Laos... WITH photos hurrah!

We flew into Laos direct from Thailand, we passed up the opportunity to do the trip overland by boat as the LP book used the phrase 'fatalities are not uncommon' and having debated exactly what this might mean, we decided that we'd take the trip in such a way that fatalities would be most definitely uncommon. We've spoken to a few people since then and it looks like it could have ben a good experience but one couple ended up sharing a boat with 80 people (capacity 60 painted on the side) and what felt like several tonnes of rice so we don't feel to bad about it.

We spent a week in Luang Prubang, another world heritage site, although it appears to be for the way of life rather than any particular landmark. The village was very nice and Debs greatly enjoyed the night markets... we are now the proud owners of bed covers and a table runner (I don't know, I'd never heard of it before either), all we need now are matching bed and table accessories but I'm sure we'll get around to that eventually. We are getting better at haggling although we still feel a bit guilty when we make a stand over 50p or something...

The food & coffee was particularly good (former french colony, credit where it's due) and we enjoyed the baguettes (Vive la France!) together with BBQ chicken and sticky rice in the night market.

We also took a trip to a waterfall, swam in limestone pools with turquoise water and climbed to the top of the main falls (having taken a few wrong turns and confronted a water buffalow or two... signs are not a strong point of Laos) it was pretty strenuous, especially in flip flops again (thanks Kev, they have taken some punishment!) but the wooden staircase with water flowing all around it and the stepping stones across the river that went over the edge made it well worth the effort.










We have now made our way south and visited the plain of jars at Phonsavan. The Jars are actually large carved urn like things scattered around the hillside, no-one really knows what they are but theories range from burial rites to containers for brewing rice whisky to fuel a conquering army's celebrations. The jars are in a variety of different conditions and are about 2,000 years old and are quite impressive as a monument to a lost civilisation. What made the jars so poignant was that they rest in one of the most bombed places on earth, during the secret war the US dropped 2 tonnes of bombs on Laos for every person that lived there and there are still thousands of unexploded ordnance (UXO) scattered around the countryside, the areas of the plain of jars that you can visit have been cleared of bombs but you can still see the craters in some case right next to, or in the middle of a collection of jars.















http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-12-11-laos-bombs_x.htm - An article on the UXO problem in Laos.

http://www.theintrepidfoundation.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=18_9&products_id=23 - A foundation that matches donations made towards clearing of UXO in Laos.


We are now in the middle of Laos, about 3 hours by road north form the capital in a place called Vang Vieng which is very different from Phonsavan... it is famous for "tubing" and bars playing Friends on constant rotation. Tubing involves hiring a tractor tire... being driven up the river for 5km... and then floating down... oh, and there may be a few bars with rope swings, zip lines and water slides along the way... To just drift down the river would take 2 hours... with the stops it can take all day. It is a fantastic way to spend a couple of lazy days and the mountain scenery is fantastic. These photos probably tell the story better :)

In case it all sounds too good to be true we should also share a couple of other things about the trip... firstly the actual travelling... no-one ever really tells you about it when they get back because it's not the thing they want to focus on... we have made a number of trips now that have involved 8+ hours on either a coach or minibus, often the state of the roads mean that the average speed is ussually around 40km an hour and the size of the seats is distinctly sub Ryanair. The world going past you is usually very pretty and we stock up with books, but if the heat and winding roads make you feel ill then it can be a very long trip. You get a bit stir crazy on some trips and you get to thinking about all sorts of strange things... We actually developed a theory on the relative strengths and capacity (based on number of stops per trip) of the Thai and Laos bladder, the Thais will generally only stop once no matter how long the journey (we don't pack water for those trips!) whilst the Laos will happily stop every hour or so and half the bus will head off into the bamboo...

