Vientiane – temples and Xieng Khuan (Buddha Park) (Fri, 18 Feb)

We visited some more temples this morning. Most notable of them was Wat Si Saket, which is the oldest temple in Vientiane, built in 1818. There are more than 300 seated and standing Buddha figures of varying age (15-19 century) and size, and thousands of small Buddha figures in the niches in the cloister around the temple.

We took a local bus to Xieng Khuan (Buddha Park). The park is located about 25 km from Vientiane on the bank of the Mekong. It has a load of Buddhist and Hindu sculptures made out of concrete, including a huge reclining Buddha and a large ball (probably depicting the earth) and a tree on top – it was possible to climb up the ball by narrow stairs inside the ball. The inside of the ball had several floors and each floor depicted different worlds (hell, heaven, etc). All together, the whole park was a really weird place.

The bus ride with local bus was quite an interesting experience – the bus would stop whenever somebody wanted to come in or go out. The door of the bus would open and close in the curves of the road as it pleases – not exactly the same safety standards that we have in the EU, but I didn’t feel unsafe there.

It was our last evening in Laos. We spent it walking the promenade of alongside the Mekong and watching the sunset. We met an interesting Danish gentleman, who was travelling around the region alone. He was a retired math and physics teacher, who had been to Tartu in 1990 with some teachers swop program. He travelled around the lot (e.g. including Argentina several times) and had a lot of interesting stories.

We had our favourite green papaya salad, with some BBQ brochettes and veggies for dinner and did a little more shopping. And it was time to call it a day.

We’ll leave Laos tomorrow afternoon. So by tomorrow evening we should be in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

To conclude on our Laos experience – we really liked it here. Laos is quite clean (especially as regards toilets :)) and peaceful compared with other SE Asian countries we’ve been to. Lao people are nice and friendly, and the overall ambiance is safe (nobody tries to trick or scam you). For sure there is a lot of poverty around, but overall, the life does not seem so sadly poor and hurt as in Cambodia. An interesting point to note about Laos though is that that the communist red flag with the hammer and sickle is widespread.

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Vientiane (Thu, 17 Feb)

We decided to look for a slightly better accommodation for the upcoming two nights, as this seemed one of the keys to make the stay in Vientiane happier. After some search we found a decent place to stay for little more money, but with much more comfort.

We headed to explore the city’s main sights after moving and slow brunch. One them is Patuxai (Victory Gate), which is kind of a local version of Arc de Triomphe, except that this is made of concrete. The LP and google sources had describer it in quite negative manner leaving an impression of it as a concrete monster, but compared with some of the some concrete establishments in the ex-soviet states (including in Tallinn), this looked quite fine. It is said that this monument was built with the concrete donated by the US for constructing a new airport instead; therefore it has a nickname “Vertical Runway”. The upper level of monument offers great view to the alleys leading to the monument and to the whole city.

We continued walking alongside avenue, which hosts several embassies, banks and government institutions – a lot of new development and building is going on everywhere. Finally, we reached to the destination of the day – Pha That Luang. This is a three-layered gilded stupa, which is the most important religious monument of the country and also the symbol of national sovereignty. There are of course some more temples around it, so we saw some of those as well.

We took a tuk-tuk back to the centre and continued walking around the sights there.

In general, this was a day of taking it easy and not rushing into too many things.

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Luang Prabang / Vientiane (Wed, 16 Feb)

It was a little sad to check out from our guesthouse knowing that our time in Luang Prabang is soon over for this time, but it’s time to move further.

We still visited the National Royal Palace Museum in the morning. We hired the audio tour, thanks to which we could learn more about the last Lao kings, history, traditions and mythology. The royal palace was rather modest compared with its counterparts in Europe, but it was quite nice. The really flashy part of the royal buildings was the royal Pra Bang Temple, which really looks rich with all the decorations.

We did a bit of handicraft shopping in the local market. With all nice handicraft here, it’s really difficult not loose your mind. The prices are very affordable, but of course we can’t carry loads with us for the next two months.

We had the flight to Vientiane in the afternoon. After slow and nice Luang Prabang, Vientiane did not look charming at all at first sight. Besides, we had a little hassle with finding a guesthouse, as the budget options were mostly full and the more expensive options did not seem worth it. We settle in a quite lousy room in budget guesthouse after all, but this did not do the adaption with the new city any easier. I was already determined to leave for Vang Vieng next morning in order to get out of Vientiane, but Felipe thought Vientiane deserved its chance.

