Well, after a VERY long bustrip from Phonsavan we are now back in Vientiane. The bus ride was reasonably uneventful (although there were two more armed men among the passengers – that really is going to take some getting used to!). OH! and we saw a very young boy, maybe six or seven walking along the side of the road with a gun as well.. it was almost as big as him!!!

ANYWAY after our bustrip we decided to take a rest day here in Vientiane before heading onto our next destination. We are catching a bus tonight at 7pm and will be arriving in Tha Khaek at around midnight.

Not sure how long we will be there for or where we go from there but we will keep you posted! Our visa runs out on the 17th so we’ll be detouring through Thailand into Cambodia sometime around then.

guns, bombs, mines and some jars

Well Vang Vieng is behind us now. We caught a bus out yesterday. Thankfully since Umphang I have invested in some motion sickness tablets.. that road was worse than death highway! My shoulder is bruised from banging into the window every three seconds! We saw our first civilian with a gun (well he probably wasnt a civilian but he was out of uniform so it was still weird!) he was carrying a semi automatic rifle casually over his shoulder. Everytime the bus stopped he jumped out for a cigarette. It was disturbing enough that luke and I didnt even smoke! We didnt want to be near the gun so we just sat inside the bus and watching wistfully. Logically I know that he is probably a cop or in the army and logically I know that the chances of him shooting us – or anyone else – are practically non existent but it still makes me really uncomfortable. Whenever he walked out of my sight I would feel all creepy until I could see him again and I couldnt stop looking at the gun.. but at the same time I was worried that it was rude and I would make him angry.. it was difficult!

The whole bus trip was about 6 hours (the gun guy got off after five hours) and we arrived in Phonsavan yesterday afternoon. I am not sure how I feel about the town… the gun guy caught me off guard, and the guesthouse where we are staying is absolutely COVERED in firearms and hardware from the war (bomb casings, grenades, cluster bombs, mines, rifles.. that kind of thing) I think with just the firearms I could cope but the room is also filled with dead, dusty animals, owls and cats and squirrels and stuff like that.. its really not a very pleasant place! The whole town is decorated like that (the war stuff, not the animals) I guess its free metal.. something which is usually well beyond their means.. but its very disturbing.. there are bomb casings holding up houses, being used as fence posts or light poles or steps or letterboxes.. its all very surreal!

I guess my problem is not really with the decoration choices of the townsfolk but with the fact that all this hardware makes the war very real for me. Its awful that even now – almost 40 years later – people are still dying from land mines that were planted in the ground, that people still arent safe walking in their own fields, that children get legs or arms blown off! Even now as we speak (type) there is a company working on unearthing all the unexploded objects in town. They have a special marking system so people know where they can walk and where they cant. Its unbelievable that its still needed you know? But what is more unbelievable is that before today it never even occured to me that people lived like this.. That there would be a town with huge craters in the ground from bombs dropped decades ago and people just walk around them as if its nothing! It makes me kind of ashamed of my upbringing.. I am so sheltered! And just think how bad it is going to be in Vietnam!!!

We went on a tour today to the plain of jars and our tour guide took us to his old village. He was seven years old when the village was bombed. Most of the bomb casings and stuff had been taken away (for decoration but also to be sold in Vientiane where it gets melted down into other things) but there was a TANK still there. no wheels or anything, really just the shell, but after nearly forty years the shell of a tank was sitting 20 metres from his old house (his parents dont live there anymore funnily enough)

ANYWAY. The plain of jars were great. We went to three different sites today and had a look, it was incredible to see but its a bit of a shame that there isnt any real answers about what they are doing there or what they were for.. lots of theories but not much data.. they dont know how old they are or anything like that which was a shame. Apparently there have been people wanting to do some research on them but because of the land mines it makes it a hard place for people to work. All three sites were incredibly peaceful though and the actual jars were great. they were all different sizes and different shapes. some with lids, some without. There are some photos on our site for you to have a look at, its kind of difficult to describe.. We also saw a huge old cave that was supposed to be used as a cremation place (there was even a natural chimney in the roof which was pretty cool), some of the theories about the plain of jars include this cave.. that it was a huge kiln etc etc.

