All the way from Vientiane to Chang Mai in Thailand

18 03 2010

After the fun in Vang Vieng we took the bus down to Vientiane, the Laos’ capital.  Vientiane is a nice and cozy city but we had heard that there are not that many things to do and see there.  We therefore decided to get a room for the night and head for Thailand in the morning.

At the guesthouse we met new friends when we were going to sleep – there were bedbugs in the bed!!!  At first we saw one and thought that it was just some harmless bug but soon there were others that followed.  Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep that night and hurried away from the guesthouse as soon as possible – after refusing to pay the agreed rate.  What got us even more angry was that they seemed to know there were bedbugs in the room and rented it to us anyway …bastards!

We had seen tickets from Vientiane to Chang Mai in Thailand for 1,100-1,500 baht ($33-$45), which felt way too much for us – the savvy travelers :) so we decided to go on our own.  We had seen that everything seemed to be overpriced in Vientiane and felt sure we could do better when in Thailand.  We went to the local bus station and got a ticket to the nearest big Thai town (Udon Thani) for 80 baht – a good start.  Going through the border was extremely easy and straight forward …and no payment to get the Thai visa, which is nice :)

For some reason most towns around here have at least two, if not more, bus stations and it is not uncommon that you have to get your self from one station to the next if you have to change busses.  On top of that the bus stations are often outside the towns and that doesn’t make things easier.  Anyway we had to take a tuktuk between bus stations and got a ticket to Chang Mai three hours later for 525 baht.  By showing a little initiative we saved about 50% or 600 baht on the fare, which is huge in backpacker terms, and arrived in Chang Mai 3 hours sooner than if we would have taken the Vientiane-Chang Mai bus so we saved both time and money :)

I have to admit that the 14 hour bus ride was no luxury ride, we had one stop after seven hours and that was it.  Twenty minutes to pee and eat.  Apparently we had a toilet on board but that wasn’t really accessible because the bus was completely full with about fifteen people standing in the middle without any seats – some of them were standing for hours.

We were very happy to reach Chang Mai where we knew of a great guesthouse in the middle of town waiting for us.  Chang Mai is the main city in Northern Thailand and offers a lot of tours and activities that we are now trying to decide between so stay tuned!

ps. we have not been taking enough photos recently as you can see by the crappy photos in the last few posts but I promise that we’ll shape up here in Chang Mai ;)


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Vang Vieng and tubing

16 03 2010

Vang Vieng surely is a town one of its kind!  We arrived just when it was getting dark and the town was starting to get lively.  Many of the restaurants where playing Friends or Family Guy on the TV and the guests lounged on benches, sipping beer and watching the shows – it all looked so cozy! 

We were quick to find a room, get rid of our bags and head for a nice looking restaurant.  We had been warned that all you could eat in Vang Vieng were Happy Pizzas, Opium Burgers, Mushroom pasta and the like so we were very curious.  Our menu didn’t have any of that stuff and in fact we didn’t see any of those dishes – not that we were really searching :)  It wasn’t long before we could smell the sweet odor of ganja from the next table.

On our way back to the guest house we met a few drunken kids, skanky girls in bikinis and guys only in their shorts – all too happy to tell us where the cheapest buckets of whiskey were to be had – but the oldies just went to bed ;)

The next morning we headed towards the river for the town’s main activity (besides partying) – tubing.  For the uninitiated, tubing is floating down the river on an old tractor tube stopping at the various bars along the way, jumping into the river on big swings or water slides. 

We bought our ticket and were driven about four kilometers up river.  We kind of thought that we would just be spectators watching the young ones having all the fun but it ended up being a lot of fun for us.  They have about twenty different bars that you can stop at.  Many of them have free shots and cocktail specials and all serving ice cold beer to a thunderous beet of dance music. 

The river was surprisingly clean and the surroundings absolutely beautiful with high cliffs towering over the river between jungle covered hills so no matter what you are looking for – it should be a lot of fun.  Unfortunately we didn’t dare take the camera with us so we don’t have any photos :(

It took us about five hours and a few beers to float all the way back into town.  When we came to town we saw that the town is not so cozy in the daylight – the restaurants are all kind of sweaty and the people either suffering from a hang over or drinking it away. 

After shower we planted us into one of the Friends bar, ate dinner and watched a few episodes of Friends, an excellent evening after a fun day.

We kind of knew that we had done everything we wanted to do in Vang Vieng and didn’t want to stop too long and repeat any of it, always stop while you’re ahead,  so we just took the bus then next morning to the capital – Vientiane – before going back to Tailand.


