Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is Laos main tourist place. Fat wallets fly in with the plane and check out the old part of town. Which is ok, but not amazing or anything close. The fact that is surrounded by the Mekong and another river make it nice. Prices tend to be of of place. We rented some really bad bycicles with only one gear and rode them to a famous waterfall 30 km in the south. It was as hot as steep, which resulted in a poor condition of us at the sight. The waterfalls were truly beautiful - only rivaled by Lanquin in Guatemala. Turquoise pools separated by picturesque waterfalls. But the word has spread a long time ago and the tourist infrastructure is well established. Even a asian bear parc is at the entrance. We hiked up to the very top of the fall - were 90 percent of tourists physically cant go and walked to a cave on the plateau. While we visited that place we were the only ones in the cave. Then we returned, dipped into the refreshing pools and packed our bicycles on top of a TukTuk and drove back.

Mekong

The two day boat cruise went from Huay Xai all the way to Luang Prabang with a scheduled stop at a village in the middle. We left 2 hours late because the people in charge wanted to wait for more tourists to earn more money. During the smooth boat ride we saw the hilly, green landscape of Laos with an occasional fisher trying his luck on the shore. Sometimes you could see a cluster of locals trying to find gold in the water. We spoke a bit with an Malaysian guy who is married to a Swiss woman who was traveling with him. He was speaking about trading silver or herbs from Southeast Asia to sell it in Switzerland. He gave us more insight into Malay politics - basically saying the country is going down the drain because Chinese people are taking over the economy and extreme Muslims the politics. A funny side note is that he told us in front of his wife that he spends 3 months per year in Vietnam or so to spent some money for women. Apparently the money she earns. They seem to have a funny deal there. In the later afternoon everybody had to get out of the boat because there were some rapids coming up and a shallow. So everybody had to carry their backpacks and suitcases through the sand and rocks 1 km downriver. But by the time everybody arrived the night has fallen and a nearby indigenous village splashed out and set up several improvised kitchens. They were charging horrendous prices - clearly used to the fact that some time tourists get stranded here. But these prices fell the less they were selling. People had to sleep on the uncomfortable windy boat. The nights here get pretty cold. I didn't want to sleep in the cramped boat and that's why we decided to set up my mosquito net on the shore in the sand and sleep there. It was freaking cold; apparently also in the boat. Freddy wore everything he had with him. The next morning everybody felt like shit. The views were better than ever. Morning mist was all over the snaking valley were the Mekong searches it's way to the South China Sea.
Everybody was happy to arrive in Luang Prabang and ending the slightly too long trip.

Huay Xai

The Lao border town is small and extremely unsignificant. The basic tourist infrastructure caters the tourists which usually stay only one night to catch the two day boat cruise to Luang Prabang the next day. Still it has some decent restaurants on the river which offers you some stunning views of the sunset. We purchased the tickets and boarded the long narrow boat which has a pretty big diesel engine. The water is pretty low during this season. Not only because of the weather but also because the Chinese have built a damn upriver in Southwestern China to withhold water for their own consumption during the dry season. This has become a major problem for Cambodia and Laos. Thats why the tourist had to be separated to two boats to make sure we wont hit any hidden rocks.

Chang Rai

Chang Rai is the city northeast of Chang Mai which will always be in the shade of Chang Mai. Less pagodas and less tourists maybe make it an authentic northern Thailand city. After arriving with the boat we went to an guesthouse a bit outside the city. Only after we checked in we found out that there is a huge construction site just next door. So we changed after one night to the center. There we met a thai guy who spoke perfectly english because he works for Thai Airways and mostly overseas in the states. He gave some in depth insight on the Thai culture, their king, transverstites etc. But he also gave us a lot of wine and cool stories about the fact of working for an international airway. A flight from London to New York costs him 2 USD but the taxi to the city center 40 USD. It was good fun. Otherwise Chang Rai is a pretty odd city with few sights. The best picture I found is this clocktower.

Thathong

This village is just a stop over to get to Chang Rai by boat. It has a nice river flowing through the center and has some nice and big Buddha statues on top of a nearby hill, which we climbed in the morning before floating downriver to Chang Rai.

The boat ride was really scenic and featured bamboo forest, buffaloes, good old fashioned rice fields, elephants on the shore and elephant shit all over the place. Cool relaxing ride without lowlights or highlights.

Chang Mai

Chang Mai is way up in the north of Thailand. It's close to Myanmar, China and Laos. A lot of tribes from Myanmar and China have fled to this mountainous region over the past. So now the ethnic composition is really diverse and have become a tourist attraction by it self. Freddy wanted to take the tour and so we did. It was the odd kind of tour you can find in many touristy places. But we still did some stuff you normally don't see. We saw a elephant circus, which consisted out of soccer, basketball and painting. Not exactly daily business back home. Then we took on oxcart to a souvenir shop strip, through which we had to walk through to get to the spot where we could "board" our elephant. The elephant took us down a road through a river and through a nice little forest. Afterwards all the tired tourist ate at the only restaurant that was there. Afterward we got the typical Asian hats and cruised downriver with an bamboo raft. This was actually pretty cool because it was really slow and quiet (no engine). While going down you are able to see a lot of elephants taking baths and so on. The elephants parents by the way used to work in the forest to collect tree trunks etc. Than we went to a Karen long neck village which features the world famous people who where rings around there neck and eventually have 30cm long necks. Oddly enough the village was pretty new and looked like it was built just next to a huge tourist Information complex as a park. But we found out that the people who live there since 5 years fled from the Myanmar regime and now have no nationality and need to earn some bucks. That made it acceptable. Then we visited an orchid farm which was the last stop on a packed trip that my grandpa physically easily could do.

Chiang Mai itself is OK. The amazing things is the sheer amount of Pagodas (Buddhist churches) they built there. In total it has more than Bangkok.

Bangkok

Sadly Bangkok was already the place where Victoria had to fly back from. We had a wonderful trip around Southeast Asia. But all beautiful things come to an end at some point in time. The next day my brother Freddy arrived from Switzerland. He'll join me for the next 3 months to travel extensively to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and China. It was nice to meet him in Bangkok City, the first time since 15 months I met anybody whom I have known before the trip. We spent the days with sightseeing, eating and drinking. China town, boats on the river, the MRT, Lumpini Park, Pagodas, Khao San and shopping malls. We were able to catch on the latest news from each other. Cool stuff.

After 2 nights in Bangkok we took a wonderful 15 hours night train to Chang Mai. The train was pretty good and reminded me uf Eastern Europen trains.