Introduction to Laos and the Border Town of Huay Xai

We were anxiously anticipating our first land border crossing in SE Asia due to countless stories of scams, exhortions, ridiculously long waits one hears from fellow travelers and guide books. Also, Duncan and I do not have the best luck when it comes to borders - border officials see our backpacks and assume we are drug smugglers or something. Anyway, after our overnight bus dropped us off in Chiang Khong in Thailand, we took a 3-minute boat ride across the Mekong River to Huay Xai, Laos. It was here that we were introduced to the laid-back Laos way. The visa on arrival application process was surprisingly efficient and painless. We were not asked a single question from border officials, our bags were not checked, and we were even given a pamphlet of commonly used Laos phrases. I think we're going to like this country.

The town of Huay Xai is essentially a one street town. Travelers only come here for two reasons: 1) to immediately catch the slow boat to Luang Prabang after crossing the border or 2) to do the Gibbon Experience. We were here to do the latter and thus had to stay here for two nights. It was here that we had our first taste of Beer Lao as we watched the sunset over the Mekong River:

We also had one of our best meals of the trip here after walking up top a table on the side of the road and signaling for 2 of whatever they were serving (something Duncan had been wanting to do all trip). It was basically noodles with meat and veggies in a super spicy broth - as they say in SE Asia "same, same" as things we had eaten before "but different".

The most entertaining thing in Huay Xai was the matron of our guesthouse, Mrs. Changpeng. She was the ultimate saleswoman, which led some of our French friends we met on the trip to refer to her as "a shark". She was so cute and walked super slow, but good luck walking into her guesthouse/ restaurant and not handing over money for a room, food, or a tour.

Back to Back Sleeper Buses in Thailand

Anyone traveling in 3d world countries will inevitably take an overnight bus ride, lasting somewhere between 9 and 16 hours, at some point in their journey (if not several).  Leaving Phi Phi Island in southern Thailand and heading for the Laos border crossing in northern Thailand, we prepared for back-to-back sleeper buses, with an 8-hour layover in Bangkok in between.  Of course, these would not be the best two nights of the trip.

The first bus ride wasn't so bad, probably because the buses in the south are more frequented and thus nicer than those in the north, and because we had our last reserves of ambien to help us out.  But even a good sleeper bus is still a sleeper bus...

First, you're never quite sure which bus to get on at the chaotic station, where it's crowded, dirty, and dark.  After eventually sorting out which bus is yours and getting settled, you head out of town slowly through traffic, but happy to be on the road and bumping your ipod while watching the night scene outside.  Then they throw on the dvd.  You're hoping it might be something in English and maybe even something worth watching.  Hahaha, you were silly to hope that. It's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," with Nick Cage--you're not even sure it's that or if its rather that one about young superheroes--dubbed into Thai.  You strike out there so you keep your ipod on.  Time to eat your sleeping pill and get as comfortable as can be accomplished: not very. 

Then out of your induced sleep haze you realize you're stopped and all the Thais are getting off the bus.  Checking the time, it's 2:30 a.m.  You've stopped at a huge snack depot.  You certainly don't feel like making a transaction for some shitty snack, but hey, the bathroom here has to be better than the tiny one on the bus, so you stumble off with eyes half closed and do your business. 

In the morning you're woken up as the first stop is made, where one or two people get off, and the bus keeps going.  It's too early for your destination--you think--so you don't ask any questions but become more observant.  But as more and more people get off at random roads or shops, you hope it will somehow become clear when it's your turn. 

Our day in Bangkok is taken up with some shopping and then meeting up with some British friends (met in Vietnam) for some day drinking.  We figure since we're out of ambien this might help us fall asleep early that night on our bus up north. 

We load on and again hope for an American movie in English.  We get really hopeful when the previews are in English and of movies we actually want to see.  Again our hopes are dashed, as a very low budget Thai movie is put on with the sound blaring.  Turn up the ipod and yes, the four large Chang beers a piece help us fall quickly asleep, even with the likes of ACDC serenading us.

But then we're woken up by a bus employee at 1:00 a.m. and asked to show our tickets.  That makes sense.  I mean, we could've snuck on with our huge backpacks somewhere outside Bangkok and not paid for tickets.  Whatever.  But he does give us some orange flavored milk and a package of one slice of bread lathered in sugary butter (the bread actually wasn't so bad).  Now the beer sleep has worn off, and this bus has less leg room than the last, and my ass is killing me from sitting for so long in the last 36 hours, so the rest of the night is off-and-on napping with vivid, weird dreams, as the traditional Thai music blasts from crappy speakers and the AC vents drip water on us slowly. 

Some rest in the near future is definitely needed.

