Welcome to Thailand!

Chiang Mai, Thailand - After two 10 hour  days on a boat running rapids up the Mekong River followed by a 6 hour minibus ride from the border we've finally arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

We were here on our honeymoon 5.5 years ago so it is nice to be back in a city we really enjoyed and have some familiarity with.

We left Luang Prabang on Wednesday morning and spent 1o hours on our boat the Luang Say cruising upstream to  Pak Beng where we overnighted.  The cruise was quite nice as we were on a boat that held 40 and there  was only 7 of us so plenty of room to spread out and enjoy the scenery. We made a couple of stops along the way to see some caves and visit a couple of villages. 

One of the villages is famous for its Lao Lao which is the local moonshine aka rice whiskey.  After being told the fine points of how the whiskey is distilled we were invited to sample some of the firewater.

It wasn''t too bad though probably would have tasted better if it wasn't 100F+ outside and the bottles hadn't been sitting in the sun all day.

The scenery along the river was spectacular, very mountainous with many rocky outcrops in the river exposed by how low the river was at this time of year.  The boat even had to run the rapids upsteam quite a few times.  For such a large boat it apparently only drew about a meter of water so didn't need much water to avoid running aground.

We spent a night in Pak Beng actually about a mile upstream of PakBeng at the Luang Say Lodge which was quite nice with great vistas of the mountains and the Mekong River from our windows.

Unfortunately it was quite warm and since there were no screen on the windows we had to keep them closed to keep the bugs out (we did have a mosquito net over the bed as well).

Neither of us slept great as it was so warm though the lodge was very comfortable and the dinner was excellent.

After breakfast it was back on the boat by 7am for another 10 hour  trip.  We stopped at one more village (I feel like I've seen enough villages for awhile) and arrived at Houay Xai on the Lao side of the border around 5pm.  We took a tuk-tuk to the Lao border and got our exit stamps then hopped in a small boat that took us across the Mekong to the Thai side.  After having our temperature taken to make sure we didn't have swine flu (we didn't!) and a couple of forms and stamps later we were officially allowed into Thailand.

We had decided to spend the night  at the border and head to Chiang Mai the  next day as it was 6 more hours to get to Chiang Mai.  We threw our backpacks on and headed down the main road paralleling the Mekong to find a hotel.

After a few hundred meters we were sweating like crazy as it was quite warm and very humid out (Surprise!).  We stopped at the first hotel that said they had AC, I looked at a room and while it wasn't anything special it was reasonably clean, cheap and had AC.

After cooling down for a few minutes we headed out to organize our transport to Chiang Mai the next day and booked a mini-bus.

The next day we had an uneventful minibus ride from Chiang Kong to Chiang Mai followed by a short walk to our hotel and we had arrived.

Twenty hours on a boat, 2 nights and a 6 hour minibus ride was all it had taken!  I think we'll stay in Chiang Mai a few days to recuperate.  The weather is much nicer here, the food is great and we have a few things we need to get done with me needing a hair cut and Betsy needing a spa treatment being the top 2 on the list!

Monks on Parade

Today I managed to get Betsy out of bed bright and early to see the monks receiving their alms from the locals.  Every morning between 530am and 6am (except Sunday's it seems) the monks walk through the streets where the locals give them sticky rice for their bowls.

Today is also our last day in Luang Prabang.  We were here for 6 days the longest we've been anywhere and honestly we were ready to leave a couple of days ago but we had to wait for our boat which isn't leaving until tomorrow.  We haven't done as much sightseeing as we'd have liked in Luang Prabang as it has just been too hot!  Accuweather.com currently shows the "realfeel" temperature in Luang Prabang to currently be 135F!  Ouch!

We have a 2 day boat trip up the Mekong tomorrow morning and on Thursday night will cross the border into Thailand.

Cambodia Photos

I've uploaded some photos from the Cambodia part of our trip (other than the Angkor Temples) to the website.  Click on the link to the  right or here

Where to Next??

Luang Prabang, Laos - As I mentioned in the last post we are almost at the mid point of our trip and are trying to figure out where to go next.

We had both really wanted to go to Myanmar but with the onset of the wet season and blistering temperatures their at the moment coupled with intermittent electricity we are not sure how comfortable it would be traveling.  No AC or even a fan in 100F(40C) weather is pretty tough to do for long and with the wet season approaching some of the areas we really wanted to go would be inaccessible.

So Myanmar is out for this trip. 