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Laos quick facts

16 03 2010

Laos (with a silent s at the end), the land of million elephants, is the home of 6.5 million people, 70% of which are ethnic Lao and 67% exercise Theravada Buddhism.  Laos is more than twice the size of Iceland or six times the size of Switzerland.  The official language in Laos is Lao accompanied by Lao script.

Laos is a land-locked country between Burma, China, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.  With building of new roads though, you can say that Laos is slowly becoming a land-linked country – a major transport hub between the ever growing economies of China, Thailand and Vietnam.

Laos is, like Vietnam, a communist country but the communist party has since the eighties been relaxing its grip on the whole society.  We weren’t aware of the communist regime at all apart from a few revolutionary flags around governmental buildings.  Laos now welcomes foreign investment and the citizens enjoy more freedom than ever before.  The lack of proper infrastructure is though still hindering progress in Laos even though the country has moved leaps and bounds in recent years.  The country is very mountainous and land travel takes a lot of time – as we have experienced.  Unfortunately water levels are getting lower and lower in the Mekong, after the building of several dams in China, making travel by boat difficult as well.

Rice production still makes up the biggest portion of Laos’ economy but they also grow coffee, tee and opium.  The country is rich in minerals like gold and copper and more areas are being mined every year.  The country is still pretty poor with about 30% of the population under the poverty line.

Laos has the honor of being the most bombed country on this earth.  I read somewhere that during the Vietnam war, the Americans hit Laos by an average of one B-52 bomb load every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973.  That is more explosive power than was used in the whole of WWII.

The last fact is that apparently it is not allowed to play cards in Vientiane!  At least we were eating at this restaurant tonight and were playing “Kleppari” while waiting for our dinner when the manager came and told us that playing cards was not allowed in Vientiane?!?!?


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Luang Prabang in Laos

14 03 2010

Luang Prabang has been a great relief after all the all the noise in Hanoi.  As you might have heard the Lao people are extremely relaxed and I think that in the five days we have been in Laos only one scooter has honked its horn at us so it has been very relaxing!

The flight from Hanoi was very nice and we even had a nice dinner on board during the one hour flight.  Getting a visa was no problem, we had a minor scare though as we didn’t have any dollars nor Lao kip but the visa guys accepted Thai baht so in the end we were OK.

Luang Prabang is a very cozy town of about 50 thousand people, located on the banks of the Mekong river.  It is quite a beautiful town with a dominating French colonial style.  The relaxed atmosphere is quite dominating and you even have to wake up some of the tuk tuk drivers if you want them to drive you places :)

For the first three days here in Luang Prabang we have just soaked up that relaxed atmosphere and done next to nothing – just wandered around looking at the many temples in town, checking out the very nice night market and chilling in one of the cafés or bakeries here.  We met the Húsavík quartet again – just shows how small Asia really is – and here is a link to their Icelandic blog

Laos has been called the land of the thousand elephants so it made sense to book a mahout training course (elephant trainer/rider) for Elínborg’s birthday.  We booked a two day training course with the Elephant Village, which seemed to us like the most trustworthy company in town.

The elephant village had nine elephant chicks and on the first day we got to ride the elephant on the saddle and after we got comfortable I was allowed to ride on the elephant’s neck.  After the first ride we had our mahout training, learned the lingo and how to control the elephant.  After lunch we were allowed to ride the elephants on our own into the jungle where they spend the afternoon eating their 200 kg. of greeneries before going to sleep (the elephant dongs are in proportion to what they eat :).

In the evening we joined a local party celebrating the opening of a new school in the village.  The party felt a bit strange and after two ladies asked me to dance, we left for the peace and quite at our restaurant.  We could hear the banging music from the party in our lodge well into the night …or at least until about 21:30 when we fell asleep :)

In the morning we went with the other mahouts and fetched the elephants from the jungle and took them for a bath.  Bathing the elephants in the river was so much fun – they are such delicate and fantastic creatures and so much fun to be around.  This was possibly the most fun activity that we have done so far!

After breakfast we went back to Luang Prabang and are now waiting for the mini-bus to take us down to Vang Vieng.


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Hanoi City

10 03 2010

We arrived back in Hanoi from Halong Bay on a Sunday and after learning that all the museums and some pagodas would be closed the following Monday (like any other Monday) we decided to visit the Perfume Pagoda, which is up in the Marble Mountains, about 70 km. outside of Hanoi.

