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Published: August 30th 2006
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Happy Pizza
I never had a birthday pizza before, thanks to Alan and Kate for everything. Yeah we're in Laos. It's really nice, great scenery and great food. Lots of French influence on the cuisine here - cheeses, baguettes, croissants, etc... And everything is super cheap. It's amazing. But it's been a while since my last blog entry, so I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on.
Basically, after renewing my Thai visa I went with Alan to Chiang Mai on an overnight bus from Bangkok. It was a 12 hour ride but we actually got a bit of sleep and met some people so it wasn't that bad. So this was my second time in Chiang Mai, the first being when I was there several weeks ago with my mom. This was a bit of a different experience though. Maybe because we were robbed. I thought the guest house we stayed at looked nice, but apparently there are some corrupt night watchmen. When we woke up one morning, Alan and I found the door open and our cell phones gone... along with Alan's wallet. Fortunately, they left everything else. We went to the tourist police to report it, which was completely pointless. They told us we must have been really really drunk to
The market in Chiang Mai
Shopping for our cooking class. not hear people entering our room and robbing us while we slept. Not a bad point, either. But overall, it was good to be in Chiang Mai again. We took a cooking class. I found a place that had Mexican food so I gorged myself on mediocre enchiladas several times. But then we left and headed for the laid back hippie town of Pai. It was good fun. They had cool nightlife, everyone goes to the Shisha Bar first then to a place called Be Bop for live music and stuff. One night we were at the Shisha Bar, Alan and I ran into Jessica who we met on the bus ride to Chiang Mai. She and her friend were teaching English there, so it was good because they knew what were the good things to do around the area. One day me and Al rented bicycles and rode around the countryside for awhile which was really nice except that Alan broke his chain and my bike made a really funny noise as well, besides the fact that it was so hot out and we were sweating like bastards. And we had to avoid a few angry village dogs that
Our cooking instructor
Explaining the ingredients started chasing us. So the next day we stepped it up and rented proper scooters and rode out to the waterfall. Man that was fun. Then one day we picked up Jessica and her friend Elka and went out to these hot springs that they knew about. Also we found an amazing restaurant that was a do it yourself BBQ - they put a portable barbecue type thing on your table, you go to the buffet and pick your ingredients, then you bring it back to the table to cook it with all these sauces they give you. Anyway, overall it was a great stay in Pai.
Then we went to Mae Hong Son, mostly because we wanted to visit the Longneck Tribe village. You've probably seen pictures of these people at some point, the women stretch their necks out by putting a steadily increasing stack of brass rings around their necks. Mae Hong Son itself was pretty nice. Good food. Decent guest house. But both Mae Hong Son and Pai are plagued with blackouts - the power seems to go off even if it's only raining lightly. It's interesting to walk around these cities when there is zero
Fresh fish
Gutted and cleaned before your eyes. power though.
So then it was back to Chiang Mai for my third time. We needed to go there to catch a bus to Laos though, that's why we went. Another nice guest house. I got to do laundry and stuff. One night Alan was downstairs and met this girl named Kate, she's from England, and now has been travelling Laos with us for the past couple weeks. So anyway, the three of us left Chiang Mai together and started on our journey to Laos. The first day was a bus ride to the border, then we stayed at some shit guest house, it was balls hot in our room and I got no sleep. Then the next day was crossing the border into Laos (so much nicer than the Cambodian border by the way) and then we got on the boat for our 2 day ride down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. We stopped in some town called Pakbeng for the night during the boat trip. After we got to Luang Prabang, we were really enjoying the town and the food and everything, so we wound up staying there for 8 days.
After being lazy for
a week, we got on a nice 8 hour public bus ride to Phonsavanh mostly to see this tourist attraction called the Plain of Jars. It basically consists of fields with these big rocks with holes in them so they are kind of like Jars. It's kinda like the Stonehenge of Laos - they're about 4,000 years old and nobody knows how they were made. It was cool but even better was we got to see lots of Vietnam War history because these plains were all battlefields during the war.
The town of Phonsavanh was pretty lame, so after a couple nights we left and got on another 8 hour public bus to Vang Vieng. Awesome town. Incredible scenery on the bus ride too, by the way. Overall, Laos has the nicest natural surroundings I've seen since New Zealand. So in Vang Vieng, the three of us got a sweet riverside bungalow. A day after we got there it was August 27th which is my birthday so the celebration began early. It was a great birthday bar crawl in a really random and strange town, followed by a stop at Happy pizza and more drinking. Thanks to Alan and
Rice fields
Along our ride. Kate for everything, and also happy fucking birthday to Shawn and Josh as well. We also went river tubing in Vang Vieng which is a special breed of tubing. Over here, it goes like this. The Lao people have been savvy enough to set up lots of riverside bars to break up your ride. You hop in your tube down the Nam Song river and stop at these bars. Well, you don't really stop.. they hold out long pieces of bamboo or throw out ropes to reel you in out of the current of the river. The point is, you get beers to go and lots of rope swings. It was so much fun, the view of the mountains as you float down the river is absolutely unbelievable.
Well we just got to the city of Viantiene and had dinner, it's the capital city of Laos and much bigger than the other places in Laos we've been. But I'll save that for the next entry I guess, considering we just got here and all.
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richardwhat'shappening
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Kate is great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!