Fake

Khao San Road is absolutely chock-full of little stalls selling cheesy t-shirts. And since this is my last full day in Thailand, I couldn't resist picking up a few of them as souvenirs. As their brand name suggests, they are all pretty much "same same... but different". I especially like the "iPood" one, which is a not-at-all-subtle satire on that overpriced fashion accessory which I've avoided owning for so many years. Also good is the one with the picture of cave man evolving into upright man, and then ultimately devolving into man hunched over a computer screen, with the inscription: "something somewhere went terrible wrong." Geek power! The tuk-tuk one is cute, too. It was tough to pick out a mere three, since they're all so funny and so wearable — but sadly, I can't take the entire contents of Khao San Road back home with me.

For the second night of our Doi Inthanon trek, we're staying at the Karen "hill-tribe" village in the area. I say "hill-tribe" with inverted commas, and for good reason: this is actually well-known as a "fake" village — unlike the real hill-tribe villages further north in Thailand, it's quite literally just kept here for the purposes of tourism — and this is fairly obvious when you visit the place. They get tourists staying here almost every night (especially during peak season), and they're neither awkward nor intimidated around us. We saw the hill-tribe school, where the local kids are taught to read and write; we were shown the villagers' humble houses; and we observed the various animals that roam freely around the town. Our accommodation for the night — like last night's — is a simply affair of bamboo huts, which are once again rather uncomfortable, but which are something rough and different.

There really wasn't much to do when Chris and I arrived in Sucre this morning, after our interesting night's bus ride. So we decided to check out Parque Cretácico, a site where you can see dinosaur footprints embedded in the face of a rock wall, and one of Sucre's main tourist attractions. Very cheesy place, and not terribly awe-inspiring, either. But like I said, there wasn't really much else to do in Sucre. So we had a look at the footprints.