Vientiane

Upon arriving in Vientiane we checked into what I have classified as the dumpiest room we've had yet. At first glance it doesn't seem that offensive. But then your nose kicks in and you smell the overwhelming combination of antiseptic and mold. And then you notice that there is no window - well, there's a window but it looks into a dark shed. And then you enter the bathroom which has an even worse smell. And then you think - "well it's only for 2 nights. I can do anything for 2 nights."



Our stay in Vientiane was filled with many chores. 1) Get money. The only ATMs in Laos are in Vientiane so stocking up on cash here is important. 2) Figure out how we're getting to Vietnam. Our Vietnamese visas start on Friday. We'd like to get into Vietnam at as northern a border crossing as possible as our plan is to start in Hanoi and work our way south to Ho Chi Mihn City. Put most simply there is limited information as to whether the border crossing we'd like to use is even open. If it's not, you're sort of screwed as you're in the middle of nowhere. Our desired border crossing is described in the Lonely Planet as "only for the most experienced travelers." This likely describes Michael - it most certainly does not describe me - but we're going to go for it and hope for the best.

Just wandering down the street I saw this monk sweeping the top of a temple - pretty cool. They use these handmade brooms that you see sold everywhere. This other monk was just taking a breather during a very hot day.





We did do some sightseeing in Vientiane. We visited Pha That Luang, which is described as the most important national monument in Laos - a symbol of both the Buddist religion and Lao sovereignty. What distinguished Pha That Luang from other wats we've seen is this huge gold structure smack in the middle of everthing. Not all the interestesting but you feel like if you can you should see the "most important national monument" of a country when you can.





Much more to my liking we visited Wat Sok Pa Luang. Within the confines of a functioning wat there is a little straw hut on stilts where you can take a sauna and get a massage. I didn't get any pictures but this place was totally charming and worth the trip. It was nice to have a little pampering before heading back to the smelly room.

At 4 am came the last room excitement. What sounded like a rat was running around in our ceiling!! He would run for a while and then be quiet for a while making us guess his next move. We lay awake for about 45 minutes with the flashlight trained on the ceiling. As would be expected we're pretty tired this morning.

Today we headed back up to Vang Vieng where I am right now, on the bamboo raft, typing this entry on Michael's Palm Pilot with the travel keyboard. Tomorrow we start the 4 day trek to Vietnam. I imagine there will be much to share when we get to the other side.

Vang Vieng

Getting to Vang Vieng required a 7 hour bus ride through some of the windiest roads I've ever been on. My stomach bounced around for pretty much the entire trip - ugh. On the bright side we stopped about every 90 minutes at various road side markets. At one of them I found this little monkey just sitting around eating an apple.



Either I'm getting more used to the toilets or they're just getting better. Must be the latter because I can't imagine the former actually happening. This set of three was found during one of our many stops. Cute...but I hate to imagine being in there at night - no lights, no nothing!



When you arrive in Vang Vieng you're dropped off pretty much right next to this huge tarmac that the United States built at some point. Very ugly, and makes you a bit scared about what this town will actually be like.



This is a very popular town with travelers. It consists of two dirt roads each about 2 blocks long filled with guest houses and restaurants. All the restaurants have tables with big pillows where you can watch movies all day and night. "Friends" seems to be quite popular here as it's played all the time in constant rotation at at least three different joints.



Speaking of joints, that's the other appeal of Vang Vieng. Almost all restaurants offer a variety of "happy" foods - pizza, shakes, pancakes, tea - you name it, it comes in a "happy" variation. This again adds to the appeal of watching Friends all afternoon. On the bright side of this being a real traveler town, the food is slightly better and I had something that almost tasted like a Boboli pizza AND a glass of cheap red wine. Having not seen any wine in a month I was pretty excited.



We've also been hanging out with our new friend Serge. We met on the bus coming to Vang Vieng and have been sharing meals and stories ever since. Serge is from Montreal and has been traveling for six years - pretty impressive. Yesterday the three of us went tubing down the Nam Xong river. All along the river are homemade swings, zip lines and jumping points, some up to 20 feet high. So the drill is you float a bit, get a Laos Beer at one of the many riverside coolers, and every so often take a jump off a big ledge. Or, if you're traveling with Michael and Serge, you stop at every swing, zip line, etc and do your thing. It was great fun to watch and a very relaxing way to spend the day. Some of the videos are pretty crazy to watch - check out Michael's blog for some good pictures.

