The first couple are interesting, and then they all start to look the same. There is also a stone Buddha stuck in a tree, which is quite good really.....
We also took the opportunity to get a proper Thai massage at a small place run for and by blind people. This amounts to an hour of vindictive wrong-way-bending of limbs with a karate chop to the back of the neck as the coup-de-grace....Possibly one of the least relaxing hours of our trip so far but apparently will do us good.....
Ayutthaya and the temples only really warranted a couple of days and a night so we got back onto the night train for Chiang Mai in the north. The sleeper trains are really good here and you only have to share your bunk with a cockroach or two. Regardless of creepy-crawly bedfellows, the trains beat the buses and minivans hands down in terms of comfort and also mean dealing direct with the rail company instead of a shady travel agent, of which there are many.
Chiang Mai was a lot cooler than our previous stops, to the extent of actually needing a blanket at night, and much less humid. Plenty to do, an interesting night market which was less frantic than expected on account of a football match between Thailand and Singapore...
Monk spotting outside Starbucks....
We also discovered the rotee, a pancake filled with banana and egg and covered in honey and condensed milk. Sounds revolting we know, but tastes great. So far we had avoided taking any of the tours every hostel, guesthouse and travel agent try to sell you as soon as you walk in the door but we felt we ought to give one a try. The day out we took started off with an elephant ride, a visit to some of the hill villages before lunch and a float down the river on a bamboo raft to finish. Sadly we didn’t care for the elephant equivalent of a donkey ride on Brighton beach and the remote hill tribe village was awash with tourists making us feel like we were at a zoo. The rafting was quite entertaining although there are no pictures of it for obvious reasons....
We rode an elephant much like this one....
The trekking part of the day was pretty good...
Back in the city we found toothpaste and beer for sale...of course...
Onwards to Pai next, further north by about four hours and much sleepier, much quieter and great fun. We found a great bungalow with free bedbugs in a herb garden for a few days doing very little (some might say we do very little anyway.) We did some more exploring by motorbike to the Pai canyon, which is not very big, and to several waterfalls, which are also not very big.
Not quite the London Eye.....but the Pai Eye...
In the evenings the town centre turns into a ‘walking street’ lined with food stalls, markets and live music, with everything from local folk music to touring bands from Bangkok. Even the police get involved. This guy sang with just about every band he could find, including some performing only in his head.....
From Pai we took a bus back to Chiang Mai and another to Chiang Khong and the border with Laos. As we left Pai we had teamed up with Joe and Laura from the UK and the four of us spent three or four hours negotiating Laotian immigration and customs before boarding a boat for a two-day trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang in northern Laos. Predictably the boat for 70-odd people was packed with around 120 and fitted out with seats ripped from a bus for the lucky-ish. The rest of us had all splashed out on cushions from the convenient cushion shops in Chiang Khong and across the border in Huy Xai in preparation for the benches...
The boat stopped at the half-way town of Pak Beng for some hard bargaining for a room above the generator (no electricity here after 10pm) and a very tasty buffalo curry. By now we were six, joined by Jacob and Dalin from the US and the next morning we made an early start for the boat to bag the decent spots on the boat, ie the floor. Another six hours or so later we arrived in Luang Prabang, now as a party of eight, joined by Jeroen and Tamara from Holland.
Luang Prabang was much more expensive than Thailand (although all things are relative) but quieter and prettier with traces of French colonialism all over the city and very much the kind of place to lose weeks without realising. It also has a great name.
And proper tuk-tuks...
We tried a Laos massage, which is remarkably similar to the Thai one. Slightly less vindictive but still finished with a karate chop to the back of the neck. To recover we hired three motorbikes for ourselves, Joe and Laura and Jeroen and Tamara for a very entertaining trip to the Kuang Si waterfalls about 35km away from the city.
Joe captured bike to bike by Sarah...
At the butterfly farm (also known as a field) on the way...
And at Kuang Si...
Jeroen in full swing....
We stopped on the way back on a football pitch to take this picture,
only to be surrounded by a group of local children. Very soon a football match broke out, Europeans and small children against slightly bigger children.....
Naturally the Europeans won, the Dutchman among us scoring the winning goal...
Our 30 day visa for Vietnam was ticking away so we said our goodbyes to all and took a flight to Hanoi rather than waste literally days on buses to get there overland. The general wisdom is that Laos Airlines are to be avoided as no-one knows a great deal about them but we found the service efficient, on time, spotless aircraft, ham sandwich included, and friendly staff (Ryanair take note.) Hanoi was great fun, total chaos but lots to see and do assuming you can get across the road. To cross it’s best to work in pairs. Pick a direction each, place all your trust in your crossing partner and slowly step into the road, allowing the motorbikes time to react and go around you rather than over you....
