East is East [Part 1: 17/7-23/7 - Bangkok and Laos]
Here we go again, time for the usual travel report from our latest holiday/trip - not too sure who I'm doing it for to be honest, seeing as I've pretty much abandoned LJ of late, or if anyone will read it but since I don't know where else to put it I might as well write it here.
Following the theme of the last 2 years, we went East this time too: well, South East (Asia) to be precise - Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, plus 2 days in Bangkok (the first and the last of the holiday, simply cos flying in/out of there was some £300 cheaper than flying ot any destination in the countries we actually wanted to visit). What can I say, eventually we'll run out of places in the East and be forced to go some other direction, who knows ;-)
Anyways, here we go
And so it was, that in the morning of the 17th July, me and doniajud boarded a plane to Moscow... Moscow? I thought you said you went to Thailand I hear you say; yes, but again, Aeroflot is so much cheaper than pretty much any other airline so it was worth flying to Bangkok via Moscow. The (very long) journey - 4 hours London to Moscow, than 2 h layover followed by 10 hours to Bangkok - was rather uneventful and without major problems (apart from the fact that the second flight was delayed by almost an hour because a completely pissed passenger had to be removed from the plane just before departure. Oh, and the exhorbitant amount of fucking babies, all screaming and/or babbling constantly, also on the flight from Moscow. Why the fuck do people who have babies subject them - and everyone else in the process - to the misery of long haul flights? in fact, while we're on the subject, why do people have babies in the first place? I mean it's not like there's not enough people on this poxy little planet as it is, in fact quite the contrary, anyway I digress.
The following morning (courtesy of the 6 hour time difference between Thailand and the UK) the - expected - shock getting off the plane was the terribly hot and humid temperature, but at the same time I remember thinking it wasn't as bad as i feared.... I needn't have worried, it would get every bit as bad as I had dreaded in the following days. Got a bus into town and, not staying in Bangkok but taking the overnight train to Laos the same evening, we left our backpacks at the station and went for a wander.
We made it to nearby China Town and walked around the markets and little streets for a while, the idea was to make it to the riverfront and have a look at the temples too but then the heat and crowds started getting to us so we headed back to the station and stationed ourselves in a little café/restaurant just opposite, where we had our first (very nice) Thai meal and a couple of beers. Soon the time to get our train came and we settled down in our cabin - because of having been travelling for pretty much 2 days already we decided to go posh and get a 1st class cabin (for the exhorbitant price of about £25 each!), meaning there were just 2 berths and we had the cabin all to ourselves. The jet lag and general tiredness soon hit us and we fell asleep almost immediately... in fact, while still drinking a beer we had bought on the train. The wet sensation of the spilled beer on our seat and ourselves quickly woke us up and we understood it was time to call it a day.
The next morning we arrived at the Thai-Lao border, where we changed train and went across the Friendship Bridge on the Mekong into Laos. In Laos in fact there are no railroads and the train just went a few miles before it reached its terminal station. From there (some 20 miles from the capital, Vientiane) we took a taxi into town and to the hotel we had booked.
Having settled down and freshened up it was time to start exploring. Vientiane is a fairly pleasant place with a sleepy feel to it - the capital and biggest city in Laos it may be, but it certainly doesn't look anywhere as chaotic or big as Bangkok. Again we noted it wasn't as hot as we had feared and promptly concluded we had to make the most of it while it lasted. We had a first, unrivalled throughout the rest of the trip, delicious bowl of noodle soup from a street stall on the Mekong riverfront and then we set off exploring: saw a couple of temples and a kind of reproduction of the Arch of Triumph in Paris and then we ended up back on the Mekong for sunset and dinner. There were a lot of stalls/small cafés literally on the river bank, were you could sit by the river and have drinks and/or food. After having both we soon retired to our hotel - first cos we still hadn't completely adapted to the new time, and secondly cos the following morning we had to leave early to go north, to Luang Prabang.
The journey was by bus, and it lasted a rather long 10 hours. The bus per se wasn't too bad, fairly comfortable and airconditioned, however unfortunately it had a extremely stinking on-board toilet that let out unbearable smells everytime someone opened the door even just for a second. On top of that at some stage of the journey a guy with a child got on the bus and sat right behind us; because by then we were in the mountains and the road was rather winding (and not very good in terms of paving) the child thought best to start vomiting almost immediately and carry on for quite a while! Well, apart from all the above the journey was definitely worth it though - some stunning views of rice paddies, mountains and countryside dotted with small villages of wooden huts with thatched roofs. We finally got to Luang Prabang around 6 pm and got a Tuk Tuk (the typcally south east asian motorcycle-cart taxis) into town and found a nice little guesthouse right by the Mekong.