As we finished our tubing we came across Rainbow Island where there were many little bamboo floats in the water for reading and relaxing. This is where I spent most of the next day while Michael rented a motorbike and toured around town and beyond. I did a bit of driving on the bike but that was plenty for me.



Tomorrow it's time to leave happy land and head 3 hours south to the capital, Vientiane.

Luang Prabang

Having just spent three days pretty much just traveling it was a nice change of pace to just chill out in Luang Prabang. The village was almost pocket sized, and you can walk from one end to the other in about 20 minutes. The french influence is alive and kicking - more in the form of baguettes than coffee unfortunately, but I'll take what I can get.

We spent a total of four nights here wandering the streets, eating sometimes good food, and reading on our front porch.



At the northern most end of the town is Wat Xieng Thong. This wat was built in 1560 and remained under royal patronage until 1975. One of the most interesting things here was the royal funeral chapel which houses a 36 feet high funeral chariot and various funeral urns for each member of the royal family.





Even just wandering the streets you see the most interesting things. These are rice cakes that have been handmade and are left on screens to dry in the sun. You'll see these all over town on a sunny day...which pretty much every day has been to date.



Meals were a treat as there were plenty of restaurants right on the water, all lit up at night with cute little white lights.



One night we spent a good part of the evening playing cards on our porch. My first time playing Texas Hold'em poker. As I like to play for money....and as we didn't have much at the time....we decided to play with Michael's trip medication. Doxycycline (for maleria) was worth 10,000 kip each (about 1 US dollar) and Cipro was worth 50,000 kip. The little stuffed santa "thing" in the corner is our version of the lawn gnome who is traveling with us cortesy of Michael's youngest niece - Alice age 6. My first poker experience was not particularly successful - good thing I have my own maleria medication.



We also visited Wat Chom Phet - an abandoned wat on the other side of the Mekong. For about 1 dollar you can get a guy to shuttle you across the river and wait for you while you explore. About 1 minute after arriving we met La, our 10 year old guide who didn't do much guiding other then to show us the steps to the wat. The view at the top was pretty cool. We spent about 30 minutes there hanging out with some more new friends who again, wanted to be our guides. But, as we were done with our trip, there was not much guiding to be done.





After four nights it was time to hit the road - this time south to Vang Vieng.

Goodbye Thailand, Hello Laos

Next stop - Laos. While we were trekking our passports were being processed in Bangkok to secure our visas for Laos. For whatever reason you can only get a 15 day visa to Laos so you have to plan carefully about where you want to go and when. We decided to enter Laos at the Thai border town of Chiang Khong. This required two bus rides and a sprint to the ferry to get across the border before it closed. The 2 minute ferry across the Mekong takes you to Huay Xai, the border town on the Laos side. This town seems to exist to feed and house travelers waiting the night to start their trips.





Getting to our first real destination in Laos required a two day journey down the Mekong. The slow boat as it's called travels down the Mekong at a not so fast pace (as the name implies) stopping every so often to pick up and drop off folks. While the thought of the trip seems somewhat romantic, the reality it slightly different. Don't get me wrong - the scenery is amazing and it's a true experience to be sure. What is also true is that there are over 100 people crammed onto a boat that could comfortably seat maybe 40, the wooden, straight-back seats lose their charm after about 90 minutes, and the dynamics of people living in such cramped quarters for 14 hours over two days is not always pleasant. As explained in Michael's blog in greater detail there was much heated discussion between stubborn passengers about rights to seats, saved seats, seat assignments, etc. The Germans in particular seem quite concerned with this and have no problem voicing, very loudly, their opinions. Unlucky for them the Dutch, who seemed to be sitting in what were claimed to be the German's seats, were unwavering in their place.....let the games begin!







The boat bathroom was better than expected. Rumor had it that the "bathroom" consisted of a hole in the boat that dropped directly into the Mekong river. It smelled awful but I did appreciate the cute touch of the little trash can with the smiley face.



The boat ride is divided into two days. 6 hours the first day and 8 the next. In between we stopped in another town that seems to exist entirely for travelers - Pakbeng. When you get off the boat you're left on this cliff of sand to drag your bag up the vertical beach to find a room for the night. There is no hot water in the entire town. And I advise folks to not order pizza when in Pakbeng. I do, however, advise them to have many bottles of Laos Beer to make them not care if they've showered or eaten properly.







By the second day on the boat the novelty had worn off. Now it was simply about plowing through to get to our destination - Luang Prabang. As a french man told us this morning while were were recovering from the previous night's journey, "that trip is twice too long." I couldn't agree more.

