Monday, 18 February 2013

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

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