We are catching a bus back to Vientiane tomorrow and will probably spend the night there before heading down south. I am not sure how the internet situation is going to be once we get into the real Laos countryside so if you dont hear from us too often dont worry too much!

xxx

Vientiane and Vang Vieng

Well we spent a full week in Vientiane. It is a nice city but my perception of it kind of soured toward the end. Once it gets dark the streets fill up with people trying to sell opium. They are all there during the day as well but for some reason once it gets dark they start approaching you. There were tuk tuk drivers who we walked past four or five times during the day and they didnt even look twice at us but then would suddenly be so interested in us once the sun went down. Well not us exactly, they were much more interested in Luke than in me (not that I minded!).

We spent most of the week eating. Vientiane has the most varied bunch of restaurants we have seen since we left home and the quality of the food was amazing. We ate a lot of delicious french food and we found a great little restaurant call the Full Moon Cafe where we would spend hours lounging around drinking coffee and reading our books.

Once our visa stuff was all organised we caught the bus from Vientiane to Vang Vieng. The trip took about 3 and a half hours. Previously when travelling we have caught local buses and we have always been the only farang on board. I spent a lot of time wondering how all the other tourists got from town to town because there were always so many of them but we never ran into anyone on the buses. Well this time we booked a bus directly through our guesthouse and lo and behold there were the tourists! It was just a minibus and there was only one local on board (and i think he actually worked for the bus company!).

The trip was really nice. Vang Vieng is just stunning!! for the first half of the trip we drove through little towns, pretty similar to the streets of Vientiane but during the second half of the trip we alternated between villages and country side. In all of the villages there would be a group of women showering at a communal shower (in sarongs) and groups of children playing what looked like a combination of volleyball and soccer. There was a volleyball net and a group of kids on either side but instead of hitting the ball over with their hands they would kick it or headbutt it over.

The town of Vang Vieng is tiny, right by the Nam Song river and surrounded by mountains, more mountains than I have seen in one place in my entire life! The town is really just a bunch of tourist places, guesthouses and restaurants and tour operators, and the place is absolutely CRAWLING with tourists, more so than Ko Samui or Phuket. Without the tourists I dont think there would be much here at all. Our bus pulled up right outside the Malany Guesthouse and we go a room there for $4 US a night. When we arrived it was already dark so in the morning when we woke up we were bowled over by the view, the balcony of our guesthouse looks out over a beautiful mountain range, it is just gorgeous!

On our first day in Vang Vieng we didnt get up to anything exciting, we ate breakfast and had a look around town then hid in our room from the heat for a while. We spent the late afternoon/early evening at one of the tv bars here. Such a strange concept but its actually pretty great. The tv bars have wooden day beds set up with a mattress and pillows to lay on and a small table in the middle where you can rest your food and drinks. At the front of the room there are two tvs playing old Friends episodes (or sports, depending on which bar you go to). We just lay there for hours drinking cold cokes and watching tv. Its strange because its something I would never do at home but its really relaxing and comforting for some reason. Maybe because we dont have to concentrate on what they are saying lol!

Yesterday we did a tour. It was a beautiful day for it, we got picked up at 9.35 (only 5 minutes late, its nice to not be running on thai time anymore!) and we drove for about an hour along the river and up towards the mountains. There were only five of us on the tour, another couple – the girl was irish and the boy was spanish – and an older german man (and us of course) Our tour operators name was Kau and he was excellent. He spent all day singing and splashing us with water and then singing some more. I dont think I have ever known anyone to be so happy! We kayaked down the river for about an hour or so to start the day. It was a lot of fun, we kayaked through some rapids (though not enough of them for our liking!). The good thing though, was that we were going with the current which made it a lot easier. At least that way we didnt go backwards if we werent rowing!

We stopped at a village after about an hour and parked our kayaks. We walked through the village, past chickens and piglets and turkeys and cows and then through some countryside (and over gates on the strangest ladder things I have ever seen) until we came to a cave opening. The cave was partly submerged, and to get inside we had to get into the river and sit in tubes and then float through the mouth of the cave (lying down – there wasnt much room to get in!). It was dark in the cave and there was a rope for us to pull ourselves along so that we didnt get lost. eventually we came to some dry land and we climbed out of our tubes and left them behind. We had to crawl though a VERY small space. So small that mostly we werent crawling but dragging ourselves through with our elbows. (I wonder if they mention this bit if really big people want to do the tour?). It wasnt very long, probably only fifteen metres but it was a lot of fun! By the time we got to the otherside we were all ridiculously dirty! From there we waded through more water (not higher than our knees though) and walked along more dry bits. There was only one spider that i saw which made me pretty happy (not seeing the spider, but only seeing one) Eventually we came to an inner cavern which was filled with water. We couldnt get through that part (unfortunately) and when we shone our torches inside we could see bats flying around. We sat there for a while and Kau told us some stories about the cave (but he was difficult to understand and I dont really know what he was saying!) then we retraced our steps back through the water and the dry bits and then we crawled back through the little space and then we got back in our tubes and followed the rope halfway back to the cave opening. There was another tunnel about halfway back and instead of heading outside we followed the rope through that one for a while until we found dry land and then we walked through the cave some more (this time wading through some pretty fast flowing water!). Then we headed back out to the sunshine.