We went for a walk to the newly refurbished promenade at the bank of the Mekong and watched the sun go down to Thailand, which is just across the river. We also wandered around some streets in the centre, looking for book shops to check if there are any good materials on what to do in Vientiane in 2,5 days, but we didn’t seem to find the right books on that. We also googled a bit on the city and after all I agreed that if we take it on slow pace, we will find enough so to do here.

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Luang Prabang – cooking experience (Tue, 15 Feb)

We got up 5.30 to go to see monks gathering alms (mainly food) from the local laymen. According to some sources only Buddhists are to offer the alms to the monks but the rule appears to have been bent because as soon as we approached to the street where the monks start their walk the local vendors tried to sell us rice and bananas that we could give to the monks. That didn’t seem quite right. In the end, there were probably more tourists than locals offering the alms once the monks arrived. But of course that was only the start of the monks’ morning walk and probably they split up after that and go around the smaller streets where the locals live to get alms.

We headed to Lao cooking class by 8.30. We met the master chef Linda and the co-students (a couple from the UK, two girls from Canada and a Japanese girl) and chose recipes to learn. Afterwards, the sous-chef took us to a tour to the local Phousi market to see all the ingredients. Linda explained that the ingredients used for cooking at the restaurant were bought already around 5 in the morning, when everything was still fresh and the choice was better. For us the choice was still bewildering even at 9 o’clock. We could see all kinds of known and unknown vegetables, dried ingredients (e.g. Mekong weed, buffalo skin, etc). We could ask questions from the sous-chef who kindly explained us everything we wanted to know. This was really an excursion on its own, really interesting.

After visiting the market, Linda told us about the history of Lao cooking and made comparisons with different South East Asian cuisines. She also explained what the basic ingredients of the Lao kitchen are and what could serve as replacements in western countries (and what really cannot be replaced at all). We got then hands on with chopping techniques of the main ingredients, but in order to save time the ingredients for our dishes had already been chopped before. It was then time to get to kitchen and actually cook the stuff – the spring rolls, coconut milk soup with chicken, beef stew in Luang Prabang style, fish wrapped in banana leaves, chicken salad, green papaya salad and sticky rice with coconut milk.

Once the food was ready, it was time to eat it all. Really yummy! Linda gave us a recipe book and a certificate for completing the class :), and as a gift also small boxes which are used for serving sticky rice in Laos in the end.

 We were really very happy the class – the food, the arrangement, the chef, everything. So if any of you should get a chance to come to Luang Prabang, we really recommend this course by Tum Tum Cheng Restaurant and Cooking School (tumtumcheng@yahoo.com, tel: +856202425499). Btw, even Jamie Olivier had been to Linda’s classes. Linda didn’t know then that he was a famous TV chef in Europe and got to know about it only after further students noted his name in the students’ list.

In the afternoon, we went to a really nice lounge bar with a nice view to the Nam Khan river to write the blog and read. The bar is called Utopia and is also worth visiting when in you happen to come to Luang Prabang.

We ended the day with another Lao body massage and this really was the best massage we’ve got during our trip so far. It was rather strong, but it felt right and professional. One of the Canadian girls who had been in the cooking class with us was a masseuse specialised on Thai massage and she recommended that place, where she had been the day before. So to continue to line of recommendations, we recommend for Lao massage the place called “Luang Prabang Massage and Spa” (we don’t have the exact contacts of this place, but it’s located right on the peninsula’s main street Sakkaline/Sisavanvong in the middle of travel agencies and restaurants).

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Luang Prabang – sports and culture (Mon, 14 Feb)

We had scheduled a biking and kayaking tour for this day. A minivan picked us up from our guesthouse and took us to a garage, where all the people who were in the minivan were allocated to different tours. We met soon our guide Helo (or something like this; I’m not quite sure how the name is actually spelt) and it appeared that we didn’t have anybody else besides Helo joining with our tour.

We got the bikes and started pedalling. We headed out from Luang Prabang up the river Nam Khan. The road run through small villages and offered awesome views over the river and hills (like the pineapple plantation on the picture).

We passed by also a local brick factory, which consisted of big pile of clay and a two men throwing the clay into a mixer, the third cutting the clay mass that came out the mixer into bricks and the fourth lifting the bricks on a carriage. The bricks were then put into rows into the sunshine to dry and then probably went into the oven. Who said making bricks should be any more complicated than that?!

