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Dorien
half asleep (or wanting to be) but still damn hot!
(oliver) oh I come from the land of darkness, I come from a land of doom. I come from a land of game hens, and the land of the big baboon. and i'm never never going back there, and i could not if i tried, cause i come from the land of lizards, and the lizards have all died. the lizards have all died, the lizards have all died. ca CAW
...swimming in a sea of sticky rice (think sushi rice), sticky mangoes, and these delicious giant grape fruits, trying not to step on the lizards running across the paths and up the walls, we stop to drop a few lines in our woefully (or, perhaps for you, thankfully) infrequent travel blog. It is my turn to slog through uploading and resizing and captioning the pictures, so leave you now to Oliver...
Well where to start? Dorien I and are in Luang Prabang, Lao..... Holy
westerners. Last we updated the blog we were in Pai, Thailand. Wow, we
kinda suck at this. Well here is a quick update on where we have been and
what we have been doing. We left Pai and headed north back to Chaing Rai,
where we
Oliver
oliver, give me "BLUE ICE"
(dorien) rented a motor bike and went to ivestigate another "bording
school" for Akha children. It was in extreme contrast of the Akha Training
Center, and confirmed much more our suspicions of foul play at the center.
There were more staff, less children and extremely clean facilities where
they worked to get the children ID cards, and a real education they can
use. We left there and headed even further north to Mae Sai, which is on
the Thailand and Burma Border. Interesting little place. We went and tried
to find another place that takes in indigenous children but weren't able to
find it. So it was off to Lao. We stayed one night at the border, Chiang
Khong, in the worst guesthouse yet. For a hundred Baht we stayed in a bamboo
cacoon where we were out numbered 50 to one by flying insects and 20 to one
by spiders. Not to mention the ant colony in the corner.
Without problems we got our Lao visas and crossed over the Mekong to
Huay Xui, stayed a day and night and headed north. Seven hours of some of the
worst roads I have ever seen (and being from Alaska, that
says a lot). The
dust was so bad that buses were getting stuck in a fine powder. We didn't get stuck,
but we did blow an upper radiator hose. Which we fixed with a piece of
intertube rubber. The dust was so bad that I could hardly see from one end
of the bus to the other and everyone was breathing through towels (or for
us, shirt sleeves). To top it all off, instead of a seat, I got to share the over-heating engine
cover with not one but four other Lao people. Didn't matter much because I
didn't fit in the seats. We arrived in Luang Nam Tha, then the next day headed out
to Muang Sing, which is supposed to be the best place in SE Asia to do culturally and environmentally sensitive treks (ala Lonely Planet guidebook). We went on a trek into the hills to spend some time with the local villagers (Akha). Dorien got really sick. Wasn't sure if
she would make it or not but she stuck it out. (but (dorien here) I was miserable trying to trek up and down some pretty steep hills for six or seven hours, wanting to puke every
step of the way. I was definitely at the end of the train of people). We made it to the village which unbeknowsted to us was practically empty. Most of the families had moved on to another village. But at least there was nice hiking. When we got back to town I went from feeling great to reexamining my lunch and then later my breakfast. But I took a nap and felt fine a few hours later (oliver, i guess, gets sick in a manly way. puke it all out, better the next day. i got to feel like shit for over a week).
OK. Here is where things got interesting. Dorien and I decided to head
to Zieng Kok, planned on building or buying a boat and heading down the
Mekong. Joined by two New Zealanders, Derik and Paula. We went with great
enthusiasm and ran into problem after problem. OK..... We boarded a tuk-tuk (small truck) for 40,000 Kip (4 dollars) each but once we arrived the
price was suddenly 400,000 kip for everyone. Which is ridiculous and we
would have never agreed to it in the beginning. With most of the town involved with the arguing
between us and the driver, who turned out to be an opium adict, we finally
gave him 40,000 more to shut him up and walked away with him ranting in the
back. After securing a place to stay for 2 dolalrs a night we started
looking for a boat, without success. We made arangements to then build a
bamboo raft and float three days to Huay Xai. After getting a local to
agree to take us up to the hills and chop down bamboo, finding rope, macheti
(large knife), intertubes for safety and many other items we needed to
complete the raft, I walked down stream about a kilometer and found that we
could not float the canyon in just a bamboo raft with four people on board.....we would die. By the time i got back the police heard about what we were thinking about trying and told us NO! So our energy shifted to getting a slow boat to take the four of us and four
French travelers down the river to Huay Xai.
Two days of bargaining and we agreed to an outragous amount for one
days work but we didn't like the sound of back tracking
by bus (recall the dust, seating arrangment, and broken radiator hose). The morning
we were going to leave, the boat driver said that he had paper work to do
and wasn't going to take us down the river. We talked to another slow boat
driver who was fixing his boat from a recent collision with I assumed a
rock. He said perhaps but after a firm talking to by the jet boat mafia he
said sorry "you must take jet boat". The jet boats are a very unsafe way to
travel and we were told that at the end of the month they were being banned.
But we were in a tight spot and all 8 of us decided to risk it. They
still wanted to charge us a ton of money but at this point we didn't care.
As they were getting the boats ready, the extremely unfriendly drivers were
yelling at us and the police officer who earlier didn't speak any english
told us in good english, that the boats are very unsafe and that the drivers
were drinking whiskey all morning. Which I confirmed a moment later when
they walked past me. The smell of lao-lao (rice
practising guitar
at our hostel in Mae Sai
(oliver) wiskey) was prevalent. The
8 of us had enough and decided to wait for a tuk-tuk to arrive and take us
back they way we came. Well the police officer said that was a good idea
and he would arrange transport for us. This man arrived with a pickup truck, got
10000 kip from every one and handed half of it to the police officer. Every
one in the town was trying to rip us off. So we back tracked 2 days all the
way to Huay Xai and booked a 2 day slow boat to Luang Prabang, which was actually quite enjoyable.
Enjoy the pictures.... we'll try and keep the updates more frequent. O
and D
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Pete T.
non-member comment
Nice Pics
Hey Oliver and Dorien! Your pics are great. I am jealous you are traveling... enjoy it b/c coming back into the workin world SUCKS!! Drink some whickey with a scorpion in it for me please! AK says hello.