Oh, and we also had a hired bike stolen which cost us 40 quid to replace... this was pretty bad as we had seen the bikes unlocked all over town and we were about 3km from where we lived and hired the bikes... all I can say is that I don't know where Debbie learnt those words, but if the little chap who stole her bike knew what they meant then he better wash his ears out. We considered chasing on the remaining bike but frankly it wasn't worth getting hurt over... still hope he fell off and broke something important or painful though... but not permanent damage despite what we may have wished fervently at the time.

Right we've whittered on enough for now I think! We are up to date which is good.

Right, now where were we...

G'day once again.


When last we wrote Debs and I were leaving Ayathaya having had a not so wonderful day... well we climbed aboard the train to find our seats were full with a mother and two children... I was all for turfing them out but Debs is a kinder more charitable soul than I (especially as it was a 4 hour journey...) luckily there was space in another carriage and we settled in for the trip.


We went to Phitsanulok which was a town within striking distance of Sukhothai which is a UNESCO world heritage site (like Stonehenge) and is a former capital of Thailand dating back to ages ago... (1257, I checked) the city is now in ruins but is in much better shape than Ayuthaya and is outside any urban centres so is a lot more peaceful. We hired bikes and cycled round most of the sight which contains 26 different buddist sites and temples including an amazing sitting buddha. Again the place was really pretty deserted, we saw about a half dozen other tourists and two of those had arrived on the bus with us. There are some photos of the temples below, it's hard to explain just how impressive the place is and I don't think it comes over in the photos but it was amazing to see the number and variety of beautiful buildings and structures that are now being properly restored and protected, at one point we assumed we were on a natural island, only to realise that we were surrounded on all sides by 4 huge man made moats.


The strange thing about Sukhothai was that so many of the buildings were in ruins, and as they came from a completely different culture we found it difficult to imagine what the original would have looked like, I would imagine a Thai person looking at a ruined castle or church in the UK would have a similar problem... I suppose we lacked the history to put flesh to the architectural bones... fortunaltely a solution to this problem was to be found in the next stop on our journey, another former capital of Thailand, Chiang Mai.



Chiang Mai has more temples than anywhere else in Thailand except Bangkok, it also has many temples from the same era as Sukhothai and so we were able to fill in the gaps and actually came to appreciate the sites we had seen earlier even more as we were able to see just how ornately temples from the same period were decorated and imagine just how magnificent the much larger ruined temples of Sukhothai must have been, it was great to see the connections between ancient and very modern Thailand.


Whilst in Chiang Mai we went on a one day trek out to an Elephant camp where we were able to play with elephants and go on a trek through the jungle on the back of one. Debs has her eye on bringing a baby elephant back as a pet, but having seen how much they eat I don't think even grandad Hendry's veggie patch could take the punishment... We bought a bunch of bananas to feed the elephants... and we first peeled them, until we were told that really wasn't neccesary... and then we continued to feed them one by one... we later saw them being fed whole bunches at a time... I have a feeling the poor elephant thought we were teasing it with our one banana at a time feeding strategy... frankly we were really doing it to get bang for our banana buck! We are on a backpackers budget!


OK, I've wittered on for ages already and there is still so much to tell you... hmmm we're in a whole different country now and have been for a week...


To sum up... whilst in Chiang Mai we had intended to leave after 3 or 4 days as our visa was almost up but we heard about a festival that was taking place in a few days and we decided to stay and check it out and maybe hire a moped to see some sights a bit further out... we ended up in the middle of a massive street party with everyone letting of fireworks, often inches away from our heads or feet and thousands of floating lanterns being released into the sky... We got stuck in and let of a few ourselves (having first checked that they were biodegradeable, our guilt about potential dead turtles would have been to high otherwise) and wandered through the night markets eating spring rolls, fresh corn on the cob and trying to wipe the grins from our sweet chilli encrusted faces. This came at the end of a day in which we had visited a Tiger sanctuary, some royal botanical gardens with orchids and lillies, booked our flight to Laos and just about pursuaded a scooter to struggle to the top of of a mountain to visit one of the most holy sites in Chiang Mai in time to watch the sun go down over the city before a slightly nervous descent in the dark dodging lightless bikes as the first lanterns were starting to rise over the city... it was good one.



