Blogs from Ban Houayxay, West, Laos, Asia - page 6

We left thailand on a little boat to cross a tiny river to laos we could wave over it was that close but, yet worlds apart Huay xai was a strange place gone was the land of smiles we felt we had entered the land of frowns how wrong we were we are a week here now and we love laos the people are that bit shy bit they are an amazing people considering the hardship they have suffered with all the bombs in the 1960s that were dropped on the way back to the usa from vietnam our first epic trip was trying to travel on a road that has yet to be built it was a building site at one stage we had to push the mini van. we should have gone in a ... read more

We needed to make our minds up on how we were going to travel to Laos, so after several trips to the travel agents we decided to book a deluxe one day river cruise down the Mekong. We were under the impression that we would have to do a two day cruise and stop over on the way at a place called Pak Ben. But this company that we booked with was offering a one day cruise with no stops. We were pleased with this because the accommodation offered in the guide book sounded very basic and we could not book anything in advance, also we thought we would need a bed for the night with no mosquitoes or bugs after a long day traveling on a boat. The trip started from Chiang Mai and you ... read more

The Gibbon Experience was amazing!! For anyone who is planning on comming this way, it's someting you don't want to miss. It's even worth comming all the way to Asia just to do. On the first day we got picked up in a truck at about 8:00 am and took the truck, which had 9 people in it. It chugged up the mountain for about 3 hours where we got to the village at the base. After that it was 1.5 hour hike, mostly uphill and through rivers to the base kitchen. There we were greeted by a couple of playful monkeys who were jumping on our heads and getting into a lot of trouble. One of them "jack" was playing with the little kitten, although I'm not sure the kitten was having as much fun ... read more

There is a saying in travel that says, "It is not the destination that matters but the journey" and nowhere on our trip so far has this been more true than on the 2-day boat trip down the Mekong in Laos. We had left Thailand on a fish-tailed ferry boat for the short crossing over to Hauy Xai, lugging our packs up the boat ramp with a last, fond look back at Thailand before going through customs procedures and entering Laos. I had wanted to do the Mekong boat trip ever since reading Dervla Murphy's account of a similar journey undertaken in the nineteen nineties. Admitedly, things had changed since then - it had become a lot more popular and commercialised for one thing but the same old rice barges were still being used today and ... read more

After finding out that we weren’t booked onto the Gibbon experience, we basically had to sit tight and hope that we could capitalise on somebody else’s misfortune. We were told to come back and check on the evening of the 26th. The night before was spent stewing over the whole situation and by lunchtime on the 26th we had all pretty much come to terms with the fact that we couldn’t do it. I decided to kill some time by having a wander round Huay Xai to see if there was anything that took my interest. I stumbled across a temple called Wat Jom Khao Manilat. This temple is set at the top of a large hill overlooking the town. It is accessible via a large ‘naga’ flanked staircase. The temple itself is very nice and ... read more