Chiang Mai by night, especially Sunday night, is very cool. Por, a Thai sax player we met in
Pai, invited Niels to play a gig in Chiang Mai last Sunday night. Because of the language
barrier we were not really sure what the gig entailed but Por had given us a rough map
showing where to meet him. After getting directions from our guest house owner we wandered
in the direction he had pointed and came across a street in the old part of the city that
had been completely closed off for the Sunday night market. The atmosphere was brilliant,
with all sorts of stalls lining the steet, which was packed with pedestrians. Every 50m or
so random buskers sat in the middle of the road, though we're not quite sure how they
avoided being trampled. The gig Niels was sitting in with must have had some status as they
actually had a street corner to themselves! The gig was outside a bar, which had posters
with info on Thailand, my favourite bit of info was on the real name of Bangkok, Groong Tep
Mahanakorn Amornrattanagosin Mahintarah Ayuttaya Mahadirokpop Nopparat Rartchatahnee Burirom
Udom Rartchaniweiht Mahasatarn Amornpimarn Awadtarnsatid Sahggatuttiya Wissanukahm Prasit.
The name apparently earns a listing in the Guiness Book of Records as the longest place name
and means The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddah, the
impregnable city of God Intra, the grand capital of the world endowered with the nine
precious gems, the happy city, abounding in enourmous royal palaces which resemble the
heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Intra and built by
Wissanukarm. If you can remember the name you qualify to be born in Thailand in your next
life!So, after that piece of useful information, where were we?Oh yeah, on Monday we headed to the bus station to get a bus to Chiang Rai. After we had
bought the tickets we saw that they were for Chiang Khong instead, so, since we needed to go
to Chiang Khong the following day, and since we had just wittnessed a scene where a tourist
was yelling at the ticket sellers for giving him the wrong ticket (really, mate, we're in
THEIR country and speaking to them in English, so can you really complain if they
misunderstand you??) we decided to head to Chiang Khong.We got into CK quite late and had a quiet night and a sleep in before catching a boat across
the Mekong to Huay Xai in Laos on Tuesday morning.Probably the first thing we noticed in Laos (apart from the fact that they drive on the
right (wrong!) side of the road) was the baguettes. Laos was a French colony and the
influences are still really apparent in the architecture, language and food (the very, very
good baguettes were sooo good after three weeks of Thai bread, which is sweet and, well,
just not very nice).The next day, Wednesday, was the first day of a three day trip we had booked. The trip was
called the Gibbon Experience and it took place in a national park in Bokeo province. The
national park is the only policed one in Laos - it is protected from poachers by forest
guards, most of whom are former poachers themselves, and their wages are paid by small
groups of tourists coming to stay in the park for three days. The tourists stay in tree
houses, ours was built 40m above the ground in a giant strangler fig. The only way to get
into and out of the tree houses is by zip lines. More of these zips lines are strung through
the jungle and from ridge to ridge over valleys. The largest line is 150m high and 450m
long. There are also beautiful walks though the jungle. The Gibbon Experience gets its name
from a species of gibbon that was though to be extinct until about 1940, until it was
rediscovered in the Bokeo jungle. We were lucky enough to see some gibbons, which few
tourists do (though most at least hear them singing in the morning). Another highlight of the experience was seeing a black asiatic bear cub that is in the care on the forrest guides. The cub's mother was killed by poaches and it was found in a market place and bought to the gibbon experience camp because they have a good track record with raising orphaned animals.
Jeff, a French guy who started the Experience, is at a bit of a loss as to what to do with
the bear when it grows up (at the moment it's only two months old and has just opened its
eyes) because it will have been raised by humans but will still be a very big, potentially
dangerous animal.The trip from Huay Xai to and from the jungle was along a highway that is being constructed
that will link China with Bangkok. As it is very much in the construction stage it is
basically a big pile of dust and you can see the results of the three hour trip from the
picture of Niels on our blog (http://www.carolyncanham.blogspot.com/).We got back into Huay Xai on Friday evening and the next morning set off on a two day slow
boat trip down to Luang Prabang.we'd heard that the trip was a bit painfull (hard seats, crapmed etc) but you know a healthy
mixture of Beer Laos and Laos Laos (whisky) and good company (great bunch of people we met
on the Gibbon Experience) does wonders to make time fly, as does activities like climbing
onto the roof of the boat.The two day trip includes an overnight stop at a town called Pak Beng. Pak Beng has got to
be the drug capital of SE Asia. We quickly lost track of how many times we were apprached
with "Opium, you want opium? Weed, you want weed?" Some guys we met were even told at the
guest house they stayed at that their room rate would be much cheaper if they bought weed
off the owner. Pak Beng is probably the worse night we've had on the trip so far, the guest
house was horrible (flithy toilet and no running water) and our meal of bbq pork and sticky
rice was more like bbq fat, but hey, it's all part of the experince right?We arrived in Luang Prabang on Sunday evening tired, hungry and dirty and we wanted to find
a guest house Carly (Carolyn's friend) had recommened to us. Rather that wander aimlessly around the town we got a tuk tuk, who we paid way to much to drive us about 100m - damn! After Pak Beng the guesthouse was lovely, although anything with a shower would have been lovely. That night we
had what I think has got to be close to the best dinner of my life... it's called Sindad and
it's a cook-it-yourself bbq and soup thing. You get a bucket of hot coals on your table and
on top of that thing shaped like an upside down metal bowl with the bottom edges turned up
to make a sort of moat. You bbq the meat on the bowl bit and cook soup in the moat - so
good! After dinner we checked out the night markets and a funky little bar called the Hive,
where we got talked into joining a group of people going out to Kuam Si Waterfalls the next
day. We had been really keen to have a day of doing nothing, but decided we should take the
opportunity to join the group as making our way out there alone would be much more pricy.
Well, that was the best decision ever!! The waterfalls are SO beautiful... they look like
what resort lagoons try to look like! The area has a lot of limestone, which coats the
bottom of the waterholes and makes the water look turquoise. There are heaps of different
waterfalls and swimming pools of all sizes, places where you can jump off, dive through
waterfalls and even swing off a vine into a pool (yes, not a rope, a VINE). The limestone
also coats trees that are underwater in the wet season, which looks amazing. We ended the
afternoon with a jam, sing-a-long and beer on a wooden deck overlooking the biggest fall -
perfect!Last night there was a great thunder storm. At about 9pm this crazy wind picked up and all
the stall holders started to quickly pack up. We guessed there must have been a storm coming
so we thought, should we go back to our guest house or a bar to wait it out... we chose a
bar. After a few hours and a few drinks we decided to call it a night and halfway home,
along came the storm! So, today we are having our quiet day and we're lucky to have done it this way around cause
it's cold (jumper weather!). Love to all.Talk soon!