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Published: December 4th 2006
Well, where to begin....
Instead of booking the 26+ hour bus journey from Hanoi in Vietnam to Vientiane the capital of Laos, we opted to make our own random journey. This involved taking yet another night train to Da Hong (again we booked it rather last minute and so only managed to get a hard sleeper carriage again, which meant sharing with 4 others... who were lovely locals who tried to feed us constantly with the weirdest looking fruit and sweets!). So 13 hours later we eventually arrived in Da Hong and caught a minibus and then a motorbike taxi to the Lao Bao boarder, however we thought we might not make it to Laos as the minibus we were in was smuggling cigarettes! Right in front of our eyes the driver pulled over and his mate got out and went and picked up a huge bag filled with cigarettes, we wondered what they were going to do with all of these when suddenly they started shoving the packs of cigarettes in one by one into a gap where the air-conditioning unit should have been in the mini-bus roof! So funny... Another comedy moment at the boarder was when a
guard saw Sam's North Vietnam hat and motioned us over to him, at which point we thought he was going to confiscate it, but he only wanted to remove the North Vietnam badge on the front (phew! was a bit scary for a second!). We crossed the boarder and literally hiked into Laos. Got into the nearest town only to find that the last bus to Savannakhet (our planned destination the other side of Laos) had gone 30 minutes beforehand. After some fun sign language and slow speaking we managed to communicate where we wanted to go and took a risk taking the local "tin-can" bus to a town supposedly on the way to our destination. Luck was on our side as two women took us under their wings and managed to guide us onto various forms of transport assuring us that they were all heading to Savannakhet.... we had lots of fun in a pick up truck showing the locals pictures of our friends and family and trying to communicate even though no-one spoke any English and we didn't know any Laos! Claire nearly died of embarrassment at one point when she tried to give a lady some money
Claire Flying
Inbetween floating down a river on a rubber ring, you can zoom down these zip wires into the river!
This turned out to be a warm up to life at the Gibbon Experience but slightly wetter.(22,000 kip, about 2 dollars) when all the lady was trying to do was guess her age.
About 24 hours after we left Hanoi we made it to Savannakhet, which we are now going to rename as "the Ghost Town of Laos" as during our time there we hardly saw anyone, foreign or local and every time we ate at a restaurant it was closed when we came back to it later on! Very strange. Savannakhet has some beautiful old French colonial buildings but these are in much need of repair, needless to say we did not stay long here and made our way north to the capitol Vientiane (unfortunately we did not have enough time to see the south of Laos... that's for another trip...).
Even as a capitol city Vientiane is so quiet and laid back with a population size similar to Milton Keynes. We loved it there and could have spent many more days chilling out there. We visited a couple of temples, Wat Sisaket was one of the best temples we have seen so far with long walls full of tiny alcoves filled with even smaller Buddhas. We also went to see their version
of the Arc de Triumph...hilarious... rather ugly piece if architecture that was actually built out of cement donated by the US and intended for building a runway...well it was never completed and there is even a sign on the wall of the archway that describes it as "an interesting local eye-sore". Also while we were there a religious festival was on so we decided to take a look and we were glad we did... a funny site seeing monks of all ages using microphones and loud speakers with disco lights flashing all around them. We were told they were praying or chanting but we are not so sure!
From Vientiane we headed to Vang Vien for the tubing experience. Yes, we rented large rubber rings and threw ourselves into the rather cold water and floated down the river for two hours dodging the odd rock poking out of the water (you have to move your bottom rather quick!), and surrounded by huge mountains. The first day we did this it was quite late in the afternoon but we had such a laugh that we decided to do it again the next day and headed back out to the river.
Sunset in Luang Prabang
We treked up for sunset - busy but a great view ! It was earlier in the day and it meant we could take advantage of all the various bars and rope swings and jumps along the way... great fun. Sam even managed to get in a game of volleyball. We had a great time (possibly helped by some Beer Laos along the way) floating along and took our time taking 6 hours to get down the river this time! Vang Vien is mainly a place for trekking and water sports and only has one main road full of bars and cafes... most of which are playing "Friends" on repeat constantly, much to Claire's delight and Sam's disgust after she made him watch 5 episodes in a row!