Having freshened up we went out for dinner and had some very nice food on the riverside, then, instead of going back to the guesthouse, we had the unfortunate idea of going for a drink and trying to find some bar we had read about in the guide. We did find A bar which we thought was the one we were looking for (we later discovered it wasn't) and went in for a drink - we ordered 2 cocktails (one each) but what we didn't realise (nor thee waiter told us) was that they had a 2for1 offer on cocktails so effectively we got 4 of them! Oh well, that certainly wasn't a problem, it was when we left that the accident happened; basically, to get to this bar you had to go up some rather slippery and uneven stairs (like, one step about 5" high, the next one more than a foot!) - going up wasn't a problem, going down apparently was: Donia almost slipped but managed to keep her footing, I didn't and fell like a sack of potaoes, landing with my back right on the corner of one of the steps! In excruciating pain I managed to get up and slowly walk back to the guesthouse, where I took some painkillers and went to bed.
The following morning the situation wasn't much better and so the day wasn't as pleasant as it could have been for me, walking up and down to see the sights of the city. To make matters worse the weather was now EVERY BIT as bad as it could have been, extremely hot and sticky, pretty much unbearable. Despite all this, somehow I managed to carry on and we explored Luang Prabang - a truly beautiful place, full of temples and interesting buildings, and with beautiful views of the Mekong from the riverside. During our meandering at some stage we also saw a fairly big snake crawling on the pavement, but a bunch of kids saw it immediately too and started chasing it until it disappeared down the river bank in the vegetation. In the afternoon, as if my back hadn't had enough yet, we climbed to the top of a hill in the middle of the town, at the top of which there's a temple and from which you get beautiful views of the town and of the sunset over the Mekong. The views were really worth it, though we slightly miscalculated the time of sunset - we thought the sun would set around 6 so we made our way in order to be up by around 5.30... and then waited till past 7 for the effing sun to go down! The evening was then finished with an excellent dinner at a restaurant specialised in traditional Lao cuisine, where they actually explained to you what the food was and how you were supposed to eat it etc.
The following morning fortunately my back was a bit better - just as well cos we had booked a half day trip to the Kuang Si waterfall, some 30 odd miles out of town. The waterfall is beautiful, very tall and surrounded by the luscious jungle vegetation. At the bottom there are also a couple of swimming areas where, despite the high number of tourists, it was quite nice to swim/paddle in the cold water, finding some much needed respite from the intense heat. At the entrance of the waterfall park there is also a sanctuary for bears rescued from poachers - the irony though is that in order to save them they have to put them in enclosures; I mean, I suppose living in captivity is better than not living at all, but still I bet the bears would rather be free.
On the way back to town the minibus stopped at what was described as a 'ethnic minority village'. Ethnic minority might well have been, and it certainly was a village, but authentic it definitely was not - the bus drops the tourists at one end of the village, where there is a concrete-paved path lined with stalls selling souvenirs and other supposedly 'authentic' handicraft from the villagers going through it till the other end, where the bus picks you up again to take you back to Luang Prabang.
Having got back into town we still had time for a wonder through the stalls on the riverside, including one that had jars of Lao snake wine - some sort of rice spirit with all sorts of snakes and other similar animals marinading in it, you know, like the worm in the mezcal bottle. We took a photo but we didn't taste it, didn't look too appealing to be honest; after this it was time for a massage - massage is quite a big thing is Laos, like in Thailand (stop sniggering, I'm talking about real massage, not the 'other' type!) and Donia wanted to have one and persuaded me to have one too - which I must admit was very nice and certainly helped making my back a bit better. Finally, we went for dinner in a very colonial-looking restaurant, with lots of geckos climbing its white walls looking for THEIR dinner while we were having ours.
The next day we were gonna fly to Vietnam, but not before getting up at the crack of dawn to see the daily procession of the monks from all the city temples, who go about the streets collecting alms from the locals. That morning was also the first we saw any rain - it was supposed to be the rainy season and a week into our trip we got 1 hour of rain, and on top of that when we were already back in the hotel and in bed... and after that it would be another week before we saw anymore of it, rainy season my arse! Anyway after a last brunch we made our way to the airport to fly to Hanoi and the next country in our itineray: Vietnam
A stay of not even a week is certainly not enough time to get a good idea of a country, however we both liked Laos quite a lot. Of the 3 countries we were gonna visit it was the one we knew less of, we didn't really have any expectations about it and all in all we found it a very pleasant, laid back and beautiful country, certainly very poor but (we would also see it in comparison with the other two) where on the whole the population seemed more content and 'happier' than in the others. Like I said ours are very superficial ideas formed in the limited time we spent there, so it might be all wrong, but the feeling we got was fairly relaxed.
Which was certainly very different from our next destination, Hanoi - but this will be dealt with in the next chapter of the East is East travel report.
