peanut sauce and sambal sauce, which are bases for many Balinese dishes, Bakso (Balinese soup with chicken balls), Pepes ikan (banana leaf wrap with fish filling), Satay lilit (chicken or fish satay), Urab (Balinese boiled vegetable dish), Nasi Goreng (fried rice), Mee Goreng (fried noodles), Gado-Gado (Indonesian vegetable dish with peanut sauce) and Dadar Gulung (pancake with coconut filling). After cooking all this, we had the feast of eating all the dishes – a bit too spicy for a hot day, but quite tasty :)!

We ended the feast with the durian that we had gotten from the market earlier. It’s said that durian smells like hell and tastes like heaven. We didn’t quite agree. It does smell bad indeed, but its taste is not what we would call heavenly. It’s rather sweet and tastes like a mix between a melon and papaya, but with the creamy texture of an overly ripe banana. It’s ok to try once, but taken the bad smell and the hassle with choosing and opening it, it’s not really worth taking it into your daily fruit menu.

After the cooking class, we headed back to the market, which had turned into souvenir bazaar by that time. We did some souvenir shopping and headed back to our guesthouse. As our guesthouse was located at Penestanan, which is known for its painters, we found it a good neighbourhood to look around for a few more art shops and do some art shopping.

In the evening, I treated myself with a Balinese massage. I happened to find a really nice spa for that – Kiradi Spa(www.spainubudbali.com). If any of you ever comes to Ubud, I really recommend this place.

As Bali, and Ubud in particular, is famous for its traditional dances, we thought it might be worthwhile to end our stay in Bali with a dance show. So, we caught a Legong dance performance performed at open air stage of the Pura Dalem Ubud temple by the Sekaa Gong Karyasa troupe. The dancers were really mesmerising – every movement of their body was controlled up to their fingertips, facial expressions and even glances, and the costumes were also wonderful. All dances were accompanied with a live gamelan orchestra. All this was really wow! It was only sad that were many more performers on stage than people in the audience (only 6 people in all), but we tried to make it up with good applauses.

After the dance show, we had dinner in restaurant with a nice river view and said farewell to Indonesia.

Motorcycle trip around Ubud (Mon, 28 Mar)

We rented a motorbike for the day and headed to see some sights around Ubud.

We wanted to go to see Gunung Kawi – an ancient temple site, which has a group of shines cut into cliff – first, but it proved quite difficult to find. Asking directions from locals who didn’t speak English we ended up at a site called indeed Gunung Kawi, but when we read the descriptions from the LP, it just didn’t seemed to match at all. We then realised that this was another Gunung Kawi (at Sebatu – Tegallalang). That explained the lack of tourist crowds and souvenir stalls around it. It was a nice old temple to see anyway, but we had no idea what was the significance of this particular sight.

The Gunung Kawi of Tampaksiring that we had been looking for was 4 km away. After taking a few more wrong turns, we finally found it. There was a nice small path amidst rice fields leading down to the river. The huge stone engraved shrines were on either sides of the river. The shrines and the temple there date back to 11^th century.

From there we moved on to the nearby Tirta Empul – a temple with holy springs, which bubble out from a pool near the temple. The water of the springs is directed to bathing pools. Quite a few locals were paying respect to the spring waters and bathing there. We didn’t feel like joining them for the bath, but still washed our hands and faces with refreshing spring water.

We then headed back towards Ubud, planning to see a few more sights highlighted by the LP. With a little more help from locals, we managed to find the Yeh Pulu bas-relief. This is a 25 metre-long carved cliff face, which is believed to date back to 14^th century. Compared with the carvings of Borobudur, this is hardly remarkable, but it was quite nice and secluded.

As a final sight, we went to see yet another temple, Goh Gajah – a cave temple carved into a rock with entrance through mouth of a demon. There are also a fountains and a bathing pool around. This temple site is believed to date back to the 11^th century.

Once done with the planned temple sightseeing, we rode through the wood carvers villages north of Ubud. The sides of the road had a myriad of workshops selling marvellous future, decorations, small and big figures, masks, etc. In addition, there were a lot of nice shops with excellent choice of lamps. Having endured the almost epic quest for decent lamps for our home, we felt really sad this kind of stuff is not imported into Estonia. We really felt restrained – there is no way we can send any of the lamps, chairs or tables home without spending a fortune on shipping costs, even though the prices for the beautiful things were really reasonable (not to say very cheap).