Luke and some of the others had a swim (mainly to get themselves clean after crawling through the dirt) and then we walked back to the village by the river to have some lunch. Lunch was pretty unremarkable but we had a great view of some kids playing in the rapids in the river. They would jump in at a certain point and they would all shoot down the river (so fast it was scary) some holding onto a tube (as many as eight at a time on one tube) and some just floating down, they would reach the end of the rapids and would scramble out of the water and run back to the starting point to do it all again. It looked like great fun but we didnt get the chance to give it a go. After lunch we went to see another cave, this time a ‘temple cave’ it was nice (but so like all the other temple caves) especially the rock in the shape of an elephant near the roof of the cave.

After the second cave we kayaked again. For three hours we kayaked. It was beautiful, breathtaking even. We didnt see anyone for ages but after a while we started seeing more and more people. Pretty soon after we left the village where we had lunch, the novelty of the kayaking had worn off (for me anyway) and so luke did most of the work while I sat there gawking at the mountains and the forest. Pretty soon we started passing these little river bars and after about three of them our guide told us to stop. The bar was really just a wooden platform leaning against the trunk of a tree over the bank of the river. They had ‘beer lao’ flags and an esky full of big bottles of cold beer. They sold pepsi and other cold drinks and chips and stuff and there was a wooden plank for people to sit on. The main attraction of the bar though was the rope swing and the flying fox.

From the bar there was a ladder going up to a platform, about eight metres from the water, where people could either jump off on the rope swing or do the flying fox. The rope swing was much more popular! Luke and I bought a beer and sat and watched people jumping. We saw many people fall flat on their face when they jumped but couldnt hold their own weight, or couldnt get a grip on the bar properly. It was great fun to watch! A lot of the tour companies here hire out tubes for an afternoon and people just float down the river doing a kind of pub crawl from bar to bar until they get back to town. After we had sat there for about an hour watching people jump luke was itching to have a go (but making excuses not to all at the same time) eventually one of the guys we were with (who was pretty confident that luke wasnt going to jump) said “if you do it, i will”.. the look on this guys face when luke said DONE! was priceless!!! So luke and this guy wandered up to the bar and climbed the ladder up to the platform. Both us girlfriends got out our cameras and ran over to the river bank so we could get photographic evidence. We stood there and watched and waited. I joked to her that I thought they were talking each other out of it and then we watched them climbing back down the ladder through the ‘bar’ and back down to sit with us. It was too ‘bleeping’ high apparently. higher than it seemed from the ground apparently.

I am making fun but to be fair I didnt jump either so I shouldnt laugh. The contraption was too precarious looking for me.. even though I watched a hundred people jump off it without incident!! yeah yeah excuses excuses.

So! We stayed at the bar drinking and watching people jump for probably an hour and a half then we got back in our kayaks for the home stretch back to Vang Vieng. The other two kayaks in our fleet rowed ahead and we were left behind but we didnt mind too much, we just sat there for most of the time watching the sun getting low over the mountains and letting the current float us back home. We rowed sometimes (when we felt too guilty about being lazy) and eventually we made our way back to the drop off point. We pulled our kayaks up onto the shore where we left them in the hands of kau and we went to the pub with the other people on our tour to have another beer. We watched the sun set (spectacular!) and had a beer and then we all went our separate ways for dinner (and hot showers!).

It was a great day!

We are both sore today, luke more so than me since I spent most of the day NOT kayaking and just sitting there and letting him kayak!!! We plan on spending the afternoon relaxing in front of endless Friends episodes..

oh and there are more photos (of course!)..

bye!!

The visas are all done!! We have two lovely new stamps in our passports, a visa extension for Laos.. from 15 days to 30 and a visa for Cambodia valid for 30 days.. SO, we are now able to leave Vientiane and get on with our Laos adventure.

