Kayaking Nam Ou

Luke in the kayak with limestone mountains in background

Emily in front of our transportation

We spent today kayaking down the Nam Ou river, about 1 hour outside of Luang Prabang. We had sit on top kayak and it was class I-II rapids. In Alaska, we would probably call a few parts class III. 2 out of the 3 boats flipped (the ones with the guides in them), but not ours, for we are pros! The water wasn't too cold though, so it didn't really matter... It was a beautiful day and beautiful scenery. We passed by many fisherman, families washing clothes and themselves in the river, and kids playing loudly on shore. The kids love yelling "sabadee" to us and wave wildly trying to get us to wave and say hello back.

The rest of our trip is pretty well planned out now, since we are running low on time. We'll spend the next week in Laos, visiting Vang Vieng doing more outdoors activities, and then to the capital city Vientiene. There really is so much to do here in Laos but so little time! We'll probably come back though someday, it is very safe, and very well set up for tourists. The opportunities for outdoor activities are truly endless here. Anyways, we'll then fly to Siem Reap, Cambodia and visit one of the 7 wonders of the world, Angkor Wat. Then we fly from Siem Reap to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a quick overnight, and catch our connecting flight to Krabi Thailand to stay for the last few days on an island. It was much cheaper to fly through Malaysia then to fly through Bangkok for some reason. Then we will end in Bangkok with a few days of shopping.

Visit to a village

Emily and Luke in Ban Houaxfay village near Luang Prabang, with limestone mountains in background

On Friday, we set out on a 2 day trek to 3 hillside villages and returning by bicycle to Luang Prabang. This was a good way to learn about the Lao people. We had a group of 4 and 2 guides, named Gai and Gao, both from small villages and they are currently students and guide to earn money for school. We began at a Hmong and Kmu-Lao village called Ban Suanda La. We hiked from there down a small trail through the jungle up to a mountain village of Hmong people called Ban Tinpha. The Hmong supposedly came down to Burma/Thailand/Laos from Mongolia several hundreds of years ago. This village was relocated from a mountaintop by the Lao government in order to stop them from growing opium. Now they just farm food for themselves and sell in a market. It was clear how poor the people are in these villages. They were all wearing basically what we would consider rags, but some of the girls did have their traditional skirts on. A couple kids begged for food when we stopped for lunch, but our guides would not allow us to give them our leftovers because it would encourage the villagers to be beggars. It is a very bad feeling throwing the food in the garbage and feeding it to some hungry puppies. The guide said if we wanted to give them something we need to give them books or pencils or buy their trinkets, or we could make a donation to the village chief. We learned from our guides that each family rents land from the government to farm on. They use several acres to feed their family rice and other vegetables. The villages have pigs, chickens, goats, cows, buffalo, and ducks. They eat some of the meat but they get alot of meat from the jungle (birds, frogs, rodents, stream crabs, etc.). Little boys would walk past us with their jungle rat traps and we saw many old bird traps lying around.

We then made our way to the village we would overnight in, Ban Houaxfay. Upon entering the village, we saw our first "jungle rat", a few kids were playing with it, still alive, they must have just trapped it. Luckily we don't think we ate rat for dinner...... Our guides cooked us dinner on woks over a wood fire, inside the hut. The smoke just rises out the grass roof, with no chimney. They didn't think it was too big of a deal, breathing in all the smoky air while cooking. Despite that these people are very poor (average monthly income is $30) , they apparently are happy. They say they have an easy life in the village, where they grow their own food and can take a nap whenever they feel like it....... Our guide Gao, said he would prefer living back in his village, because it is too hard in the city, where things cost so much money and you have to work harder.

We stayed in the chief's guesthouse, and they have a generator that runs each night between 6-8:30 pm for movies. The kids stop by and pay 500 kip (about 10 cents or less) to watch movies or Lao music videos each night. The generator shut off at about 8:30pm, and we were off to our beds..... It poured rain all night and we dreaded the next days hike and bike ride in the cold rain and mud. We woke up to rain and mud, but luckily the clouds started to lift and it stopped raining by the time we started hiking. Next we hiked to a waterfall and cleaned off our very muddy shoes and pants. After the waterfall visit, we hopped on really crappy Trek mountain bikes, and biked the 20 km back into Luang Prabang. It was really fun biking through the main road with the village kids along the side smiling and yelling "SABADEE" (hello), "I LOVE YOU", "HELLO" and giving us high 5's as we rode past them.