We got back to our guesthouse right before it got dark. We took advantage of our guesthouse having a swimming pool and after the refreshing splash we capped the day with a quiet dinner.

Ubud (Sun, 27 Mar)

After a lazy enough breakfast, we headed towards the centre of Ubud.

Ubud is a rather small town in the middle of Bali known as the cultural centre of Bali, and also made famous by Elisabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love. Even though it’s very touristy, I still liked it. As we headed towards the centre, there were of course a lot of guys offering transport or motorbike for rent, but we knew it would be like that and it wasn’t as aggressive as in Seminyak. There are a lot of shops selling art, woodcarvings, souvenirs and clothes everywhere and most of the shops are really cute.

Dropping by from some of the art shops/galleries along the way, we reached the Monkey Forest Sanctuary, which is basically a nice large park that hosts three temples and is also a home for about 300 Balinese macaques. We had been warned that the monkeys can be quite aggressive, but as we had no food with us, they had no reason to attack us. I didn’t expect much from the place (we anticipated it would be very touristy), but I was really nicely surprised. The monkeys were wonderful and the temples and the surrounding park felt quite magical.

Once out of the Monkey Forest, we continue wandering around the streets and art shops until we came to conclusion that it might be a good idea to visit some art museum to get a better grasp of Balinese art. The Agung Rai Museum of Art (called ARMA) appeared to be closest for us, so we headed there. The museum was quite nice – the buildings of the museum are designed in Balinese style and stand amidst gardens, ponds and fountains. The collection of the museum includes the works of various Balinese and foreign painters, inter alia the rather famous German painter Walter Spies.

The museum front yard happened to host the Bali Spirit Festival. We had read the festival ads the day before – it looked interesting but the ticket price was quite high, so we were not sure we wanted to go there. But as we got out of the museum we found ourselves right in festival grounds. So we seized the opportunity and stayed.

The concerts of the festival were really nice, including both Balinese and foreign bands and shows groups (including for example local kecak and fire dancers, xylophone orchestras and bands from Northern California and Burkina Fasso). There were a lot of hippie spirited people in the festival, probably most of them expats and tourists. It reminded Viljandi Folk a bit, but the focus was not so much on ethnic/folk music, but more on spiritual music. We had a good time and were quite happy for the coincidence that placed us amidst the festival.

Labuanbajo / Ubud (Sat, 26 Mar)

As our flight to Bali was in the early afternoon, we didn’t have too much time for sightseeing, but still had the morning to spend around Labuanbajo. We decided to go to a nearby beach, which was at walking distance from our guesthouse.

The beach was not very particular. We being almost the only people there, it looked quite deserted, but somehow not in a nice way. There was a lot of garbage in the sea and also of the road to the beach. This really looked sad. Actually, we have noticed that the careless presence of garbage everywhere is prevalent throughout Indonesia, and even diving or snorkelling in Gilis and Komodo you can see plastic bags and empty packs of chips lying around among the corals. It made us think that even though the country is poor, keeping your neighbourhood clean by not throwing waste randomly around but collecting it wouldn’t cost anything. Throwing rubbish around just expresses disrespect.

We took a bemo to the airport around noon and stayed there waiting for our plane, which was delayed (of course). The airport was rather small and simple, but a town of 7,500 inhabitants with only a few flights a day does not need anything fancy.

The plain was a bit worn out – the AC dripped water at some places and some seats would recline front when leaning on them, but fortunately everything functioned enough to take us safely to Denpasar.

We arrived to Denpasar around 5 pm. We got a taxi from the airport to Ubud. It took almost two hours to get to Ubud. As we approached Ubud, there we a lot of paddy fields and stone and wood carving workshops along the road, and generally the scenery was really nice.

As it was already dark by the time we got to Ubud, we were not much in the mood to go around different places. We had gathered several recommendations for accommodation in Ubud from other travellers. So we just told the taxi driver to drop us one of them. So, we stayed in a place which looks like it has been a temple some time ago (I’m not quite sure if it actually was a temple or not, but it looks really nice anyway).

We dropped our luggage and found a nice place for dinner nearby.