Lovely Luang Prabang

Hello!

Well we had a nice last day in Luang Nam Tha.  Dan rented a motorbike again and drove about 300km total in the countryside and saw some pretty crazy stuff (I will let him tell those stories when we get home), and me, longing for a slightly quieter day, rented a bicycle and pedaled around the city and surrounding villages for the day.  It was extremely pleasant.  All the little kids love when you ride by and make a point of running out, waving and yelling "Sadaidee!!" - hello in Lao.  We are at the end of the dry season here now so all the rice farmers are starting to plant now and the fields that are on their way are so beautiful.  The green fields of rice with scattered bamboo huts and mountains in the background are so picturesque.  It is still really really hot here, and the farmers are burning the brush in the areas where they will plant rice so it always is a little smokey and foggy in the countryside...no wonder they call this the fire season!

The following day we headed off to Luang Prabang by local bus, which started out as a pretty fun adventure.  The bus was ancient, and packed to the max, with both people and stuff!  Then centre isle was full of bags of rice and bamboo shoots that you had to walk over to get to your seat (we set out a little later than expected from our guesthouse so of course we were right at the back).  People from the local villages would flag the bus down on the side of the road and get on with 2 little kids, 3 bags of rice, some sort of dis-assembled machinery and live chickens, all of which (except the children..ha ha) would get hoisted up and strapped to the roof of the bus.  Once the bus stopped at this open air market and people scurried off the bus and came back with bamboo shoots, cucumbers and other foods...a grocery stop perhaps?  Whenever the bus had to stop for construction or something as well half the bus emptied to pee in the bushes, including the women...I was among them once and happy this was culturally appropriate because I always have to pee on road trips :>)  The roads were very winding and because of all the stops the 200 or so kilometers took us about 9 hours and we were so happy to get off the bus!

Luang Prabang is definitely the supremely pleasant city that it is described as, but of course more touristy than Luang Nam Tha.  But it's total charm makes up for it.  There are temples and monks roaming the streets everywhere, the architecture is beautiful, it's right on the Mekong and there are cafes serving delicious coffee and toasty baguettes everywhere (the French influence).  The first day we were here we took this little ferry across the Mekong to check out a temple on the hilltop because it afforded a nice view of the river.  It was stinking hot and as I was sitting down to try to cool off Dan started vigorously fanning me with this fan he found.  Then, to our great surprise, the fan broke, hit me in the face (I still have the bruise and the scrape), and then fell down and stabbed Dan in the toe).  Fiasco.  We had to stop of the way back to buy some kleenex to clean up the blood so we looked somewhat presentable for the ride back.  In the afternoon we found a beautiful cafe across from a temple and watched the monks sweeping up the leaves as we sipped away at our iced coffees, so that made up for the theatrics of the morning.  We realized the following day, however, that we missed an interesting temple across the river (we were distracted by our wounds) so we decided we would head back over (also an excuse to ride the ferry again).  We had the idea that we would rent bicycles this time.  What we failed to realize was that there was a thunderstorm the night before and the road to the temple through the village was  not paved.  Dan made it through okay but I got stuck in the mud halfway through and couldn't balance on the bike and had to put my feet down.  What followed was a horribly frustrating but hilarious (in retrospect) scenario.  My flip flops were being sucked into the mud and as I pulled them up they splattered mud all over me as I tried to push this bike down the road.  Eventually one of my flip flops broke so I ended up walking shoeless almost ankle deep in mud through the village full of people.  Dan can tell you that I did not find the situation particularly hilarious at the time :>)  Despite stifling his laughter he did manage to fix my flip flop and get about 50% of the mud off my shoes when we finally got to the temple.  We were greeted by 5 very enthusiastic kids yelling "temple! temple! buy ticket!  buy ticket!"  We paid our dollar and 25 cents each and then the kids scurried around handing us flashlights, saying "cave! cave!" and pointing to themselves saying "tour guide!"  So we dutifully followed them to the cave where we went in and saw the retired headless Buddha statues.  And I thought that was all but oh no!  These three tiny kids then led us deep into this cave beyond where any natural light could reach.  It was kind of steep and slippery at certain sections and they were so cute and polite, offering us their hands if they thought we were struggling!  When we came to some interesting stalactites or stalagmites they would point and say "hello!  hello!"  I am not exactly a huge cave fan so I was happy we didn't see any bats for one, and even happier to see the light of day when our tour guides let us out!  We gave them 25 cents each for leading us out to safety, which they seemed happy about, and some gum, which they seemed even happier about.  And then we were off again, through the mud, which went pretty much like the way there, but luckily some of the kids working on the ferry helped us clean them off in the river a little before we returned them!