I Heart Bangkok

Not really.  It's huge, it's skeevy, it's crowded, it's hot.  And then there's the people trying to scam you in any variety of ways.  We were kinda over Bangkok from the second we arrived.  Oh, and you do see quite a few old dude-young thai girl arrangements. 

But it's kinda worth seeing as well, because it's definitely a scene unlike any other we've seen.  The night on Khao San Road, the traveler/ex-pat zone, is ca-razy!  It was a little more than we could handle, but luckily our hotel had a TV channel that showed nothing but pirated American movies - we got lucky with an Angelina thriller, "Salt." 

Two great things about Bangkok are the cheap, delicious food and the shopping.  The street stalls like the one below are the way to go for amazing Tom yam soup and tasty curries.  As soon as you step foot in a restaurant the price goes way up and the quality even goes down a bit. 

This is Khao San Road where you can buy sweet T-shirts, clothes, shoes, sunnies (as our English friends call sunglasses), rip-off designer bags, the whole shebang.  You can probably buy ladyboys there too, but we didn't check into that. 

 

Here are some English blokes/mates (don't they have cooler words than us!) we met in Vietnam and reunited with in Bangkok for a few large Chang beers before our sleeper bus up north to the Laos border. 

One final note, we were about to buy an I Heart Bangkok tank top for our dear friend, Mike Spahr, but then we decided he'd never wear it, and that's an expensive joke on a budget. 

Phi Phi Island - Stop, Hammock Time!

After taking an overnight bus from Bangkok to Phuket (more on sleeper buses in SE Asia on a later post), we hopped a ferry to the beautiful Phi Phi Island (pronounced "pee pee"...hehe) in Southern Thailand. This was a much needed 5-day break from being on the move for the past 3 weeks - no cars, white sand beaches, and crystal blue water. We stayed in an awesome bungalow overlooking the bay outfitted with a hammock on the deck (see above). When we weren't on the beach or in the water, we were in this hammock, relaxing away the lazy days. 

Here's Duncan floating in the Andaman Sea, with Phi Phi Ley, another island, in the background (more on this later):

On our last day there, we decided to go on a snorkeling trip to Phi Phi Ley. Since we are on a strict budget of $75 per day between the 2 of us, we booked the cheapest tour which of course turned out to be the most bush-league tour. Our "guide" (but really just longboat driver) only spoke one word at each stop: "swim"; "snorkel"; "monkey"; "maya bay". Even though it was bush league, we got in some good snorkeling (albeit with terrible, dirty gear--Duncan's leaky mask caused him to lose a contact) and saw the main attraction of the area - Maya Bay. For those of you who don't know, this is famous for being the location where "The Beach" was shot - one of Leo's more dubious films. Instead of actually taking us to the bay, our "guide" dropped us off in a different bay and pointed 50 yards to a ladder which scaled a rock cliff out of the water and told us "walk 3 minute." Since we had to swim there, we could not bring our camera to document this beautiful place. But, we took a picture of a postcard:

But, it was probably better off we didn't get a picture of the real thing because it would have been spoiled by the thousands of tourists and boats (but not our boat) that get shuffled through there everyday. I guess we'll have to watch that movie now. 

One more thing about Phi Phi - this is a big place for honeymooners and apparently many foreigners like to take seductive pictures of their new wives in the shallow waters and on the bows of boats. And they don't seem to care that there are other people are around - I was embarrassed for them because swimsuit models they were not.

Pics:

Here are some gratuitous, artsy pictures to make you jealous:

Every night, the hippies of Phi Phi put on fire shows at the bars on the beach:

This is what happens when Duncan has too much time on his hands and finds a frog in the bathroom:

Hanoi - Madness

Our last stop in Vietnam was Hanoi, the capital city. We spent a total of 3 days in Hanoi, both before and after our Halong Bay & Sapa excursions. The first time we arrived in Hanoi we arrived in the midst of the 1000 year anniversary of the founding of Hanoi, a celebration we had been hearing about throughout our time in the rest of Vietnam. Everyone warned us how crowded it would be but we kind of didn't take it too seriously, until we got there. It took our cab from the airport about double the time to get through the city because there were people EVERYWHERE. It's hard to describe and the pictures we took (not included) do not do the craziness justice (that's why they are not included). The funny thing was that this "celebration" was not much of a celebration at all - no events, no music, no food - just tons of people on the streets wearing "I Love Hanoi" shirts and waving Vietnamese flags around. Kind of lame for the biggest event in 1000 years. When we returned to Hanoi after Sapa, it was definitely less crowded but still crazy.

Try to find Kate in the madness...

