Northern Thailand

Bangkok

We arrived by plane from Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam, to Bangkok. Our first impression was that it was really, really hot and humid, even more than in Vietnam! But we were quite happy to find a more westernized city...

The manager from our hostel was very nice and gave us indications and prices for most attractions, told us where to have nice and cheap food, and even advised us a reasonably priced massage centre. By the way, we tried the Thai massage... and it's not for us :) During a full hour, the masseur bends every muscle in your body and it's mostly painful... We were lying on the floor one beside the other but we couldn't see our faces, it was  hilarious as each of us knew the other one was suffering too! :D 

Regarding the visits, we started with Chinatown. It's quite impressive especially the main street as it's very narrow and very long, there are merchandises and people all over the place.

Then, we visited some of Bangkok most famous temples.

Here are a few pictures:

Wat Suthat which we visited at sunset, very beautiful


Wat Pho and its 46m long reclining Buddha!

A local monk, unshakably calm ;)

Sukhothai

We left Bangkok after 3 days and we went to Sukhothai to see some temples ruins.

We rented some bicycles, it was a good idea except for the burning sun that day (Aurore was feeling very dizzy...) but it was really worth it! :)

"There's so much you can learn, when you're on a pachyderm!" Evelyn, Evelyn

We'll remember this hill, we climbed it and our reward was... a big NOTHING :-/

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is a lovely city with plenty of temples to visit (surprising  in Thailand, isn't it? :D).

The bells to catch Buddha's attention

In Chiang Mai, one can choose from a large choice of treks and animal seeing excursions, but spending a few hours on the back of an elephant and cuddling a probably drugged tiger wasn't appealing to us... That's why we ended up renting a motorbike to do our own excursion and see a nth temple and a Hmong tribe village.

Celebration in this nth temple

Authentic Hmong Grand Ma

The swimming pool, essential!

Laos

The trip from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang had been quite a lengthy one!

We started by going to Chiang Mai bus station fairly early as it was 8.30am. Unluckily, all buses until 12.30pm were full. Never mind, we went to a coffee shop (with air con!) to wait. After 3h30 in the bus, we arrived in Chiang Rai where we changed for another bus for the border city: Chiang Khong. We had no problem to find the bus but it was rudimentary, we drove all doors and windows wide opened and we were the only tourists on board.

Everything went well and we arrived in Chiang Khong late afternoon. It was too late to cross the border... A lady had spotted us and she brought us to her hostel. The price was ok but the room wasn't very nice... at least, we were overlooking the Mekhong and could see Laos on the other side.

The next morning, the hostel lady gave us a lift to the border. We passed through Thai emigration and crossed the Mekhong in a small boat. That's when we first met world-famous Laos rapidity :). It took an hour and a half to get our visa-on-arrival done... We just had time to jump in a tuk-tuk and take our boat to Luang Prabang (there's only one daily), phew!

We spent two days on this boat, going down the Mekhong slowly. It was quite a long time but the scenery was worth it!

Rare phenomenom: a Laos girl shows signs of excitement and energy to share! ;)

We saw about 50 children bathing (and washing too!) in the Mekhong while on the boat

Our boat looked like that one

Little kid really happy to draw on our Sudoku book :)

The boat stopped in Pak Beng to spend the night. There's nothing to see there, but it's first place we saw displaying menus with "happy shakes". These are opium based drinks... That's maybe why they're so not energetic! :)

We finally arrived in Luang Prabang after those tiring 3 days.

Yeah, that's us!

Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is a very nice city along the Mekhong with houses with a colonialist architecture, lots of restaurants (especially a French one which helped us refill our batteries!) and souvenirs shop.

We also tasted the Laos fondue: it's a coco nut soup in which we cook all kinds of vegetables, while cooking the meat on the central grill before putting it into the soup. It's delicious!

Vang Vieng

After 6h in a minivan, we arrived in Vang Vieng. It's funny to note that Laos people are not used to long-distance buses, there's always one sick during the trip! :-/

For a lot of people, Vang Vieng is this:

The most popular attraction in Vang Vieng is tubing. Tubing consists in taking a tube to float down the river and stopping at the different bars to drink buckets of whisky, vodka, lao-lao and much more... Drugs are also widely spread. We didn't do that.

This left us quite perplex. The situation is paradoxical: on one side, tubing must certainly bring a lot of money to the city but on the other hand, it's very sad to see so many people zig-zagging half-naked in such a nice scenery and in the middle of such a poor population...

We even discussed the matter with our room neighbours, Anne and Reginald. She's French (a very gifted painter) and he's an "Earthman" :). Reginald is from multiple origins (Indian, English...) and travelled all his life in more than 70 countries! He's got a lot of charisma and a very simple way of life. He seemed like the happiest man on Earth!

Anyway, for us, Vang Vang was this:

♫ Tatatataaaa tatata ♪ (Indiana Jones music theme) & "aahh, don't look down" were both in our heads

We did a trek in the mountain with an English couple, Dave & Naomi, and an Italian guy, Antonio. We all got on very well and spent a very nice day. Leeches (and slips for Aurore) were also part of the trip.

Mouh mouh mouh...