Today we rented a motorbike and went to see some beautiful waterfalls about 30km outside of the city.  We got up really early for us because it's a pretty big tourist attraction here and we wanted to beat the rush.  They were very lovely, falling into blue/green pools.  We contemplated going to the famous caves here this afternoon, but opted for a nap and then sitting in a cafe instead because we were kind of "caved out" from yesterday and were a little worried the motorbike sounded unhealthy!  So we gave it back before they could blame us for anything :>)  And now we are off for supper....probably overlooking the Mekong again...ahhh....

Love Hanna and Dan xoxo

Hmong Night Market in Luang Prabang

Our tour guides through the caves

Laos and Luang Nam Tha trek

Well much has happened since our last post!  I am happy to report that I got in on the Songkran fun!  I met a Malaysian couple throwing water at the front of our hotel and they invited me to join them.  We were joined by two local kids afterwards and so I can say that throwing buckets of water at people is waaaaaay more fun than the reverse.  The next day, as planned we did head off to Laos.  We took a local bus (that was packed tight!) to Chiang Khong, and let me also mention that being on a local bus does not render you immune to the festivities of Songkran!  There were people throwing buckets of water into the windows as the bus drove by, and given that some of the windows didn't close properly, we got wet despite being on a bus!  There was this really cute little girl on the bus though, (she was the driver's daughter) and when he would wave people to not throw water she would too, except she had a water gun in her other hand!  When we got to Chiang Khong, we took a tuk-tuk down the looooong main street to the border where there was (another) crazy party and arrived at the border soaking wet.  Well, that was when we finally found it.  It was the wierdest, sketchiest border I have ever been to, and we wandered around for a while because it was unclear as to where it actually was!  But we finally found an official looking guy to stamp us out of the country, and walked to the beach (that's right, the beach), where we hopped on an old longtail boat across the river to Laos!  We got our Visas arranged no problem (although it's the most expensive for Canadians!) and then sat down for a bite to eat before venturing into town to find a place to stay.  We had a lovely supper on the Mekong River and watched the sun set.  It is very quiet in Laos compared with Thailand!  So far we are quite surprised by the difference!

We were trying to decide whether to take the two day boat trip along the Mekong to Luang Prabang or take a bus to Luang Nam Tha...the latter won over because we decided we wanted to do a trek.  The owner of our hotel arranged a minibus for us with a group of other travelers, which was convienent because the bus station was 8km out of town and the minibus was only 2 dollars more than the local bus, plus it made the journey pretty painless.  We found a great place to stay almost immediately, got some lunch, and then quickly realized that because of the holiday (and maybe because it's Laos?) that everything was closed and spent the rest of the day reading and relaxing.

The next day we took a motorbike 60 km north to a town called Mua Sing that was amazingly, quieter than Luang Nam Tha!  The drive was beautiful, through the mountains.  There are so many tiny villages along the way with people living in simple homes made from bamboo.  There are monks riding bicycles, families on motorbikes, kids running down the street and waving hello, just all the really great simple SE Asia stuff that everybody falls in love with.

We spent the past 2 days on a trek through the jungle and to spend the night at a local village (Khmu tribe).  We both had a very nice time, and I can say that I felt it was much better arranged than the one I did in Thailand 5 years ago.  I didn't get that horrible "human zoo" feeling, and felt that we had very little impact on daily village life.  I mean I still think it must be wierd for the villagers that trekkers are passing through, but it seems that the company tried hard to ensure that foreigners are not overly intrusive on daily life.  They also give the village 35% of the profits which is nice.  Our guide was very informative, and we learned a lot about the villagers way of life, and of course it was really amazing to see it first hand.  Just to actually have to walk the 8km into the village (which was quite a climb into the mountains) and realize that it's only accessable on foot and when they want to buy something or sell something from the village by the road they have to hoof it there and back!  And they have so much knowledge about the environment around them, passed down from generations, I really have a lot of respect for them.  And of course the kids are always great :>)  When we first arrived there were these two little girls playing and fishing in the river...they were pretty cute!  They even caught a little fish!  We even hopped in the river too to clean off :>)  And after hiking 11km today in the sticky heat, we are happy to have had a shower and a nice meal.  I have had my favorite here, roasted peanut Jeos. Sticky rice and steamed veggies that you dip in this spicy roasted peanut and lime sauce...yum!  And despite having a really great experience and feeling like we went with a culturally sensitive company, these treks always beg the question, is it really a good thing for these communities?  I wonder if they feel they benefit as much as we feel we do.

So tomorrow we will spend one more day here and then we are off to Luang Prabang.  Bye for now!

