Sabadiee......Thailand and Laos

Due to popular demand here is another post...

We left Chaing Mai to go to a sleepy town called Pai, if we would have known that there was 750 turns up and down mountains before we left we may have had second thoughts. Lets just say everyone didn't look too great when we got off! We were greeted by a middle aged Australian man who seemed friendly enough suggesting we stay at one of the riverside bungalows, we later found out that he was an alcoholic and druggie and just wanted a free beer off us! lol. We got to the bungalow and it almost seemed like I was back home in my wooden log cabin and Georgia was happy enough because it had electric, a bathroom and even wi-fi which seemed like a miracle by looking at the outside. It was just for the night as we had booked a hotel with a swimming pool for the next day.

As soon as we got off at the town, we could see that most people were slightly on the hippie side lol.....dreadlocks, reggae and a bit of the old wacky backy as Georgia's Nanny Bett would say. The main street turned into a night market in the evening and we had a walk down before getting some traditional street food, authentic Thai pizza slices, kind of.



Mekong River - Thailand/Laos Border

The next day we had arranged for the hotel to pick us up from the centre of town, it came as quite a surprise when an English couple turned up, who were the owners. On the way to the hotel they explained that they only had 3 rooms and they were originally built for their parents and friends but they never turned up. It was basically staying in someone's house who had a swimming pool, it was nice not to do much and just sit around the pool for a couple of days! We would have stayed longer but they were fully booked!

We ended up booking the slowboat to Luang Prabang in Laos which took 3 days in total. The border between Thailand and Laos was the Mekong river and we had to jump on a ferry to cross the river and get a visa, not too similar to the Woolwich ferry. When we finally got on the slow boat to Laos (7hrs on the first day and another 7 hrs on the second day) we ended up talking to a couple, she was from Poland and he was from Spain and they were both teaching English in China, we must have met about 20 people teaching English in China now! Anyways, we was amazed that they were getting around by hitchhiking and couch surfing which is basically staying at people's houses for free. Georgia gets stressed looking for a hotel for 20 minutes, don't think she it cut out for that lol.

After 2 days travelling down the river passing all the villages and naked boys in the river playing, we finally arrived in Luang Prabang. We had to walk around for 30 minutes to look for somewhere to stay but ended up in a guesthouse costing 6 pound and conveniently had Sky Sports so I managed to watch the Villa beat West Ham, Georgia weren't impressed about the score.

We walked into Luang Prabang, which was strange because you would pass monks, a lot more compared to Thailand. It was one of the nicest places to walk down, nice enough to face our fears have an Indian meal after our trauma of being ill from actually visiting there! Safe to say it was the nicest meal we had in weeks. We then booked up an excursion to the waterfall after being told by my Uncle Bill to visit and we did not regret it. It must have been the clearest waters that we have seen but not enough to jump off the trees as there must have been about 200 chinese people watching and we didn't want to make a fool of ourselves. The actual waterfall was huge! It was the perfect hangover cure from the night before!

The night before consisted of us having a beer at sunset (5pm) and finishing at 2am, it was one of the best nights we have had since traveling. We met up with 2 girls that we spoke to in Thailand at a cooking school and we ended up meeting a few other people from England. In Laos, all the bars have to be shut by 11:30pm but we was told that a bowling alley was open until 2am so we shared a tuk-tuk. The next thing we know we are in the middle of nowhere at some "underground" bowling alley playing bowling and having more beer with the people we met!

The rest of our time in Luang Prabang was trying local Lao food for a change which was an experience and trying not to getting annoyed with the guesthouse owners for turning most of our white clothes pink!

Next was Vang Vieng, which we heard was a big party town consisting of bars along the river in which you float between them on a tube or a rubber ring! To our disappointment the government demolished all the bars as there were too many people dying jumping into the river off the rocks. We decided it was still worth doing as it was the main thing to do in the town plus we managed to find a couple of bars on the river. It was dry season so it took 4 hours to travel 4km back down to the town. When we got back to the town, we were greeted by dozens of naked boys dragging us in from the water to the shore and asking me for money, didn't help that I had a see through water-proof wallet. I offered the naked kids my last drop of beer but they wanted the money so I gave them a 1000kip!!! Works out to be about 8p lol.

On Valentine's day we went to a blue lagoon and caves which I was excited about and went to the Irish bar which was Georgia's highlight. To be fair, the food was almost being at home. Later that night we met with 2 boys from Bristol and went to a jungle party. It might seem like we drunk a lot this week, well we have after all the weeks we have been to ill to be having anything more than a shandy!

All in all Vang Vieng is a completely different place to Luang Prabang. The latter is a nice pretty town with French buildings and Vang Vieng is a dodgy version of Spain with average restaurants, the usual tat in shops and cheap alcohol. We are currently in the capital of Laos, Vientianne and we are impressed! We have just booked our Visa and bus to Vietnam but before then we still have a couple of days left to enjoy Laos.