What we have decided to do is spend June in Thailand and July and August in Indonesia.  We will cross into Thailand next week after taking a 2 day boat up the Mekong River to the Lao-Thai border.

From there we will work our way south through Thailand all the way to the Thai Islands down into Malaysia probably to Kuala Lumpur. 

From there we will fly to Indonesia for two months.  At this point we are thinking of spending 1 month on the island of Sulawesi and another month in Nusa Tenggara which are the group of islands east of Bali including Lombok & Flores.

Finally we'll end up in Bali for a week before flying back to Singapore and heading home.

All of the above are subject to change!

2 Months on the Road

Luang Prabang, Laos - Last week we passed our two month mark on the road.  At times it seems like it is going by quickly but at other times it still feels like we have a long ways to go.

Some observations from the first couple of months:

Favorite Cities/Towns:

• Halong Bay, Vietnam - Beautiful Scenery, lovely boat, fun co-passengers
• Hoi An, Vietnam - Cheap Happy Hours! Lots of restaurant choices and nice town
• Saigon, Vietnam - Vibrant cosmopolitan city, great food choices, huge improvement over Hanoi!
• Luang Prabang, Laos - Similiar to Hoi An, very nice town, great food, shopping, tours. World Heritage site

Least Favorite Cities/Towns:

• Hanoi, Vietnam - Big, dirty, loud, Hoan Kiem Lake was nice but that was about it.  Saigon was much better!
• Chau Doc, Vietnam - Mekong Border town, spent 1 night which was plenty.
• Battambang, Cambodia - Countryside tour made it worthwhile but the actual town had little redeeming features.

Favorite Restaurants:

• Foreign Correspondents Club in Phnom Penh - Cheap Happy Hour, good food if a little expensive but great atmosphere, very colonial feel.
• El Camino - Siem Reap, Cambodia - Authentic tasting Mexican food and great margaritas reminded us  of home
• Texas BBQ - Nha Trang, Vietnam - Some of the best BBQ we've ever had, another reminder of home
• Plenty of great little local restaurants that we've since forgotten the name of throughout Vietnam and to a lesser extent Cambodia & Laos.
• JOMA Cafe in Vientiane & Luang Prabang - Good Sandwiches and great Lemon-Mint "Smoothies" for those HOT days.
• Friends Cafe in Phnom Penh - Cafe trains former street children how to work in the restaurant industry and in the process serves some of the best food we've had anywhere in Asia.

Favorite Activities:

• "Mahout for a Day" - Elephant Park Project, Luang Prabang, Laos - We each had our own elephant that we got to take down to the river and bathe, quite the experience!
• Halong Bay 3 day/2 night tour on the Prince II.  Stunning scenery, great food and other travelers made this a highlight.
• Red Bridge Cooking School in Hoi An - Great Food, nice riverside location.
• Tuk-Tuk Tour through the countryside of Battambang, Cambodia, seeing villages, ruins and talking to our Tuk Tuk driver a survivor of the Khmer Rouge.
• Killing Fields in Phnom Penh while not a "favorite" definitely the most moving.

Favorite Things:

• Great Fruit Shakes/Juices
• Cheap Beer (Beer Lao, Tiger Beer, Angkor, Singha etc), big bottles for a $1
• Hotels with Air conditioning and wifi!
• So many great eating options in most towns and cheap!
• Not having to go to work every day!
• Seeing interesting things and meeting interesting people

Least Favorite Things:

• Expensive cocktails (Betsy - Can only drink so much beer!)
• Having to figure out accomodation in each new town.
• Staying near bodies of water (Mekong River) that you can't swim in and it is 100+F
• Tuk Tuk drivers constantly asking you if you need a tuk tuk
• Vietnamese trains - expensive and dirty, the buses are much better value

Even our least favorite places had some redeeming features they just aren't places we would rush back to or tell anyone they had to see.

Two months down and three and a half to go at this point we are in no hurry to head home...

Mae Pua & Mae Cot...Our Elephants

LUANG PRABANG, Laos - The experience at the Elephant Park Project was amazing.  We were part of a 5 person group that headed about 30 minutes outside of the town center to have a day with the elephants.  When we arrived at the park our guide explained the conservation efforts of the park, the rules we needed to follow when we were around the elephants and interesting elephant facts.  At this park there were 7 females of varying ages.