We have bus tickets for Vang Vieng. We leave tomorrow at 2 pm. YAY

Nothing else to report, we are alive and well (and weigh a kilo or two more than when we were in Thailand after all the great french food here!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BARRY!!!

Nong Khai to Vientiane

Well, what has been happening here? After our last update Luke and I headed into town for the festival. It was pretty amazing, there was a huge stage show with Thai dancers and a performance of the legend behind the Naga fireballs. There were food stalls galore, but silly us, we’d eaten before we went so we were too full to try any of the local food. We didn’t stay too long, the stage show was interesting but was continuously interrupted by long stretches of commentary that were (of course) in Thai so we quickly got tired of standing there pretending not to be bored! It worked out well for us though because when we got back to the Mutmee guesthouse, the owner, Julian, was setting up a showing of the Mekhong Full Moon Party at his house so we were able to watch the film that got the fireballs all the attention they have these days. It was a really interesting movie, and although it didn’t give an explanation for the phenomenon it went into quite a few of the different theories behind it.

The day of the Naga fireball festival was incredible! From start to finish it was an amazing day! Julian had organised transport for everyone at the guesthouse and at 1pm we all piled into the back of two songleaws and made the one hour trip to the village of Phonphisai. The amount of traffic on the roads was incredible. Luke and I were sitting in the front with the driver and we had a great time watching the reactions of all the thais overtaking us in their cars! Barely a car went by without at least a smile or a wave but most often there was cheering and shouting or laughing and pointing. What a sight we must have been.. two bus loads of farang! The cars that went by were packed to the brim, it seems EVERYONE wants to see the fireballs! In the back of one ute I counted 12 adults and four children!!

The road on the way to the village was absolutely breathtaking! Along the sides of the road were a few houses but mainly it was jungle area, about fifteen minutes into the drive I started noticing trees that had been shaped into animals. They were hiding within the normal trees of the jungle so you couldn’t always see them clearly but they were just fantastic! Now you have to understand I am not talking about the little shrub animals you see in Australia, these were actual trees transformed into animals.. some were almost TWO STORIES high! For miles and miles and miles there were elephants as tall as four men, horses with actual riders holding onto reigns, circles of children dancing and holding hands – each child in a different position, dogs, cats, birds, even dinosaurs!!! It was just incredible to see and sometimes you would go a kilometre or so without seeing anything and then out of nowhere you would see another giant tyranosaurus rex or a elephant on his hind legs.. spectacular!!

We arrived at Phonphisai at about 2pm, and even though the fire balls don’t appear until well after dark there were already thousands upon thousands of people. We walked down to the river and all along the river bank, as far as the eye could see, were hundreds of tents and thousands of bamboo mats, all filled with (or covered with) people. Away from the river, every available patch of ground, through the streets and along the footpaths were food and drink stalls or people sitting on the ground selling bamboo mats or fans or hats. The streets were swarming with people! There were news vans and jumping castles and ferris wheels and dodgem cars and merry go rounds and and loud speakers going off all over the place, there were men selling balloons as big as children or carrying stalks as tall as three people covered with fairyfloss.. it was mayhem!!

Luke and I wandered around for an hour or so getting our bearings and taking in the atmosphere of the place and we eventually found ourselves a shady place in the middle of the main market where we sat down and after much sign language and pointing managed to order lunch and two cokes (the coke part was easy – coke, it seems, is universal). We ate our lunch and then went in search of our own little piece of land by the river, we bought two bamboo mats to sit on and two bamboo fans to fan ourselves with and then fought our way through the crowd. Surprisingly we managed to find ourselves a spectacular spot only two metres from the waters edge. By now there were still three hours until sunset so we got comfortable and watched the crowds swell. The amazing thing about the festival was the happiness of the crowd, there were so many people, some of whom had been sitting in the hot sun since it rose just waiting for night fall there were people drinking huge amounts of alcohol but we didnt see one fight or disagreement. Every single person I saw was smiling or laughing, it was magical!

By sunset there were hundreds of thousands of people there to see the fireballs (some have even said there were over a MILLION people who showed up!) We were squished into a sea of Thais, there was only one other farang in sight (a man who was sitting on – of all things – a banana lounge!).

