Tag: laosthai2007

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general travel

the end of the story

So the story ends with a train ride from Nong Khai to Bangkok. The day train reveals the Thai countryside looking bare and dry, and very much like Australia in places. Although it does have floppy eared Brahman cows running around to keep things entertaining, as well as the occasional expanse of water, or limestone outcrop.

Back in Bangkok, I decide I never want to go there again. Khao Sanh road is a cesspit of evil – at night it pounds with music, neon lights glare from everywhere, sun-soaked tourists wearing far too little crowd the street, and vendors pack the arena. It’s impossible to move, and I have the flu.

The one thing that saves Khao Sanh road is that there is someone there making the banana and chocolate pancakes I fell in love with in Ton Sai three years ago. I eat one as we walk towards the airport bus to make our escape.

The only stopper in the whole escape plan is that we’re both coming down with some sort of evil Bird Flu virus, and my ears are blocking up. I am warned that my ear drums will explode, that I should delay my flight by two days if my ears don’t improve overnight, and pay far too much money for some antibiotics and eardrops and other hocus pocus medicine from the medical centre in the Bangkok airport. It’s midnight, and we abscond to a hotel in the hope that a good nights sleep will reduce the chances of exploding ear drums. The foyer looks like a scene from a Wild West movie, but they have rooms with beds.

Waking up at 5am from a night of fevered sleep, we catch a racing taxi to the airport. 140km/hr in a 90 zone gets us there in no time. My ears don’t feel good, but I can force them to unblock, which I figure is better than nothing.

They don’t explode. I am relieved.

Categories
general travel

relaxing in nong khai, thailand

Night buses always seem a good idea at the time. After spending the first three hours sitting in front of a Japanese girl who is throwing up constantly, I begin to regret things (when they went around handing out bags at the start of the ride, I’d vaguely assumed it was a rubbish bag, silly me). Sleep doesn’t come, and when we stumble off a tuk-tuk into the middle of Vientiane at 4.30am, exhaustion levels are high. We find benches by the river, and I douse myself in Deet and fall asleep, ignoring the hovering swarm of mossies and other insecty things. Woken at 6am by Laos women doing vigorous aerobics in the street to energetic dance music. A jogging man stops nearby and follows the aerobics from a distance.

By midday we’re back in Nong Khai, Thailand, with a painless border crossing over the Friendship Bridge. Back to the land of ATMs and driving on the left side of the road.

Bamboo hammocks, Nong Khai, Thailand

 

We find the Mut Mee Guesthouse, and collapse. The next day we utilise the bamboo hammocks, and mostly laze around reading and sleeping. They have enormous rum balls for sale at the counter, and a self service system which is conducive to me eating far too many of them. The guesthouse sits beside the Mekong River, all shady and relaxing, and the man managing the place is vaguely reminiscent of a Kiwi John Malkovich.

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bikes general travel trip reports

outside of luang prabang

After spending some time in less touristed lands, Luang Prabang seems infested. We hire bikes and ride randomly out of town.

Farmland, Luang Prabang, Laos

 

I find a cow. Several cows in fact. This one was my favourite.

Cow, Luang Prabang, Laos

 

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general travel

downriver on the mekong

Sleeping lightly, I’m woken by the roosters. They start at 4am – apparently they haven’t heard that they’re supposed to crow at dawn. Later, on the boat, I overhear a couple of English guys: “Were we camped next to a bloody farm or something? The bloody roosters didn’t shut up all night!”

We pile onto the boat at 8am, along with a hoard of others, mainly coming down the river from the Thai border. As we sit for a couple of hours, waiting for all of the idiots with no temporal awareness to finally show up, I am amused by a group of German cyclists – they get their bicycles safely loaded onto our boat, use their bags to reserve lots of spare seats for themselves and get settled. Twenty minutes later, one of them decides to ask us where the boat is going. “Luang Prabang… downriver”. Ah, they want to head up river. Queue another twenty minutes of them getting themselves and their luggage unloaded, and with all parties concerned having only minimal English, trying to use sign language to convey to the Laos boat guys that they want their bicycles off the roof of this boat, and onto the roof of the other boat.

Riverboat on the Mekong, Pak Beng, Laos

 

The boat finally heads off down river. And the scenery stays the same. Muddy river, rocks, some trees. People fishing. Occasionally people washing and swimming. Crops grown on the sandy shoreline. Meanwhile on the boat, the English, US, and one Scottish guy all band together drinking Beer Laos.

Finally, as the sun has just set, we arrive back in Luang Prabang. Fighting all the touts offering guest houses and tuk tuks and god knows what else, we make our way up to the street, and collapse at the guesthouse.

Sunset over the Mekong from the slow boat, Laos

 

Categories
general travel

alarming the locals in pak beng

Having a thirteen year old guide book can sometimes lead to pleasant surprises. We expected the bus drive from Udomxai to Pak Beng to take around seven hours. Seven hours of being cramped on a tiny mini-bus, the aisles filled with plastic seats, and the leg space designed for people with much less leg than either of us had. But hoorah, we arrived in Pak Beng after only three hours. We wander down to the Mekong and confirm we are indeed already at Pak Beng, then go forth on the hunt for fruit shakes.

 

The main street, Pak Beng, Laos

 

Alas, they don’t have electricity during the day, so we can’t have shakes. We meet Lai, who is hanging out at his restaurant, practising his French by talking to a Spanish photographer. He makes us juice, and tells us about a good spot to swim in the river. Just three or four kilometres out of town, and the locals go down there and play soccer in the afternoon as well (try outs for the local team).

 

Feral puppy, Pak Beng, Laos

 

We wander out there at four, and the further we get from the main part of town by the river, the crazier the reaction to us is. Most tourists seem to just stop off for one night on their way down to Luang Prabang from the border with Thailand. So the villages a few kilometres out of town don’t see so many foreigners. Kids come running out of their houses to yell Sabaidee! at us, and we have a posse following us through town, demanding in authoritative manners “HELLO!” “WHERE YOU GO?” “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” “WHERE YOU FROM?”.

 

Village kids, Pak Beng, Laos

 

At the river there are hoards of Laos doing laundry and bathing. We swim, then everyone gets treated to the spectacle of a 6 foot something white guy playing soccer with a hoard of Laos guys who are all about a foot shorter than him. I sit on the sidelines with an ever increasing contingent of local boys next to me.

With soggy clothes and the sun sunken behind the hills, we start the long walk back home in the increasingly chilly air. We’ve not gone more than a few hundred metres when a group of kids on mopeds come up to us. They stop and offer us a ride. Hoorah! I jump on the back of one of the mopeds, Corey ends up driving the other with the Laos kid on the back, and we all zoom together through the villages, with all the Laos laughing at us as we fly past.

 

Playing football, Pak Beng, Laos

 

We eat all of our meals in Pak Beng at Lai’s. The sign out the front proclaims “Good Food. Good Conversation… My Wife is a VERY Good Cook”. He tells us the story of how he was travelling around Laos, and happened to stop and have some noodle soup at a little place in Pak Beng. That was how he met his wife, and apparently the noodle soup was so good that he decided he would have to stay and marry her. The meals I ate there were definitely my favourites of the trip, so it was a reasonable decision on his part :)

 

Lai and his niece outside Lai’s restaurant, Pak Beng, Laos