Mountain biking and white water kayaking adventure

There are a few standard things that backpackers do while they visit Luang Prabang and one of them is the waterfalls. On our third night in Luang Prabang we were heading to dinner and got sidetracked by a waterfall tour so we figured why not, we might as well see what the rage is all about, right? When we got to dinner all of the tables were full at the restaurant but there was a couple sitting in the corner at a table for four and they asked us to join them. We ended up talking, eating, laughing, and drinking with them all night! They had signed up for a two-day mountain bike and white water kayak excursion that was leaving first thing the next morning… So in order to go we would have to bail on the waterfall trip – we decided it was worth it and checked out of our guest house the next morning to meet Calum and Abi for breakfast and head out for the next adventure!

This trek was a bit more of a challenge than our last one! The first day we cycled 45 kilometers out into the jungle along a river that led us to the village that we would be spending the night at. The mountain bike ride was by far the most challenging bike ride of our lives! We would have to stop in the shady spots along the way so we could grab a drink of water and take a breather – some of these hills were the steepest hills I have ever seen! At one point along the way we pulled over and tried to help some native hill tribe villagers attempt to repair a flat scooter tire – but we failed… When we finally made it to the village it was one of those feelings that was similar to finishing the slow boat ride - relief, pleasure and achievement.

That evening, after a long swim/shower in the river we all gathered around on the floor mats with the host family and enjoyed some quality home-cooked Thai food. We have a very interesting/hilarious story at this point but I am not sure I can do justice without telling it in person but I will give it a try. So we were all sitting around in a circle with about 3-4 buffet style dishes in the middle and then we each had our own bowl of vegetable soup and when they started passing the sticky rice around to Abi grabbed the bucket and scooped a handful out… before taking the time to see what the host family was doing with the rice we each threw our handful into our bowl of vegetable soup… well apparently that wasn’t right – the mom started giggling and slowly it turned into an all out laugh among the whole family because in Asia you are supposed to hold your sticky rice in your hand while you eat dinner! Haha… So while our rice is floating in our soup they are taking the time to make little balls with theirs and then use their fingers to grab pieces of fish or chicken out of the buffet dishes in the center of the circle. We were EXTREMELY embarrassed at this point and tried to explain to them that we just didn’t know what we were supposed to do.

The next morning we got into some kayaks down on the river and paddled our way through a series of good size rapids! It was a blast - Lindsay and I fell out at one point and Calum and Abi fell out just a little further down river but it wasn’t the fiercest river I had ever seen and we were wearing helmets so everybody survived without a bruise!

We were extremely busy and wet with sweat or water the entire trip so we never had a camera available and therefore don’t really have any many photos to share – sorry!

Hair cut

I’ll keep this post short but I thought it was worth mentioning… I don’t know if Lindsay told you in her last post about Luang Prabang but when she got into her bicycle accident we were actually heading out to find a barbershop. My hair wasn’t terribly long but out here in this weather it is just too much to handle. We obviously didn’t get the haircut after the accident but we went out the next morning and found one for $4! The barbershop reminded me exactly of the movie Zohan – just a bunch of out-dated Paul Mitchell posters hanging all over the walls. At this point I didn’t really care if the cut was shitty, I just needed to get it out of my eyes because I would literally be sweating within seconds of getting out of the shower…

The lady was really cool and understood everything pretty well, she also made it very clear that I would not look good with super short hair… so I sat down and let her get started. She had some pretty budget tools and also some very different techniques – for example when we asked to have her shave the hair on the back of my neck she busted out a brand new all-purpose razor blade, unwrapped it, and literally shaved the hair off my neck…

The haircut was solid and it is still treating me well – I might get another before we head home!

Luang Prabang

After sitting on a slow boat for two days, we were ready to get out and explore Luang Prabang! We settled into our guesthouse and went out to search for some bikes to “hire”. We found a rental place just down the street that charged 20,000 kip ($2) per bike for the day, pretty good deal! Oh and we had to give them one of our passports to hold hostage.

We biked all over the beautiful, French style town, which isn’t very big. All along the river were tons of bars and restaurants that all looked AMAZING! Each place had a very unique and special atmosphere and the menus made our mouths water at first sight. There was no way we could settle on just one place, so we decided to do a mini pub-crawl. We choose to go to three or four different restaurants and got one drink and one appetizer to share - SO DELICIOUS!

