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Published: November 22nd 2008
Non
Our trekking guide in Chiang MaiAnd so i am alone...after 3 weeks of adventures, Danielle and I spent our last night together and said goodbye yesterday. Unfortunately things did not end exactly as expected. After an 11 hour bus ride, we checked in to our guesthouse in Vientiane. And that's when it struck. Food poisoning for two! Huzzah! Of all the things to get food poisoning from in SE Asia, we have determined that it came not from street meat, not from bad water, not from any exciting unknown delights...but from Pringles. Ridiculous. Needless to say, we were both sick all night. We managed to drag ourselves out of bed as we had to cross the Thai/Laos Friendship border and make our way to Udon Thani, where we had a flight booked to Bangkok in order to catch our respective flights to Saigon/Vancouver. Insert road construction. Flight missed. November 21 rules. We finally made it out of there, said our sad goodbyes in Bangkok, and I made my way to Lub D hostel in Bangkok, my safe haven where I knew I could attempt to sleep off my illness before boarding my reschuduled flight the next day. And so, 16 hours of sleep later, I'm back
on track and on my way to Vietnam in a few short hours. That's when the real adventure begins...but I suppose for now I should start at the beginning...
As Danielle and I were flying into Bangkok after our various snafus yesterday, she made a pretty good summary our our three week Thailand/Laos vacation. This trip has been the best travel times I've had, combined with the worst.
And so...
Week one. Amazing! 24 hours of travel took us from Vancouver, to Hong Kong, to Bangkok, overnight sleep in Bangkok airport, and we finally stepped out of the airport in Chiang Mai the morning of November 3rd. Highlight of Chiang Mai was definitely our trek. We headed out for a 2 day 1 night trek through the jungles of Chiang Mai...swam in water falls, rode elephants, visited bat caves, white water rafted, rode a bamboo raft, and spent the night in a hill tribe village where our guides, Non and Chai, prepared an amazing Thai feast for us all. What an experience. Our inital group was Danielle and I, Emmanuel and Charles from France, and Fabrice and Carline from France as well. After our first day, we
met up with another group for our overnight stay: Katrina and Carly from Northern BC, and Steven and Finnean from Ireland. We spent the evening drinking beer Chang, feasting, swapping travel stories, and learning about Thai culture from Non and Chai. My highlight from the trek was probably our transportation from the rafting centre to our rafting spot...raft strapped on top of truck...Julia riding front seat of raft over bumpy pot hilled back roads. Hilarious.
The day we returned from trekking, we flew back to Bangkok and fit in as much as we could in three days. What a cool city. We figured out the super modern skytrain quickly, and made our way around the city to take in all the major sights. This included Wat Phra Kiew, The Grand Palace, Wat Pho, the night market, and a ride up the Chao Phraya...and the 'unofficial' sights of course: MBK centre (the mall...ha) and backpacker central: Khao San Road. Good times.
After a few days in Bangkok we were ready to bid farewell to the big city and get in some serious chill beach time. This is when things started to go sour. Bad train ride. So bad. I
our brochure read:
"Let's Go: we might see BATMAN" and we did. was feaverish and ill as we travelled from Bangkok to Chumphon. The bathrooms were...awful. I had to wake Danielle up at one point because there were bugs swarming around her head where she had leaned to sleep. We arrived in Chumphon to rain and bleh. We were informed we were going to have to spend the night in Chumphon to catch the morning boat to Koh Tao. Our room essentially looked like a prison cell. Bleh.
The morning had some promise to it as we arrived on Koh Tao and saw the beach...amazing. We checked into our beach hut and morale started to boost as we swam in the bath warm water and discussed all the activities we were going to fit in while we were on Koh Tao: a diving and snorkelling mecca. While on a stroll to investigate the town later that afternoon. It started to rain. And not just rain, monsoon pour. Hilarious! This rain that came out of nowhere! It continued to rain all day. At night, as we prowled the town for fun, it was still pretty funny as we covered ourselves in our rain jackets, even making up a hilarious monsoon song.
Bangkok
Wat Phra Kaew By the next day, the rain still hadn't stopped. Getting less funny. We asked the lady at our guesthouse what there was to do on Koh Tao in the rain. She laughed. Not a good sign.
So here's the scoop. Apparently we missed the memo somewhere in our travel research that we were in fact entering southern Thailand at the very beginning of Monsoon season. Awesome.
Morale was low as we left Koh Tao to Koh Phagnan, but we had made it this far with the goal of making it to the Full Moon Party on the 12th, so we figured we'd stick it out until then.