An elephant carrying tourist at Tad Sae Waterfalls, near Luang Prabang

trekking through the mud

Little boy on the trail

The village we stayed overnight, Ban Houaxfay.

Our guide, Gai (means chicken) cooking our dinner inside the hut. It is actually pitch dark with no lights on (my flash lit up the room).

Our bed. Another couple on our trek, Katherin and Alex, were in the bed next to us, separated by a curtain. Most of the rooms in this guesthouse were set up this way.

The trail.

Luang Prabang

View of Luang Prabang from the hill

We have really been enjoying the city of Luang Prabang in Northern Laos. It is a French-colonial town with several beautiful Wats (buddhist temples). We rented bicycles and cruised around the town, walked along the Mekong River, visited the Wats and ate baguettes for breakfast. Found a little bakery that serves great chocolate filled croissants. It is a very safe city and right now it is packed with tourists. Biking around town is quite fun, there is little traffic except for bicycle, motorcycle/scooter, and tuk-tuks. There seem to be no traffic rules and at interesections you kind of behave like it is a round-a-bout but it isn't really one..... everyone just merges into each other.

Beautiful wat with mosaics all over

tree of life mosiac on the outside of the wat

Lao cooking class

Luke frying rice noodles and eggs for Fue Khua

Oh Padek (Lao pork casserole) Kheua Sen Lon (noodles with pork and veggies) Chicken Larp (a cold meat salad)

Emily with a Luang Prabang salad

First things first... when you arrive in a new country, you must understand their cuisine! Today we took a Lao cooking class and learned to make some great new dishes. The dishes here are kind of similar to Thai dishes, but maybe not so spicy. They spice it up with sauces and chutney dips on the side, so you can make it as spicy as you want to on your own. We had a market tour and then headed back to cook lunch and dinner. It was a full day of eating great food!

The night market in Luang Prabang is great. I (Emily) want to buy a ton of stuff, but we can't go overboard yet, we are only halfway through the trip and it would be too much to carry..... there are awesome textiles and silks here.

We will spend the next few days here, probably doing some exploring (biking and hiking around) before heading south toward Vang Vieng and the capital Vientiane.

Textile at the night market, reminds us of Guatemalan textiles!

Slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang

Slowboats in Pakbeng, Laos

The guesthouse we stayed at in Huey Xai, Laos dropped us off Monday morning at the slow boat landing at 9am with bag lunches and butt cushions for the 2 day ride on wooden slow boats to Luang Prabang (with an overnight in Pakbeng). You have the option of taking the slow boat or the speed boats. The speedboats however, are very dangerous. They travel at high speeds, are very noisy and more uncomfortable than the slow boats. You must wear a helmet and earplugs. Apparently there are many accidents and deaths from them flipping, hitting rocks, or even just standing waves. So we opted for the slow boat, but after the 2nd day, we were kind of wishing we took the speedboat, which takes half the time....

Our first slow boat on day 1 was not the nicest, with about 30 rows of wooden benches, but at the back there were a few soft benchseats, like those from an old minivan, and we got on early enough that there were still a few of these open so we took those seats. About 80 people boarded over the next 2.5 hours. Our guesthouse had us there early so we could pick the best seats. They told us the boat would leave at either 10:30 or 11:30, depending on who you asked, but at 11:45 a huge group of tourists, at least 25, boarded. Most of them were stuck in the engine room or on the floor, because they arrived later. The floor was probably better then the bench seats though, which allowed no leg space and could move freely so eventually the back of the one in front of you would be touching your knees.

Finally we departed. It was an 80 foot wooden boat, loaded with about 110 passengers, going down the Mekong with mostly class 1 and some class 2 rapids. Fortunately, the boat managed to avoid the rocky areas. Only one time did we feel like the boat would tip over as it was only about 2 feet or less - under normal conditions - to from the gunwale to the water where we were sitting. We passed many hillside villages, with thatched bamboo huts on stilts, nestled into the hillside. We saw people down by the river to bathing, washing clothes, kids playing, etc. There were also many fisherman throwing their nets into the water. The villages reminded me of what you see in museums of the precolumbian natives in the Americas. The people also seemed somewhat similar to our travel in Chiapas, Mexico and Guatemala but even less developed. The Mekong is like the highway through the area, there are very few roads. After 6 hours of floating, we arrived in Pakbeng a rustic village connected to the road system.