The perfume pagoda is a natural limestone cave with a fully fledged altar and everything.  To get to the pagoda we took a bus for two hours, went in a rowing boat for one hour and walked up the mountain for forty minutes so you can imagine the anticipation.  I’ll let the pictures speak on how beautiful the pagoda really is.  Going to the Perfume Pagoda to pray and give sacrifices to Buddha is supposed to give you good luck, good health and prosperity for the whole year and if we get any of that, the effort is surly worth it. 

The main attraction for us on this trip though was to watch all the Vietnamese tourists visiting the pagoda.  The guide said that the days before our visit the pagoda was visited by over fifty thousand people each day but we were visiting on the twenty third day of the newly started lunar year and odd days are not as good for visiting the temples according to local legend so we escaped the crowds.  We were especially interested in the many restaurants that lined the pathway.  The local specialty here seemed to be some kind of soup with fresh meat in it and the meat was was on display in front of the restaurants so that the guests could ensure its freshness.  For the soup there was a choice of beef, deer, cats and dogs – all sounding delicious but we took a pass for this round.

There are a lot of trips that you can make out of Hanoi, either daytrips or 2-3 day trips but we have been told that the city it self is nothing special.  Never the less we walked a bit in the old town and visited the Temple of Literature (where they, like professor Dumbledore, seemed to like the Phoenix an awful lot), which was nice, but in the end we totally agreed with what we had been told.  Hanoi is a bit like an overgrown village with endless narrow streets where people are selling anything and everything and scooter after scooter.  Hanoi has no big city feel to it event though there are five million people here, at least not where we went.

We had planned to stay until the eleventh but changed our flight ticket to Laos and we left two days early for Luang Prabang in Laos – town we have only heard the nicest things about .


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Hue and Halong Bay

8 03 2010

Last time I left you, we were on our way to Hue to see the Emperors Palace and the Purple Forbidden City.  In short, we only stayed in Hue one day and the palace and surroundings were a big disappointment.  I had read that during the Communist era most old ruins had been left to rot or at least not restored nor properly maintained.  The goal of the communist revolution is/was to build a new, better society that is not hampered by the burdens of the past.  The citadel was also heavily bombed by the Americans during the Vietnam was and maybe the Vietnam government wanted to keep the place in a bad shape as a monument of the destruction by American bombs?  At least the whole citadel was a bid depressive but at least we could see that now they have stared on a big restoration project so hopefully the site will be back to full glory in a few years time.

We took the fourteen hour sleeper bus up to Hanoi that arrived just before seven in the morning.  We moved quickly and booked a three day, two night trip to Halong Bay, departing at eight o’clock that same morning. 

Halong Bay is about 170 km. from Hanoi.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a beautiful bay with just under 2,000 majestic limestone-cliff islands scattered around the bay.  We took the bus to Halong City (with a stop in a souvenir store of course) and there we boarded a nice three star Chinese junk with eleven other passengers and a crew of six.

 

At first it felt like stepping into a ski-lift, going out on that boat.  At any one time there are about 300 similar passenger boats sailing around Halong Bay and they all have similar schedules so we could always see a few boats behind us and a few ahead of us, all heading in the same direction. 

But we were quick to shake of the ski-lift feeling.  Sailing around the bay in those old looking boats is soooo relaxing and nice.  The bay is very quiet and the scenery is so astonishing that you get the feeling of moving around in slow motion.

We visited a big cave on one of the islands, went kayaking and visited a floating village where the people live in houses build on rafts and underneath they have enclosures filled with fish, squid and lobsters that they feed until they are big enough to eat.

The first night we slept on the boat but on the second day we went to Cat Ba Island and stayed in a nice new hotel in Cat Ba town.  In hindsight we should have stayed two nights on the boat though.  The hotel in compared to how nice it was on the boat.

We were picked up the next morning and sailed quietly back to Halong City where we took the bus back to Hanoi (with a stop in a souvenir store of course).

All in all the tour was great, the scenery was fantastic, the food was good and the accommodation cozy and nice.  Our only complaint was our tour guide.  I’m not really sure that he knew that he was our tour guide, he acted more as a cowboy herding us, the money cows, from place to place.  He never told us anything interesting, never informed us of the schedule until the last minute and was just plain rude at times.  But he wasn’t enough to ruin a great trip though.  For people considering to take a similar trip I would recommend taking the two day one night on the boat option on a three star boat or even three days two nights on the boat option.


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