Blogs from Ban Houayxay, West, Laos, Asia - page 5

Hopped into the mini-bus that would drive us the five hours to the Laos border north west of Chiang Mai and get chatting to two red-haired Irish lads, one of whom has his head stuck out the side of the bus from a dodgy pizza the night before - better off sticking to the street stalls and none of that western muck! They be the brothers Colin and Derek Henison, hailing from Millpark, just outside Roscrea in the good auld Co. Tipperary - my home town, amazingly enough! It's a small world, but seeing as they are a good 10 years younger than I am the only person we know in commom is my uncle Dan, the town plumber. Their Dad was on the munster side that beat the All-blacks all those moons ago, so ... read more

Alright, now that the suspense has built I will tell you what we were doing in Huay Xai. This small, extremely boring town is the departure point for the Gibbons Experience. This eco-tourism forest conservation project was started by a guy from France in response to the widespread poaching, logging and slash and burn practices that were destroying Laos primary forests. Basically, the money made has allowed them to create and protect a nature reserve, complete with patrolling guards. They work very closely with local villages and virtually every employee is from a village. It is their hope that one day they can hand the project over to the villages. Our journey began with 11 tourists and 3 employees piling into an old 4x4 van for a long, dusty and often bumpy trip. Our bags ... read more

So as previously mentioned, we made it up to Chiang Mai on another sleeper train, and another 18 hour journey. Seems easy now! 2 hour European flights will be a breeze... Spent the first day getting our barings in the city. We quite like Chiang Mai, for a city of its size, its fairly relaxed. Not quite as manic as Bangkok! A moat envelopes the old town district, with more of the commercial markets and businesses further out to the east. Made a quick scout of the tailor shops to see where James was to get his suit made, before visiting the night bizarre. Were quite looking forward to looking round the night market, as we had heard it was a great place to do some shopping, however, we were quite dissapointed, as it seemed to ... read more

Sat 17th Feb We all went for a last breakfast at JoMa’s I was devastated as they had run out of cinnamon swirly buns. Keirra and I got a TukTuk to the ferry port and got on our boat for the day. There were a few comfortable seats but they had already gone. The boat filled up as we were sitting on a small wooden bench with upright back. We took it in turns to sit on the floor leaning against the wall and on the bench (the floor being more comfortable!) There was an elephant festival that was on this weekend and when we got there most of the boat got off (including Kerra). So for the last bit of the journey I got a more comfortable seat. Shared a room with Bex and Lauren ... read more

Our last 2 days in Laos. We leave our beautiful quiet guesthouse at 7 am and walk to the landing place of the slow boats and successfully secure 2 tickets for the slow boat up the Mekong towards Thailand. (We are well proud as we have done it all ourselves, despite travelagents trying to sell us the same tickets for 10-20% surcharge) I have noodlesoup and strong coffee for breakfast after we have dumped our luggage on the boat and are told that we won't leave for another hour. The wooden benches look quite uncomfortable but we wanted the slow boat (as oppossed to the fast boat - a speedboat which cuts the 2 day journey down to 5 hours - initially Terry wanted to at least consider this as an option despite the fact that ... read more