After we were nice and full, it was about time to return our bikes so we headed back to the shop. About three blocks away from the bike rental place a girl came ripping around the corner on her motorbike. We both saw each other and did the awkward left right left thing, only getting closer and closer. The problem was…. I might have been on the wrong side of the road…? But we had just left Thailand and I was FINALLY used to people driving on the left side. Sooo we ended up running into each other, which in the end was my fault, I guess. Once I realized we were definitely going to crash I gracefully hopped off my bike as it went down. I was fine, but my bike, not so much. The wheel was now in the shape of a squiggly oval. Apparently I have horrible luck with renting bikes. Oh, did I mention the roads in Luang Prabang are very quiet and not busy at all, Cory and I saw maybe 2 tuk-tuk’s on our whole bike ride. Of course I hit the only moving object one the entire rode…hmmm. Cory carried my mangled bike to a tuk-tuk and threw it in the back so they could drive it the last three blocks we had to go. I knew I would have to pay for the damage, I just wasn’t sure how much it was going to cost. We got to the bike rental and a man who spoke very VERY little English told us the owner would be there in about 15 minutes and we had to wait for him. 15 minutes later – still not there, 30 minutes later – still not there, 2 hours later – FINALLY! At this point I didn’t care how much it was going to cost, we just wanted to get Cory’s passport back. We explained to the owner what happened, expecting him to act like he didn’t understand and rip us off. However he was very nice and more concerned that I was OK. He charged me $200,000 kip, which is about $25, not too bad, but my $2 bike rental had just turned into a $27 bike rental. OH WELL, at least I didn’t end up in the hospital, right? Most people who get in accidents with motorbikes don’t come out of it as well. Hopefully next time we rent bikes I can give it back flawless… third times a charm right?

Slow Boat

Some people said that we wouldn’t stick to our original plan – they were right. We had always planned on making a journey through Laos but not by way of a 2-day boat ride! Thailand is an awesome place for spontaneous last minute changes of plans because there are literally hundreds of travel agencies in every city competing with each other for our business so they are all very helpful and willing to answer any questions. I figured out our route from Chiang Mai and we set out the next morning. Our first stop was Chiang Rai about four hours north. Chiang Rai was an awesome, quieter version of Chiang Mai with cheap lodging, awesome bars, and a nice Night Bazaar! The next morning we set out for Chiang Khong, which is where we had to cross the Mekong River into Laos. The visa thing was all pretty easy leaving Thailand and we hopped on a taxi boat for Heuy Xai to get our Laos visa squared away and sign up for the slow boat in the morning.

After we got all settled into our place we set out for some dinner with some friends that we had met on the bus – we found out real quick that Heuy Xai sucked. The little village town was way overpriced and filthy! I was starting to wonder if maybe we had made the wrong decision committing to this much time in Laos…

The next morning we walked down to board the boat at the pier and we were really early so we got some nice comfortable seats towards the back of the boat. About THREE hours later we hadn’t left and there was about 150 people on this rickety old wooden boat… Thanks to Lonely Planet I knew that at a certain point you could actually demand that they charter two boats if the first one gets too packed and it was definitely too packed. At this point we had made some new friends at the back of boat and we all started scheming a way to stand up to the “Laos slow boat officials”! Our plan backfired much worse than we could have expected – before we knew it they had border control on the boat, English translators, and some pissed off dudes that we couldn’t understand. After some translation we figured out that they were trying to charge us more for the good seats now and that if we didn’t pay the extra 100 Baht the boat wouldn’t be leaving… It has now been almost four hours since the boat was supposed to leave and we were facing the chance of getting kicked off. This was hands-down one of the most nerve-racking experiences of the trip! Lindsay was ready to get off and buy a ticket for the next flight out of town… I didn’t want to stand down unless we were all ready to accept failure – we were asking them to charter another boat and they were telling us that we had to pay more for our seats – the negotiation was ugly! The only way we were making any headway was through a really nice Thai guy that new enough of both languages to help translate… I was starting to worry that things could seriously get ugly quick when they FINALLY gave up on the extra money thing and sent half of the backpackers to another boat! We won the battle and DAMN it felt good!

We spent the next six hours floating down Mekong River, which was an amazing experience. The scenery was beautiful and I just like being on the water so I was content for the whole ride just listening to some music, reading my book, chatting with other travelers and enjoying the riverside villages and locals along the way. Just after sunset the boat pulls into a hillside village known as Pak Beng. This place was primitive! Just as we unloaded the boat and started hiking up the hills to find our lodging for the evening they fired up the generators and the town lit up - one guesthouse at a time as we walked down the roads. This place was much nicer than our first town in Laos and actually had some good restaurants and lodging options – if they could keep the generators running!

Lindsay and I were running seriously low on cash at this point and just figured that they would have an ATM but when we pulled into this village we realized that wasn’t going to be the case so we had to get extremely efficient with our Kip and make sure that we had enough for lodging, dinner, breakfast and snacks for the boat the next day. Somehow we managed to get all of that for 150,000 kip or $17! When we loaded the boat the next morning it was packed with locals and all of their goods! The slow boat is their main form of transportation and they also use it for shipping goods to and from other parts of Laos so the second day wasn’t nearly as comfortable but the scenery was still amazing and I was on a boat so I was content.

