Mekong Delta and the Beginnings of our Holiday in Cambodia

 The Mekong Delta was great. There is a definite change of pace compared to the rest of Vietnam, everything seems unrushed and everybody happy. We travelled on so many different types of boat, and the occasional bus during our three days. The rowboat on the last day was my favourite experience as we got expertly navigated by a local woman through a brightly coloured floating village where everybody’s going about their daily lives and their dogs watch you float by from their porches, all in the early morning sunshine. The floating market we visited on the second day went by quickly but seeing all the buying and selling from the big boats stuffed with fruits and vegetables to the small boats was fantastic and the big boats even advertised what they sold by tying a selection to the mast!

As part of the trip we learnt how the people of this area make money from the natural resources of the Delta which was really interesting. We visited a brick factory and saw the thousands of clay bricks they produce and then sell on - 30 for $1! A family business to do with coconut processing where nothing is wasted of the coconut and they make sugary candy, coconut drinks, coconut toffee and the shell of the coconut gets pressed into wooden souvenirs such as salad servers that we bought with some of our left over Vietnamese money. We also visited a fruit farm which grew all the exotic fruits of Vietnam, a fish farm which consisted of a house built over a huge square net that fish swim into to get fed through a hole in the floor and then never leave and of course rice fields that when glimpsed from the boat stretched endlessly into the horizon.

The lunch on the first day of the trip is worth mentioning because we had this HUGE ugly, angry looking Mekong fish presented to us. He tasted so good! We had fresh spring rolls prepared in front of us which consisted of a bit of fish, mint leaf, pineapple, and rice accompanied with a dipping sauce. Mmmmm! We then had about 3 other dishes all delicious but none of them could beat the spectacle of the fish.





The border crossing was no problem at all, we had an hour wait for the visas so we ate something in the border cafe and by the time we were finished they were done! Getting to the border was the most interesting as we took a 3 hour slow boat. All the houses were set back on land with stilts rather than in or very nearby the water as we’d seen previously. Children would run to wave and blow kisses to the boat (one girl even pulled different poses with her fingers making the peace sign – I blame the Japanese!) and people just carried on as they always do crossing from one side of the river to the other in a row boat to visit friends, casting fishing nets from small boats to catch lunch or ferrying huge amounts of vegetables from the fields on the back of a pedal bike over a rickety looking wooden bridge - it was fascinating.

Cambodia so far has been really friendly and everyone always has a smile on their face even if half the people we talk to are tuk-tuk drivers looking for a fare... The Khmer food that we’ve tried has been fantastic and the beer seems good too which is always positive! The money can be a little bit confusing at first because they mainly use US Dollars but you can also use Cambodian Riel mainly for smaller things. This means that a lot of the time we’re using the two currencies together – to pay $4.50 you might put down $4 and 2000 Riel. The temples in Phnom Penh remind us a lot of Bangkok and rest of Thailand’s glitzy and slightly gaudy style. We took a walk around the main sights and the river front on our first full day taking in some more French Colonial architecture combined with monuments, temples, wats and even the national museum! Phnom Penh is certainly a busy city and we’ve found finding certain cafes has not been the easiest as streets and buildings are given a number whenever they are built meaning you might see buildings 14, 36 and 108A all sitting next to each other. It also doesn’t help that a lot of the cafes mentioned in the Lonely Planet have closed making them impossible to find.

Yesterday we went to S-21 and the Killing Fields. S-21 was a school that got turned into a prison and interrogation / torture area by the Khmer Rouge an extreme Marxist style party who took over Cambodia from 1975 – 1978. During their time in power they abolished money and forced everyone from the cities to become slaves in the fields working 12 -15 hour days and receiving nothing but watery rice for food. Naturally the leaders were suspicious of everyone including their own party members thinking KGB or US informants were everywhere so they rounded people up and tortured them until they lied about whatever they wanted to hear. Then truck loads of these self-confessed ‘spies’ and ‘traitors’ were taken to the killing fields 15 km out of Phnom Penh and savagely killed by most often a blunt instrument such as a lead pipe and pushed into a mass grave with hundreds of others. It’s appalling to think that this happened just over 30 years ago and the leaders behind it have still not been punished. S-21 had portrait photos of each of the victims, some photos were also taken after the torture everything is mostly the way it was with tiny cells and barbed wire covering any escape routes. It’s still quite a brightly coloured building and so ordinary looking which makes it all the more chilling for the crimes that were committed there.

