Vientiane and Koh Chang

Happy new year, everyone! Apologies for the lack of posts for a while – we have been relaxing on the beach and settling into the new year!

Last time I wrote were we were due to arrive into Vientiane, where we spent a couple of days. It's a small and pretty French colonial city and Laos' capital. 

At times - if you ignore the tuk-tuks - you could be mistaken for thinking you're in Paris: cafes with blackboards written in perfect French handwriting, run by French ex-pats, advertising duck a l'orange and 'jambon beurre' baguettes, tucked in amongst the Laotian cafes selling fried noodles.

Can you spot the French influence?

We also found a Tintin-themed Belgian beer cafe, which Kev just couldn't resist!

Drinking with Tintin in the Belgian beer cafe

We spent a morning at COPE (http://copelaos.org), a museum dedicated to telling the story of Laos' unexploded ordnance following the Vietnam war – and the resulting need for prosthetics caused by injuries from cluster bombs.

Laos is the most bombed country in the world per capita. The impact of the Vietnam war in Laos was equivalent to bombs being dropped every eight minutes, 24/7 for nine years, non-stop. Thirty percent of the cluster bombs dropped did not detonate and are therefore still active. 

Much of the land is used for farming so the unexplored 'bombies' (individual bombs, about the size of an orange, within the larger cluster bomb shell) still pose a very real threat today. However, with new bomb search and disposal techniques, they hope to clear all remaining ordnance by 2020.

As we travel south, the weather is starting to get warmer. We felt it first in the move from Vang Vieng to Vientiane, and then again through Bangkok into Koh Chang. Fortunately, also the roads are becoming less mountainous, though the minivan drivers remain as crazy as ever! 

We passed through a town called Trat – the jumping off point for Koh Chang and randomly met a man who lives in Truro – it’s a small world and the Cornish really do get everywhere! 

Koh Chang is Thailands third largest island and is just south of Bangkok. It has a mountainous, jungle interior and is fringed with pretty sandy beaches on the west coast – the perfect place for a spot of rest and relaxation.

White Sands Beach

Arriving in time for new year we were fortunate to stay on a fairly quiet part of the island, so we were able to avoid the worst of the (hideous) new year’s eve’s parties on the beaches - and found a secluded part of our local beach, Pearl Beach, to toast in the new year. Nearby White Sands Beach and (somewhat inappropriately named) Lonely Beach were 'party central', so well worth avoiding!

We hired a scooter to get around and made Kai Bae Beach our home for the week. Three times a day the elephants from a nearby elephant camp would be walked down the beach to bathe in the sea (which from experience, we know they love! 

Elephants on Kai Bae Beach

I just hope they were not forced to also do circus tricks for tourists in the camp). In any case, they seemed to love the ocean and were well used to human contact. You could walk right up to them in the sea and touch them if you wanted, but even the baby ones are pretty strong so I kept a safe distance!

Baby elephant, Kai Bae Beach

One afternoon we hired a kayak and paddled around on of the small off-islands off Kai Bae Beach. It took forty-five minutes and was a welcome break from the inactivity of sitting around on the beach. That said, I think some beach time was long overdue after a month in land-locked northern Thailand and Laos.

Kayaking

The sea is the perfect temperature (probably somewhere around twenty-nine degrees Celcius) and the weather around the mid-thirties. The afternoons have been overcast and slightly cooler and fortunately, too, there have not been many mosquitoes around - paradise!

White Sands Beach

Next, we head back to Bangkok in order to head to our next location: Phuket and then on to some of the other islands.

Vang Vieng

Our journey from Luang Prabang turned out to be seven hours, rather than the four we were quoted! For a 268 km trip, that works out at an average speed of 38 km per hour, which describes perfectly how mountainous and bendy the roads for the entire journey. I later found out that there’s an old road and a new road. The new road is steeper and scales just one mountain, however, the old road scales three, so I guess we must have taken the old route! The overcrowded minibus that we took was pretty old, so perhaps the steep new road was more than it could have managed! It was, however, a very scenic journey – absolutely stunning mountains clad with dense jungle.