Our group with our guide in the middle (note the socks over the pants to prevent leeches from getting in: class!)

Our guide doing the BBQ for us 

Little decorative touch in the middle of nowhere!

Then, the next day we went by motorbike in the country side:

Nice fence post, isn't it?

A very lively market place

Vientiane

After 5 hours in a bus, we arrived in Vientiane, the capital. Everything was well until we had to do the check in at the hotel. They asked for our passports as usual and then... Sh*t! Etienne forgot his passport in Vang Vieng. :(

We took the decision very quickly (and angrily) to go back to Vang Vieng to get it back. Luckily, as we were walking out the hotel, we met Dave, Naomi & Antonio once again! They advised us to call our hostel in Vang Vieng and get the passport brought here by the 1st bus the next morning. Thanks to our new friends, that's what we did and the passport arrived in Vientiane the next day, phew!!!

We did not spend much time in Vientiane as there's not much to see and we still had to go in southern Laos. Nevertheless, we had time to meet Catarina and Marie-Eve, a Portuguese and a Belgian ladies who both do humanitarian jobs in Thailand at the Birman frontier. Catarina helps young Birman refugies and Marive-Eve is a vet and neuters stray dogs. We spent a good chunk of an afternoon discussing with them and we dined in a Belgian restaurant with Marie-Eve (mussels and chips of course!) :)

Cheers!

The next day, we went to see the Buddha Park:

This park is weird... It's full of Buddhist and Hinduist statues. Funny but too small.

Say:" AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Back in the city centre, we went to see Patuxai, the triumphal arch of Vientiane:

String sandwich for Etienne, yum! (Vientiane speciality: sandwich with pate and a lot of unindentified ingredients...)

Tha Khaek

We especially went to Tha Khaek to take on the "Loop". This consists in doing a 4 days motorbike trip in Laos countryside. Etienne took a few minutes to familiarize himself with the semi-automatic motorbike while Aurore was getting ready to carry the 15kg backpack for the next 4 days... and off they went! We had a very good time, especially on dust roads and mud puddles :) We also realized after a few days that a motorbike trip makes your bum soar... we had to take a break every 30min on the last day :D  

Yeahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

A typical Laos house with its cows, pigs, chickens, dogs, etc living outside and sometimes inside too!

Having fun in the mud

Here are a few pictures of the beautiful sceneries we saw:

We also had to endure a traffic jam... Proof in video:

... Three days... It's been three long days we've left... food supplies are getting low already... the heat is intense... it's tough... very tough... but we keep on riding our Kolao motorbike!

:D Back to reality now, on the 3rd day, we stopped to visit Kong Lo cave. This cave is only visited by boat on the underground river. It's both freaky and exciting at the same time. At some stage, you even have to get off the boat into the water and push it to pass some rapids, all in the dark, with our two Laos guides who can't speak any English: we loathed quite a lot, certainly due to the adrenalin :)

Pakse

We took a few days to relax in Pakse before jumping on Mike the motorbike once again ;) This time we went to see the waterfalls of the Bolaven plateau. Here are a few pictures:

And the waterfall name is... on the sign!

Tat Lo: we swam there, the water wasn't really clean but it was great fun

It was nice to see those elephants in semi-freedom (no chains, no barriers)... but they were still used as tourist attractions during the day.

Laundry and bathing at the same time

A house and the water pump for the town

We ended our trip with Tat Fan waterfall:

"Hey, Aurore, move, I can't see the waterfall!"

"Thanks. Here it is. That's Tat Fan waterfall."

One pic for the road: pineapple and durian seller.

We did a final day on the motorbike to go and see Wat Phu, beside Champasak. We visited the ruins of the ancient Khmer capital (pre-Angkor). This site is really beautiful and very close to Cambodia (which is not on our list).

"I believe I can fly!"

While on the road, we kept hearing in our head a particular song from Moriarty called "Jimmy" (because of the many buffalos along the roads), and we had to let it out! :D

To conclude, Laos is definitely our favorite destination since the start of our trip. Every warmhearted "sabaideeeeeeeeeeee" from children as well as their parents when we entered into villages, brought us happiness :) The Laos people may be really laid back to the limit of laziness and are mostly poor but they always have a smile on their faces. They seem to have everything they need (That's to say a TV, a karaoke set and beer ;) That's the proof that we do not need much to reach happiness!

We were supposed to finish visiting this country by going to the 4000 islands to relax, but we finally decided to go for Thailand beaches.

Southern Thailand

We went quickly through Bangkok again, just to do some shopping in Chatuchak market. This place is gigantic! There's a lot of choice and bargaining is mandatory.

Ko Pha Ngan

We picked this island because it seemed the less touristic on the East coast of Thailand. We spent a few days just lying on the beach, reading, playing cards, sleeping and doing nothing ;P

"Hello? Is someone in there?!?"

Little paradise on Earth...

View from our bungalow (You're jealous, right??? hahaha :))

We wanted to spend 15 more days in Thailand but we had to shorten our stay for another project: a 10 days Vipassana meditation course in Malaysia. Don't worry, this is non-religious. We'll tell you everything about it the next time. :) And we'll probably have to come back another time to Thailand to see all those beaches!

See ya! :)