Then we climbed a small tower so that we could get onto the bench-like seat that is on the elephant.  Stacy and I both climbed onto Mae Pua along with her mahout (the elephant's keeper for life) and we were off into the jungle.  There were parts of the path that were very steep but the elephant handled it gracefully; unlike her passengers!!  We soon reached the river and made our way across.  As we were going along, our mahout asked if I would like to take the drivers  seat.  As I climbed down from the safety of the chair onto the elephants neck, I was thinking, "how do you stop this thing."  All of a sudden, there I was with my legs tucked behind the elephants ears, sitting on her head & walking through the water.....what a thrill!  Soon we came to a sand bar in the middle of river and our mahout took our camera and jumped OFF!!!  Yes, I was still driving and there was no mahout on-board....he was taking our picture as we were walking along.  Stacy took a turn also and chauffeured me around on the elephant.

We returned to the station were we had begun our elephant ride.  Next we then attended "mahout school" where we learned the different commands & how to get on and off the elephant as a mahout.  The bench-like chairs were removed from the elephants backs and we each climbed onto our own elephant as a mahout. 

 Stacy's elephant, Mae Cot, is the leader of all the other elephants and the oldest one at the park at 60 years old.  I stayed with Mae Pua as my elephant.  She is the youngster of the group at 17.  Her mother died when she was 3 and her current mahout quit school to be the one to take care of her.

We rode our elephants  back to the river for their bath.  Once we made it to the middle of the river I saw Stacy with Mae Cot partly submerged and getting a nice bath.  As soon as Mae Pua and I reached them Mae Pua completely submerged her entire body into the river and me with her.  Mae Cot never did this while Stacy was bathing her but Mae Pua was very playful and decided this was fun....continuing to do this 3 or 4 more times.  Even though there was elephant dung floating around a bit, this was still the most amazing experience!  You can tell the elephants love to be in the water and be scrubbed with a brush.  They are flapping their ears and moving their trunks all around.  So much fun!!!

We then went to the other side of the river and a short way into the jungle where we said goodbye to our new elephant & mahout friends.  Our guide explained that the mahouts will continue taking the elephants up into the mountains to eat and sleep.

The remainder of the day we were served a lovely lunch and given massages in huts overlooking the river.  The end to a day I will never forget!

 

VIP = Vomit Inducing Potential

Luang Prabang, Laos - VIP was stamped in big letters on the front of our bus from Vientiane to Luang Prabang and while the bus was decent I think it was more an inference of the twisty trip to be expected from Vientiane to Luang Prabang.

We arrived in Luang Prabang last night after a 10 hour bus ride. Now it is only 380km (~230 miles) from Vientiane to LP but it takes 10 hours as the road twists and turns through the mountains most of the 10 hours (see the sat photo above of part of the route).  We reached an altitude of almost 1500m and then back down to 450m and then back up to 1200m and finally reached LP at 340m above sea level.

At times we could have walked up the hill faster but our bus driver was more than willing to make up time going down the hill.  He took the twists and turns faster than I would want to take them in my BMW!

Luckily neither Betsy nor I have a predilection to motion sickness but the bus ride did claim a couple of victims.

It was a beautiful (if long) ride through the mountains though and our first impressions of Luang Prabang are that it is a very nice town and we are looking forward to spending a few days here.

Tomorrow we get to spend a day with the elephants learning to be Mahouts (elephant trainers). This is probably the thing Betsy is most looking forward to on the trip so I am sure she will provide a detailed post of the experience.

Quietest Capital City in the World?

Vientiane, Laos - That would in fact be Vientiane the capital of Laos.  We spent the last 4 days in the capital and actually didn't do too much.  We saw a couple of wats, walked along the Mekong but mostly just spent two days getting our Thai visas.  Vientiane is a pleasant enough place and very quiet especially compared to other SouthEast Asian capital cities but then there are only 250,000 people in  Vientiane.

As I mentioned we had to get visas for Thailand as the Thai governmennt in their infinite wisdom decided to crack down on people living illegally in Thailand by changing the visa rules a couple of months ago.  Previously if arriving overland into Thailand you were automatically granted a 30 day visas (most western/asian countries) however a lot of guys were staying in Thailand for months if not years and just doing runs to the border with Laos, turning around and getting a new 30 day visa.  Thailand decided to combat this by changing the visa rules so that you can only get a 15 day "visa on arrival" when crossing overland. This would frustrate the guys living in Thailand and force them to leave.  What is has done instead is inconvenience every traveler crossing overland and forced them to get  a visa ahead of time and waste at least 2 days doing it.

Maybe a better solution would have been to limit the number of visas a person could get in a year?  That would stop the perennial overstayers yet not impact tourism.  Better be careful, we don't want logic to get in the way of any decisions.