Vang Vieng is party central – full of western backpackers celebrating Christmas, but even more Koreans in town for a music festival, which just so happens to coincide with the Christmas holidays. There are so many bars, all with loud music blaring out and competing against each other, resulting in a total sound clash. It’s loud, brash and full of twenty-something-year-old backpackers. We did feel a little old and out of place at times, not being big into the dance or K-pop scenes, but the town had a good laid-back atmosphere and was good fun.

Vang Vieng riverside

Fortunately for us, we stayed just outside the centre, in a more peaceful area so we couldn’t hear the pumping music as we went off to sleep. We did, however, have to put up with a very confused rooster on the property next door, who only crowed between midnight and seven in the morning. I’m not sure why he slept all day and woke up in the middle of the night, but it made for a terrible night’s sleep! 

There’s quite a lot of nature in the area – lots of chickens, ducks, pigs and cows wandering around on the road, so we had to be careful when walking back to our accommodation at night – there were no street lights and I almost walked into a cow at one point! 

Vang Vieng is most famous for ‘tubing’ – floating down the Namsong river in a big inner tube and stopping at riverside bars along the way. As the river is quite fast-flowing in places, some of the bars throw you a rope, then reel you in. Others, you just paddle to the bank.

Tubing

The tubing scene has apparently calmed down quite a lot in recent years as it was getting too loud and people were getting too drunk and having accidents – but it’s still a must-do activity if you’re visiting Vang Vieng. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed taking in the mountain scenery as much as the occasional beer on the way downstream. We did avoid the ‘buckets’ of locally brewed ‘Lao Lao’ whisky, though I dare say they claimed a few casualties throughout the day!

Keeping on the theme of alcohol, every evening, our host, Nouth, would bring out one of four bottles of her mother’s home-brewed spirits and invite everyone in her restaurant to do a shot with her. It was pretty potent stuff – apparently made by fermenting sticky rice – and tasted a bit like homemade plum brandy. For added decoration, each bottle had a creature in it: the four we tried over the duration of our stay had a scorpion, a giant centipede, a snake and ants in them! Not terribly appetising, but also rude to refuse our host!

Can you spot the scorpion in the bottle?

Following our day of tubing on Christmas day, we booked in for a traditional Christmas dinner at the Irish Bar in the town. As much as we enjoy spending the odd Christmas in the sunshine, we always miss the big family dinner, so it was a real treat to have a proper roast with all the trimmings and to celebrate with other homesick westerners.

On our last day in town, we hired a scooter and visited two of the Blue Lagoons (there are three in the area) and Tham Phu Kham Cave. It was tough going on the scooter as most of the way was on unpaved dirt tracks, but worth the effort as the lagoons were beautiful, deep turquoise water pools, with platforms to jump off and a series of rope swings going into the water. I couldn’t resist doing a few acrobatics whilst I was there!

Somersault!

Kev's leap!

Tham Phu Kham Cave involved a climb up a steep cliff, which lead us into an enormous chamber. Inside the cave is a large Buddha shrine as you enter, then with a head torch you can descend further into another deeper, big chamber. I must admit we got a bit creeped out and we only had one torch between us, so we decided not to venture too far inside. Apparently, the cave goes in quite a long way and down to a maximum depth of five hundred metres, so we didn’t want to venture too far in, in case we got lost and couldn’t find out way back out!

Tham Phu Kham Cave

Next up, we’re back on the minibus and heading south to Laos’ capital city, Vientiane for a couple of days before we go back to Thailand in time for new year. I’ll write again soon! 

Luang Prabang

We had a really easy border crossing from Thailand into Laos, the officials were friendly and the border police even asked the bus driver to take a selfie with us after asking where we’re from! 

