Advertisement
Published: September 1st 2008
Edit Blog Post
Video Playlist: 1:
42 secs
Long neck woman
The rings normally weigh 5kg and is 30 cm in height The 24th was a day of traveling on our bike down to Vientiane, but we decided to stop one night in Vang Vieng. We did not do much in Vang Vieng apart from play a bit of cards and have a nice Indian meal.
On 25th we got up early to travel down to Vientiane to return the bikes. My travel buddy Alberto was staying in Laos another week, before returning to Barcelona so we went out for our last dinner. He was an easy guy to travel with and we never had any disagreements apart from whether to turn left or right!
The 26th I flew from Vientiane via Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai in North Thailand. In the evening I meet up with a friend (Ron) of my friend Cinnamon (from London Business School). He has lived in Chiang Mai for a few months, so knows all the good places to go for drinks and dinner. We went to a restaurant where tourists don’t go, with his girlfriend. The food was yummy and the prices were laughable.... five 640ml beer for 3 USD...what a bargain.....we ended up drinking far too many which explained the way I felt
Long Neck Women
Me with two long neck women next morning.
On 27th I got up a bit late and walked around town in the afternoon. There are about 300 temples in and around Chiang Mai, but after three I was templed-out. In the evening I meet for dinner with Ron again and he took me to another local restaurant, where the food again was fantastic and the prices so low.
Ron had recommended that I hired a motorbike and go to Pai and Mae Hong Son, which is in the heart of the Golden Triangle where a lot of drugs were grown in the past. Drugs are not grown in Thailand anymore, but it still is in Myanmar (Burma) and the area is a big smuggling route into Thailand. I hired a bike in the morning and drove 130km to Pai, which took just over 3 hours as there were a lot of curves on the route as it is in the mountains. Ron had recommended a place where I could stay in a bamboo hut just out of town. The place was really peaceful and set in a lovely garden. I meet 2 Germans, 2 Swedish and 1 Canadian girl that I went out for
dinner with. After dinner we went to the hippie bar were a few guys did a fire show, which was amazing to watch (see video attached). Pai is a real hippie place.
On 29th I went on a 2 hour elephant ride outside Pai. The ride was beautiful but my bottom did not enjoy it, as it was like sitting on a plank of wood. It was also really hard to hang on to the elephant, as I did not have a seat apart from a blanket. This was properly my first and last elephant ride. After that I went on a two hour bamboo river rafting trip on the river. I had dinner at the place I stayed. They only serve vegetarian food and it tasted fantastic. I decided not to go out that night, as I had a few late nights.
On 30th I got up early to drive to Mae Hong Son. After 25km I had a puncture, but did not panic. After 15 min a van picked me and the bike up and took us back to Pai, where I had a new tire put on. This delayed me a fair bit and I
Ear rings
Have a look at her ear rings did not make it to Mae Hong Son before middle of the afternoon. I had time to go and see the temple by the lake and just walked around town for a bit.
On 31st I had hired a guide to take me to see some of the hill tribes close to the Burma border. The people in the hill tribes have migrated from Tibet, Burma, China and Laos over the last 200 years. There is still a lot of migration happening from Burma to this area and there are over 50,000 people living in refugee camps in the border region of Thailand. My guide took me to see the village of the Long Neck Women, a Shan village and a Hmong village (from China). The long neck women were amazing to see. They come from an area in Burma and nobody really knows where the tradition comes from, but the story is that the men demanded it to avoid women marrying men from other tribes. It was really good to have the guide with me, as it meant that through him I could talk to some of the people. On the way to one of the villages we
Hmong Village
There was over 20 people living together in a house. I gave up counting the children as more and more seemed to arrive stopped at a hot spring where they offer mud bath, massage etc. I got talked into having a mud facemask, which was an experience (sorry I am not smiling on the photo, but I could not move my mouth). We also saw a waterfall on the way.
On 1st I drove back to Chiang Mai. I did a stop in Pai to have some lunch, before doing the last 3 hours. After about 20 min drive from Pai I had another puncture (amazing 2 weeks of traveling in Laos without any punctures, but in Thailand 2 within 4 days). I man stopped and offered to take the bike on the load of his lorry and as he was going all the way to Chiang Mai, he drove me all the way there.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.048s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 24; dbt: 0.028s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb