We've been in the capital of Laos, Vientiane, for three days, waiting for our Vietnam visas to be valid (when applying for the visa, you have to specify when you'd be arriving, and we had picked the 11th). Vientiane itself is nothing spectacular, although there's some good restaurants, cafes, and shopping. Most important, however, it has fast internet connections, so we've uploaded a ton of new photos.
After the last post, we remembered a number of things we should have mentioned:
Elephants!
How could we forget? One of the highlights of our trek out of Chiang Rai. We went to an elephant camp where we took an hour-long ride on the back of Hang Dee, a towering 28-year-old male. We both enjoyed it immensely, but Jacqueline was particularly thrilled, as it was something she's wanted to do ever since chickening out on riding an elephant when she was three (also in Thailand).
Interesting Meat
On the second night of our trek, our group, having just finished dinner, was sitting around the table and we got on the topic of meats that Jacqueline won't eat (namely, cute animals, such as rabbit, lamb, deer, etc.). This led to a discussion of venison, and whether people liked it (or had even tried it). Our guide, Kuan, had just gotten his own dinner, a dish of meat and greens (something specially prepared for him, as opposed to the significantly more bland dishes they prepared for our Western palates). We asked what he was eating and he replied "golden deer," a local delicacy. He offered everyone a taste, and half the group tried it (J didn't, of course, and I abstained mostly because I felt bad that everyone was eating his dinner). The ones who had had venison before said it tasted gristly and nothing like venison. Then Kuan asked me if I ate "hot dog" in America. A bit confused, I said well yes, I have, and he grinned and pointed at his dish and said "hot dog." After a few minutes of confusion, it came out that the "golden deer" in his dish was indeed dog. Needless to say, some were pretty upset....
Finally, after we left Luang Prabang, we went south to Vang Vieng with the hopes of going climbing there. Apparently the only way to do it is by going with a tour guide, and there was only one company licensed to do this. They had an office in Luang Prabang, so we went in there and were shown a brochure that indicated that, since we were climbing with our own equipment, we could get transportation to the climbing area, a private guide, and lunch for $7/each. When we arrived in Vang Vieng, however, we were told that that price was only for the permit to climb, not for a guide or even transportation to the site. It would be $25 each if we wanted what we had been promised. After a bit of arguing, and a call made back to the office in Luang Prabang, he offered transportation to the site, but nothing else. We were pretty peeved at being so misled, so we said forget it and asked for our money back (we had paid in advance). He did so, grugingly. We were bummed about missing out on what was probably our last chance to climb (we've looked and haven't been able to find anything in Vietnam), but justified it to ourselves by saying that it couldn't have been anywhere near as good as Krabi, anyway.
Ok, we've got to run. We're taking a 22-hour bus to Hanoi, Vietnam. They've told us the bus is comfortable, but we've long ago learned that means nothing in SE Asia.
Cheers,
-b & j
Ah, these get harder and harder to write the longer we go between posts. Actually, if we go really long between posts, like we have a number of times, it's a bit easier, as we can collapse whole weeks into a few sentences. Anyway, best to just jump in....
When we last left you, we had just arrived in Chiang Rai, Thailand. We ended up staying in Chiang Rai a little longer than planned, but not for the best reasons.
We took a cooking class, something we had been very much looking forward to doing. The class started with a tour of the local market, then we went back to the "classroom" (a restaurant), and spent the day making--and eating--six different Thai dishes. Jacqueline was a bit better at restraining herself, but my Midwest upbringing makes it hard for me to leave any food on my plate, so by the end of the day, I was painfully full. Fortunately and unfortunately, my stomach wouldn't stay like that for long.
That night I started feeling a bit off, and before long I was throwing up my expertly prepared dishes and shaking with severe chills. I was better in the morning, but still to weak and nauseous to leave the room. The next day my appetite was starting to return, but the smell of Thai food still made me a bit queasy.
Up until this point, I was certain that I had gotten food poisoning. However, Jacqueline seemed to prove my theory wrong by proceeded to get sick as well, just as I was recovering. Another day spent in bed. (Having a TV helped pass the time, although for some godawful reason the only English-language news channel they got was Fox News, which is in itself nauseating in its non-stop conservative blather.)
By the time Jacqueline was feeling better, we'd been in Chiang Mai for a week and spent half of it in our room. We had planned on going climbing nearby, but both decided that we'd rather just move on.
(I'm realizing that at my present rate, it's going to take hours and many more pages than you might want to read in order to catch up, so I'll try to be a bit less verbose.)
Next stop, Chiang Rai, a few hours north by bus. We went there, as most tourists do, for one thing: trekking. We did a 3-day trek through through the countryside, through jungle and bamboo forests, visiting some hill tribe villages along the way. It was very interesting and great fun. There were 8 in our group, with people from New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Canada, and Japan. Our guide was great, pointing out all sorts of fauna and flora, explaining hill tribe traditions, and demonstrating that bamboo is probably one of the world's most all-purpose plants. He and some hill tribe helpers that tagged along made cups, bowls, chopsticks, water carriers, flutes and even spitball pop-guns out of bamboo. For lunch our second day, we stopped for lunch by a river and watched while they made a fire and proceeded to cook for us noodle soup with vegetables, along with tea, all prepared in, served in, and eaten with bamboo. It's also used for constructing houses and even for aqueducts, funnelling water, sometimes hundreds of meters, from a nearby river.
We got back from our trek on New Year's Eve, and spent the night celebrating with our trekking friends.
The next day, we took a bus to Chiang Khong, then crossed over the Mekong River into Laos. We spent a night in Huay Xai, then took a two-day slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. We had been apprehensive about the slow boat, not being sure if our backs and bums could handle two days on hard wooden seats, but it ended up being a great trip. There was plenty of room to strech out and move around on the boat, and the scenery was superb. The Mekong River valley is beautiful, surrounded by lush hills and sparsely populated by very primitive villages.
Luang Prabang is a wonderful city. Beautiful wats surrounded by both traditional Lao and French colonial architecture. The city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995, so a lot of its old buildings have been restored, and many more continue to be. It's also small enough to be walkable, with relatively little traffic (and thus pollution).
Tomorrow we head south to Vang Vieng, the next stop on the standard Lao backpacker loop. We're actually going to be able to get some climbing in for the first time since leaving Tonsai. The only way to do it is by booking a guide to take you, and interestingly enough, you need to book at least a day in advance so they can get approval for you to climb from the provicial governor, in Vientiane. Ah, life under communist beaurocracy. Anyway, we're looking forward to it; hopefully we haven't completely lost the climbing muscles and callouses we built up in Tonsai.
That's it for now. Take care,
- b & j
P.S. Still no new pictures uploaded. Maybe when we get to Hanoi, which should be in a week.