Luang Nam Tha was the first town of our northern Laos "Off the Beaten Track" tour. It was near a National Protected Area, where we did an 18 km kayak trip down the Nam Tha River. The day involved navigating various classes of rapids, visiting two hill tribe villages, and eating a BBQ lunch (including a delicious bass) cooked at the side of the river.
Sidenote: roads in northern Laos were all kinds of crazy. Mountains, hairpin turns, unsealed sections with potholes the size of St. Bernards, and more cow obstacles than New Zealand meant we kept an average speed of 25 - 35 km/h. This makes for slooooooooow going. Heaps of Gravol made the trip fine for us, if a little hot and uncomfortable at times, but on each bus ride at least 5 to 6 Laos people were constantly throwing up (and then chucking the plastic puke bags out the window and into the countryside - painful to watch). The views over the dramatic cliffs and valleys, and the lovely sunsets, made the journey worth it.
From Luang Nam Tha we caught a 9-hour bus to Nong Khiaw, a beautiful riverside town completely surrounded by limestone karsts. This was our favourite spot in Laos. We did various hikes to caves (which housed 100 people hiding from bomb attacks during the Indo-China War) and waterfalls. It was gloriously quiet with excellent food and friendly locals.
Next up was a 12-hour bus to Sam Neua, which involved two bus break-downs and Andrea getting puked on by a 5-year-old. We arrived at midnight, two hours late, and faced the challenge of finding an open guest house in the middle of the night during a power outage - the city was pitch black. Sam Neua didn't have much to offer, so we left after two days.
On the 9-hour bus ride to Phonsavan the little girl in front of us threw up, no joke, at least 25 times - luckily into bags instead of on Andrea. Curiously, we found the best Indian restaurant outside of India in Phonsavan, run by an Indian lady in a sari. It was a treat but reminded Craig how much he misses Indian food - Laos food, usually noodle soup and fried rice dishes, just isn't the same, especially when you're eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner some days.
Touring through the north, we learned about the "Secret War" that devastated Laos in the 60s and 70s. The US carpet-bombed eastern and northeastern Laos from 1965 to 1973 because of the presence of the North Vietnamese during the "American War" (as the Vietnam War is known here in Southeast Asia). One statistic we found particularly devastating was that it is estimated that America dropped an average of 1 planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years. This amounts to 1.9 million metric tonnes of bombs - or 2 tonnes for every person in Laos. Unfortunately, the country is still scattered with unexploded ordinance, which has killed at least 10,000 innocent people so far, and which means that literally going "off the beaten track" in many places is NOT recommended!
We are now back in Vientiane, the capital city, after an 11-hour bus ride south. Tonight we board an air-conditioned sleeper bus (complete with beds! how posh!) for the 16-hour-plus ride to Hanoi, in north Vietnam.
Overall, the people and the landscape of northern Laos (and the yummy meat salads) have been wonderful. After we are done touring Cambodia we may pop back into south Laos to see what adventures await us there!
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Moore Pathammavong's Guide to Winning a Free Car
Vientiane, the small capital city of Laos, was our first introduction to Laos culture. During our two days there we explored the city, falling in love with cheap fresh fruit shakes ($0.60) and the friendly people. The country used to be ruled by the French, which still shows in its many baguette sandwich stands, its French signs, and its Arc de Triomphe replica. Noodle soup is the standard dish here but there is still a variety of curries, fried rice and noodle dishes, and Craig's current favourite, "laap", which is basically a meat salad: minced chicken, pork or beef with mint leaves, lime juice, chillies, shallots, and fish sauce. His new favourite condiment is "jaew bawng", a thick paste of chillies and buffalo skin. Yum!
After Vientiane, our next stop was Vang Vieng, a small town a few hours north. It's surrounded by giant limestone cliffs and filled with backpackers. People come here for one reason only - tubing down the Nam Song River - and the whole town makes its livelihood from the tourist dollars. So, of course we had to try it out.
We rented tubes from the local cooperative and caught a shared tuk-tuk to the launch point 3 km north of town with two fellow Canadians, two Belgians, and a few Brits, who were to become our tubing buddies for the day.
Basically, as you tube down the river the many wooden shacks, aka bars, lining the river throw you a pop bottle on a rope to pull you in to their drinking hole. Cheap buckets or beers follow, before you head back on the river to continue the journey. Bars also have mud tug of war, and a variety of swings, zip-lines, and slides plunging you into the water (and our moms definitely would NOT have liked to see how high some of the jumps were!). We made it down the river safe and sound with just a rope burn and a bruised tailbone at the end.
