The Tale of Two Falangs in Northern Laos...

Prepare yourself for a long blog post as it has been a while since we’ve had the wifi to put one up! 

...To start where we left off in Nong Khiaw and Chris’ birthday.  We went climbing on one of the beautiful Limestone Krasts.  It was a tough walk just to get to the climbing site, over slippy rocks and through small gaps in the bushes!  The climbing seemed tougher than in China and I didn’t get on too well with it.  Chris on the other hand did really well and managed both routes easily.  Due to my frustration the guide agreed to let us go back early and he took us mountain biking to a huge cave on the other side of town – the ride was beautiful and the cave very impressive as it was one of the Government hideouts during the Vietnam War.

Next came Luang Prabang.  We found a nice hotel with a slightly intense, bored owner who tried to engage in conversation / cook for us / sell us a tour at any opportunity!  Luang Prabang has a French feel to it, the architecture appears European and they sell baguettes – which in my opinion is the best thing that France brought to Laos as we’ve had 4 months without a sandwich so our baguettes tasted amazing!  We did the normal sightseeing and temple hopping, viewing what is claimed to be Buddha’s footprint (which is much larger than the footprint in Thailand we saw...but who I am to judge - maybe he had odd, giant feet?!)  We also did a cooking course and the food was amazing!  Not quite the same as Thai food, more casserole dishes, less curries, but very flavoursome with fresh herbs, garlic and lemongrass featuring in most dishes.  We were stuffed by the end of the day after having 2 dishes for lunch and a further 3 for our tea.  It was a great day and we’ve come away with a good recipe book so be prepared for Lao food on our return!

There was a great night market where we both picked up some treats – dress for me and trousers & a BeerLao top for Chris, a table runner for our imaginary dining room and an apron for all my cooking in our imaginary kitchen!  We also bought some amazing slippers – which cost far more to post home than they did to buy!  On our last day we went to a waterfall which had been recommended to us; it had stunning turquoise blue pools which you could swim / jump into and the falls itself was impressive.  Chris randomly bumped into someone he used to go to Primary School with!  Small world!  We also visited the bear sanctuary – we loved the bears!  They were so playful seeking out the treats their keepers had hidden around the enclosure, their bodies almost looking human when they stand on two legs and their faces looking quite dog-like especially when they were panting in the sun, super cute!

The next day we had a loooong bus journey with a stop while a car was rescued from down the cliff side, a stop for lunch, numerous wee breaks and a 30km/hr limit!  But we eventually got to Vang Vieng – backpacker, party Laos capital!  After a good night’s sleep we headed into town, signed up to tubing down the river, met 2 others doing the same thing, Sheila and Anna, and we headed by tuk-tuk to our start point (a bar on the river!)  It is the strangest, most exciting pub crawl you could ever do!  All in our individual rings we float quite quickly down the river as it is rainy season, the current is fast!  Then as you pass the bars they throw rope to you to grab onto and they haul you in!!  We sampled our first (second, third and maybe forth...) South East Asia ‘bucket’ (like a seaside bucket and spade!) which instead of a glass you get a bucket of spirit and coke – which for £1.20 for a Whiskey bucket, it would be rude not to!  All the bars have different attractions to lure you in, Chris went on 2 slides (one we call the death slide as it hurt...a lot!) we played mud volleyball which turned into a mud fight and we watched some river surfing from our last bar – too exhausted and tipsy to join in!  After an exhausting day of tubing and bar crawling we headed to an Irish Bar for Cottage Pie and Pan Fried Chicken – was a good end to a fun day!

With a hangover we headed to Vientiene where we saw the most amazing sunset above the Mekong River.  It was a productive couple of days there, getting washing done, applying for our Vietnam visas and posting home our souvenirs.  As ever, the post office was not the most straight forward process!  Well we entered through a staff back entrance (feeling like real stupid falangs!) then we went to one counter for wrapping, one counter for customs, one counter for weighing, one counter for paying and then back to the weighing counter to give in the receipt!  Randomly all the post office text was in French – but we think we got through the process fairly smoothly!  We also visited the Buddha Park which is a random collection of various religious statues and some mythical creatures which one man decided to combine all together; so it’s a surreal journey through Hindu, Buddhism, Spiritual gods and plain make belief!   We also saw the Arc du Triumph replica which gives good views of the city.

Back up the country we go to Phonsavan.  With hardly any other tourists in town we organised a private tour to the ‘Bomb Village’ and the Plain of Jars.  The Bomb Village is a small tribal town which has got its reputation from its imaginative use of the scrap metal bomb casings left over from the Vietnam War.  They use the casings for house stilts, BBQs, benches, plant pots and fences – it’s a sight to see and really opened our eyes to the amount of bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War.  Neither of us really knew about the extent that America bombed Laos – it feels like it’s a dirty little secret that somehow has managed to be swept under the carpet.  For 9 years, billions of dollars of bombs were dropped on Laos in attempt to stop the Vietnamese travel along the border and the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail – but Laos an innocent bystander continues to be swamped with landmines and unexploded bombs.  We visited some bomb craters too – they were huge but more harrowing was seeing the amount of them, you could almost visualise the line the plane would have taken to drop the bombs.  After a noodle soup lunch we went to the Plain of Jars – here they have done a sweep for landmines to ensure it is safe for tourists but there is a strict path which you must stick to as much of the surrounding land has not yet been cleared.  The jars are as mysterious as Stonehenge.  Some of them are massive and there is no real explanation of how they got there or why (although I’m choosing to believe the legend that they are cups for giants to drink their Whiskey from!) and there are loads of them!  They are thought to date back from 500BC.

