Blogs from Luang Namtha, North, Laos, Asia - page 4

So after a few days of riding around paradise on a scooter, I left Pai at 8pm in the evening for the Thai border at Chang Kong. The seven hour drive was pretty uneventful and we arrived at the Boom House in Chang Kong at 3am in the morning. As the night's accomodation was included in the price of the bus ticket, I was expecting it to be pretty awful, but it was fine! I shared a room with three girls and after a short gossip we all fell asleep. The majority of the gang from the bus were taking the slow boat but two of the girls were going across the border. So after an unexpectedly free and tasty breakfast and a free ride to the border (brilliant) we made our way to the border ... read more

Luang Nam Tha is a nice little town surrounded by little villages. We could not find a good trek that met all our needs so we decided not to do one. Instead we rented some bikes and decided to explore on our own. We first went out to a nearby waterfall and hiked in. I think that my view of nature is a little bit spoiled with the summer job that we. Have. The waterfall was mediocre with obvious human influence all around it. After the waterfall we road around to outskirts of the town. We stopped for lunch and waited for over an hour to get some fries. Things are very slow in Laos as we were warned both by our guidebooks and other travellers. This continues to be the case at all meals. I ... read more

From Kunming in Southern China, we took a sleeper bus to Mengla (even southerner China), then a regular bus across the Laos Border to Luang Namtha (details below). The enormous bus from Mengla into Loas contained just the driver, Alex, myself, a Chinese woman and a massive amount of vegetables. It felt fitting. I entered china in a crowd of Trans-Siberian tourists headed for Beijing, I left in a crowd of cabbages headed for the middle of nowhere. And almost nowhere it was. But it was nowhere with sticky rice and that is all I cared about for a long time. Sticky rice is amazing. In Laos it is the main variety of rice grown and is eaten as a staple with every meal, as an alternative to white rice. In order to cook it, it ... read more

"Pii Mai," rufen die Jugendlichen, "Frohes neues Jahr!" und mit einem heftigen "PLATSCH!" wird mir eine große Schüssel Wasser über den Kopf geschüttet (ohne Rücksicht au meine Kamera). Triefend nass setze ich meine Fahrt auf dem Mountainbike fort. Es ist Pii Mai, das laotische (und unter anderem Namen auch thailändische und kambodschanische) Neujahrsfest. Nach dem westlichen und dem chinesischen Neujahr ist dies bereits mein drittes Neujahrsfest in diesem Jahr, aber auch gleichzeitig auch jenes, welches am meisten Spaß macht. Wer um diese Jahreszeit nach Laos fährt und sich wundert, dass er nass wird, ist ungefähr so, wie jener Schlipsträger, der zur Weiberfastnacht nach Köln fährt und sich dann über seine abgeschnittene Krawatte beschwert. An jeder Ecke stehen (nicht nur) Kinder und Jugendliche mit Wassereimern, -schüsseln und großen Wasserpistolen, die bis auf die andere Straßenseite s... read more

Monday 15th February, 2010 Vieng Phouka Trek Our trek organiser Mr Boung Louang ( I think) assured us in very good very smiley english that water and all food would be supplied and after our Chiang Mai trek where the food was good and plentiful I made the decision not to take personal rations...............mmmmmmmmh....not a good move it turns out. I also left our puritabs and a few other essentials that I later missed. Anyway, all started reasonably well with quite a punctual and sort of organised entry to the jungle via pick up truck. Starting in a Khmu village which was home to some 400 people living in stilt houses this seemed a stark contrast to the Thai Hill tribe villages we saw which seemed very contrived and almost placed and designed for tourism. ... read more