The 6-hour, 240 km, bus ride to the town where we are now, Luang Prabang, made us glad we bought lots of gravol. The roads here are as hilly and windy as the roads in New Zealand... if the roads in New Zealand were on acid. On the "local" (aka "cheaper") buses, if you arrive too late and all the seats are full you get a plastic stool to sit in the aisle while you dodge the puke bags that get handed out, used, tied up, and let loose to roll around the bus. Funny!
Luang Prabang, along with Vientiane and Vang Vieng, form the Tourist Trifecta - the usual northern route for backpackers in Laos. This town is nice, but VERY touristy. It's right on the Mekong River and is very French, with crumbling mansions and shaded streets (and baguettes and crepes for sale on every corner). Today we visited the Kuang Si waterfalls 32 km south of town. A wide, multi-tiered waterfalls tumbles over limestone rocks and forms many turquoise-green swimming holes. Of course, we had to hike 15 minutes straight up along the waterfall and through some shallow rapids, where we found a beautiful secluded swimming hole - secluded for about 20 minutes, when a giant tour group of Canadian tourists found it. Damn Canadians!
Tomorrow we face a 10-hour, 370 km bus ride further north to Luang Nam Tha, where we can finally consider ourselves off the beaten track. There we plan on looking into trekking in the nearby Nam Ha National Protected Area. Hopefully the gravol keeps on working!
And with the 7800 or so kip to the Canadian dollar, it is REALLY fun taking out 1,000,000 (kip) at the ATM every few days! It's especially nice when the ATM slip gives us our current bank balance in kip, and we are multi-multi-multi millionaires!
After Vientiane, our next stop was Vang Vieng, a small town a few hours north. It's surrounded by giant limestone cliffs and filled with backpackers. People come here for one reason only - tubing down the Nam Song River - and the whole town makes its livelihood from the tourist dollars. So, of course we had to try it out.
We rented tubes from the local cooperative and caught a shared tuk-tuk to the launch point 3 km north of town with two fellow Canadians, two Belgians, and a few Brits, who were to become our tubing buddies for the day.
Basically, as you tube down the river the many wooden shacks, aka bars, lining the river throw you a pop bottle on a rope to pull you in to their drinking hole. Cheap buckets or beers follow, before you head back on the river to continue the journey. Bars also have mud tug of war, and a variety of swings, zip-lines, and slides plunging you into the water (and our moms definitely would NOT have liked to see how high some of the jumps were!). We made it down the river safe and sound with just a rope burn and a bruised tailbone at the end.
The 6-hour, 240 km, bus ride to the town where we are now, Luang Prabang, made us glad we bought lots of gravol. The roads here are as hilly and windy as the roads in New Zealand... if the roads in New Zealand were on acid. On the "local" (aka "cheaper") buses, if you arrive too late and all the seats are full you get a plastic stool to sit in the aisle while you dodge the puke bags that get handed out, used, tied up, and let loose to roll around the bus. Funny!
Luang Prabang, along with Vientiane and Vang Vieng, form the Tourist Trifecta - the usual northern route for backpackers in Laos. This town is nice, but VERY touristy. It's right on the Mekong River and is very French, with crumbling mansions and shaded streets (and baguettes and crepes for sale on every corner). Today we visited the Kuang Si waterfalls 32 km south of town. A wide, multi-tiered waterfalls tumbles over limestone rocks and forms many turquoise-green swimming holes. Of course, we had to hike 15 minutes straight up along the waterfall and through some shallow rapids, where we found a beautiful secluded swimming hole - secluded for about 20 minutes, when a giant tour group of Canadian tourists found it. Damn Canadians!
Tomorrow we face a 10-hour, 370 km bus ride further north to Luang Nam Tha, where we can finally consider ourselves off the beaten track. There we plan on looking into trekking in the nearby Nam Ha National Protected Area. Hopefully the gravol keeps on working!
And with the 7800 or so kip to the Canadian dollar, it is REALLY fun taking out 1,000,000 (kip) at the ATM every few days! It's especially nice when the ATM slip gives us our current bank balance in kip, and we are multi-multi-multi millionaires!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Werewolf Bar Mitzvah
From Koh Samui we joined the monthly migration of backpackers to the island of Koh Phangan ("fan-yan"), home of the Full Moon Party. We stayed at Hat Rin Beach, which was chock-full of young (average age = 22) British flashpackers looking for a good time. We arrived two days early to secure decent accomodation - estimates say even in the low season up to 8000 people attend the Full Moon Party.
The nights leading up to the party, and the night of the party itself, found everyone on the beach. Activities included dancing (mostly to horrible trance music), playing fire games (jumping rope with a rope on fire, "spitting" fire with a mouth full of alcohol and a torch), and drinking buckets (literally, small buckets of of extremely strong vodka/whiskey/rum cocktails). Even though we were definitely older than most of the people there, we embraced the atmosphere and indulged in a few buckets. The bucket booths are a thing to behold: a long line-up of rickety wooden booths on the beach, with Thais yelling at you to buy their bucket, as the competition is fierce and they are all exactly the same.