On one side we had a group of thai men in their thirties who not only had a huge feast set out on the mat but had icebuckets full of beer and (many) large bottles of whisky, they befriended Luke and insisted on trying to get us drunk. We didnt want to offend so after the third offer of a drink we accepted and then no matter how much we protested they kept filling up our glass the second it touched either of our lips, they also gave us a cigarette anytime one of them decided to have one. One guy in particular was very friendly – although he couldnt speak english except to tell us his name was bruce (this took about four minutes to establish) and that he likes soccer and goes for Manchester United, as he got drunker he got chattier and by the end of the night he was enlisting the help of strangers in the crowd to act as translaters!! (at one point he insisted that he could introduce luke to some ‘beautiful thai ladies’, luke respectfully declined and not long after that the man started swaying dangerously and fell asleep.

On the opposite side of the boys was a family of locals (by family I mean Great Grandparents, Grandparents, Parents and Children) who had a bucket of iced water and because we had lent them one of our fans, wanted to share it with us all night. Part of this family was a young woman with a four month old baby boy named flame. Thankfully she could speak english (thankfully because the eldest woman refused to accept that I couldnt understand and babbled at me at a hundred miles an hour every time I made eye contact!)

There were a group of young thai girls who had a crush on Luke and were keen to practise their english with him, except when he introduced us they got confused and though I was luke and he was Nikki so they kept saying nikki before they spoke with him which kind of ruined the seduction…

There was a young thai couple who were celebrating being lost in a crowd by making out. We gave them one of our bamboo mats so they didnt have to sit on the wet ground (one of ours was big enough to fit both of us) and they were so grateful that they too kept offering us whisky.

With all that whisky I guess it was lucky that we were able to walk back to the bus when the time came!!

Amidst the whiskey sharing and the translating and the explaining to people we didnt speak thai we watched fireworks from both the Thai side of the river and the Laos side (from both professional firework companies and those that were being let off in the crowd) we cheered at nothing, just for the fun of it, we stood up a hundred times when someone else cheered for the fun of it and everyone thought something was happening – though nothing was, and we watched beautiful boats float down the river covered with candles and fairy lights.

We had agreed to meet back at the bus at 10pm and when it was time to go back to the meeting place we still hadn’t seen a single fireball! Thats right not a single one! By this time a lot of people had given up (especially those with kids) and the crowd was starting to thin but the strangest thing was that no-one was mad, noone was annoyed that they had waited all day – and you have to remember that some people had travelled hundreds and hundred of kilometres especially for the fire balls – noone was impatient with the crowds or anything like that.

The hour trip back to Nong Khai took three hours (one and a half of which was spent on one 50m stretch of road) but even that was great fun.. all the farang (still the subject of much amusement) jumped out of the back of the songleaw and stood by the side of the road smoking and chatting or running to nearby stores to buy drinks or icecream taking a few steps every now and again so that we were next to the bus in case it decided to go anywhere. When we finally did start rolling Luke and I were already on the bus but there was a mad rush as everyone else jumped into the back of the moving bus! Luckily we didnt leave anyone behind! The driver certainly wasn’t checking!

The next day we checked out of Mutmee Guesthouse and crossed the border into Laos. (we caught a tuk tuk to the bus station, a bus to the thai border, another bus across the Mekhong to the laos border and then the dodgiest taxi in the world – an old datsun – to a hotel that we didnt ask to be taken to – but thats another story)… We didnt even get fined for overstaying our visa!

Laos is beautiful. It is strange that two countries so close together can be so similar and so different at the same time. Laos is calmer somehow, less tacky, more genuine. I am looking forward to spending the next month getting to know the place!

Ok enough Nikki babble. we are off to explore!

Nong Khai, Serpents and Fire Balls

We can actually SEE Laos! We are still in Thailand but we could swim there if we wanted to! So no more stressing about our visas! The trip here was.. LONG! We left Chiang Mai at 8pm, arrived at Udon Thani at 8:30am and then got straight on another bus to Nong Khai. By the time we finally got a room at a guesthouse it was 11:30am (phew!). Our bus was nice and comfy and big and there was lots of leg room for everyone which was nice, although at around 2am we passed another VIP bus which had broken down on the side of the road! All the passengers then piled into our bus and had to STAND for the rest of the journey (around 6 more hours!).

