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Published: March 31st 2012
Ruby: After spending some time in Thailand, we left Chiang Rai to go to the Laos border, so we went down to where all the boats were. We got onto a mini-boat and sailed to Laos. When were at Laos we had to go onto another boat to a part in Laos that we wanted to go to. So we got onto the boat. It was a very good boat and it was only for us. Me and George jumped straight onto the bed. Two hours later we stopped to look at a village. We bought some ‘Big’ which is actually Fanta. Then we got back in the boat. In the evening we went to Pak Beng. We found our hotel. We got our keys to our room. Me and George played for a bit. Then we went to dinner. Then we went to bed. In the morning at 7 o’clock we got back on the boat. We went to a village along the river. There were loads of weavers and sellers, and I bought a scarf. Then we got back on the boat and had lunch. In the afternoon we saw another Buddha cave, and did some maths homework on
the boat. And then we got there, Luang Prabang. We went to dinner and it was lovely. In the morning, me and George watched ‘Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides’ on DVD. Then we went to breakfast – they had Nutella! We went to a temple at the top of the hill – 328 steps, and it was impressive. Then we went to the ‘Grand Palace’. It was beautiful!
Carla: Taking the train overnight to Chiang Mai from Bangkok we were advised by our guide to buy beer and snacks at the station. I overheard another guide in Chiang Mai advising some other Brits the same thing before they travelled by train in the opposite direction; not sure if this reflects a Thai obsession or a Thai view of the Brits. Thus armed we board the carriage which turned out to be just a slight cut above the Indian First Class sleeper but not too far different. We had interconnecting cabins with two bunks and (the key difference) a sink in each. There was an attendant who took food orders and brought us delicious soup and noodles from the dining car. Breakfast was served in this way as
well, although upon exploration we might have liked to eat in the diner as it was quite snazzy with neon flashing signs and yellow plastic seats – class! We had been warned that the train would be late and it was a spectacular 3 hours late on a scheduled 12 hour journey. They must be a franchise of First Capital Connect. Chiang Mai had changed beyond much recognition since our last visit in 2000. It sort of reminded me of a whole town modelled on the backpacker mecca of the Khao San Road in Bangkok; most streets within the old city walls were lined with one after another coffee, breakfast, Wi-Fi, beer, laundry service, tour organiser and so on. Also Starbucks, Boots, MacDonalds and Tesco had moved in to the outer streets. A good place to restock supplies and, oddly, to find great Italian food (at Pucinella Da Stefano). On to Chiang Rai where we had 2 nights and a chance to organise a day trip to achieve George and Rubys’ most urgent goal of riding on an elephant. We boated up the Mae Kok river (I will leave it to George to provide the schoolboy humour here) and visited
an impressive Cave Temple which was only habitable by its monks in dry season. We then carried on to a touristy village where Karen tribes people have moved (down from the Golden Triangle area) to make some money showing off large reptiles (boas, iguanas and sandsnakes) and taking people on elephant rides. A kind of child’s heaven. It was great fun and the kids’ (and Alex) really loved feeding the elephants a whole bunch of bananas at a time.
The following day we rose early to get to the Laos border in time to catch a slow boat along the Mekong. We weren’t sure what to expect but were blown away by our slightly too ‘treaty’ craft. We had a whole boat to ourselves where other tourists were in more conventional, airline-style seat, 20 person set-ups. Having booked our tour of the region from the UK as a whole package (to avoid having to faff around whilst here) we were beginning to realise that we had been over-sold some elements of unnecessary luxury without much discussion having taken place (well that’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it!). That’s what happens when you’re trying to organise a 6 month trip
all at once – some details elude you. I expect that people were talking about us at each stop, saying “there’s that posh family” or some such. Little do they know. The first leg of the journey was an 8 hour stint from Huai Xuay to Pak Beng. We stopped at a village to stretch our legs and spend some money. All the key ingredients you would want in a Mekong Village were there, dusty wooden houses, children selling bracelets, chickens and chicks, pigs and piglets, children going to school with what looked like EU sponsored book-bags and a shop with people sleeping in the back of it in which we bought some ‘Big’ which is like Fanta but with more colouring in it (if that’s possible). The butterflies and dragonflies around the village were larger than life and a good variety of colours too. We spent the night in Pak Beng, a strip of a village solely dedicated to people en route to Luang Prabang or to Thailand in the other direction. This was our first ‘opportunity’ to observe the lesser-spotted gap year traveller in its natural habitat. Some are completely untamed and one American one thought it was
OK to sing the Star-Spangled Banner drunkenly and loudly in an otherwise sleepy Laos village. I was sorely tempted to ask him if he had ever heard of a UXO (Unexploded Ordinance or bomb) and did he know about the legacy of the bombing of Laos by the US between 1964 and 1973. During this time the US dropped 2 million tons of bombs on Laos, 30% of which failed to detonate. Its estimated that there are still about ¼ million UXOs to be cleared in Laos and at the current rate of clearance it will take 100 years to make the country safe. But I didn’t ask him.
Plenty of time to read on the boat meant that I learnt this fact as well as lots of interesting stuff about the history of the region, so there might be more where that came from! Just a few more to enthrall you with here – Laos is slightly larger than the UK in area but has a population of only 6.1 million people; 85% of its area is covered in vegetation and a further 10% in virgin (never touched) forest. Now that’s dense.