After about two hours we got down to the river and changed the bikes for kayaks and headed down the river. It was time to brush up the tips of Maret and Heiti on the pedalling technique and least for me, these were really useful. We soon arrived to Tat Sae waterfall. Unfortunately, it had no water right now because it is the dry season here at the moment. It’s supposedly very beautiful, when it has water and when walking around the empty pools of water we could indeed imagine that. On the positive side, we were really the only tourists there.

After having lunch at the riverside near the waterfall, which included a green papaya salad so spicy that the guide himself could barely cope with, we continued kayaking down the river. Along the way we saw the way the local people plant crops and catch fish at the riverside. They really live in the tiniest huts I’ve ever seen – some were not bigger than 4 m2.

We also saw some elephant villages, where the elephants are trained and where tourists can spend some time participating in the training. Just about the time when we were passing, the elephants were taken to walk through the river.

Our guide Helo told us also about different Lao tribes and their languages, about the life at his home place about 40 km outside Luang Prabang and his family, etc. He told us about his tribe, the Hmong, and about how they celebrate a big Hmong festival on 16 December, to which he invited us in case we ever are around in Laos around that time of the year. Even though it was quite difficult to understand his English at some points, it was still very interesting. Also was very interesting to see how Helo was trying to get ahead in life by learning languages and acquiring skills. Two years ago he was just ploughing the fields with his parents, now he speaks Thai, some English and is studying Chinese, and he will be learning how to drive in the coming months. Quite an enterprising guy!

After about two and half hours of kayaking we were tired enough and we were happy to arrive to our pick up place. It had been a good tour – just about enough or effort, not too touristy and insightful enough.

Btw, if anyone ever comes to Luang Prabang and would like to take a tour of any kind, you can contact Helo swepheej2010@hotmail.com, tel: 56428240.

Once back in Luang Prabang we went to enjoy some culture to Royal Ballet Theatre. Well, I wouldn’t call it a ballet in western sense, but it was quite interesting, especially the costumes were remarkable. The music was slightly hypnotic and not very cheerful and the movements rather slow, which is for it got a little hard to follow after a tiresome day as some points. But the whole show lasted about an hour and 15 minutes. So it was just about enough.

After a nice dinner we called it a day as we were to get up early next day.

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Luang Prabang and Kuang Si waterfall (Sun, 13 Feb)

We took it really easy this morning and did not rush anywhere. We decided that we should not try to rush through too many places in Laos, but rather enjoy what we like and Luang Prabang is what we like. Basically, this means skipping Vang Vieng where we had also planned to go originally. We also decided that we don’t want to undertake another long and painful bus ride through Laos to go to Vientiane and got a flight there from Luang Prabang by the 16^th February. We made also several other arrangements for the upcoming days – booked a ride to a Kuang Si waterfall for the afternoon, a biking and kayaking tour for Monday and a Lao cooking course for Tuesday.

So it was soon time to go head to the Kuang Si waterfall. The waterfall is probably not very remarkable for its height or size (although is probably some good 80 metres high), but for “its multi-tiered cascade tumbling over limestone formations into menthol green pools” (as LP says). And I must say, it really is beautiful around there. We took gazillion of pictures of the menthol green pool and of the waterfall, climbed up to the upper levels of the fall and took refreshing swim in the pool – really delightful.

There is also a centre for sun bears rescued from poachers near the waterfalls, where we could read interesting facts about bears and their maltreatment, and see actual rescued bears. There was also a tiger rescue centre next to the bears’ one, but its only tiger had passed away in 2008 and, it is the gossip around, that they are now looking for a new tiger in need of rescue.

We called it the day quite early, knowing that a day of hiking would be ahead.

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Luang Prabang (Sat, 12 Feb)

After the long, long way, we finally arrived to Luang Prabang around 9 in the morning. We shared a tuk-tuk to the city centre with a bunch of other tourists from the bus and started to look for a hotel. We were determined to find something quiet. So we headed to areas that are a little further away from the touristiest streets. After taking a look in several guesthouses, we settled in one that seemed the most secluded from tourist streets, hoping to find peace and quiet there. We soon realised that this might not have been the wisest option, because instead of tourists (who in this town do not seem to be crazy party animals or disco lovers), we’ve got locals with their daily activities around – motorbikes riding, children playing, roosters crying their greetings, local men having beer just near our windows, etc. But in the end it’s not that bad, as even the local people need their sleep and hence the night time is generally quiet.

We went for a walk around the city centre and liked this place right away. Luang Prabang is quite a peaceful and its centre is rather small, so that it is easy to walk everywhere. The centre of the city is located on a peninsular that is formed at the meeting point of two rivers – Mekong and Nam Khan.