Next stop was the beautiful Luang Prabang (another UNESCO world heritage site). The first day we decided (much to Claire's alarm) to get up at 6.00am to watch the monks collect their alms. The collecting of the alms happens every morning in Luang Prabang and the local people come out onto the streets to give the monks their food for the day i.e. some traditional foods such as warm sticky rice or the not so traditional....Oreo cookies! We were glad we got up
Collecting the Alms
Fascinating though it was - it feels somewhat commercialised for the tourists and reminded me a little of youngsters visiting the Scout Tuck Shop. They were being given chocolate bars along with their sticky rice. to see it though as it was a awesome site seeing lines and lines of monks walking through the morning mist in their bright orange robes.
The following day we decided that we wanted to get out into the country side to explore and do some exercise (amazing how unfit you get when traveling!) so we booked ourselves onto a 2-day kayaking and mountain biking trip. Now, this was a challenge for Claire as she has only ever been on a mountain bike once and this time she was expected to ride 35km on a rough road through the mountains.... piece of cake, except it was about 34 degrees and we lost about a third of our bodyweight in sweat...ugh!! We both had a fantastic time though and really enjoyed the cycling, as we passed through lots of villages and got to talk to some of the locals and play with the kids who thought we were a hilarious sight puffing and panting up the hills on our bikes! We stayed overnight in one of the villages and went and had a well deserved swim in a river with some Beer Laos for company! Our group got on really
Eating at the Night Market
So good - eat as much as you want Vegan buffet for $1. We bought some BBQ'd fish and chicken to go with it. well and ended up getting our guides a bit tipsy that night when we started playing drinking games with them by candle light (not much electricity out that far), we all felt rather rough the next morning! The others in our group were good fun and to prove that it is a small world out there, one of the guys turned out to know Sam (he was from Western Turville the village next to Wendover - of all places!).
Kayaking was slightly more of a challenge than we had first realised, as the rapids that had originally been described as "gentle" turned out to be slightly more vigorous and when we kayaked into them (head first as Sam liked the challenge!) the water went right over our heads and it was all hands on deck/kayak! We kayaked for about 15km and had a real giggle and the scenery was fantastic as we were surrounded by huge mountains.
When we got back to Luang Prabang we booked our transport to take us to the north of Laos, Houay Xai, to enable us to go on the Gibbon Experience (www.gibbonx.org), unfortunately the roads are less developed the further north you
travel in Laos and so the easiest way to get there was by taking a 2-day slow boat! So the next morning we crammed ourselves onto the little wooden benches inside the small boat along with all the other passengers and their various forms of luggage, consisting of vegetables, cloths or in one family’s case their entire household... yes we kid you not, these people moved their entire house contents (including the fridge and cooker) on the boat and were dropped off in the middle of nowhere with all their things! By the time we finished our journey we had lost the feeling in our bottoms and were sick of the "beautiful scenery" (great for the first few hours but after 9 hours on a boat it all looks the same!) but we finally made it to the Gibbon Experience offices and confirmed that we would be making our trip into the jungle the next day.
The Gibbon Experience is basically a conservation project set up in the Bokeo Forest Reserve and allows tourists to come and explore the jungle and possibly see Black-cheeked Crested Gibbons, once thought to be extinct, via the use of a number of zip-lines
attached high in the trees and then stay overnight in tree houses that have been built 40-60m up in the trees! We had booked on a 3 day and 2 night trip, which meant that we got to spend 2 nights in 2 different treehouses. Once we had got into the jungle and met our guides we started out on an hour-long hike uphill to get to the first zip-line. On the way we were followed by a young monkey that had followed the previous group of people, so the guide was bringing it back to the reserve again. Well this monkey took a bit of a shine to Claire and decided that it wanted her to carry him most of the way - he spent most of his time trying to jump into her arms, which was funny at first but soon lost its novelty for Claire! We now know where the phrase "cheeky monkey" comes from!
Another animal encounter was when we reached the first zip-line. At this point we were introduced to a young bear (yes a real life black bear!) that the group were rehabilitating and were going to be sending back to live in
the jungle, eventually. Now, we had heard some rumours of someone being bitten on the leg by a bear on the Gibbon Experience but we just laughed and thought it was a joke....but oh no, this bear was a little bit over friendly and when you got too close it went for your legs, which is a slight problem when you are speeding down a zip line to a platform and see a bear standing at the end of the line! Lets just say, Claire has never run or zipped faster!