All the places in Pakbeng have generators which run from 6pm-10pm so you can use lights and hot water. Of course, our place was pretty much a dive, but it was less than $10 per night. We ate Indian food that night from a Bangladeshi guy's restaurant. We didn't do much walking around, as recommended by our guidebook (which we want to throw out for recommending the joint we stayed at) due to the sketchiness. It is about the only place that sounds somewhat sketchy in Laos so far, but only because there are drug dealers, that are a bit pushy..... Overall crime here is very low, even theft is not too common despite the poverty. Anyways, we dozed off to the generator right outside our window at about 10pm. At about 2am, a pack of dogs started barking, pretty much the rest of the night, these dogs and the roosters were very active. So not much sleep.....

The next morning we boarded the boat early and it was a slightly nicer boat. We sat up front this time. It was a better boat ride, a bit more interesting, with a lot of stops picking up and dropping off villagers and their goods. the worst part was all the European smokers. I don't know what their deal is, but there is no "smoking section", although the engine room seemed to work fine on the first leg of the trip. I guess they are just used to being able to smoke wherever they want and since a lot of people smoke in Europe, then it must not bother others...... Finally, 7 hours after taking off, we arrived in the beautiful french-colonial town of Luang Prabang.

It was a pretty good trip, but we'll probably opt not to do it again. It was really slow and uncomfortable on the boat, but the sight seeing was awesome.

Villagers along the Mekong

Speedboat with passengers. This boat is going slow right now, coming into a village.

passing by a cave on the Mekong with a bunch of Budda statues inside

Laos Map

Map of Laos (from Lonely Planet website)

Here is a map of Laos, if you needed a geography lesson..... We crossed at Huay Xai and took a boat down the Mekong River, overnighting in the town of Pakbeng and now arrived in the big city of Luang Prabang, where we will spend a few days. More on the float later, I forgot my cable to download photos. First observations are that Laos is very wild and undeveloped and saw many hill tribe villages along the river.

Arrival in Laos

Today we crossed the Mekong River into Laos and are getting ready for a 2 day slow boat trip down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang city. There will be alot to do here in Laos as far as outdoor activities go. It is still pretty wild and scenic here, with rafting, biking, hiking, etc. and most of the people still subsistence hunt for food.

Here is an interesting New York Times article on the secret CIA war in Laos and the Hmong people.

Hat Nai Yang, Phuket

We spent the last few days (after the sailboat charter) in Hat Nai Yang in Phuket. The beach was quiet and less crowded than many of the other bigger and more popular places in Phuket. Many tourist were Europeans. We did a snorkel tour and saw tons of fish, sargent majors, parrot fish, purple starfish, etc. It was excellent snorkeling. We ate like kings, eating seafood dishes daily for very cheap prices. Joe and Della spent their last day shopping in Phuket town for souveniers.

Yesterday we flew up to Chiang Rai to get ready to head into Laos. We decide to forgo any tours to the hilltribe village in the north, after visiting the interesting Hilltribe museum here. Alot of the villages are staged, especially the Karen long-neck ones, where Thai businessmen bring Karen women from Burma to work in fake villages. Sounded pretty lame. Alot of SE Asia is pretty sketchy. While I write this blog, the nimmer gringo next to me is looking at asian porn, despite the fact that there are many children in the computer lab playing video games..... Yuck, what a sicko. Anyways, we plan to head to Laos and participate in alot of outdoor activities - floating the Mekong, rafting, hiking, etc.

By the Sea B&B in Hat Nai Yang, Phuket

Lays potato chips - double cheese pork burger flavor

update Dec 19

We spent the last few days at Hat (beach) Nai Yang on the northwest side of Phuket. Joe and Della left last night and today we are back in the north in Chiang Rai (near the "Golden Triangle") planning to head into Laos sometime in the next few days. I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

Sailing Andaman Sea

Us reading in our cabin

Koh Lanta

Emerald Cave

sailing

on the sailboat

We just got off the sailboat yesterday, after a wonderful time visiting many different islands.
We went from Phuket to Koh Rang Yai at about 4:30pm and made it in time for a candle light dinner on the beach. The next day we had a long sail to Koh Phi Phi Don at Monkey Beach. We had an entertaining anchorage there, watching a pack of wild monkeys chase the humans around the beach (seriously). Emily refused to go to land there because she was afraid of the monkeys. Luke, Della, and Joe snorkeled to shore and watched the monkeys from the water, not daring to step onto the beach...