The rules of the road are as follows; pick a lane and include the invisible third lane down the middle in your choice. Stick with it for as long as you feel like it then change your mind at random. All lanes are reserved for you until something larger comes along. When that happens, resist for as long as possible, although size does matter in the end. Use your horn for all manoeuvres, all the time....
We had been caught out on arrival in Hanoi by what turned out to be a tried and tested scam. Thinking we were clever we wrote down the name of our pre-booked guesthouse and the address beforehand in a bid to make the taxi ride easier. We even took an official airport taxi rather than a tout and agreed the fare, all the things you are supposed to do. On the 45-minute drive to the city the driver was on the phone to his mate relaying all the information we had supplied, so that when we pulled up in a dark street the door opened and we were greeted by a man welcoming us to his, and theoretically our, hotel. The fact we could see no hotel did start the odd alarm-bell ringing but not quite loudly enough just yet. It transpired that our hotel had ‘electrical problems’ but naturally they had a sister hotel just around the corner for us. For the purposes of the scam the problems can be anything, no water, no rooms, fallen down etc. Of course the taxi-driver has long since disappeared and we have no idea where we are. We followed him to the sister hotel which in fairness was actually quite good, just not the one where we had a reservation. It was sufficiently good we would have stayed there until we fell into a noisy argument about the price so off we went into the night. It turns out cab-drivers and their mates run this scam all the time to get people into their hostels and guesthouses. Any attempt to complain is generally met with a sudden inability to understand English and as our Vietnamese is not that great....... It can be sinister but is really just extremely irritating. We didn’t part with any money before leaving and did eventually find the hotel we were supposed to have been delivered to. Ironically it was terrible, filthy, none of the services it had advertised and we only stayed the minimum eight hours to get some sleep before leaving for our third hotel in 12 hours. We were seduced by the proper shower in a proper cubicle at this one. Normally bathrooms here are of the ‘wet room’ variety which basically means everything gets wet and because it is so hot and humid, nothing ever dries.
We are also getting used to the language of SE Asia. You can’t walk ten yards, particularly in Vietnam without hearing ‘Hello, motorbike?’ from the motorbike taxis, followed by ‘Where you from?’ and ‘Where you going?’ The next lines are usually ‘You buy something from me?’ or ‘You want book/cigarettes/taxi/massage very cheap?’ A fake Rolex watch is ‘same same but different’ as a real one. Two fake Rolex watches are ‘same same but different’ because they are identical but there is two of them. Two watches are also ‘same same but different’ because they are completely different, but the two objects are both watches. It can mean ‘buy it from me because although the next guy has the same thing, mine is better/cheaper’ or ‘can I have another one please?’ and serves as a general introduction to any transaction. All meanings can be used simultaneously or can switch without warning. Hope that makes sense.
Out in the countryside you don’t get any of the above, just a request for money from children and adults alike. I had tea with a nun the other day, as you do if you’re not wearing any trousers.....we chatted amiably in our own languages about totally different things because the only English she knew was ‘you must give me money’. It is customary to make a donation to all nuns who make tea for the trouser-less and indeed to all custodians of temples etc but it somehow seemed a shame that was that only common language we had. The additional bit of information required for this story is that I was the only one in our group wearing shorts that day and could not visit the temple she guarded.
After a couple of days of chaos in Hanoi we took a bus, another bus, a boat and a bus to Cat Ba Island and Halong Bay on the coast.
The island itself is nice enough although the town is a bit limited but everyone comes here for the boat trips around the bay. Eight of us hired a boat for the day for a cruise around the islands complete with kayaking and lunch...
Six of us from the party all stayed together and took another bus-boat-bus combination further down the coast to Nimh Binh and the Tam Coc area, which is known as the dry Halong Bay, which we explored by bike. 45km later we were back in our guesthouse covered in dust.
By now we were just five, ourselves , Axel and Franziska from Germany, and Janneke from Holland, and we took another sleeper train down to Hue (no cockroaches here so far but the odd rat on board for company.)
Sarah at Hue....
And randomly, some fish...
We stopped for the night before four of us back on the train to Hoi An, home to more than 500 tailors. By the time we left a few days later we were $60 but five tailored shirts up. Should keep us going until Mexico at least....great town as well...
In pursuit of a bit more sand we took the train south to Nha Trang for a couple of days and have now come inland to the Central Highlands and the town of Dalat. We plan to spend a few days here then head for Saigon before crossing into Cambodia. It’s unlikely we’ll update this again before leaving for Australia so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!