Hanna and Dan

Crossing the Mekong to Laos

Cute kids at the village - they had been fishing in the river

Crazy Songkran

Well before I get started on the craziness of the Thai New Year, I am happy to report that we only had to pay 2.50$ for the lost motorcycle key.  That along with $2 for a replacement lock, about $7 in transport for Dan to go back and forth, so the whole fiasco cost us less than $12...not including of course cost of frustration and mental anguish :>) ha ha.  We have found an absolutely wonderful place to stay here in Chiang Rai.  We are spending twice what we paid in Chiang Mai (our place here is $15 per night), but it's beautiful!  Our place in Chiang Mai was really not much more than glorified camping, with cracks under the door big enough for a rat to fit under (and believe me, I was worried, I have seen enough of those ugly little beasties since we've come to Asia...I didn't see any the last time I was here!)  But our place now is on the 3rd floor so we have a nice view of the temple across the street, and the courtyard below filled with plants.  Our bathroom is clean and HUGE, we have a TV so we can watch the news, and air-conditionner, an extremely comfortable bed, AND we get fresh towels everyday...it's amazing.  Oh, and free breakfast.  What more could we ask for?  So we have ended up staying in Chiang Rai longer than we expected because we love this place so much.

So now I must describe for you the madness of Songkran, the Thai New Year.  Traditionnally, monks and the elderly are gently sprinkled with water, and all the Buddhas around town are all cleaned as well.  But among the rest of the population, it has pretty much turned into a country-wide waterfight.  The actual day of celebration is April 13th (at least it was this year), but there were people with water guns out as early as the 10th, and apparently the worst day is the 15th.  And we are not even talking waterguns, not even super-soakers, that's nothing for these people.  We are talking hoses, and huge buckets of water that they just dump to top of you to utterly soak you.  And they are relentless.  We wanted to see some of the countryside so we have been riding around on a motocycle the past 2 days, and we discovered the hard way that people on motorcyles are these kids' favorite target.  These little rascals wait on the side of the road with thier big buckets of water and start screaming in anticipation when they see you coming, and trust me, after doing this as much as they do, they have pretty good aim!  So after both days out and about, we came home absolutely dripping wet.  The funniest are the people who basically do laps around the blocks in pick up trucks with a bunch of people in the back with a big bucket of water soaking everyone and anyone!

So the first day of our motorcycle adventure we went to the Golden Triangle, which is the area where Myanmar, Thailand and Laos all meet at the Mekong.  We took the road home through the mountains, which was absolutely gorgeous.  There were big craggy cliffs rising around us and tiny villages tucked in between them.  The road close to Myanmar is pretty well guarded, as we passed several "checkpoint" with armed policemen...a little scary.  This whole area used to be all planted with opium and was a major trading centre, but the Thai government has apparently successfully stamped it out with the help of programs to replant with coffee and tea, so the local people still have a source of income.  On our second day we went to a little village in the mountains called Mae Salong.  It is actually more of a Chinese village than a Thai town and Chinese is more often spoken here than Thai.  The surrounding scenery with tea planted on a steep mountain slopes was stunning, especially since the visibility was so much better than the previous day.  We had a big thunderstorm overnight and I think it cleared a lot of humiditiy out of the air because the day before it was pretty foggy (I think just from the heat!).  We also passed some rice fields, beautiful and impossibly green, the first ones we've really seen here and a treat for me as I have a bit of a soft spot for them :>)

We had meant to head off to Laos today, but we decided to stay one more day and take it easy walking around the city since we havn't really seen much of it yet.  So far I can say that I liked Chiang Mai better, it definitely had more charm, but it's been really nice to explore the countryside here.  So tomorrow we plan to head off to Loas, we will take a bus to the border town of Chiang Khong, then a boat across the river to Laos and stay in the Lao town of Huay Xai overnight and hopefully get a boat to Luang Prabang the next day.  But for now, we are off to find some lunch...and maybe a watergun so we can be more than just victims of this crazy crazy tradition...Bye for now!

Hanna and Dan xoxo

Market in Mae Salong

 Songkran soaking!

More Chiang Mai Adventures

Well yesterday we took a break from the motorbike and did a fair amount of walking around the city to see some of the bigger temples.  There are a lot of people bustling around the city, and even in the temples, getting ready for the Thai new year.  The young monks seem to be put to work decorating the temples for the festivities.  I took a trip in the evening to the Saturday walking street, which they close off to cars for vendors to sell various things (Dan didn't think he could handle the madness).  It was quite pleasant, much less touristy than the night market.  We did however end up at the night market for dinner, which was great because they have free cultural shows and last night it was Thai dancing so I found that very interesting to watch.