We walked on the river banks and enjoyed the views. We also visited Wat Xieng Thong temple, which is one of the icons of Luang Prabang (a really nice one) and had a quick look at few other temples. By that time the heat of the day was up and the lack of sleep of the previous night did not make it easier. So we headed back to our guesthouse and had a nice long siesta.

We got up just in time to get to the top of the town centre own hill, That Phu Si, by the time of sunset. The hilltop offers amazing views over the city, the rivers and nearby mountains.

Of course, there is also yet another temple at the hilltop and on the way down, there are a number of Buddha statues (e.g. a Buddha for each day of the week –Monday Buddha, Tuesday Buddha, etc.) and a footprint of Buddha.

After that it was time for a nice dinner at a riverside restaurant and then massage. I had a foot massage and Felipe had Lao massage this time. Then we could really call it a day and go for a good night sleep.

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En route Luang Prabang (Fri, 11 Feb)

We started the day knowing that we have a long bus ride to Luang Prabang (Laos) ahead and so we did indeed.

The bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chang Kong, where there is a border crossing to Laos, took about 6 hours. We had a stop at another impressive temple on the road. This temple is all white with some mirror mosaic. It all shines so brightly in the sunlight that it is almost hard to look at it.

The roads in Thailand are generally good, but with a lot of curves and up-and-down-hills. This, and the driver’s speedy driving style, all created good grounds for car sickness, which made it tricky to find any meaningful pastime (such as blog writing or reading) without getting dizzy. We chatted with some other travellers from Sweden and Canada who happened to share the same minivan with us – it’s interesting how differently travellers see the same things and how different their expectations are.

We reached the border crossing at around 4 in the afternoon. A motorboat took us over the Mekong river and were finally in Laos. The visa upon arrival worked out quite smoothly and we were soon taken to the next bus that took us from Bokeo to Luang Prabang.

This bus was not a minivan, but regular quite big bus. There was quite a bit of waiting and stopping before the bus got going, but in general it didn’t seem all that bad at first. I don’t know exactly how many kilometres the route was, but the average speed of the bus was probably about 25 km/h, because the road was narrow, curvy and hilly and at some points there did not seem to be a road at all. The bus driver and his assistant were determined to amuse us with their choice of Lao and selected pieces of western pop music, which sounded loudly all over the bus. It wasn’t that bad at the beginning, but they refused to turn it down the whole night long, regardless of the request of Felipe and some fellow passengers. Moreover, they whistled and sang along their favourite songs at the top of their voices. As the night fell, the but bus become a deep freezer, as there was no way to convince the bus driver to turn down the air conditioning (this was a VIP bus after all, which comes with the luxury of AC). To add up, a rooster, who was among the hand luggage of some fellow passenger, also gave its sound contribution, by notifying everyone of the start of the day at exactly 7 am. So it was quite difficult to get any sleep and we just couldn’t wait to arrive to Luang Prabang.

On the positive side, the bus ride gave us a good opportunity to observe the hill villages of Lao countryside both in daylight and in the night time. The locals live in quite small huts, mostly made of bamboo or wood. Most houses stand on legs and are about 1 metre from the ground. As the darkness falls, families gather around small fires to cook food or just to stay warm. At they sunrise, the fires are made up again and some members of family, mostly children, sit around fire and warm themselves. The fires did not seem to be that common in the villages that had some electricity.

The road was quite scenic – hills and green rice paddies, some rivers.

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Day tour in Chiang Mai neighbourhood (Thu, 10 Feb)

There are a load of tour agencies in Chiang Mai offering various sightseeing and trekking tours to attractions around Chiang Mai. For instance, there are options to go to the jungle for three days and visit some “hill tribes” (i.e. non-Thai ethnic villages), or to do it in two days, but in a little touristier manner or to limit it to one day. As we’ve had several jungle trips before, we didn’t want to spend three days for the jungle this time. So we did the touristy thing of taking one day tour consisting of various attractions.

Attraction 1 – Karen long neck tribe

We had seen pictures of various body deforming traditions of different cultures in the Beauty Museum in Melaka (Malaysia) three years ago. Among others, there were the enormously long necks resulting from wearing heavy neck rings by women of a certain tribe. Apparently, this tribe, called Karen, happens to live in Northern Thailand, so we went to see them. Of course, we were not taken to their real villages located in the thick jungle, but to some tourist tailored village (mostly selling shawls and other touristy items), but it was interesting anyway. Our guide explained us that the Karen women wore the neck rings in order to protect themselves from tiger attacks (men were supposed to be hunters and strong enough to be able to protect themselves without that). The neck rings are rather heavy and as these are worn non-stop from the age of four, they push down the shoulders so that necks become tall. Overtime, the long neck became a symbol of beauty. Nowadays, the custom of wearing neck rings is becoming less popular among the Karen women.