Hope everyone who reads this blog is doing well just a quick note to say on Flickr you can browse by 'Sets' (Places we’ve been) as well as 'Collections' (Countries) if you want to look through any of our older photos it’ll be much quicker to find than scrolling through our Photostream.

Love C&K xxx

Beaches, Bullets and Buildings

We are now qualified PADI Open Water Divers! This means now have the training to go down to depths of 18 meters and skilfully hover above colourful coral whilst little luminescent fish largely ignore us, regard us with mild curiosity or dart away. As you can probably guess we loved diving regardless of what the fish did and now can’t wait to try some other diving spots on the rest of our travels.

The actual PADI course was quite tiring due to early starts and the sheer amount of reading and videos you have to fit into 3 days. We found we’d be shattered by 10pm each day trying to finish off the last few pages of our required reading. Having said that slowly gaining more control over our diving was so rewarding it was more than worth it!

Day 1 of the PADI course involved a number of confined water dives in a local pool that was around 6 meters deep. We practised the core skills of diving including clearing your mask of water, recovering the regulator (breathing apparatus), preparation of Scuba gear, buoyancy control, removal of Scuba gear underwater, emergency ascents and breathing from another diver’s spare regulator. Kat’s hair generally broke the waterproof seal of her mask after removal and it needed clearing, I looked very undignified when trying to take off and put back on all the Scuba equipment underwater and on the surface closely resembling a turtle on its back struggling to right itself but apart from that we didn’t really have any problems!

Days 2 and 3 then consisted of four dives in open water where we practised the skills we’d learned in the pool then went on to generally have fun exploring the bottom of the ocean, 16 meters deep was the maximum we got to! On these dives we saw a multitude of fish that you can see a selection of on Flickr having hired an underwater camera on our last day. As you’ll see this also meant that we had an underwater photo shoot with our instructor directing us to pose in certain ways – actually quite difficult to know what he wanted without hearing him!

On our final day of the PADI course after our dive and in the break before our final exam (which we both scored 96%) we trekked out to the nearby Cham towers which were very similar to the ones we’d seen in My Son and the Nha Trang Cathedral which was huge and very picturesque. These activities all combined and mixed in with a good Indian meal and a beer meant that we slept soundly throughout the night bus’ journey for once all the way through to Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as everyone still calls it).

In Saigon we stayed in a hotel situated in the back room of a tailor shop. It was a real hotel you just had to walk through the tailor shop to get to the street. We really enjoyed doing a short walking tour of some of Saigon’s historic French Colonial buildings, the famous Rex Hotel which was where all the reporters stayed during the Vietnam War and the Reunification Palace which was where the American backed President commanded the South’s war efforts from - untouched 60’s / 70’s decor means that it looks a lot like a villains lair from a James Bond movie! Crossing the street is as much of an experience as everyone says it is – doing it slowly is the key! Scooters just jam the road at rush hour and a few times when we weren’t sure quite when to step out into this death trap a local came to our aid or one of the tourist police helped us across.

We visited a Cao Dai temple that looks a lot like a Disneyland for religion and the worshippers hedge their bets by taking the best bits of every religion and worshiping all the gods. We attended mid-day mass which was really interesting as there was a choir, band and lots of people in multi-coloured robes (to identify which religion they believe in most). Cu Chi tunnels came next where the Viet Cong dug a network of tunnels into the ground to evade and kill the Americans during the war. We were shown numerous traps that involved falling into horrible looking sharp spikes. The tunnels themselves for us were a hot, tiny mad 200 meter dash which included a section we had to go flat to the ground and slide ourselves down because it was that small, and they’ve been widened for Westerners! I certainly couldn’t imagine staying down there for months at a time and not coming up for fresh air. Whilst we were at the tunnels we also fired an AK-47 (which has quite a kick!) loaded with 10 real bullets into an area nowhere near the targets we were aiming for! Certainly a new experience and something we felt we had to try as the opportunity was there!