Next stop Laos.

North my friends, to temples, ruined cities and elephants

Hello again,

We are currently lost in Chang Mai which is the former capital of Thailand and home to many trekking companies catering to backpackers and other tourists.

Our route north took us once again through Bangkok where a night on the notorious Koh San Road ended in us meeting some Irish chaps who had spent the last 18 months as illegal immigrants in Perth!

We traded stories of customs officers, beard growth and Bangkok traffic for a couple of hours, tried out what appeared to be hand rolled burmese cigars from a street vendor and Debbie sheparded me home a little after midnight with promises to e-mail ringing in our ears... Here our versions of the night differ... Debbie claims I woke up around 3am and stood on a chair in the corner of the room and dropped my shorts... when questioned as to what the hell I thought I was doing I apparently replied 'I'm going for a pee, what does it look like?!' Debs then claims she shouted loudly enough to ensure I removed myself to the bathroom...

Now I will leave it up to you to decide if this is a true story as I don't remember a thing of this and put it down to an overactive imagination, possibly cheese before bedtime rather than my failure to adjust to the 1 litre bottles of beer we had been enjoying earlier in the evening. It had been a good night and it was good to meet some new people following the lovely but strangely empty islands.

In the morning we dodged the cries of 'Where you go?' from the herd of tuk tuk drivers and battled our way to the train station to begin our slow trip north. For the princely sum of 15 baht each (a little more than 25p) we got a train to Ayuthaya which was about 1.5 hours away and a former capital of Thailand.

On arrival in Ayuthaya our previous good fortune deserted us...(see photos of previous accommodation that Debbie has posted on facebook) we found a cheap place near the train station with a friendly chap standing outside welcoming us in, the room was basic but seemed ok... it was only later that we noticed that the walls were made of reed mats and didn't reach the ceiling and the toilet in the shared bathroom had no lid or manual flush, but on the upside there was hot water...

We could hear everything from the rooms next door and their light was shared with us as well! When the chap next door fell asleep with the light and a portable DVD player left on, and started to snore loudly we realised that we were in for a long night... still it was cheap and we weren't going to be there long! Fortunately the chap woke up around 1am and turned his light off... Debbie had managed to drift off but I had lain awake idly wondering if it would be weird to go and wake the guy up, or if I could risk knocking on the wall without punching through it, and indeed if that might not be a reasonable tactic as well... I really was tired in my defence and the only reason I didn't go and knock was that it had been going on for a few hours and it felt like it was now too late to complain... how English is that?

The ruins of Ayuthaya are best explored by bike and are famous for the overgrown buddha surrounded by tree roots, we managed to see this, and the most celebrated of the ruins before we were hit by a double whammy of traveller complaints. Debbie began to feel unwell, and my bike developed a puncture whilst we were 3k from our guesthouse and during the hottest part of the day :( we managed to limp back home with the help of a motorbike mechanic who helped to re-inflate my tire but after the hot sweaty journey back we didn't feel like venturing out again and so the rest of Ayuthaya would have to be missed, we weren't going to endure another night at the guesthouse and we had an appointment further north with another ruined capital city that was supposed to be better preserved in any case, we packed our bags without shedding too many tears, noted the chewing gum pushced into the wall cracks and departed for the train station.

The rest of our trip north will have to wait for next time as we have to go and explore Chiang Mai! No sign of temple fatigue yet but it will set in eventually I'm sure... photos of temples and Buhhda will surely replace sunsets as our new photo-obsession. We are off to Laos in a couple of nights having extended our stay here on the basis that there is a big festival that starts today. If people want to see photos then check out Debbie's albums on facebook or look at 'photo's of ben' on my profile and you'll get access to the albums. We tried to post albums on here but we can't seem to do it.

Bye for now.