We are staying at a place called the Mutmee Guesthouse. The rooms are ok but they have a BEAUTIFUL garden area right on the banks of the Mekong River where you can sit and read. and the people who own it are great! It seems that the delay in Chiang Mai must have been destined because after arriving here we have realised that we are smack bang in the middle of the serpents fire festival! Luke and I read about this festival a while back and REALLY wanted to go, we especially wanted to see the ACTUAL serpents fire, but the Lonely Planet didnt say when it was, just that it was on the 15th day of the 11th Lunar month, which was no help to us! Well it turns out that the 15th day of the 11th Lunar month is TOMORROW!

Incidently the 15th day of the 11th lunar month is also the day that our Thai visa expires BUT we have spoken with the immigration people and they have said that we can stay an extra day but there will be a 200B fine for each of us when we go over the border crossing (200B is about $8). SO! we are going to see the serpents fire tomorrow (yay yay yay) and then we are going to cross the bridge over to Laos on the 19th instead.

So about this serpents fire thing.. I dont know how well I can explain it but I will try.. basically there is a particular part of the Mekong where this happens and it only happens on the 15th day of the 11th lunar month each year (which is obviously a different day each year) the end day of the buddhist lent. Anyway.. every year on this particular day natural red, pink and orange fireballs shoot out of the mekong river just at this one point and hover above the river. It was only known about around this area until a few years ago when a thai man made a movie about it (its called the mekhong full moon party for anyone who is interested) the movie was huge in Thailand and some other countries picked it up as well and now every year THOUSANDS of people come to look at the lights.. noone knows what it is or why it happens but skeptics have been trying to prove it as a fraud ever since the movie was released and they can’t explain it either! There are two stories that are popular.. one of them is the traditional story about the Naga Serpent and the other is that at this time of year there is so much plant and animal life decomposing at the bottom of the river, that it begins to emit flammable gases. Apparently these gases are only released by the gravitational pull of the moon, at its strongest when the moon is full, and ignite when they reach the oxygen at the surface. Sounds odd to me! Surely if this was true then there would be fireballs coming out of every river! Or if not then this one EVERY moon and not just this one.. Who knows! anyway we are going to see it tomorrow! I’m excited..

There is also an actual festival that accompanies this fire ball thing and goes for a week so we are heading into town tonight to have a look at that as well! What good timing huh?

We don’t have any other news. Yesterday was spent recovering from the bus trip and today we have been organsing money and things for Laos and Cambodia (who have no atms!).

We will update from the other side of the mekong in a couple of days!

N+L

Chiang Mai Update

We are no longer stranded!!
I have in my hot little hands two very pretty pink bus tickets for a trip from Chiang Mai to Udon Thani.. (its amazing what a local with 50 Baht in payment can do!)
We leave at 8pm tonight.
Because it has taken so long for us to leave Chiang Mai we won’t be able to see any of Udon Thani as we had planned and will have to get straight on another bus tomorrow morning BUT we will definently be able to be out of Thailand by the time our visa expires (touch wood!)
Nothing else to report (except that anyone who plans to come to Chiang Mai needs to eat at the Riverside Bar and Restaurant – best food, great band, cheap drinks!)
Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Lukes Dad today!!!

When next we update we should be in Laos!

Lots of love
xxx

Stuck in Chiang Mai

Well it seems we are having some trouble leaving Chiang Mai! Its been a combination of incorrect information, full buses and the language barrier and has resulted in a little frustration and 2 extra nights (so far) in Chiang Mai. We still don’t actually have a bus ticket but we have paid a man who works at the guesthouse where we are staying 50 Baht to organise it for us so we are hoping that by the time we get back we will have tickets to Udon Thani. If not I don’t know what we are going to do.. possibly go into Laos from the north which should be easy enough to organise (although we thought that about getting a bus to Udon Thani too!). Either way we have four days to leave the country.. eep!

To be honest the problem is partly our fault because we are being a little picky about our transport. The trip to Udon Thani is 13 hours so we want to go by first class bus (which really just means it has air conditioning and comfy seats..) I dont think I could do 13 hours squished into a tin can bus!!! Also the first class buses have special departure times which means we would get in at a normal hour and not at 2am.. which is important because we will need to find somewhere to stay… fussy fussy!

Aside from our departure difficulties Chiang Mai has been great… lots of shopping!
We will update again soon (hopefully from Udon Thani!)

Wish us luck!

Chiang Mai

Luke and I have spent the last few days enjoying the comforts of the city.. food with no rice.. cinemas.. air conditioning.. internet that isn’t dial up.. Luke ate steak two dinners in a row, and I have finally begun to realise the value of chain stores.. yay for sizzler and their potato salad! Its been really nice after so long in the countryside!