We’ve just arrived in Cambodia and for the past 3 days we have been thoroughly enjoying boating around the Mekong Delta and waving at all the local kids (more about that in another post).

Love Chris & Kat. xxx

Moving Down Vietnam

We're enjoying Vietnam now that we're in the swing of things here.  It has a very different feel from neighbouring laid back Laos, and it is a world from the land of smiles but it does hold its own charm.  

There is a big Chinese influence; the most obvious was seeing the Imperial Palace in Hue which was like a miniature Forbidden City – much more attractive in my opinion, green and mostly un-restored.  But Chinese style temples and buildings are generally ever present and their shared enthusiasm for building huge Mausoleums for Kings (we viewed a few on the a tour down the Perfume River in Hue)  again show the similar Architecture and adoration of their rulers – Ho Chi Minh is just as well loved as Mao!  The Vietnamese temperament also reminds me of the Chinese, quite blunt and to the point, I often joke that restaurants must entice people in with their warmth and customer service – "You! Buy something!"  When we were in Shanghai we went to a Propaganda museum to see the old Communist posters – amazingly here they are still used & we've seen them everywhere! 

As well as the Chinese influence – the French have also put their stamp on the place.  Again baguettes lurk at every street food stand!  Also the buildings around Hanoi and Hoi An were very European featured, very colonial looking.  There are even Notre Dame Cathedral replicas in both Hanoi & Saigon. 

We enjoyed Hue, we did a tour of the DMZ which was a day of bus travel and photo opportunities, then the impressive tunnel complex where a whole village hid for the duration of the Vietnam war.  The following day was the Perfume River tour, it was really very hot – 38degrees – and the boat was the slowest moving object that I have ever travelled on!  But despite the distinct lack of breeze, we survived and enjoyed seeing a pretty pagoda, a traditional garden house & a few Mausoleums all just off the bank of the beautiful Perfume River.

Next on the destination list was Hoi An.  A lot of travellers rave about here – and it's easy to see why!  A gorgeous riverside setting, a typical mix of beautiful French vs traditional Chinese buildings, an abundance of restaurants selling delicious seafood dishes (can't get enough of the squid!) and the crowning factor – fresh beer for 12.5p a glass!!  We indulged in a lot of 'Bia Hoi' and generally enjoyed some relaxing around the town.  One day we hired a bike and went on a really nice 5km ride to the beach, which was beautiful & so quiet; we had a walk along the shore (burnt our feet on the hot hot hot sand getting there!) and played some Frisbee in the surf (great gift Lianne J).  It was so lovely to have a relaxing day. 

The following day was back to sightseeing.  We headed to My Son, a Cham temple complex dating back from the 4^th Century.  It's unknown how they built it, much like the pyramids it seems an engineering feat and nobody knows how they stuck the bricks together, even top scientists can't replicate the technique!  Its full of more recent history too – the French found the sight and cut off all the Hindu god heads to take back to France (they are now in the Louvre in Paris!) and there are numerous bomb craters & stories from the Vietnam War.

From Hoi An we embarked on another night bus – this would be our 2^nd in Vietnam.  The experiences have so far been much the same.  A bed on an incline, so you're slightly upright – your feet go under the head of the person in front of you.  Its slightly too small – especially for Chris, the pillow is like a rock, the driving includes frequent swerving, the film is dubbed in Vietnamese and played loudly, the horn honking is louder than the movie and mostly continuous!  But this delightful experience is cheap and so far has delivered us safely to our destinations!  Only one more night bus to go to Ho Chi Minh!

We are now in Nha Trang and after a Discovery Diving Day we have just signed up to do our PADI Open Water Course.  We did 2 dives today, once we started to understand how to regulate our buoyancy to avoid floating up or crashing down into Coral then we soon started to enjoy ourselves.  We saw numerous fish; to name a few we saw Dory from Finding Nemo, really cool trumpet fish, a school of humbug fish, an ugly looking octopus, lots of sea anemones and lots of coral.  It was beautiful and we seemed to get the hang of it enough to sign onto the PADI.  So we have lots of reading, DVDs and the day in a swimming pool tomorrow for practice!  Wish us luck! Hopefully we'll be qualified divers in the next 3 days!!