With some time to kill at the bus station, we stopped for some food on the Laos side of the border – we had a choice of noodle soup or noodle soup: presumably it’s the only dish on the menu that the staff know how to say in English (and our Laos language is limited to three words at present) – so two noodle soups it was, with a can of the local Beer Lao. The soup itself was a lot like Vietnamese pho: a thin broth with thin rice noodles, beansprouts, spring onions, meatballs, tripe (or at least I think that’s what it was – I didn’t eat that bit!) and a wedge of lime to squeeze over the top.

On the whole, Laos is a bit more expensive than Thailand, despite being poorer and less developed. The currency (Kip) is 10,000 to the Pound, so we are enjoying being millionaires every time we go to the cash point!

From the border, we took an overnight bus into Luang Prabang, which took fourteen hours. Believe it or not this was the quickest option, with most tourists opting for the two-day slow boat up the Mekong. With hindsight, we wish we had also taken this option as the entire fourteen hours was on winding, pot-holed, mountainous roads. We had bunks on the bus, so lying down it felt even more precarious! 

If I thought the journey to Pai in Thailand was bad, it turns out most of Laos’ roads are like an extreme version of this – with sections of unpaved road, lots of pot-holes for good measure and many trucks driving through the night.

Night buses in Asia are also famous for having freezing cold air conditioning blasting out all night – we had on all our clothes, including fleeces, scarves and woolly hats and we were still cold! Arriving into Luang Prabang at five am, we were certainly pleased to get off, but we then had to wait until we could check in at our guesthouse. The cafés didn’t even open until 6.30 so it was a long and tired wait, but it is at least the only night bus we have planned to take on this trip. 

Luang Prabang has a big French influence. There are bilingual schools and all the cafes serve baguettes and crepes. After our time in Thailand, it was lovely to have fresh baguettes again, instead of the usual sliced, white loaf.
It’s a beautiful, well-preserved city. All the shop fronts have the same style wooden signs with lettering and there are lots of golden temples, but the buildings also have a colonial French style to them.

The coffee here is also excellent, grown locally and served Vietnamese-style with condensed milk in the bottom of the cup. It’s very sweet but very strong and delicious. 

The local-style cafes light two fires in the morning and keep them burning all day. On one fire, there’s a big pot for brewing the coffee and on the other is the stock for the noodle soup. In contrast, there are also lots of more western-style restaurants and cafes – all charging western prices.

One day we took a minivan to Keung Si waterfall, twenty kilometres out of town and which apparently, cannot be missed. The main waterfall is spectacular and cascades from a great height.

The water then continues downstream into turquoise pools and further falls. We started with a walk to the top of the falls and ended the day with a swim in one of the pools at the bottom.

Another afternoon we did a boat trip on the Mekong – a local man took us out in his boat (something like a house boat, but adapted with additional seats to take out passengers and living quarters at the back).

We cruised upstream for thirty minutes, then he cut the engines and let the current take us back downstream, whilst he did some fishing. We were lucky enough to have the boat to ourselves – it does seem to be really quiet here at the moment, despite being peak season.

 

On our last day, we took a walk up the steps to Mount Phousi – a mountain viewpoint with a temple at the top and great views out over the city, the river and the mountains beyond. If I thought before that it was quiet on the river, then it must be because all the tourists were at the top of Mount Phousi – all there to see the sunset! It was so busy it was almost impossible to take a photo without someone’s selfie stick in the way, so we decided not to stay for the sunset and to head somewhere a little quieter…

Luang Prabang is a small, but picturesque city and after three days here we feel like we’ve got a good feel for it. Our next stop will be Vang Vieng, where we’ll be for Christmas. I’ll write again once there.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Chiang Rai and Chiang Khong

After a couple more days in Chiang Mai, we headed north to Chiang Rai. The bus felt like it had no suspension at all on the mountain roads and duly broke down half way. Fortunately for us it was a rest stop and all buses on their way to Chiang Rai also stop here, so after an hour’s wait or so, we were able to get two seats on a bus to complete the journey. It meant we lost most of the day to travel but we at least arrived in one piece!

