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Published: August 17th 2008
After the hussel and bussel of Bangkok we were very glad to get out of the major cities and into the smaller hippy town of Chaing Mai. We've been fairly lazy compared to the pace we attempted to see everything in previous places.
Chaing Mai is a relaxed place full of coffee shops, vegetarian restaurants, book shops and massage places. We managed to pick up a couple books on the pol-pot regieme and the second Indo-China war (its fun fun fun with us!) went on a Thai cooking course - we make the best Thai food EVER now - and spent the rest of our time in restaurants cafes and a fantastic fooftop raggae bar.
After detoxing in Chaing Mai we headed off on a 4 hour twisty road to the hippy trail town of Pai. This was another place that was all about chilling out (and scooters).
On our second day in Pai we hired a scooter (I put all my faith in Chris since I've never been on one before) and we headed out to see a little of rural Thailand. It was a great day riding through little places with no other tourists. Unfortunatly towards the end of
the day we took a wrong turn somewhere and scidded over on a muddy road. I escaped uninjured but Chris grazed his knee and elbow alittle mostly he seemed worried that he'd scared me.
The next day we took a Thai massage course, it was a crazy day with one on one tuition were these two thai ladies would massage us and then we would massage them. Chris's Thai lady was tiny, watching the massage was like a slapstick comedy routine.
From Pai we took a sleepless night bus to the Thai-Laos boarder which we crossed in the morning. We signed out of Thailand on one side then crossed a river to sign into Laos. All went well until some border guard looked at my passport then wondered off with it, and came back showing me a big red cancelled stamp. It turned out someone had stamped a exit stamp not and entry one but in my sleep deprived state assumed I was being rejected from Lao.
A two day journey down the Mekong followed acoumpanyed by Chris playing trumpet, a guy with a keyboard and some crazy Izralies with a drum, harmonica and didjeridoo! It was fun
(kinda) we met some interesting people, watched the beautiful scenery go past and read our books. We spent the night at a tourist trap where they tried to squeeze every last kip (Laos currency, 17'000 to the pound) they could out of us. We finally got to Luang Praband and went drinking with some of the people we met on the trip and generally plan on being pretty lazy (again) for the next few days.
Love, Chris and Alice
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Lynda Jaros
non-member comment
Photos from the boat trip
Hey Alice, I'm very proud of myself for, despite the mother of all hangovers, I'm here downloading photos to email to you guys (I couldn't resist Chris' challenge of being on the second person EVER to follow up on an email promise!) but I don't have either yours or Chris' email address! Anyway, drop me a line at lynda_jaros@hotmail.com and I'll send them on. Sounds like you're having fun in LB. Maybe bump into you again in Laos sometime. Take care, Lynda