Anyhow Monday morning we lined up to get a visa took about 3.5 hours, then came back the next day and waited another couple of hours andpicked up our passport.

Painless process, didn't cost any money just was a waste of time. 

So tired....

VIENTIANE, Laos - We are sitting in the restaurant of our hotel waiting for the people who are currently in "our" room to checkout so that it can be cleaned and we can check in.

We took the overnight bus from Pakse to Vientiane a 10 hour trip.  We were "lucky" enough to have booked a "sleeping" bus for this trip.  

Our worst travel experience to date was the overnight train from Hanoi to Hue.  Neither of us are really fans of overnight trips as we don't sleep that well when traveling overnight and last night was no exception.

Walking around Pakse we saw the sleeping bus in a parking lot near our hotel and were quite impressed by it.  It looked very clean,  the pillows looked nice, and it even had a fullsize bathroom (i.e. the door was normal sized not 4 feet high like our bus from Siem  Reap to Phnom Penh)

Anyhow we walked back the next day to book the bus for the following night but the guy in front of us in the queue was taking forever so being to impatient to wait we just decided to walk over to a travel agent to book the bus instead.  

That was a mistake!  When we were dropped of at the bus station the next night there were a bunch of travelers waiting to get on a bus only they weren't getting on our bus they were getting on a nice looking bus parked next to ours!

The tuk tuk that had picked us up at our hotel along with 2 other backpackers had already unloaded our luggage from the top rack into the hold of the bus before we could get out, at least we hoped our luggage was on the bus.

Our bus once again turned out to be completely populated with locals with the exception of two french girls that were backpacking.  We stepped on board and our hearts sank, the bus we were on was nowhere near as nice as the one we had seen the day before and in fact it looked nothing like the other bus which had had cubbyholes and double beds that would sit up like a chaise lounge and curtains for privacy.

Once we had stepped over all the flip flops in the aisle and hopped up to our "bunk" we knew we were in trouble.  The bed measured probably 3' x 5' and was designed for two?  Also the 5' was a bit generous as at about 3 feet we had a rack over the top of the bed for our day packs and from 4 to 5 feet the bed in front sloped downward on an angle such that it was impossible to even lay on your back.  All you could do was lie on your side and wedge your feet under the bed in front!

The mattress was also flat, there was no adjusting the sitting position all you could do was lean your pillow against the luggage rack behind you to sit up.  So we did just that and sat up for the first two hours watching some tv shows on our laptop.  The rest of the bus was completely dark and after two hours we put away the laptop, turned on the ipods and attempted to get to sleep.

Neither one of us could get comfortable and we basically spent the whole night just lying there listening to our Ipod's.  The time actually went fairly quickly and we only made one stop the whole night.

Ten hours later we were in the Lao capital of Vientiane and in a Tuk Tuk headed to our hotel.  Unfortunately we were at our hotel before 7am and the current occupants of our room didn't check out until 12 pm so we had breakfast at the hotel restaurant (very good!), walked around for a couple of hours and then napped on the sofa in the restaurant before finally about 1230 pm we were able to check into our room!

So here we sit in our room trying to stay awake (its 4pm) until a decent hour.  I think tonight we'll just go next door to the hotel restaurant as the food is very good and we are too lazy to head out anywhere.

On Monday we need to head to the Thai Consulate to get a 30 day visa for Thailand as the Thai's in their infinite wisdom have decided to only hand out 15 day visas at the border instead of the usual 30 day visas that until recently they had always granted.  Fifteen days isn't much time to see a country as large as Thailand!

Off to happy hour, some food and then some sleep!

Village Life

PAKSE, Laos - Our tour yesterday included two villages.  The first village was Bane Kokphoung. As we walked up there was a couple of ladies surrounded by several children of varying ages. The women and 2 older girls where smoking on a "communal" pipe of local tobacco.  The village people don't speak Lao but rather their own language so our guide could not even communicate with them. Even with no words spoken, they still made us feel welcome. 

Our guide explained that their lives have improved since they are getting more money for the coffee that they grow and from the tours that come through. Our guide also told us that they don't give the village money but they do give school supplies, clothes, medicine, etc. for allowing us to come into the village.  The second village we went to was known for their weaving (that is where this picture was taken).  The children here and in the previous village have a way of melting your heart.  Most of the children in the villages have big smiles to greet you and a very playful way about them.  Makes you wish you could do something more to improve their situation....can be difficult at times.