Attraction 2 – Orchid farm

We dropped by from an orchid farm for a short visit. As I love orchids, I can always spend good time admiring the variety of colours, shapes and sizes of these flowers, which are so rich in Southeast Asia.

Attraction 3 – Elephant ride

Well, this pretty self-explanatory – riding on the back of the elephant for a short walk and feeding the elephant with some banana. This is probably kind of do it once in a lifetime thing – so we’ve done it now and can cross it out from the “to do list”.

Attraction 4 – Elephant show

The elephants would push logs and play football and basketball, but most remarkably, one elephant drew a picture of an elephant and flower with his trunk. This was really impressive and something we wouldn’t have believed without seeing it.

Attraction 5 – Visiting another hill tribe: Lisu

According our guide, the Lisu tribe likes to live autonomously in small huts in hills, but that was about all that the guide told us about them. The village where we were taken was not very representative of anything. It had a few stalls selling souvenirs such as pashmina shawls (probably made in China), regular T-shirts and Nestle ice cream. Some female vendors wore a tribal costume, while another wore T-shirt and shorts and didn’t bother to put on the tribal dress next to her. So this visit did not really leave any remarkable impressions.

Attraction 6 – Bamboo rafting

We would flow down the river on raft made of bamboo sticks. It was quite calm and pleasant after a plentiful and tasty Thai buffet lunch, only the sounds of the nearby motorway and the motor-powered crane lifting the bamboo rafts for the next batch of tourists were intruding a bit the tranquil jungle ride.

Attraction 7 – Ox cart ride

Even though some of our group mates described it as “this is so much fun” (I’m not quite sure if they were sarcastic or they really meant it), this was a little dull – two oxen would ride a cart on the regular motorway for about 15 minutes making in total around 300 metres and that’s it. The lesson to learn from this ride was that any modern means of transport are of miracle speed and are a blessing in the day heat, but otherwise, this will probably not be something to remember.

Attraction 8 – Waterfall

The last attraction of the tour was a waterfall. It was not really very remarkable in terms of its height, size or beauty, but it was refreshing to take a quick swim in the heat of the day.

Back in Chiang Mai

We still had a few hours of daylight left when we got back to Chiang Mai from the tour, so we went for a walk outside the Old City to the riverside, which is the new centre of Chiang Mai. Of course, there are plenty of temples around, so we could take some pictures to record the typical architecture. Perhaps the most outstanding of these was a temple which had a lot of figures of different animals around it, among others was Donald the Duck :).

We walked through the night bazaar after eating at a food court and, as LP says, night bazaars in Thailand sell anything you can imagine and also some things you cannot. My favourite was the photo shoot with Thai prince/princess style makeover – you would have make up and hear done in a fancy way and you get the respective costume, followed by a photo session, after that you get a CD with pictures –all that in a night bazaar.

We ended the day with aromatherapy massage. The massage oil was not very aromatic, but it was nice to get pampered again.

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Chiang Mai

This morning we allowed ourselves to sleep long. Even though it would have been wise to start exploring Chiang Mai early in the morning to prevent the heat, sleep seemed like a better option.
But when we finally got ourselves going, we took the sightseeing seriously. Chiang May has over 300 temples. We saw probably about 10 of them. They are all remarkable for the architecture and carvings, amount of Buddha statues, etc. Of course, after you’ve seen 10, they all start to look alike. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera to the hotel, so we cannot post a sample here. The temple that was somewhat of an exception was Wat Chedi Luang, where you have the opportunity to chat with a monk and we took it. The monk was 22 years old and had been a monk for 4 years. We spoke about Buddhism and about his life as a monk (and a bit about football too, he happens to be a fan of Messi and Tevez…). It was interesting, although the English was a bit of a barrier sometimes and that prevented any really deep conversation.
The weather is quite hot here – this is sets limits to how much we can walk around. So we were quite exhausted already by 5. We booked a tour to nearby attractions then for tomorrow and had ourselves pampered with some Thai massage.
We ended the day with a truly nice dinner in restaurant at poolside, decorated with candles and reflection of moon and star, enjoying good Northern Thai food and listening to mild live music. That was really special.

We call it a day early today, as we have to get up early tomorrow to good to tour of all kind of interesting attractions.

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