We are now staying for a few
nights in Luang Prabang, which, I have to say, is the highlight of the trip so far for me. Whilst I know it is not the unspoilt travellers’ mecca it used to be. It has been very tastefully developed and the old town streets remain clean, quiet and completely hassle-free. Each street is lined with beautiful wooden houses, trees, flowers and lanterns and the temples are the most wonderfully proportioned ones that I have ever seen , decorated with pretty but not flashy, glass mosaics. A perfect place to explore on foot and also to find the best coffee outside France.
George: We are in Bangkok airport and a man called York is going to take us to our first hotel on this tour. The hotel is called i-Residence. It has a swimming pool so that’s where we spend most of our time. We go to a nice restaurant for dinner, right by a huge gold temple (actually the Democracy statue – Ed). We leave the i-Residence after breakfast as we head off to Chiang Mai. (No – we go to What Pho then overnight train – Ed.) We stay in a hotel called ‘The Empress’. At the side there
were two wooden elephants which I sat on and pretended I had an elephant called ‘Jimathon Bobhead’.
We go to a temple today that has a huge gold Buddha but behind it there is an old temple.
Today we leave Chiang Mai and head for Chiang Rai. The hotel is called ‘Phowadol’ and the rooms are little houses. Today we go on a mini-tour on our own long tail boat. First we go to the Buddha cave and then we go to ride on an elephant. But before we can get there we spot a lady with tamed lizards and snakes. The whole family gets their picture taken with a Boa over their necks. After we’ve ridden on an elephant we go to the hot springs and I swim with my normal shorts on! We go home in the afternoon and have a swim in the normal cold pool in our hotel.
This morning we wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning to get our minibus to the Laos harbour at 6:30. At the harbour we find our boat. It is a nice private boat that Buffalo Tours has booked for us. We are on the boat from 9am
to 6pm and then we stop for the night at a village called Pak Beng.
This morning we all get up at 6am and get back on the boat to Luang Prabang. The river we are going along is called the Mekong river and it is the 12th longest river in the world. I like the rapids that make it extremely fast in some bits but I don’t like not being allowed to climb on the rocks at the side of the river. The river is narrowing now and more rocks are gathering at the sides; Mummy gets scared when go round them. We stop at a small village with houses for Buddhist monks. We get back on the boat and continue sailing to Luang Prabang. We arrive at LP but our tour guide is not there so we get a rickshaw to take us to Villa Chitdara although we don’t really know where we’re going. The rickshaw driver takes us to the wrong place and just as we’re looking for the place on the map the tour guide shows up and takes us to our guesthouse. On Saturday we explore town and also we find a Children’s Reading Charity
which is different from other charities because when you buy a book it gets given to the Children’s Library Boat reading session. This is where children from the villages can read whilst they float down the Mekong River. Luang Prabang is different from what I imagined because its smaller and less busy.
Alex: We stopped over for a day in Chiang Mai, in quite a fancy hotel with a nice pool, so we spent a couple of hours there in the afternoon. We tried to take a brief look around the old town, but Ruby’s tummy ache made a surprising return as we walked around the hot dusty streets, but miraculously recovered on the way back to the hotel in the tuk-tuk. Funny that. We managed to take in a couple of the more important temples, but the town itself was not worth the pain of dragging round complaining children. The next day we got to Chiang Rai, and dealt with the urgent issue of laundry. Since this section of the trip started we have been staying in relatively expensive hotels where laundry costs are far higher than we can afford, so we have to save it all up and
take it to a town laundry where it costs about a pound per kilo. We also arranged an expedition for the next day, before returning to our ‘ghost-town’ hotel. We were the only guests in this big hotel, I felt odd – but at least we had the pool to ourselves and didn’t have to worry about the children making noise. The next day we set off in our long tail boat along the Mae Kok river. First stop was a cave temple, with bats and Buddhas in almost equal number. Then onto the Karen tribe village, where we had our photo taken with a massive snake draped across the whole family (with the head at my end), before walking round to the elephant camp. Everyone enjoyed riding the elephant, and Ruby was very excited when ours headed into the river – up to its neck – and sprayed us with water from the river with his trunk! We went on to a natural hot spring – really very hot (87 degrees). The natural spring water was pumped into a pool where we could go for a swim. Ruby in her eagerness to get in asked me to lift her
over the fence straight into the pool, which being a nice parent I did. But – that was the exact point where the spring water was being pumped in to the pool – and it was 87 degrees. She screamed and I had to scrambled to get hold of her and lift her out again, and her poor feet we red and she was crying. I am a bad Dad! Anyway, we took her round to the proper entrance and she got in and it was warm but not hot and her feet were OK. Phew. The next day we set off for Laos, on a slow boat down the Mekong. We had a boat all to ourselves, which made the two eight hour journeys very pleasant. We stopped along the way at villages, we bought a couple of bits and pieces and fizzy drinks to cool down. It did feel a little like being in ‘Apocalypse Now’ especially in the morning with the mist hanging in the jungle along the banks as we sailed down the river.
Luang Prabang is a gorgeous old French colonial town. The old town is small but has loads of temples, and the Grand
Palace, the old Laos royal residence. The temples in Laos are I think even more impressive than the Thai temples. They are a different shape, with roofs that sweep down to nearly reach the ground. Some of the ones in Luang Prabang are in need of repair, and some are being renovated now by the monks that live within them. The Mekong has been a great part of the trip, and I’m looking forward to the next trip along it when we eventually reach Cambodia.
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Trisha
non-member comment
mmmm - think I'll have nutella for breakfast too this morning - thanks for the idea Ruby! (Perhaps Alex could lay a trail of it round the less child-friendly temples...)