luang prabang, laos.
well we are currently sitting in an internet cafe, dripping wet drinking a sweet beerlao.
we had a shit of a time leaving chang mai. had booked the classic 'slow boat tour' leaving chang mai by minibus, crossing to laos, and taking a 2 day boat ride down the mekong river to luang prabang. all well and good, but as we kinda expected, the shit started flyin as soon as our 'air con minibus' arrived. this turned out to be a small van already packed with people and more were to be picked up on the way. we had a chat with some cool israeli dudes in between arguing with the driver about the inadequacy of his service and the ridiculousness of fitting 10 people with back packs into a van that should hold about 8. so the bikes obviously wouldnt fit, and we had to explore other options. refunded our tour and caught a local bus to chang rai, with our bikes on a separate bus. due to the huge amount of fucking around we got in quite late, somehow found the office where our bikes were being stored and built them to the wonder and admiration of several office workers. we managed to stumble upon a cool guesthouse where we were the only guests, and went out to check out the town, not too much to see, but we found a cool bar called teepee bar, owned by this middle aged thai rocker dude with long hair and the hugest collection of rock music on cassette tape that ive ever seen. we had a few beers with him and moved on to eat mexican food at a lebanese restaurant in thailand. odd. oh yeah, just realised that ive written about some of this already, and if it wasnt for the loud canadian girl on skype, this would all be new news. ok well this next stuff is new anyway.
so left chang rai early in the morning on a local bus (the best way to get around by far for distances too long for biking) and got to the border town i think its called chang khong. we met a cool kiwi couple on the bus (yet more of the bastards) and we mosied through the town together and across the mekong river into laos. the border town on the lao side is noticably scruffier than its thai counterpart, and first impression looked like arrowtown (south island) or the set of some old wild west film. dirt roads (or really potholed dirty roads if not actually dirt), chickens running around, men with no teeth standing around drinking spitting and generally loitering, and old wooden buildings with porches hanging out over the road. we changed over a small amount of us dollars and recieved the hugest pile of local currency that its ever been my misfortune to have to carry. if i was going to buy a bike or a computer or something i would need a wheelbarrow to carry the shit. its called the kip, and is almost worthless by most other standards. 10,000 kip is enough to buy a beer, and is worth nz$1.40. they need to cull their currnecy and chop a few 0's off the end of everything.
we met up with a few mates from around thailand in hue xai (the name of the western town) and went out for some drinks in the evening. we got talking to this belgian dude who had skipped bail in trat (south thailand) where he'd been set up and done for drug dealing and had to spend 2 weeks in a thai jail. after being bailed out by his dad he skipped the country by the dodgiest border crossing. i think hes going overland to belgium, good luck to him.
after sitting in the slow boat for 3 hours (lao time is an hour behind thai time, and they call it slow for a very good reason) on the following morning, we finally left hue xai and started our trip down river, being inexorably sucked down the mekong by the downward flow of water under the influence of gravity. we docked as it got dark and started to rain at a small town called pak ben. because we were last off the boat and had to collect our bikes, we got mobbed by the locals who wanted to help us carry our bags up the impossibly steep rock dock. i managed to fight them off but lissa wasnt so lucky. "i carry bicycle. 100 baht." "no." "ok 50 baht" "no." "ok free" no." carrys the bike up anyway. "ok 50 baht" "no." "ok 30 baht" lissa gives him 5000 kip or something and tells him to fuck off. someonbe else pushes in. "you want room? 80 baht" we say ok and he leads us up this windy dark street. the whole town is powered by generator and they all use those energy saving bulbs that i hate, so its hard to see anything. we finallyb get there and the 80 baht room is for some reason not available. funny that. we book into the palce next door for a little more money. he takes orders for lunch the next day and says "here your keys, you want smoke?" and pulls this bag of weed out of his pocket. much more lax than thailand. the other kiwis didnt know what was going on so we retreated into our guesthouse. our room came complete with a hundred flying insects and a praying mantis, so i took half an hour to feed them all to him till he wouldnt eat any more then we went out for some indian food. sweet.
well, ive finished my beer so im going to take part in a waterfight outside, looks like its heating up now :) lissa will take up the reins.
Aux!
well well, its me, heeelooo. ah, aux forgot to mention not only did my bike get whisked up this cliff face in Pak Beng, i also got harassed by a bunch of drunk Laos teenage boys. Let's just say that one of them almost ended up in the Mekong face down, battered and bruised. But it appears they weren't just touchy feely towards women "you so beautiful...i carry your bike" but they also got rather friendly with our new male kiwi buddy. weird. they didn't harass aux though...given he does look pretty scary when its pouring down with rain, he's covered in mud and sand with his bike hoisted on one shoulder, generally pissed off with the whole scenario, complete with a knife in each pocket.
But we made it on the slow boat to Luang Prabang. A really beautiful little town next to the Mekong river, complete with mountains in the distance (aaaah, haven't seen mountains in about 7 months!) and the whole town is built in french colonial style architecture interspersed with the odd temple here and there :) its puuurrrrttty!
It's also Laos new year! the whole event goes on for 3 or 4 days, and is celebrated by throwing a shit load of water at each other (those poor australian farmers in queensland would kill for this). So to get into the spirit of it all, we bought the biggest water guns we could find, and spent the whole of yesterday afternoon getting into battles with the locals and other backpackers. we found a tap, and guarded it. that was until a group of young semi-rough looking locals rocked up in their jeep jumping up and down in the back listening to 50 cent. but we got along with them nicely, we shared the tap, and they shared their beer. towards the end of the afternoon flour gets thrown around as well as coloured water, so by the evening the streets and all the people are a big gooky mess. lots of fun. the next few days look to be the same.
the Laos people are super laid back, the tuk tuk drivers here are in a whole different field. the one's in bangkok would say "hey tuk tuk...you want ping pong show" - a ping pong show apparently involves strippers, ping pong balls, and a clever use of gravity....ick. whilst here the tuk tuk drivers say "hey tuk tuk...you want smoke" it appears that marijuana is in abundance.
well i'm all too clean and dry in here, and i'm going to be a target as soon as i walk out the door, a clean falang (foreigner) is too much to resist...so i'm going in...
Lissa :)