Luang Prabang, however, is just the place you want to recover and convalesce. It's a wonderful mixture of French and Buddhist architecture sitting on the Mekong surrounded by mountains. Michael described it like Carmel, California in Laos and I think that's exactly right. There are plenty of boutiques and little bakeries. They have done a lot to play on the natural charm of the village - all the shops and vendors have beautiful paper lanterns and solitary white lights at night. People are very friendly and it's a great place to just chill out. Which I think is exactly what we'll do for a few days.

Georgio and Dumbo

**Note: the "big flamer" video on the Chiang Mai post is now working**

Our next day in Chiang Mai was dedicated to relaxation - one because we were tired and two because it was Michael's birthday. Most of the day was fairly uneventful, spent in internet cafes answering emails and updating blogs. That night, however, held the highlight - a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant called Georgios. In fact it was really a gift for both of us. The way we ate one would think we had never seen food before. And while by home standards it was nothing to write home about, in Thailand it was like manna from heaven. Wine, bread, salad, fresh pasta and pasta sauce, and the best, ice cream. I, and in particular my stomach, couldn't have been happier.

Monday brought a new adventure - hill tribe trekking. It is thought there are approximately 10-20 different hill tribes living in Thailand, totalling a little over half a million people; hill tribespeople are not considered citizens of Thailand. We chose a three day/two night trek that included hiking, plenty of waterfalls, bamboo rafting and elephant riding. Our group was very international - two Swedes, two English girls, two Swiss, and two Danes. We were, not suprisingly, the oldest people on the trek....by a long shot I hate to say. Our guide, Pai, was a pretty entertaining fellow who passed the time drinking moonshine and smoking dope with the Danes. His English was pretty good but the accents can be quite difficult to understand. The first night we hiked about 2 hours pretty much straight uphill. Our destination was a little set of huts with our own waterfall right next door.











Dinner was pretty basic - vegetable soup and chicken stir fry. Again, you would have thought we had never seen food before. Our particular challenge was that we were quite short on cash (long story) and had to purchase all our own beverages, including water. We figured that we could have about 2 waters a day but that was it. Watching our fellow trekkers drinking beer and cold sodas was painful.

Speaking of painful, let's discuss the "bed" situation. Beds were in one large hut and consisted of.....well a floor of wooden slats. There were thin mats that covered the floor but these were purely decorative. We were also given a thin sleeping bag that didn't zip up and a few blankets. We each devised what we thought would be the best approach to bedding. In the morning it appeared that none of our strategies had been successful. Everyone had a horrible night's sleep and complaints included sore backs and necks and the very cold temperatures.



The bathroom was actually better than I expected, but not by much. We were now in true squat territory and all facades of Western plumming are long gone. On a good note, there was little smell and the dirt floor was as clean as a dirt floor could be.



Day two - more trekking - equal amounts uphill and down hill. After about three hours of trekking we arrived in our Karen village where we would spend the night. Our village was quite small, probably around 12 huts. Pai told us that most of the residents were part of the same family - a man, his seven daughters and their husbands. Husbands get two pigs as a dowery. And speaking of pigs, they were everywhere, along with dogs (the little Paris Hilton kind seem particularly popular), and chickens. Seeing all these animals and the lack of other food alternatives I decided to stick to vegetarian cuisine while in the village. Our entertainment for the evening was not bad Pink Floyd like the night before, but logic games played with little sticks on a piece of cardboard. We were dreadfully bad at these but in our defense the instructions were not always the easiest to understand.





From my viewpoint one of the best things that happened on day two was running into Walter, our Dutch friend who seems to appear everywhere we go, sort of like Zelig. After a little consulation with Michael I just blurted out, "How much money do you have Walter?" In his ever congenial way he loaned us 200 baht (5 bucks) which kept us flush in beer and sodas. I kissed his hand repeatedly upon receiving the cash.

Day three included hiking out of the mountains, into civilization, and hopping on the back of an elephant. I had mixed feelings about this ride. It was incredible to be so high up on this beast that just pushed its way through....well through whatever it wanted. The obvious down side was that this was certainly not an elephant living in the wild and their treatment appeared to the uninitiated somewhat questionable. I'm taking it as a once in a lifetime experience as I can't imagine I will do it again.







It was great to return to Chiang Mai to shower, get some more interesting food, and get some band aids for my blisters. We also, predictably, saw Walter again and were able to pay back the 200 baht.