We stayed on Hat Rin for a few extra days after the party, to witness the beach go utterly deserted and the area turn into a ghost town. It was actually nice and relaxing.
Our final stop on our Southern Beaches Tour was Koh Tao, famous for its scuba diving. Since we both completed our Open Water and Advanced scuba certifications in Australia five years ago, we did four "fun dives". Some were better than others, and we realized how spoiled we were with most of the diving we did in Australia. Even the snorkeling we did in Malaysia was more interesting (in terms of marine life). However, it was great to get back under the water - it's an incredible feeling to be swimming 25 m underwater with a school of fish 5 m across swimming along beside you. And Thailand's diving in much better - and cheaper (at less than $30/dive including boat trip and equipment) - than any of the diving you can do in Ontario!
Now we're in Bangkok, safe in the tourist bubble of Khao San Road and Soi Rambutri. Apparently it's calmed down here a lot, but this area is so far from where the Red Shirt protestors were, we wouldn't even know if anything was up. The 8 pm curfew has been lifted but there are much less tourists around compared to when we were here in January. We're not sure if that's due to it being the low season now, all the Bangkok unrest, or both.
Tonight we take an overnight bus to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. We're excited to be getting to a new country to explore, especially since so many people have told us how wonderful Laos is. The southern beaches of Thailand were lovely and relaxing, but were not really representative of Thai culture, so we're looking forward to getting away from the party backpacker scene (kind of) and immersing ourselves into a new culture. Plus, we feel rich going to Laos; at around 7900 kip to the Canadian dollar, we became millionaires after exchanging around $170 CAD!
Today it is 3 months exactly until we return home, and we have 3 more countries to visit: Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. We're pretty sure time is going to fly!
The nights leading up to the party, and the night of the party itself, found everyone on the beach. Activities included dancing (mostly to horrible trance music), playing fire games (jumping rope with a rope on fire, "spitting" fire with a mouth full of alcohol and a torch), and drinking buckets (literally, small buckets of of extremely strong vodka/whiskey/rum cocktails). Even though we were definitely older than most of the people there, we embraced the atmosphere and indulged in a few buckets. The bucket booths are a thing to behold: a long line-up of rickety wooden booths on the beach, with Thais yelling at you to buy their bucket, as the competition is fierce and they are all exactly the same.
We stayed on Hat Rin for a few extra days after the party, to witness the beach go utterly deserted and the area turn into a ghost town. It was actually nice and relaxing.
Our final stop on our Southern Beaches Tour was Koh Tao, famous for its scuba diving. Since we both completed our Open Water and Advanced scuba certifications in Australia five years ago, we did four "fun dives". Some were better than others, and we realized how spoiled we were with most of the diving we did in Australia. Even the snorkeling we did in Malaysia was more interesting (in terms of marine life). However, it was great to get back under the water - it's an incredible feeling to be swimming 25 m underwater with a school of fish 5 m across swimming along beside you. And Thailand's diving in much better - and cheaper (at less than $30/dive including boat trip and equipment) - than any of the diving you can do in Ontario!
Now we're in Bangkok, safe in the tourist bubble of Khao San Road and Soi Rambutri. Apparently it's calmed down here a lot, but this area is so far from where the Red Shirt protestors were, we wouldn't even know if anything was up. The 8 pm curfew has been lifted but there are much less tourists around compared to when we were here in January. We're not sure if that's due to it being the low season now, all the Bangkok unrest, or both.
Tonight we take an overnight bus to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. We're excited to be getting to a new country to explore, especially since so many people have told us how wonderful Laos is. The southern beaches of Thailand were lovely and relaxing, but were not really representative of Thai culture, so we're looking forward to getting away from the party backpacker scene (kind of) and immersing ourselves into a new culture. Plus, we feel rich going to Laos; at around 7900 kip to the Canadian dollar, we became millionaires after exchanging around $170 CAD!
Today it is 3 months exactly until we return home, and we have 3 more countries to visit: Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. We're pretty sure time is going to fly!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
It's Raining... Ladyboys!
Our first Thai beach destination was the mainland beach of Rai Leh, outside of Krabi, which is only accessible by longtail boat. Longtail boats are long (surprise!) wooden boats seating about ten people, similar to an oversized canoe, with a propellor on the end of a three metre long driveshaft (hence the name "longtail").
We spent two days on Rai Leh, which is surrounded by soaring limestone cliffs covered with rock climbers. 90% of the places to stay were expensive resorts, contrary to what our guide book says, which means it's one of the many beaches quickly changing from a budget backpacking destination to a flashpacking mecca. We left early hoping to find a more budget-friendly place.