After the animal encounters we took our first trips on the zip-lines....WOW! The best fun ever! The views from the zip lines were stunning and it was a real adrenaline rush the first few times we did it! You even have to zip in and out of your treehouses as there is no other way to enter or exit them! We have tried to upload a video to show you how much fun it is zooming down a zip line but incase you can't access it we've also uploaded it here:
On the first day we went on a 3 hour hike down to a
Group Kayaking
The bare chested bearded chap in the middle is non other than Matt Gibson from Weston Turville (Small world huh!!) waterfall and went for a swim in the water there.... however, when we got out of the water we realised we had some little friends with us... leeches! Only little ones but still rather gross, Claire got out of the water rather sharpish after that!! Our first treehouse was very basic but still out of this world. 40m above the ground and surrounded by nothing but jungle! The toilet and shower facilities were interesting as they consisted of a hosepipe and a hole over the side of the treehouse, also there was no curtain or any privacy, which was a bit of a pickle for Claire as we shared the treehouse with 2 other guys! The first night we slept in the treehouse was fun after we had battled with the hundreds of ants that had invaded our mosquito net and bedding! A lot of Deet later and we finally got to sleep. We woke up to the sound of our guides "zipping" into our treehouse to bring us a tasty breakfast before the hike back up to the main treehouse. The rest of the day was spent exploring the many zip lines and dodging monkeys and bears.
That
night we stayed in another treehouse, this time it had a kitchen and proper shower and squat toilet... mind boggling what you can get into a treehouse 60m above the ground only using ropes! We had a great night eating and talking by candlelight, this time we were completely on our own as the guides went and slept somewhere else in the jungle. All was going really well until it was time for bed. Claire had checked the mosquito net and bedding for ants and all was fine until out of the corner of her eye she saw something move beside her bag which was propped up against the tree trunk that went through the middle of the treehouse.... suddenly Claire starting stuttering that there was a spider and not just any spider but one bigger than the size of your hand! After much debating about what to do about it (nothing in the end as we didn't have a pot big enough to try and get it into and it moved too darned fast to attempt to swat it, also we didn’t want to risk being bitten as there was no-one around to help!) Sam managed to coax a
2/365's of our trip spent on one of these?
Yes we spent 2 days on one of these !! But the Gibbon Experience made it all worthwhile... rather frightened Claire to go to bed, which meant sleeping right beside the tree trunk and all the other huge spiders that we spotted afterwards. We made it through the night and when we got out of our mosquito net the next morning we were greeted with the site of a few rather large dead spiders on the floor of the treehouse! Not what you want to see at 7.00am! After breakfast in the treehouse we headed out for an early morning hike to try and see the gibbons and hear them sing. We heard some singing in the distance but never saw them close up, it was all still good fun. When it was time to leave the jungle later that day Claire was happy to say goodbye to the jungle and all its wildlife!
When back in civilization we headed across the water and left Laos and crossed into the north of Thailand, making our way to the wonderful Chiang Mai. We arrived at about midnight and only had the next day to spend there before flying back to Bangkok, so we made the most of it and went and explored the many beautiful temples in the
Welcome to www.gibbonx.org
Our first night's accomodation at the Gibbon Experience city. As it was also a Sunday we were lucky to catch the huge Sunday night market, which was a shopping delight for Claire and also full of great local delicacies for Sam to try out, like squid on a stick! We also managed to get in a quick foot massage, which Claire loved but unfortunately Sam got a man doing his massage and he was rather aggressive (no more massages for Sam.... too much pain!). From Chiang Mai we headed back to Bangkok for the last time and then caught our flight out to Japan! It was rather sad saying goodbye to southeast Asia as it meant that the first part of our trip was over but we have had the time of our lives so far and are looking forward to the rest of the journey! Sam also said goodbye to his beard in Bangkok, first shaving it off to a goatee much to Claire's horror and then being marched back the next day to get it all shaved off!
We will update the blog again soon (we have been running a bit behind with things so will update about Japan very soon).
Sending you all
lots of love, Claire and Sam.
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Rach
non-member comment
Wow!
How come Sam ALWAYS bumps into someone he knows, wherever he is in the world?! Sounds like you're having an amazing time still guys, send big kisses to Rob from me! xxx