Chiang Mai

The next day we headed north again, this time to Chiang Mai. Accompanied by our friends from the hostel we experienced a very hot and sweaty bus ride. Best summed up as not pleasant. I should mention, however, that getting to the bus station, and getting around in general, can be quite fun. One mode of transportation has you sitting in the back of a small pickup truck with a little canopy and you zoom at fast speeds through the city streets. As you can see below it feels sometimes like you're part of an interactive video game.



Upon arriving in Chiang Mai and finding a guesthouse we played another favorite game - killing mosquitos in your room before going out to dinner.

Today we took a cooking class at the Pad Thai Cookery School. This was very cool. They pick you up in aforementioned pickup truck, pick up other students throughout Chiang Mai, and wisk you off to the local market where you learn about local fruits, vegetables, and spices.



Our class was pretty small - 11 students. The school is in the country somewhere about 10 minutes outside of Chiang Mai in a picturesque setting with big fields, rolling hills, etc. Everyone has their own cooking station. In many ways it felt like Home Economics from 5th grade without the jello parfait and cool whip. Over the course of 6 hours we made 4 main dishes, 1 appetizer, and 2 desserts. Our last "dish" was a big flamer, which freaked me out a bit. The experience was great and the food was fantastic. I now have my day Thai cooking certificate so friends and family beware!!







Big lunch means no dinner for me toinght so I can spend time updating the travel log. I'm quite excited for bed tonight since for the first time we have what might almost be considered a proper mattress. Not great, but closer to what is comfortable. Of course there is no top sheet, towel, toilet paper, etc.



Tomorrow is Michael's birthday so I'm hoping to have a lazy day and a nice, non-Thai, dinner.

Heading North

The next day we boarded a train heading north to Phitsanulok - about 6 hours from Bangkok. As you'll see below a bit of Boston flavor can be found in even the most unexpected locations.



The train ride was fairly uneventful except that it marked the begining of the end in terms of bathroom hygiene. I could no longer rely on my cute little bathroom in the guest house in Bangkok. This bathroom, found on the train, pretty much summed up the worst of it to date. It was very cramped - I wont even tell you what I had to stand on to take this picture. Plus, no ambience, which I suppose is not suprising. On the plus side there were well placed railings to help one keep their balance and a good supply of toilet paper. On the con side, the rocking train and the fear that the door wasn't really locked.



Upon arriving in Phitsanulok we made our way to the local Youth Hostel, this funny out of the way place that was fairly overgrown and ratty. Outside our door was a lovely collection of about 30 empty beer bottles and a few whiskey bottles - they love whiskey here. In the room the bed (which was hard as a rock like all the beds in Thailand) had only a top sheet. We were given some pieces of cloth when we checked in but honestly couldn't discern what was a sheet, a "towel" (and I use that term loosly), and a blanket. Let's just say we made some educated guesses and plowed ahead.

Phitsanulok served as the jumping off point to get to Sukhothai, the original capital of the first Thai kingdom from the mid-13th to late 14th centuries. We arrived after a 2 hour bus ride with some friends we had met at the hostel - there were 8 of us total. To get around Sukhothai you rent bikes and spend the day exploring at your own pace.

The scenery was absolutely amazing - one of the most beautiful and peaceful places I've ever seen.









Touring by bicycle is quite civilized. I tried to capture with video the whole bikeriding experience.

End of Bangkok Days

Before leaving Bangkok we visited the Grand Palace which was consecrated in 1872, the first year of Bangkok rule in Thailand. These buildings are incredibly difficult to describe. They are so ornate - decorated with every piece of gold and mirrored tile imaginable. The detail is amazing. Along the walls that surround the Palace are murals documenting epic tales important in Thai history. I like the mural below where a big long tongue is being used to protect a village - pretty impressive.













As it's a working temple, many folks are praying and providing various offerings including eggs, water, and toilet paper.



Our last night in Bangkok we visited the Sukumvit, also known as the go-go bar area. As you might imagine, this provided for excellent people watching. The majority of the clientelle appeared to be fat Germans and Americans, some in packs and some traveling alone, who most likely came to Bangkok and Bangkok only for a week of "entertainment." Our vantage point was the Nana Entertainment Plaza where you could sip beers and ogle the goings-on. Supposedly, this is a frequent stop of foreigners in Bangkok for sex reassignment surgery. We met 2 young American college students who were here taking a tourism class. I was imagining trying to explain this to one's parents....till they pointed out that their professor was sitting about 3 stools away.

The next moring, fresh from a night of adventure, we were ready to head north.