Northern Thailand, Laos and Vietnam

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ok, this is gonna be a long one since I haven't updated in a while. The last time I tried to update the blog it didn't work for some reason.

I spent only one day in Chiang Mai, and decided to head up to Pai, which is a small town in the mountains of northern Thailand, popular with backpackers, which I've heard a lot of good stuff about. I took the bus, which was incredibly old and beat up, and which they packed to the hilt so that some people had to stand in the aisle for the entire 4 hour journey. The road was incredibly windy, but fortunately it was well paved.

By the time I got to Pai, though, I had become quite sick and spent the first few days in bed. I did get out and about a bit, though. Turns out there was a reggae festival there at the time, and the place was completely packed with hippies. I've never seen so many hippies in one spot. Pai seems like a pretty cool place, there's a thriving nightlife with lots of bars (although they all play almost exclusively reggae... guess that's what you get in a hippie town).





River crossing to bungalows in Pai

After I got better, I signed up for a two day guided trek. I really enjoyed it - the guide was good, the group was small and a good bunch, the hiking was fairly intense and we went through some pretty sweet jungle. We spent the first night at a remote hilltribe village, and they cooked us supper and all. Apparently they were going to be celebrating their own version of the new year the next day, which would involve slaughtering lots of pigs. Unfortunately we didn't get to see that. We were off again early the next day. However, I didn't get much sleep. There were roosters crowing early in the morning, dogs fighting at random times, and, for some reason, all the kids in the village had a seemingly lifetime supply of incredibly loud firecrackers which they set off on a constant basis all day, late into the night, and started up again early the next morning. The trek itself really was pretty intense - we were constantly climbing up and down mountains both days, about 5 hours per day. I was pretty happy to be done once we got back, but I really enjoyed it all the same.






Waterfall during hike






Some of the jungle we hiked through






Hilltribe village where we stayed overnight






Inside the hilltribe village. Pigs, roosters and hens, and cows reigned free all over the place.




A bat caught in a net that we came across on the second day. The guide freed it and it actually seemed ok, but just sat there.






The trekking crew

After that, I left Pai and took the night bus to the border with Laos. Unfortunately the bus was very uncomfortable and I got almost no sleep. I then boarded the slow boat from there to Luang Prabang, a two day journey which involved 6 hours on the boat the first day and 8 the next. The first day was pretty good, everyone was having a pretty good time (it helped that they sold alcohol on the boat). I got playing cards with some people, and that was fun and made the boat trip seem to fly by. But the second day was a lot less fun. Everyone seemed tired, the boat was much more packed, and there was not much of a party atmosphere like on the first day. We eventually got to Luang Prabang though. That night I went out with some of the people I met on the boat, and we eventually ended up at, of all places, the bowling alley. Apparently it's the only place in town that stays open late and serves alcohol late, so everyone kind of ends up there at the end of the night. I bowled, drank, had a lot of fun, but the next day I felt pretty sick. Most likely a hangover, because the next day I was fine. I left shortly thereafter to Vang Vieng, a small backpackerish town halfway between Luang Prabang and the Loas capital, Vientiene.






The slowboat to Luang Prabang. Very packed.






Some of the scenery on the minibus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng






More scenery

Vang Vieng is a pretty sweet little town. One really unusual thing about the town is that most of the restaurants, all street-side open air, have no chairs, but rather, a cushioned floor with a low table in the middle. In addition, they all have big-screen TV's which constantly loudly blare episodes of Friends (yes, Friends, and only Friends, and that's just about every restaurant). The town is Friends-crazy. I have to admit I really enjoyed a few days where I just chilled out in these restaurants, sprawled out and watching Friends all day while snacking on food and drinks.

The main attraction of Vang Vieng, however, is the river tubing. Scores of backpackers rent inner tubes, get dropped off upstream on the river, and float down, stopping at all the scores of riverside bars along the way. All these bars have big ziplines or ropeswings out into the water, so you spend your day tubing down the river, drinking and playing on the ropeswings. It's pretty sweet.