Koh Phagnan was flooded as Koh Tao was, and we were getting skeptical as we wandered around the town on our first night looking for something to do. A caucasian guy on a motorbike pulled up beside us in Thongsala and simply said: "You speak English? Where's the party??" Our response was "We don't know man, trust us, we're looking to." We didn't find the party that night, but we managed to get in an almost sunny day the next day and rented a scooter to explore the beaches which
Bangkok
Wat Phra Kaew was pretty fun. That night was full moon...we had some crazy adventures and managed to keep morale at mid-level as we partied late night through the rain. A cool experience, and definitely one I would like to repeat when it's dry and warmer. Apparently the full moon crowds can reach a high of 70,000...but monsoon season is generally about 5,000. Damn you monsoon.
And so Danielle and I made an executive decision. Time to get the hell out of monsoon Thailand. We had a long long long travel day as we ferried from Koh Phagnan to Surrathani, took an overnight train from Surattani to Bangkok, spent the day in Bangkok while waiting for our afternoon flight to Udon Thani, flew to Udon Thani in the north of Thailand, caught a bus to the Laos border, and finally crossed over and found ourselves in Vientiane. Over the course of our travels we befriended a fellow traveller, Pablo from Chile, who we adopted into our travel crew as our bodyguard. Most excellent. We woke up the next day in Vientiane refreshed, and to a delightful sight: sun! We fit in a few sights: breakfast along the Mekong, Patuxai etc, then hopped
on a bus to Vang Vieng. This 'VIP' bus which was meant to take 3 hours and in fact took 5, was a bus ride from hell. We were told that the airlines are supposedly paying off the Highway people to ensure the roads remain in terrible condition in order to promote air travel. Awesome. I could barely move once we arrived but we could now relax for the next three days.
And relax we did. Vang Vieng is seriously the most amazing place on the face of the earth. A small town absolutely flooded with backpackers. On our first night we checked out a few of the smaller bars, and were informed by a very intoxicated tuber, that the real party got started after curfew at the Bucket Bar. We stepped into Bucket Bar and Danielle and I looked at each other with an expression on pure glee. Here were the people we'd been looking for for so long in the south. Two sad travellers who'd been starved for fun, finally finding a taste of what we came to SE Asia for. Good times. The next morning we relaxed then took a kayak trip down the river, where
we got a taste of what we were in for the next day...river madness. Fast forward to next day. The main activity in Vang Vieng is renting tubes to float down the river. What would normally take around 1 hour, ends up taking 4+, as there are about 20 bars along the river, with people hooking your tube to bring you in at every stop. Swings, slides, ziplines, mud volleyball, dj's, drinks and dance parties. Ooh tubing. So much fun.
The next day we sadly said goodbye to Vang Vieng as we wanted to get one last Laos stop in before we had to head out. 5 hour busride later we arrived in Luang Prabang. Thankfully we had adopted another Canadian traveller, Stuart, who was a master at the art of bargaining the prices down on absolutely everything. He managed to get the four of us an absolutely deluxe room for a dirt cheap rate. Luxury.
Our first night in Luang Prabang we explored the night market for dinner, then headed out to Lao Lao Garden for some drinks. We met lots of other travellers, but were unfortunately informed that everything in town shut at 1130 which was
curfew time. What to do after that? Why head to the Bowling alley of course! This is apparently what happend every night in town, as it's the only place allowed to sell alcohol after curfew...go figure. After our night of bowling, we managed to get up at a decent enough hour to check out the amazing waterfalls just north of the city, and visit Phu Si, the hilltop temple. We took some time to relax before heading out to the market again for dinner, where Danielle and I met up with Ollie and Dave, two guys who'd been on our busride from hell from Vientiane to Vang Vieng, and who we'd ran into again at tubing. We had a few drinks and a lot of laughs with them, and as curfew time rolled around, we discussed whether it was time to hit the bowling alley again. Bodyguard Pablo thankfully had a better idea. He'd recruited a bunch of travellers and we all headed back to our guesthouse for an impromptu house party. Good times, and a great last night with our little travelling crew.
Now we circle back to where I first documented...11 hour bus and food poisoning. Will
lonely planet
it's for tuktuk drivers too not revisit.
I am now just about to leave Bangkok for my flight to Saigon, where I will attempt to upload some photos to give life to some of these ridiculous stories. I hope everyone at home is doing well. Danielle and I have missed everyone, and now that I am alone, I miss everyone even more!!
But for now...the adventure begins...
xo,
Julia
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Greg
non-member comment
Your SE Asia Trip
Looks like a good trip Julia, I guess I should have mentioned there is nothing to do on Koh Tao except diving.... oops. What class did you go on the train. I always go 2nd class and have had no problems, clean sheets etc......wierd. Shitty to hear about the food poisoning that sucks. I bet its from water though, from washing out a glass or something at a restaurant. Anyways, Ill be there in Non-Monsoon season. So get your party shoes ready!