We were a bit tired and overwhelmed so didn't try to see too much of Hanoi (missed the grand Temple of Literature and Ho Chi Minh's tomb - but frankly, you see one grand tomb or temple, of which we've seen a few, you seen 'em all).  Instead we walked around the lake in the center of the city and sat down to drink some beer, or "bia."  Which reminds me how cool their word for beer is - it's like someone from New York or Jersey saying "beer" but dragging out into two syllables.  Gimme a cold bia!
 
This is where we sat down in the Old Quarter for some Bia Hoi, a beer that each place brews locally without preservatives.  At the awesome price of 20 cents per glass (almost pint sized!), you really can't beat it.

You sit on these little plastic children's chairs or stools.  This was the Bia Hoi place kitty corner from ours. 

Then we bid Kate's Mom farewell, as she headed back to the US of A, by way of a 9-hour layover in Tokyo (eek!)  And Kate and I headed down to Bangkok, the city where you can do it all or have it all done to you...

Sapa

Immediately after getting back to Hanoi from our Halong Bay tour we boarded a night train to Sapa, a small mountain town near the China border in the north.  There are a number of indigenous tribes up there that all cultivate rice on these terraced rice fields, making the mountainsides quite picturesque. 

Here was the view from our nice hotel, the Cat Cat View Hotel.  It was very relaxing after our bumpy sleeper train without much sleep. 

Many of the above-mentioned indigenous tribes leave their villages each day to hock their goods to helpless tourists such as ourselves in town.  As soon as we arrived by van from the train station a hoard of women and girls started running after us, saying hello and asking us where we were from.  Little did we know they were being quite tactical - they were laying the groundwork for later saleswomanship.  When we left the hotel for lunch, they accompanied us up to the restaurant without trying to sell anything.  But then they waited outside the restaurant for an hour and as soon as we exited they started saying we had to buy everything from them since they had known us the longest.  This is Kate and her mom getting mobbed by these women.  When Kate finally refused to buy anything, one woman yelled at her, "Kate, you no good!"  Ruthless.

 After a night in the hotel we headed out on a trek to do a homestay in one of the indigenous villages.  This is Kate and her mom getting helped down the mudddy (VERY MUDDY) trail.  We did 13 km through two villages, led by our fearless local guide, Chi, a 21 year old who married at age 12.  She lived in one of the villages.

 Rice fields down in the valley.  Water buffalo are used to plow the fields - huge animals that were cool to see up close.  But that meant they also left huge pies all over the trails; had to be careful not to step in those steaming piles. 

These were the guides that helped Kate and her mom down the muddy slopes.  They're not very tall...

This was our host lady.  She made us an amazing meal - one of our top three for sure this trip.  She also force fed us (really twisting my arm) homemade rice wine.  We had to do a certain cheer before every shot.  It was quite entertaining.

And "More," she would say.  So again we'd sing the Vietnamese toast and drink more.  We made it 'till about 8:30 p.m. that night before hitting the hay. 

OK, that was Sapa, the only place we actually wore our fleeces and pants we dragged halfway across the world.  Until next post....

Halong Bay - f'n paradise

Our next stop was probably our favorite in Vietnam. Duncan the geologist tells me that Halong Bay is an example of karst topography - it consists of a thousand or so limestone islands. One of the most beautiful places either of us has ever been...yet. You totally feel like you have suddenly been cast in Pirates of the Caribbean or something.

It is quite difficult and no less expensive to get yourself to Halong Bay and navigate the islands on your own, so we booked one of those "somebody does everything for you" tours for 2 nights. I am usually skeptical of such tours - they make me think of old people and a guide with a flag leading helpless tourists around - but we didn't really have a choice and we picked an awesome tour. We stayed the first night on a boat with with about 12 other people after kayaking amidst the islands and floating villages around them and checking out a huge cave during the day. They even let is jump from the top deck of the boat (see pictures below), which added another notch to our list of "things they let you do in Vietnam that they would never let you do in the US". The evening ended with dinner and forced kareoke - apparently this is the main form of entertainment in Vietnam . Luckily we had a crazy Russian couple on our boat that had drank several bottles of wine and vodka throughout the day and they broke the ice by being the first singers. Here are the pcis from the first night on the boat:

 Jumping off the boat....I would like to mention that I was the only girl with the guts to do it.

The second day we left the boat and went to Cat Ba Island, one of the islands in Halong Bay, and did a two hour hikei in the National Park there in which we were promised that we would get views of all of Halong Bay from the top which we did not but oh well. Then we headed to our own private island - Monkey Island - where the 30 or people on the tour had the whole island to ourselves and bungalows on the beach. Truly paradise. A few of us went exploring the island to find monkeys and we discovered that the monkeys on this island have drinking problems. They would attack at the sight of a beer can and when they got their hands on one...well, you can see the pictures below.

The beach on Monkey Island.

Moonlight over Halong Bay.