This morning I got up at 5:30 (that right!) because I wanted to see if I could witness the monks receiving alms.  I wasn't really sure where to go, but I did a bit of searching around of the internet and some random person posted that they found a good spot was right around the corner from where we are staying!  So while it was still dark I headed out to see if I would be lucky.  The streets were very quiet by Asia standards but I was surprised at how many people were up and about at that hour, setting up their little stands, rice cookers steaming away.  I found a bunch of people with tables set up right on the road with lots of individual bags of food that looked like offerings so I went across the street and sat on a bench and sure enough, not five minutes later, the first monk appeared.  He was indeed walking barefoot, and was summoned by a woman at the table who gave him some food, then knelt so he could sing a blessing.  It was really quite amazing to witness, especially in the middle of a busy street with tuk-tuks and motorcycles whizzing by, periodically drowning out the monk's voice.  It's seemed so beautiful to me that this still goes on despite the hustle and bustle of every day life.  A tuk-tuk driver even pulled over beside a monk walking at one point because he had an offering for him, the monk blessed him, then the driver was on his way.  So after by exciting morning, I went back to bed for 2 hours :>)

The next part of our day was a little less exciting ... we decided to rent a motorbike again to see this temple called Doi Suthep up in the mountains.  It all started out well, with us stopping off at the long distance bus station to book our tickets to Chiang Rai for tomorrow, but then when we got back to the bike, Dan couldn't find the key!  So we had to call the rental shop (who's number thankfully I had), and they said to just come back and get a spare (which thankfully they had), so Dan hopped on a Sangtaw and I waited by the bike....then when he got back we realized we had locked the back wheel with the chain as we were instructed to do (maybe being overly worried), and we did not have a spare key to that.  So off Dan went again to try and find a saw to cut the lock (on a Sunday), which, thankfully he did and we were on our way.  Major fiasco.  But we got to the temple, and it was lovely, and very peaceful and cool now that it was evening!  We have to find a new lock to replace the one we sawed apart, and are hoping we won't be charged too much for the lost key!  But for now...we are off to enjoy the festivities here (including bustling markets and live shows in the square) and to get some cheap Pad-Thai.  We are certainly hoping our "excitement" for the day is over!  Bye for now!

Hanna and Dan

Chiang Mai

We are happy to repot that the overnight train was MUCH better than the bus!  We spent the extra money on air-conditionning because the last time I was in Thailand I didn't and the fans didn't work and it was horrible, but at the beginning of the trip they were really pumping the cold air out and we were freezing!  As the Scottish woman across from us put it, it was "positively glacial."  Sometime in the middle of the night though they turned it off (I guess enough people complained) and I woke up sweating in my sweather, socks and scarf!  But we got a pretty decent night's sleep.  We found a place to stay relatively easily and had a pretty uneventful rest of the day!  We kind of wandered around, took a snooze on our very hard bed, had a cold drink, I went to one of the many markets.  It is HOT here, and seems to get hotter by the day, so we can't go far without stopping for a rest and a cold drink.  I was very happy to find that Chiang Mai is the charming city that I remember, and that my favorite sticky rice restaurant is still around, serving the same amazing dessert that is was 5 years ago.  It may become a morning ritural.

The past 2 days we have spent touring around the surrounding countryside on a motorbike (that we rented for $5 per day!).  It's so delightfully cool up in the mountains around the city and such a nice reprieve from the heat.  The first day we found ourselves at this tiny Hmong (hilltribe) village, complete with children playing soccer, local handicrafts, stray dogs and the ever present little store selling potato chips and warm cans of beer (no power).  We stopped for a coffee at some sort of research station funded by the University of Chiang Mai where they grow thier own coffee...we were served very strong coffee by a very cheerful woman in a lovely bamboo hut overlooking the valley below.  Today we did this 100km loop through the mountains and saw some beautiful countryside.  We have been putting off elephant riding because it is such an overpriced tourist trap (and exploits the poor things) but I think secretly we both wanted some kind of elephant encounter, so when we drove by an elephant camp we pulled over to check it out.  It wasn't really advertised or anything, we just saw some tourists heading out on a ride, but just down the road we found a young kid in a hammock with two mother and baby elephants.  The one little baby came right up to us and was so sweet and friendly :>)  So we got our elephant fix without feeling too guilty!  Tomorrow is the weekend which is great for open air markets in Chiang Mai so we are definitely going to hang around for that, and we will probably spend the day walking around the old city taking in the sights since we haven't done any of that stuff yet.  Next week is the Thai new year and Chiang Mai puts on a big celebration for it, so there is a lot of prep work going on at the moment!  We are still deciding whether we want to stay for it or not.  We would like to see it, but we also want to make sure we have enough time in Laos.