Another bus journey – this time with a break down and garage stop for some welding!  But we eventually arrived to Sam Neua.  Today we headed to Viengxay Caves which is a fascinating network of caves where the Government lived for 9 years of the Vietnam War as it was thought to be the safest place to escape the bombings.  Each cave had an emergency room which were reinforced and had machines which could provide filtered air whilst they were hiding out in the room.  The army barracks was a huge open cave and the Government even had a huge theatre where people would come to perform or have celebrations such as weddings!  It was amazing to see where they had been hiding in the karsts – it shows how bad the bombing must have been – I can’t imagine our Queen living in a cave for a decade!

Today is our last day in Northern Laos with the Vietnam border only 4 hours away!  Laos has exceeded all my expectations of it.  It is beautiful – the North is full of river towns with rolling lush green hills as their backdrop and butterflies everywhere.  The people are friendly and helpful – there is the odd increase in price for being Western – I now fondly call this being ‘falang-ed!’  The food has been good – especially if you like the sticky rice!  And there a surprising range of things to do and see –I think we’ve managed to cover most of it!  Now we wonder how will Vietnam compare?!

Love K&C xxx

Across the Mekong to the Land of a Million Elephants (not seen one yet!)

We left Chiang Rai a little disappointed; perhaps it was the heavy rain on the day of our arrival or the fact we felt like we slept above a night club or that there just wasn’t much to see...so we moved on quickly and a bus, tuk-tuk and then boat across the Mekong took us the Laos border!  With no hassle at all we were over the border with pretty Laos Visas in our passports and became millionaires when we withdraw some Laos Kip.

We decided to stay the night at the border town Huay Xai as it was really beautiful overlooking Thailand and the Mekong River.  We went to romantically watch the sunset over the river – but nature had other ideas and instead we watched a BIG storm float over from Thailand and torrential rain soon followed with thunder & lightening – our restaurant was more of a gazebo so we got wet even when we were under cover!  Chris saw an impressive fork of lightening strike the river too – really cool.

We quickly discovered three dietary requirements when in Laos. 

1.        BeerLao (Lao people are particularly proud of this one and for good reason – its a good brew!)

2.       Lao coffee – it gets mixed with the sweetest condensed milk, but surprisingly tastes pretty good.

3.       Sticky Rice – a little dull on its own, but mix in some coconut milk and mango and you have an amazing desert!

We next travelled to Luang Namtha.  We luckily met Pete & Katie on the bus (an English couple who’d been living in Vietnam for a year) they were also hoping to do a trek of some kind whilst we’d be near the national park.  So we joined forces to get a cheaper tour price and quickly recruited Carven (an Ozzie) who then found a crazy lone Chinese speaking traveller from Shanghai who also joined our pose.  We decided upon a 1 day trek / 1 day kayak trip.

The trek lacked animals, but had heaps of nature with the guide regularly stopping to let us taste local plants and fruits.  The climb was bloody steep!  And hot!  But the lunch was amazing.  They laid out a banana leaf table and logs to as chairs.  The fire was lit and they found a huge piece of bamboo that they’d use as a pan.  Beef, banana flower, water, fresh herbs and spring onions made a fantastic soup.  The guides unwrapped sticky rice and chilli sauce that they’d bought locally earlier in the day, bamboo was halved to make serving bowls and banana leaves made into spoons!  It was a gorgeous meal and so environmentally friendly, all the waste was natural and could be left to decompose in the forest and it felt a little like we were on Survivor or Shipwrecked!  The trek down was slippy, myself and Pete competed for most clumsy – think my falls totalled 5 by the time I reached the bottom!

Jungle Lunch

At the end of day one we stayed the night in a bamboo hut, washed in the river, learnt about ‘falangs’ – being the Lao word for foreigner – hence why we hear it so often!!  We drank very, very dirty Lao Lao (rice whiskey) and played Uno! 

The next day we floated down the very scenic Nam Tha River on inflatable 2 man kayaks.  Much tamer than our Nepal kayaks but a wonderful way to view the National Park.  Lush, think green rolling hills is the best way to describe Laos so far.  It was a good day, but it did end up giving Chris bad sunburn!

Nong Khiaw

We have just arrived in Nong Khiaw, it’s a little town surrounded with Limestone karsts and the river cutting through the town.  We have a little bamboo bungalow near the river.  Chris is currently lazing in our hammock and we’re watching the sun disappear in behind the karsts.  It’s very quiet and tranquil.  Like much of Laos so far, there are only a handful of tourists (or falangs!) about and it is very beautiful.  It’s Chris’ birthday tomorrow so we’re hoping to do some climbing, followed by chilling out with a Beer Lao or two...