Chiang Rai itself is a small city but with a lot of traffic. The main features of the city are the clock tower – which I’ll get on to later – and the night bazaar. The rest of the sights are a few kilometres outside the city centre.

The most stunning – and perhaps the main reason to visit Chiang Rai – is the White Temple (Wat Rong Khun). 

The White Temple

At the end of the twentieth century the temple was incredibly run down and in need of renovation, but with no funds available to do so, so local artist Chalermchai took it upon himself to raise the funds and completely renovate the temple. His vision is to not be influenced – neither artistically, or through others’ monetary contributions – and he wants his temple to be as famous as the Taj Mahal, or Angkor Wat. 

Chalermchai is on site every day continuing his works and expects the project to be completed around 2070, ongoing even after his death. He has apparently raised and spent nearly £900,000 of his own money on the project so far!

Unlike other temples Wat Rong Khun has a much more modern feel. The idea is that you enter Hell as you approach and enter the temple, then once you have passed through the main building, you leave into Heaven. The ‘Hell’ section features sculptures of severed heads hanging from the trees, strange monsters and a moat of hands reaching up towards you!

Moat of hands

'Hell' at the White Temple

The same artist also designed the clock tower in central Chiang Rai – you can certainly see the similarities to the White Temple.

The clock tower

We also took the time to visit another modern temple, known as the Blue Temple. The building itself is in a similar style to other temples in the region, but painted in shades of blue and gold and is quite beautiful. Unfortunately, on the day we visited the Blue and White temples it was quite overcast so my photos don’t really do them justice!

Inside the Blue Temple

We also did a cooking class whilst we were in Chaing Rai, making four Thai dishes, including making the red curry paste from scratch. The day started with a visit to the market with the teacher to buy all the ingredients we’d need for our chosen dishes. Everything was really fresh and locally grown and sourced. 

Market visit

The teacher – a local lady – also gave us a tasting tour of the market, giving us the opportunity to try some of the weird and wonderful looking snacks for sale in the market, that we otherwise wouldn’t know how to eat! We tried sticky rice mixed with mung beans and sugar then barbecued in a banana leaf; sweet doughnuts with a savoury bean filling, coconut pancakes, more sticky rice baked inside a bamboo with sugar; and an appetite stimulating pepper leaf made into a parcel and filled with fresh ginger, chilli and lime – it was fiery but, gave us an appetite for our lunch after a morning of tastings.

Our shopping complete, we headed back to our host’s kitchen and were each allocated our own cooking station to make the four dishes under her supervision. 

Making the red curry paste

Busy in the kitchen!

First up was Pad Thai, followed by hot and sour prawn soup, Thai red curry with chicken and then bananas in coconut milk.

Pad Thai

Hot and sour prawn soup

Thai red curry with chicken

We were absolutely stuffed after we’d eaten all that, but proud of ourselves. We hope we can now replicate this when we’re back home! 

As an aside, the Thais find it quite amusing that us Westerners can’t handle our chilli like they can. When you order a dish in a restaurant they always ask how spicy you’d like it. Now, I’m a fan of spicy food, but apparently, what I call hot, they call ‘medium-low’!

Leaving Chaing Rai, we headed to Chiang Khong, on the Thai-Laos border. It’s a small town, popular on the backpacker trail for tourists crossing the border on land. It’s right on the banks of the fast-flowing Mekong River and it’s Laos on the other side of the river. 

Our first view of Laos, across the Mekong River

We’ll cross the border later today then get on a bus to Luang Prabang, our next stop. I’ll blog again once we’re there.

Kev and Sarah's adventure part 2!

Hello!

So here we are again, ready to embark on our next big trip; an adventure that will take us to Hong Kong, Macau, Perth, Thailand and Laos...then on to Central America - as we say goodbye to the British winter and follow summer round the globe.

You can follow our fun times and photos on this page - please feel free to leave a comment, we would love to hear from you!

Sarah and Kev
xx