Yesterday was a busy day, we visited a few different places. We found another temple cave, this one much larger than the first (and with fewer steps!).. Ban Cao it was called, its about an hour out of Chiang mai and the cave is covered with stone carvings and statues, most of the time you can hardly even see the carvings unless you are really looking because they are so well hidden in the stone of the cave. It was really beautiful. We also visited a tribal community, which I had mixed feelings about. We joined a guided tour to visit this place (its about 3 hours out of the city),they are a karen community that have migrated from the Mae Hong Son area specifically to be closer to the tourists (obviously because tourists mean money!). you can do two or three day treks up to the golden triangle to see ACTUAL hill tribes, but I didnt want to do that, it just didnt seem right to me to go traipsing through these peoples homes. Anyway I heard about the people who had come down especially to be accessible for the tourists and I figured I would feel better about visiting these people.. in the end I felt pretty bad but I am still glad I went.

The tribe we visited was a ‘long neck’ tribe. We were there for about an hour or so and we met some really nice people, we left a donation for each of the little kids and we bought some jewellery and some embroidery. In the end it wasnt the adults I felt sad for so much, after all they had made the decision to come down from the mountains to make money, but I felt really sad for the kids who just spend their whole lives being gawked at by tourists (me included). There was no schooling or anything like that (the village only has 18 people). Its a strange situation to be in because part of you wants to run away so that you aren’t being part of the gawking group of tourists but at the same time without the tourists the people would be living in a village somewhere in the mountains with much less money for the things that they need.. its a catch 22.

We learnt quite a bit about the tribe though, the little girls have to start wearing the gold rings around their necks and their legs from the time they are one year old and each 1000 days they have to place a new ring on. They are really heavy (about a kilo each). I have heard lots of things about these ladies before – like that if they take the rings off they cant move their heads or that they remove some ribs to extend their necks – but their necks still worked even without the rings and all of their ribs were intact!! Noone could tell us why they do it though, the guide said that because the tribes people are nomadic by nature all of their stories were lost and noone really knows the real reason (but there are a lot of stories). All the women were walking around with the traditional dress and the gold rings around their necks and knees and all the men were walking around in levis and nikes.. very disturbing!

One of the little girls we met was just adorable, her name was makeda and she was really shy but just so cute! We also met a woman who had a 2 week old baby named laylee, she explained that her daughter was a special gift but that she was sad that she didnt have a boy, she didnt say why but the guide explained to us later that the boy children get taken to town for schooling but the girls have to stay in the village…

I am still torn about the whole visit. I am glad that I went and that I saw it but I dont know how I feel about it all. I guess its not my place to say what is right or wrong about it..

On that tour we met a family from Brisbane. They had been travelling for four and a half months which is not too surprising in itself but they were travelling with their KIDS! Shaylee who was about 11 and Bradley who was 6! I thought they were just on a holiday for a couple of weeks and I nearly died when they said how long they have been on the road for! They will be heading home pretty soon though – I think they are all happy about that, the kids included! I managed to get stuck with both of the kids at various points throughout the day, I dont know why but that always seems to happen to me! Luke thinks its hilarious! Shaylee was intent on telling me about every single thing she had bought throughout the entire journey and Bradley wanted to talk about Jurassic Park and other such things (most of which I couldnt understand). Then at lunchtime we were sitting down at a restaurant for lunch (with both the kids up the other end of the table!) and a little thai girl who was about 5 came up and tugged on the sleeve of my shirt, I turned around to see who it was and she started chatting away to me in Thai! I just kind of stared at her for a while (its hard to respond when you dont know what someone is saying) then after about three or four minutes her big sister came and made her leave and the little girl walked backwards out the door talking to me all the while.. it was very bizarre! I do wonder what she was saying to me though!

We have also visited another butterfly house and an orchid farm both of which were nice enough, although I dont know why we keep going to see things like that! They always seem like a good idea until you get there and realise that butterflies and flowers are actually pretty boring! We took some photos though, just to prove that we went!!

7 days til the end of our Thailand adventure.. I dont know whether to be sad about it or excited about going to Laos.. both I guess! We will be catching the train back down to Phitsanulok in the next few days and then making our way across to the Laos border via Lom Sak National Park and Khon Khen..

Oh, and there are more photos if you’re interested.

xxx