Love K&C

Lots of Elephants and a Novel Use for Bamboo!

From Sukhothai we stopped off at Lampang for a night with the purpose of going to the Elephant Conservation Centre the next morning.  We really enjoyed wondering around Lampang and soaking up the relaxed atmosphere in our half-day there. We saw some impressive Wats which a helpful man came out of his house to point us in the right direction for, got some free coconut, poppy seed wafers from a street stall that we bought a drink from and had a fantastic meal at Aroy One Baht which does lots of small Thai dishes for dirt cheap prices!

We arrived at The Elephant Conservation Centre the next morning in time to see the Elephants bath time and we both received a kiss or two from one Elephant! It was just like having a hoover attached to your cheek! Once they are all scrubbed and clean the Elephants then put on a forty minute show which began with an Elephant raising a flag and ended with three of the Elephants painting! As part of the show they demonstrated the more traditional uses for trained Elephants in the logging trade and all the things they can do with logs which included carrying them using their tusks, building pyramids with them, pushing them about using their feet or trunks, balancing on them and dragging them behind them with the help of a harness. In 1989 the logging trade was banned in Thailand. As a result of this ban a lot of trained Elephants and their Mahouts (trainers) became jobless and this is why these Elephant rescue centres now exist to provide for the Elephants through tourism.

After enjoying the Elephant show we then waited over an hour on the highway to Chiang Mai for a bus to pick us up in the scorching mid-day heat. Upon looking up we saw a fairly rare occurrence called a Sun Dog which we initially thought was either:

A) The end of the World by giant asteroid

B) A huge gap in the O-Zone layer

C) A UFO

A Sun Dog

Luckily Google later proved it was none of those things but it is a phenomenon caused by sunlight hitting atmospheric ice crystals at the right angles which then creates bright spots of light in the sky. In this case it looks like a circular rainbow!

Upon reaching Chiang Mai and checking into our Guesthouse we were overwhelmed with the choice of jungle treks, hill tribe visits, white-water rafting trips and other activities on offer. We could have even fired a shotgun at a shooting range if we’d have wanted to! Eventually we decided upon a two day jungle trek which was recommended to us back on the Nepal Kayaking course by Andrew and Shereen who did a very similar three day version. The trek included a 40 minute Elephant ride, a night in a hill-tribe village, a ‘White-Water cruise’ and a bamboo raft ride down the river.

Trekking through the jungle was spectacular, although it got very, very wet! Trekking through sheets of rain in the open rainforest made me feel like I was in an episode of Lost! Our guides were great characters who made us all laugh and we were with a really fun group of people. The Elephant ride wasn’t as good as Nepal’s Elephant safari however it was still fun to go on a 20 minute circular route (extended to 40 minutes with long stops in the mid-day heat due to somebody complaining it wasn’t long enough before our trip). We were on the biggest Elephant who was so greedy! Four bananas, five bananas, six bananas all eaten in 30 seconds! His trunk just kept appearing and if we tried to space the bananas out he’d start snuffling other Elephants riders to get more! It was really funny to watch.

The overnight stay in a bamboo hut was lovely; drifting off to sleep with heavy rain drumming down on the thin roof was a great experience.

The next day we went on a downhill walk for about an hour from the village then went swimming in a waterfall and river. The waterfall was really powerful and did feel like you were getting hit by hail stones as but it was worth it to cool down! Another hour’s walk brought us to where we would be doing the white water rafting from.

After a brief safety talk we boarded our rafts and set off! It was a great introduction to white water rafting and was so much easier than Kayaking as the leader does most of the work by steering or so it seemed! I very nearly fell out at one point as the raft quite severely bent in the middle but both Kat and I managed to stay in for the whole trip. Unlike the group of Germans and there leader who were determined to go in the water as many times as possible much to the amusement of the rest of us! Once the river became a bit calmer we swapped to a bamboo raft that seemed to sink a few inches below the water with five of us on it! It was buoyant enough to get us down the rest of the river though where we then disembarked and had lunch before being driven back to our guesthouses. All in all it was a brilliant two days we had in the jungle.

The same evening that we returned to Chiang Mai we went to the Sunday Walking Street where they close a massive street in the middle of the Old City from 4pm till midnight and thousands of stalls get set up. We spent about four hours wondering around, buying bits here and there, trying food whenever we felt like it and watching the street performers! In the end we got driven off by extremely heavy rain but we had great fun there.

Yesterday both Kat and I got tattoos done in the traditional Thai way using bamboo instead of a machine. What this involves is a very thin piece of bamboo with cotton and wax holding the needles in place then the ink is gently tapped into the skin. It was a real experience! Kat’s took about 25 minutes and mine took around 2 hours. We’re both very pleased with the results!

Bamboo Tattoo

Today we’ve just arrived in Chiang Rai where it’s rained heavily so far. Tomorrow or the day after we should be heading over the border to Laos! We’ve certainly had a great time in Thailand so far and can’t wait to come back and see the south in just a few months!

Love Chris & Kat. xxx