The next day we went into Ton Sai Bay of Koh Phi Phi and dingyed to shore for a meal in town and to get some supplies. We dingyed back in to shore to eat dinner at Ciao Bella, Italian food on the beach. The next day we visited Koh Phi Phi Leh, where they filmed the movie "the Beach" with Leonardo Di Caprio. We did a little snorkeling and saw a beautiful lionfish. We departed when we saw about 10 James Bond speedboats full of tourons headed our way. We then sailed to Koh Ngai, a small empty island in the south, had a quiet anchorage alone and snorkeled through a jellyfish riddled obstacle course. The next day we headed down to the Emerald Cave, where we swam through a cave 80 meters in darkness (with a piece of crap flashlight) to a beautiful lagoon. It was pretty fun because there were many thai tourists floating in a human chain through the darkness.

After visiting the Emerald Cave, we headed to Koh Lanta, for a protected anchorage and went to shore for dinner. We ate at a beautiful hillside restaurant overlooking the bay. The next morning we headed to the quiet and laid back Koh Pu (Koh Jam). We ended up relaxing and Luke and Emily went to shore in the afternoon and had calamari and fruit shakes at the sweet beachside Urban Cafe. For dinner we all dinghyed to shore and ate more thai food at a hillside restaurant/bungalow joint run by a scotsman.

On our last full day of sailing, we had the best winds, and sailed over to Koh Yao Yai and walked the beach and ate dinner at the bungalow resort. The next morning we had a nice breakfast aboard and then headed back to the Sunsail base.

See below a map of the area we sailed (the lines aren't our track but note ferry service routes).

We'll add more pictures later when we find a faster internet connection.

Sailing

We have been sailing for 4 days now. Snorkeling and relaxing and eating good food. Right now we are at an anchorage on Koh Lanta.

Monkey Movie in Ao Thalane near Ao Nang

Luke with his new monkey buddies!

This was a movie we took of our kayaking trip in the mangroves in Ao Thalane. It is 36MB so it might take awhile to download.

Yesterday we took a kayaking trip out of Ao Thalane near Ao Nang town. Ao means Bay in Thai. We started out paddling across the Bay toward the cliffs and went up a beautiful canyon with limestone cliffs. Monkeys came to us, waiting for food. Our guide would feed them pinapples to get them to come closer. They were very friendly and walked around us and waited for us to pass them the pinapple. These were long-tailed macaques. After kayaking up the canyon, we paddled into some mangroves where the monkey's jumped from the mangrove trees onto our boats. We saw several baby monkeys on mama's back.

After the kayak tour, we stopped by an elephant camp, where we went for a ride on the elephants back into the jungle. It was very exciting and a bit scary when the elephants walked down some steep parts on a muddy trail. We were certain they would slip and fall, and we would be crushed to death, but of course they didn't. Their feet were the shape of round circles and they were very sure-footed.

Today we just relaxed at the beach most of the morning. Luke and Della had a beach massage. Joe and Della are taking a Thai cooking class right now, and Luke and I will head over there later to see if we can eat their leftovers!

Tomorrow we head back to Phuket Town to meet our sailboat at Sunsail. We'll be out on the boat for a week, mostly cruising around this area in Phang-Nga Bay and Krabi. Hopefully we get to visit beautiful Koh Phi Phi, which is only a day's sail from Phuket. Check out the Sea Pilot for more sailing info. And don't worry, Luke is on night duty and will keep his eyes and ears peeled for pirates!! :) haha.

Monkeys on my kayak

Ao Thalane Bay

Arriving at Railay

Luke and Emily on Railay West Beach

Coming into Railay on the ferry with limestone cliffs coming out of the sea

Our hotel overlooking a valley surrounded by lush green and limestone cliffs

We flew down to Phuket and met up with Joe and Della, Luke's parents. They just arrived in Phuket the day before and we caught up over a great dinner of Tom Yum soup and other delicious Thai dishes and watermelon/pinapple shakes. The next morning we got on the 8:30am ferry to head to Railay Beach and escape the hustle of busy and crowded Phuket.

We plan to stay here for a couple nights and then head to Koh Phi Phi (pronounced ko pee pee) for one night. On Tuesday Dec 9th we will get on the sailboat for a week of sailing.