Well, we are off to the night market for supper...so it's bye for now!

Hanna and Dan

Here are some pics!  Nerdy motorcycle get-up:

Local store at the Hmong village

Coffee break

Baby elephant encounter!!!

Thailand

Hello all!

Well the beginning of our Thailand adventures did not quite begin as anticipated!  We planned to fly into Phuket and then go to Koh Phi Phi (where they filmed The Beach), then to Krabi, then to Bangkok, plus possibly a stop to visit Ulla's friends on the way.  But....the night before we flew to Bangkok we discovered that the South of Thailand had received an abnormally high amount of rain and that certain areas were flooded quite badly.  Phuket and the west side seemed to be better than the east coast, where tourists had been stranded on Koh Samui and ferries to Koh Tao and Koh Phangan had been temporarily stopped.  We arrived and got a place to stay for the night, then checked out the weather forecast...rain for the next 10 days.  And Krabi, as it turns out, was also not in the best shape with mudslides and other such fun, so we made the decision to bail before things got worse, and booked an overnight bus for the next evening to Bangkok.  Our overnight bus trip...well, it was an overnight bus trip, but the flooding on the roads at certain parts were pretty crazy!  We were surprised that the buses were actually going through!  There were lots of people with cars stopped at the side of the road who didn't want to, and some even had set up tents!  We saw this one guy pushing his motorcycle through and we was chest deep in water!  I was pretty sketched out but we made it through safe a sound and only arrived in Bangkok 2 hours late (ahh...Bangkok traffic).  We didn't really want to pay for a taxi into town so we asked around which bus to take and somehow ended up on this one that took an hour (which is probably what it would have taken in a cab too 'cause of the traffic), but it was free!  I don't know why, 'cause we've taken other buses here since and had to pay for those, but we didn't complain.  After a little bit of difficulty we found a decent place to stay with a good price and took a well deserved shower before heading off for some breakfast.  We then decided to head off to the Vietnamese Embassy to get our VISA arranged....and were faced with our first tuk-tuk scam.  I blame it partially on the fact that we were so tired :>)  The driver told us we didn't have to go all the way to the embassy and we could get one at the tourist information office.  As soon as we walked in, we both had a feeling something was off and then quickly realized this driver was probably getting commission for the overpriced VISA at this place so we quickly got out, took a taxi to the embassy and have not hopped in a tuk-tuk since :>)  The Embassy was a little ridiculous but we got it all organized and picked up our passports today so we are all set to go!  Once we got back, took a nap, and got some famous Khao-San street made Phad-Thai and Chang beer into us we felt much much better :>)

Yes, we are staying near Khao-San road, which is pretty much, as Vibe would put it, "tourist hell", but I felt Dan should experience it, and it is conveniently located to many tourist attractions in Bangkok.  And it's great to be able to buy Phad-Thai from the street vendors and they make it in front of you for 60 cents!  There is also a fresh fruit guy on every corner which pretty much equals heaven for Hanna.  That being said, I am VERY much looking forward to heading to Chiang Mai on the overnight train tomorrow night.  Over the past few days we have seen Grand Palace, Wat Pho (the giant reclining Buddha)....both of which were just as amazing as I remembered, and taken in the MBK mall (Susan's favorite).  We have also been traveling around quite a lot using the river boat, which is actually a lot of fun, and quite convenient, plus it's only 50 cents per ride!  So sometimes even though it's a really round-about way, we ride the sky-train and then take the boat home to bypass the traffic instead of taking the bus or a taxi, since, if you didn't pick up on it before, traffic in Bangkok is BRUTAL.  We took a bus to a floating market yesterday, which in itself was not the greatest (I was at a better one when I was here 5 years ago), but they had this one area sealed off so the fish couldn't get out and they were selling bread to feed them, and it was just crazy how many there were and how bananas they went over the food!  I have a picture of Dan feeding them beside this little kid and I don't know which one was having more fun :>)

Well  I am sorry no pictures tonight...too lazy.  We are hoping the overnight train will be a step up from the bus as we should actually be able to lie down, not just lean the seat back...we'll let you know.  But for now, talk to you later!

Hanna and Dan

Pictures:  Grand Palace

After 3 days in Bangkok and getting worried I finally found them!  Mangosteen!  My favorite!

Iced coffee in a bag :>)

Dan eating durian dessert ... brave or stupid?

At Wat Pho (giant reclining buddha)...best buds??

Tuk-tuk?

Feast in Bangkok