Three boat rides and a minibus ride later we arrived on the island of Koh Lanta. Since it's the island's low season we were able to find a great bungalow 50 metres from the beach for 1/4 of the regular price. Just down the road was a restaurant serving cheap, fresh home-cooked Thai meals where we quickly became regulars. One day we rented a scooter and explored the 32-kilometre long island (which just added to Craig's desire for a motorcycle back home), stopping to pet a baby elephant that barely came up to Andrea's waist. The rest of our week there we spent relaxing on the beach or in the shade of our hut, reading like mad.
Now we're on Koh Samui, one of Thailand's most famous islands. After hearing numerous people say it's very built up and touristy we weren't sure how we'd like it and if it would be in our budget. Luckily we've found a bungalow by the beach that is a wonderful deal ($10 CAD/night). We're on Lamai Beach, where the busy strip comes alive after sundown with street markets, street food, ladyboys (of course!), and old white men with their young Thai girlfriends (which always freaks Andrea out). It all makes for great eating and people watching, so we figure we'll stay here a few more days.
It's getting into the rainy season here, which means occasional showers. On Koh Lanta it rained almost every afternoon for about an hour. The rain cools the air and the sun always returns. At night there are pretty cool lightning storms over the sea rivalling the intensity of a Pink Floyd laser show.
We are often surprised at how few travellers we meet who are as "budget" as us. Since most people only come here for a few weeks to a few months, and so many are European, they are on a bigger daily budget than we are. We try to spend no more than $10 CAD (300 baht) on our accomodation (which usually means a fan room with our own bathroom but no air conditioning, TV, or fridge), but at some places (like Rai Leh) that's close to impossible. We've started getting breakfast at 7/11 (which are as ubiquitous as Tim Hortons in Canada and are usually found every 100 metres down the road - literally), since yogurt-and-cereal is half the price of restaurant breakfasts. When going on the internet or booking a bus trip, we hunt around for the absolute cheapest price. And we always try to get out of the tourist bubble to find the restaurants where locals are eating authentic Thai food, which is cheaper and much better tasting than the Westernized versions of the same dishes they sell for double (or triple!) the price near all the resorts. All these efforts mean we're able to eat like royalty while still coming in well under our budget of $50 CAD per day.
We spent two days on Rai Leh, which is surrounded by soaring limestone cliffs covered with rock climbers. 90% of the places to stay were expensive resorts, contrary to what our guide book says, which means it's one of the many beaches quickly changing from a budget backpacking destination to a flashpacking mecca. We left early hoping to find a more budget-friendly place.
Three boat rides and a minibus ride later we arrived on the island of Koh Lanta. Since it's the island's low season we were able to find a great bungalow 50 metres from the beach for 1/4 of the regular price. Just down the road was a restaurant serving cheap, fresh home-cooked Thai meals where we quickly became regulars. One day we rented a scooter and explored the 32-kilometre long island (which just added to Craig's desire for a motorcycle back home), stopping to pet a baby elephant that barely came up to Andrea's waist. The rest of our week there we spent relaxing on the beach or in the shade of our hut, reading like mad.
Now we're on Koh Samui, one of Thailand's most famous islands. After hearing numerous people say it's very built up and touristy we weren't sure how we'd like it and if it would be in our budget. Luckily we've found a bungalow by the beach that is a wonderful deal ($10 CAD/night). We're on Lamai Beach, where the busy strip comes alive after sundown with street markets, street food, ladyboys (of course!), and old white men with their young Thai girlfriends (which always freaks Andrea out). It all makes for great eating and people watching, so we figure we'll stay here a few more days.
It's getting into the rainy season here, which means occasional showers. On Koh Lanta it rained almost every afternoon for about an hour. The rain cools the air and the sun always returns. At night there are pretty cool lightning storms over the sea rivalling the intensity of a Pink Floyd laser show.
We are often surprised at how few travellers we meet who are as "budget" as us. Since most people only come here for a few weeks to a few months, and so many are European, they are on a bigger daily budget than we are. We try to spend no more than $10 CAD (300 baht) on our accomodation (which usually means a fan room with our own bathroom but no air conditioning, TV, or fridge), but at some places (like Rai Leh) that's close to impossible. We've started getting breakfast at 7/11 (which are as ubiquitous as Tim Hortons in Canada and are usually found every 100 metres down the road - literally), since yogurt-and-cereal is half the price of restaurant breakfasts. When going on the internet or booking a bus trip, we hunt around for the absolute cheapest price. And we always try to get out of the tourist bubble to find the restaurants where locals are eating authentic Thai food, which is cheaper and much better tasting than the Westernized versions of the same dishes they sell for double (or triple!) the price near all the resorts. All these efforts mean we're able to eat like royalty while still coming in well under our budget of $50 CAD per day.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
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