Chiang Mai

Bangkok Airport Dec 5

Thai noodles in Chiang Mai, $1 per dish

Cool tiles and decor in our Chiang Mai hotel SriPat Guesthouse ,$28

Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai. We made Thai Fish Cakes, Pad Thai, Chiang Mai curry noodles, and papaya salad..... Yum! We were so full afterwards!

Who could pass up a Thai brat? Not Luke. This one was full of rice and ..... pork? .... and spices.

Emily looking at the wire mess. YOu have to watch out where you walk or you could be electrocuted!

Chiang Mai is one of our favorite cities in Thailand. Very sweet and quiet old town surrounded by a moat and canals. Cheap good food, fun night bazaar for buying asian crafts and silks, and fake brand name clothes. We did a thai cooking class one evening, got thai massage and ate alot of food. One things for sure is that we are NOT starving. We had Indian food a couple times and Middle Eastern food, and of course Thai food. We tried Thai breakfast of pork, rice and fried egg. You are supposed to put it all into a bowl of hot soup, but at that time we didn't realize it. Anyways, all that for $1??!!!

We ended up flying from Chiang Mai to Bangkok to Phuket on Dec 5. The Bangkok airport opened very quickly after the courts dissolved the current Prime Ministers party. The prime minister was banned from politics for 5 years and the PAD demonstrators left the airport. It is unfortunate this happened, because it is likely that the courts would have ruled that anyway, and the protesters didn't have to shut down the airport. Anyways, nothing really was resolved and the people are still divided and they will have to have another election. So the airport was open rather quickly and we were suprised that it looked like no one had been there and was pretty quiet.

In case your geography is as bad as the Austrailian girls in our Thai cooking class tonight (who didn't know Alaska was part of the USA or that is not connected to the lower 48), here is a map of Thailand so you can see where we are at. We flew into Chiang Mai in the north (we were rerouted here due to the closure of Bangkok airport). We'll probably have to head back up here after we are done with the beaches in the south in order to visit Laos.

Anyways, we will go to Phuket and Krabi where the islands are beautiful w/ white sand beaches and clear turquoise seas for good snorkelling. Then get on the sailboat and sail around Phuket and Krabi area for a week. After that, maybe head down south of Krabi near Trang to visit some other Islands and then up to Laos and/or Cambodia. We'll end the trip in Bangkok flying out Jan 18.

We'll post more later, I am holding the blog hostage, until my Mom does another blog post on her own blog (which hasn't been updated in months). Haha mom, better post something fast on yours.

Arrived in thailand

Taking a tuk-tuk around town. It is a 3 wheeled open air taxi. You can see our reflection in his rear view mirrors. Emily is on the right and Luke sitting on the left.

Wat Doi Suthep, under renovation.

Ceremony for the upcoming King of Thailand's birthday

We arrived yesterday in Chiang Mai. Our flight from Anchorage was delayed two hours, we didn't end up departing Anchorage until 5am and then it was a 10hour flight to Taipei which actually wasn't too bad, our seats actually reclined quite a bit so we slept a bit. We nearly missed our connection to Chiang Mai but luckily they held the plane for us and 20 others who were trying to get here. We are basically just hanging out right now eating good food and visiting many Wats including the Doi Suthep Wat.

We are trying to figure out our schedule for the next 7 weeks. We had airplane tickets around the country and have to rebook most of them. Flights are full to Phuket, where Luke's parents are flying in tomorrow, we have tickets to arrive there on the 8th, but will have to go standby to get there earlier. Our visa is for 1 month, so we'll head to Laos by the 30th. The main airport in Bangkok should reopen soon, the Prime Minister was banned for 5 years and there is more or less no government right now. But things seem okay here in Chiang Mai, people are gearing up for the King's birthday in 2 days.

Last night for dinner we started out with a green curry and pad khing a ginger and garlic stir fry with chicken and veggies. For lunch today we had Indian food, which was fantastic. Tonight we'll head to the night bazaar for street food and check out all the fake brand name apparel.

Today we tried Thai sausage, which is mostly rice w/ some meat and spices in a sausage casing.

Luke has been laughing over all the dogs here wearing dog coats. We think it must mean that the dogs are owned by someone rather than being strays -- or maybe they really do get cold in 80 F degree heat!

We'll post photos another time, the computer I am on is about 20 years old and has no USB port!