Advertisement
Published: July 30th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Sa Wat Di from Thailand!
We have covered much ground since we last wrote, using many types of transportation, including various types of boats, buses, tuk-tuks, bicycles, a 4x4 and our own feet!
We hung out a while longer in Luang Prabang but had to leave and start heading up to the North of Laos because we wanted to do some trekking. We were going to break up the long bus ride to Luang Nam Ta, but at the bus station we decided to bite the bullet and bought a ticket for the entire ride north. It took a good 10 plus hours to reach our destination after, again, another slight breakdown. But we made it and headed for the first possible guest house to lay down! Since we had come to the North to go trekking, we set off to book a trip. We had originally thought a 3 day trek would be good, but we ended up signing up for 1 day of trekking and 1 day of kayaking/rafting because 2 other women has signed up to do that and we could leave the next day. It’s funny how things sort of work out as they should,
because after I day of trekking we were very glad that we didn’t have to do it again the next day. The trekking itself wasn’t too hard, though the path was quite slippery and steep in places. The main problems were that it was very wet (we were entirely soaked by the end) and also the leeches!!!! Actually, the leeches weren’t too terrible and whenever we found one attached to us we yelled ‘Leech, Leech” and our wonderful guide Ket, doused the little suckers with a special mixture of alcohol and tobacco that made the leeches unattach themselves from us immediately! The main reason for the trekking was to visit the hilltribe's in the region. We stayed overnight in one of the hilltribe's villages. The village was new to having visitors, so it was very authentic still and we had a sponsor family offer up their veggies & fowl for our lovely camp meals.
It’s pretty cool to see how simply they live and we enjoyed watching all the little piglets running around. The hilltribe women were also pretty interested in us and our weird appearance and clothing. The next day we kayaked down the swollen river that the hilltribe
village was located on. It was fun, but the inflatable kayak filled with water every time we went over any rapids and Karla had to bail out water all the time. The scenery passing by was very lovely however; who knew so much bamboo could be all together in one place!
The next day (after finally drying out a bit from the trek/kayak combo) we wanted to head to the Thailand border, however we had heard that the road was in very poor condition & the bus may not make it. The guy who arranged our trek recommended that we not take the bus so we had to figure out what to do. We could have backtracked and then taken some connecting flights to get to Thailand, but we decided the best bet would be to hire a 4x4 and a driver to take us on the nasty road. Again, things worked out as they should. The road was pure mud, we are surprised that busses even attempt it. Our driver was great though, very cautious. We are still surprised that we didn’t get stuck in waist deep, slippery tropical mud.
So after our last night in Laos,
we headed over into Thailand (a short boat ride across the Mekong River) and into CULTURESHOCK! After the laid back time we had in Laos, the hustle and consumerism of Thailand took a bit of getting used to. We headed to Chiang Rai, where we stayed one night and now are in Chiang Mai. We are kind of working our way up in city size so that we can face the chaos ahead in Bangkok. This city is fairly nice, though riding a bike around today in the traffic was not very relaxing. The markets are great though and we’ve found some awesome places to get yummy veggie food.
Next, we are headed to Bangkok and then maybe to an island before we have to head home.
Hope you all are well!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.12s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.052s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
mataho
nom
Wonderful Photos
Great blog! Wonderful photos. I like your images of the people, landsscape and culture. Cheers. onomataho