James and Georgia xx

Thailand

So it's been a whole week since we have wrote our last blog so we thought we better update everyone on what we have been doing!

In Bangkok we loved the nice hotel so much, we ended up staying an extra night to take advantage of Georgia's cooking, washing, drying and ironing....well it was good for me, not so much for Georgia maybe lol. During the day we visited downtown Bangkok and went straight to the third largest shopping centre in the world with 13 floors and what seemed like hundreds of restaurants.....we ended up in Boots and McDonalds, let us off, the only thing I felt like I could trust and stomach was Chicken nuggets. After walking round for a bit we ended up taking the Skytrain back to the hotel for a lazy evening in the hotel, so we thought. After googling about the famous "ping pong shows" we were a bit put off but we were still interested  seeing the lady boys in the red light district and it turned out it was a ten minute walk from the hotel. Instead of watching films in bed, we ended up having a drink in Soi Cowboy red-light district which actually weren't as bad as we thought. It was a bit weird when there were dozens of girls (well we think they were) waiting outside the bars for older white western men to buy them drinks...and the rest lol. We ended up having a beer just people-watching and guessing if they were men or women.

The next day we moved to the other side of Bangkok to the backpackers district, Khao San Road. It's basically a busy street with market stalls, street bars, restaurants and strong beer! This is where we discovered the myth of the "Changover". Chang beer is the main beer in Thailand and only after a couple of beers we discovered that it was 6.4% so a few bottles later we had more than enough. In Khao San Road there were a lot of massage shops, with hundreds of beds on the street where you could get a leg massage We treated ourselves to a foot/leg massage for 100 baht (2 pound) but we headed inside the shop as we thought it was weird having people stare at you having a massage on the street!

So after 4 nights in Bangkok we booked up a package to Chiang Mai which included a 12 hour bus ride, a cheap guesthouse and 2 days trekking! Apart from the bus leaving 90 minutes late, the guesthouse was different to the one we booked and the tour guide picked us up a hour late for the trek; it was very organised.

We got picked up for the trek in a converted pick-up truck with 15 of us crammed onto the back of it and drove 2 hours to the jungle stopping at the markets for lunch on the way. Just before we were about to start our trek there was flashes of lightning and then it started chucking it down. The tour guide seemed excited by this especially when there was hailstones as he was shouting "ice from the sky". Judging by his reaction I think its the nearest they get to snow here!
We were waiting in the shop waiting for the rain to stop, we were peer pressured to buy beer for the trek by a couple of English girls who were drinking Rum from the bottle. So as we started our trek up a 800 metre mountain with beer in hand the rained eased and we asked ourselves how are we going to make it? We were joined on the trek by 5 girls from Bexleyheath, 2 girls from Stoke Newington, 2 Scots who loved Andy Murray, 2 German sisters, 3 French men and a couple of Argentinian boys so we had a good mix of cockneys and internationals!

So after 3 hours of trekking up and over the mountain we arrived at our jungle elephant camp and put our bags in our 20 person tree house. We then went trekking on the elephants around the camp and through the rivers, whilst feeding our elephant bananas but we seemed to have the troublemaker of the group has he casually thought to make it interesting he would go on the edge of a cliff for a laugh! We had the chance to bathe the elephants in the river but was put off because its where they do their toilets in! no thanks.....we just watched the others!
We then all ate together as a group and had the choice of green Thai curry, rice and stir fry. We ended up having a beer or seven after dinner with the others which turned into a little party but I was mainly excited by the fact they had a pool table in the middle of the jungle!
The next day we woke up and drove to the waterfall for lunch where I ended up sliding down a waterfall and lived to tell the tale as Georgia watched on! We headed to a white water rafting centre where we jumped in a rubber dinghy down a pretty boring river, was more like a lazy river which Georgia was relieved about. It didn't stop one of the men cutting his lip open halfway through, with blood pouring everywhere in the dinghy, I had to give him my top to stop the bleeding! We then headed back to Chiang Mai to look for a guesthouse for the night.

The last few days we have just been walking around Chiang Mai, exploring the temples and markets and enjoying our food! We decided to book a Thai cooking school which was always going to be more Georgia's thing than mine, especially as I'm keen on a microwave and oven. We was taught how to cook hot prawn soup, spring rolls, noodles, chicken with cashes nuts, and red thai curry which we got to eat at the end! Georgia enjoyed it has she missed her cooking over the past 3 weeks but I found it stressful if I'm being honest lol.

Right that's enough for now, we are heading to a place called Pai near to the Laos border. At this point we are missing our food and are heading to the Irish bar next door for Pie, Mash and gravy!

James and Georgia xxxx