Love K&C xxxxx

Good Morning Vietnam!

We crossed the border quickly and with no fuss from the guards. They even exchanged our small amount of left over Laos Kip to Vietnamese Dong at a bad rate for us! This Dong worked out to be the perfect amount for lunch that day and a taxi ride to our hostel from the bus station. The only problem we had was with the Vietnamese bus company we used who were really aggressive and had a bad attitude towards women.

We swapped buses towards the end of the journey to get to Hanoi and finally arrived after 15 hours where we then got into a taxi that we thought was ripping us off as the meter was running crazily fast, even when we were stationary - turns out later we actually got a fairly good price when we asked at our hostel! The thing with Vietnam is we’ve heard so many bad stories of the locals ripping you off so you’re always on your guard. Certainly we’ve noticed that you ask at a street stall how much a drink costs and the owner will pause for slightly too long to consider and then say some outrageous price. Also there’s no real service in the tourist industry it seems to be run by dour faced people who don’t care if you buy a tour from them or not which is a big contrast to the rest of SE Asia so far.



Bamboo Ladders anyone?

Hanoi was face meltingly hot and bustling with lots of scooters all over the place. Literally you can’t walk on the pavement because all the scooters are parked there! After the ordeal of the border journey it was nice to have 2 days pottering around Hanoi. We enjoyed seeing the Old Quarter with its product specific streets such as the electronic fan street, the bamboo ladder street, the paper lantern street and many more. All featuring multiple shops selling the same things! We saw a traditional long house that was a single room size wide and about four room sizes deep (long and thin) with two stories. The History museum was full of army tanks and anti-aircraft missiles captured from the Americans during the war. Most interesting was the sculpture made out of parts of crashed B-52 Bomber Planes. We also walked to see the B-52 memorial which is a lake that still has the untouched wreckage of a crashed Bomber Plane floating in it! You’ll all be pleased to know the street food in Hanoi is as fantastic as the rest of SE Asia J

We did a lot of research into which Ha-Long Bay tour to do. Fortunately we choose to do the cheapest tour we could find as we’d heard all the budget and mid-range tours get thrown together and all you pay more for is the tour company’s commission. Well we were very happy! We went with low expectations and out of everyone we met; only one other couple seemed to actually enjoy the tour! Everyone else seemed to be unhappy with everything and complained non-stop!

The first day was a bit drizzly so we didn’t get great views of the bay. It was still quite cool to see all the shadowy Karsts rising out of the sea as we slowly passed them by. We visited the heavenly cave which was massive and reminded us a bit of Chedder Caves because it was all lit up. We passed a floating village where houses float on oil drums and docked nearby to Cat Ba Island for the night for some swimming in the warm sea before dinner and drinks on the boat.

The next day the weather cleared up around mid-day. We went onto Cat Ba Island and did a short, but very muddy trek up to the top of a hill and saw fantastic panoramic views of the Island’s National Park. We had the rest of the day at our leisure so we walked around the lovely Harbour admiring all of the multi-coloured boats and enjoying iced coffee in a cafe. Later on in the evening we went out with Simon and Claire who we’d met on the boat the day before and found a bar selling tasty Beer Hoi (fresh low alcohol draught beer) where we had six drinks for under £1!

The final day we were back on the boat to cruise through the bay again and we had absolutely brilliant weather all day and what a difference it made! I couldn’t stop taking photos as it was so stunning! On the way back we stopped off to do 20 minutes of Kayaking around natural caves in the Karsts which was really nice for a different view point.

Ha Long Bay

We had one more day in Hanoi yesterday where we wondered around some more sights including the very Chinese Confucius Temple of Literature and then in the evening we caught the night bus to Hue where we have just arrived and seen the Imperial Citadel. Tomorrow we’ve booked onto a tour to see the De-Militarised Zone or DMZ. The DMZ is a small strip of land that divided Northern and Southern Vietnam and the opposing political parties during the war. Looking forward to it!

Love Chris & Kat xxx

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