By the time we finally pulled into Luang Prabang it was a huge feeling of relief, pleasure and achievement because we had just traveled through a large portion of the country via the Mekong, which is one of the most impressive rivers in the world! After having some sub-par experiences in the first two towns I really didn’t expect much from Luang Prabang but I was caught off guard when we walked up from the pier to find one of the coolest little cities I have ever been to in my life!

In the end, the slow boat was an awesome experience and I enjoyed every minute of it and I would recommend anybody traveling in that portion of SE Asia to take the adventure, but it’s probably not something I would do again…

Dilemma

Our Thai Visa is about to expire and we are having a blast in Chiang Mai and paying $6 per night to stay in our hotel so we are hesitant to leave but we have to find a way out. Bangkok is currently experiencing serious riots and red shirt demonstrations so we don’t want to use that area as a hub to exit the country but the options are very limited from up here in the north… The Chiang Mai airport doesn’t offer international flights to Hanoi like we had originally planned – so at this point we have basically crossed Vietnam off the list of options. We can either drive by bus to the east about 12 hours to a town by the name of Udon Thani and then be at the border of Laos, just south of the capitol Vientiane or we can head north by bus about 6 hours and take a “slow boat” for 2 days on the river through Laos and end up driving another 12 hours or so to get down to the capitol. The plus side of the slow boat route is getting to experience the famous “tubing” in Vang Vieng and also check out the old capitol Luang Prabang. See our dilemma? What would you do?

Monkeys and fish spa

Back in our cooking class we met a couple of Canadian girls that had mentioned going out to see some tigers at the “Tiger Kingdom” so we figured we would go check it out one day instead of partaking in all of the Songkran action. We hired a Tuk-Tuk from our guesthouse and cruised about an hour out of town to the tiger zoo. The place was beautiful and very clean; it looked to us like they did a good job of reinvesting into the infrastructure in order to keep the tigers happy… But after a closer look it seemed as though the tigers didn’t love to be in captivity and it looked like some of the “trainers” people beat them up a little in order to get a little rise out of them once in a while. So we decided that we would save our $40 (way overpriced) and maybe just let some fish suck on our feet instead! Haha

Seriously –These Fish Spas are all over the place in SE Asia but this one was exceptionally clean compared to the rest. And reasonably priced as well. For about $4 each we had hundreds of little leeching fish eat the dead skin off of our feet for about a half hour (took about 10-15 mins just to get comfortable with it). It felt like little shocks of electricity as soon as you dipped in but after some time it was a pleasant massaging sensation and there was a whole list hypothetical benefits that I can’t recall but we did enjoy it and I think I would do it again for sure!

On the way home our driver asked if we wanted to stop of and see a monkey show – I think it was about $6 each… We agreed that 6 bucks would be a small price to pay for the opportunity to play with a little baby monkeys so we went for it! These things are some smart animals and it is incredible how much they resemble humans!

SongKran

Songkran is the Thai New Year and it falls on the 13-15 of April every year but will usually begin a lot earlier and last a lot longer especially in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Often times the festival is known to last more than six days! Originally, the celebration marked their actual New Year but since 1940 Thailand has considered January 1^st the New Year and Songkran has become a huge festival of non-stop water fights!

In the ancient days Songkran was an opportunity to pay respect to elders and monks – Thai people would go to the temples and use holy water to show their respect…

Things have changed…

Now people just spray the shit out of each other with high power Super Soakers and buckets of water! Literally hundreds of thousands of people fill the streets of Chiang Mai using water from the moat that surrounds the city to drench anybody and everybody that happens to be in the streets. For lots of people it is actually a goal to hit motorists in the eyes while they try and navigate their way through the gridlocked traffic!

When we went out to purchase our weapons I had to have the best gun… I actually bought the same gun that I had when I was a little kid the Super Soaker CPS 2000, which brought back some memories. However, this one just didn’t seem to have the same kick that they had when I was young… Not sure if it’s just because I have gotten older or if they actually don’t make them the same anymore – probably a little of both.

Although we went to Chiang Mai to celebrate this wild week of water, we lost interest after just a few days. It got to the point where it was obnoxious to step out of our guesthouse on our way to dinner and just get drenched with a bucket of brown water that had been soaking in ice in the back of a pick up all afternoon. I am not saying we didn’t enjoy every minute of it but it literally became a chore to take strategic back roads and alleys to get to certain areas of the town without getting soaked on your way.