Other than that, there are also lots of caves you can explore around the town. I rented a motorbike with some other guys and we explored some dirt roads as well as some caves. One cave was so big we couldn't explore all of it.

Vang Vieng was one of my favorite spots and I spent five days there. But finally I left for Vietnam - more specifically, Hanoi in northern Vietnam. I opted to fly to Hanoi rather than take a 28 hour busride. In Hanoi I found a nice hostel (there are few in SE Asia). I met a lot of other travellers through this hostel, some of whom I went with on a tour of Halong Bay. We boarded a junk boat, which drove us all through the bay. Halong Bay is a popular tourist destination. It's a large bay filled with thousands of small islands which jut out of the water in mountainous peaks. There are also caves, one of which we explored (it was huge). The weather, unfortunately, was not that great. Once I arrived back in Hanoi, I had a night out with some of the other travellers, and in one of the bars I ran into John, the American with whom I'd travelled earlier. It was a pretty surprising reunion, to say the least. It was pretty cool to run into him. We met up the next day to go to a nearby snake village, where there are restaurants which specialize is serving snake. They had us choose our snake, then slit its throat right in front of us and drained its blood into a glass (holy crap!). Then they had us drink the snake blood and gave me the heart to eat. They then served us seven courses of snakemeat prepared in different ways. A pretty interesting dining experience to say the least.






The junk boat we toured Halong Bay with






Halong Bay






The snake which was slaughtered in front of us. The guy is draining the blood into a cup here.






The lake in the middle of all the urban chaos of the Old Quarter in Hanoi. Supposedly (according to my Lonely Planet guidebook) there are tortoises which are still occassionally seen surfacing in this lake.






Me and Alex (fellow backpacker from England who I met through the hostel in Hanoi) enjoying a fruit shake in Hanoi

I left that night on the overnight train down the south coast, and stopped in Hoi An. Not much there, but I spent a couple days there, during which I rented a motorbike ($5 for a day, no drivers licence or passport required, nor any insurance available) with an American expat who knew his way around. I followed him far out of town, then managed to lose him completely. I was on my own in some place where tourists rarely went. I tried to ask for directions, but no one spoke English. They were all fascinated by my as a foreigner, though, touching my skin and laughing at the way I looked. I finally just retraced my steps and managed to find my way back to Hoi An. And by the way, the roads in Vietnam are crazy, even crazier than Thailand. There really are no rules, speed limits, or anything, and the roads are packed. The roads have lanes for the different directions of traffic flow, but those lanes are only vaguely followed. It basically becomes a free for all out there. Crazyness.






Rice paddies, taken while I was lost with my motorbike

The next day I rode my motorbike out to the Marble Mountains, which are peaks jutting out of the flat terrain surrounding them. The view is pretty spectacular at the top of the mountain. They're called the Marble Mountains because they're made out of marble, and the surrounding village is completely dedicated to mining the marble and carving it into statues and other trinkets, which are largely sold to tourists.






View of Marble Mountains from the top of one of the mountains






The sea from the top of the mountain






A guy going to work on a marble statue in the nearby village

I then took the bus further down the coast to Nha Trang. Nha Trang is a fairly touristy town with lots of oceanside resorts. I've had a lot of fun here, though. I hung out with someone I'd met on the slowboat to Luang Prabang in Laos, and had now just bumped into randomly in Nha Trang. Also I met up with some of the people I'd met in Hanoi who were also going south, and I was staying in a dorm where I met some brand new travellers as well. I've been here for four days so far, and unfortunately it's been raining for the last two. I haven't really had much luck with weather so far in Vietnam.






The floating bar we had during a boat tour in Nha Trang






The boat we took for the boat tour. They served us lunch plus a dessert of tons of fresh fruit.

Tomorrow I leave for Saigon. I only have a couple days there though, because my Vietnam visa runs out on the 11th of March.

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