Photos: on Facebook, or in the unlikely event there is still somebody who's not on there, here:
Bangkok
Laos
Following the theme of the last 2 years, we went East this time too: well, South East (Asia) to be precise - Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, plus 2 days in Bangkok (the first and the last of the holiday, simply cos flying in/out of there was some £300 cheaper than flying ot any destination in the countries we actually wanted to visit). What can I say, eventually we'll run out of places in the East and be forced to go some other direction, who knows ;-)
Anyways, here we go
And so it was, that in the morning of the 17th July, me and doniajud boarded a plane to Moscow... Moscow? I thought you said you went to Thailand I hear you say; yes, but again, Aeroflot is so much cheaper than pretty much any other airline so it was worth flying to Bangkok via Moscow. The (very long) journey - 4 hours London to Moscow, than 2 h layover followed by 10 hours to Bangkok - was rather uneventful and without major problems (apart from the fact that the second flight was delayed by almost an hour because a completely pissed passenger had to be removed from the plane just before departure. Oh, and the exhorbitant amount of fucking babies, all screaming and/or babbling constantly, also on the flight from Moscow. Why the fuck do people who have babies subject them - and everyone else in the process - to the misery of long haul flights? in fact, while we're on the subject, why do people have babies in the first place? I mean it's not like there's not enough people on this poxy little planet as it is, in fact quite the contrary, anyway I digress.
The following morning (courtesy of the 6 hour time difference between Thailand and the UK) the - expected - shock getting off the plane was the terribly hot and humid temperature, but at the same time I remember thinking it wasn't as bad as i feared.... I needn't have worried, it would get every bit as bad as I had dreaded in the following days. Got a bus into town and, not staying in Bangkok but taking the overnight train to Laos the same evening, we left our backpacks at the station and went for a wander.
We made it to nearby China Town and walked around the markets and little streets for a while, the idea was to make it to the riverfront and have a look at the temples too but then the heat and crowds started getting to us so we headed back to the station and stationed ourselves in a little café/restaurant just opposite, where we had our first (very nice) Thai meal and a couple of beers. Soon the time to get our train came and we settled down in our cabin - because of having been travelling for pretty much 2 days already we decided to go posh and get a 1st class cabin (for the exhorbitant price of about £25 each!), meaning there were just 2 berths and we had the cabin all to ourselves. The jet lag and general tiredness soon hit us and we fell asleep almost immediately... in fact, while still drinking a beer we had bought on the train. The wet sensation of the spilled beer on our seat and ourselves quickly woke us up and we understood it was time to call it a day.
The next morning we arrived at the Thai-Lao border, where we changed train and went across the Friendship Bridge on the Mekong into Laos. In Laos in fact there are no railroads and the train just went a few miles before it reached its terminal station. From there (some 20 miles from the capital, Vientiane) we took a taxi into town and to the hotel we had booked.
Having settled down and freshened up it was time to start exploring. Vientiane is a fairly pleasant place with a sleepy feel to it - the capital and biggest city in Laos it may be, but it certainly doesn't look anywhere as chaotic or big as Bangkok. Again we noted it wasn't as hot as we had feared and promptly concluded we had to make the most of it while it lasted. We had a first, unrivalled throughout the rest of the trip, delicious bowl of noodle soup from a street stall on the Mekong riverfront and then we set off exploring: saw a couple of temples and a kind of reproduction of the Arch of Triumph in Paris and then we ended up back on the Mekong for sunset and dinner. There were a lot of stalls/small cafés literally on the river bank, were you could sit by the river and have drinks and/or food. After having both we soon retired to our hotel - first cos we still hadn't completely adapted to the new time, and secondly cos the following morning we had to leave early to go north, to Luang Prabang.
The journey was by bus, and it lasted a rather long 10 hours. The bus per se wasn't too bad, fairly comfortable and airconditioned, however unfortunately it had a extremely stinking on-board toilet that let out unbearable smells everytime someone opened the door even just for a second. On top of that at some stage of the journey a guy with a child got on the bus and sat right behind us; because by then we were in the mountains and the road was rather winding (and not very good in terms of paving) the child thought best to start vomiting almost immediately and carry on for quite a while! Well, apart from all the above the journey was definitely worth it though - some stunning views of rice paddies, mountains and countryside dotted with small villages of wooden huts with thatched roofs. We finally got to Luang Prabang around 6 pm and got a Tuk Tuk (the typcally south east asian motorcycle-cart taxis) into town and found a nice little guesthouse right by the Mekong.
Having freshened up we went out for dinner and had some very nice food on the riverside, then, instead of going back to the guesthouse, we had the unfortunate idea of going for a drink and trying to find some bar we had read about in the guide. We did find A bar which we thought was the one we were looking for (we later discovered it wasn't) and went in for a drink - we ordered 2 cocktails (one each) but what we didn't realise (nor thee waiter told us) was that they had a 2for1 offer on cocktails so effectively we got 4 of them! Oh well, that certainly wasn't a problem, it was when we left that the accident happened; basically, to get to this bar you had to go up some rather slippery and uneven stairs (like, one step about 5" high, the next one more than a foot!) - going up wasn't a problem, going down apparently was: Donia almost slipped but managed to keep her footing, I didn't and fell like a sack of potaoes, landing with my back right on the corner of one of the steps! In excruciating pain I managed to get up and slowly walk back to the guesthouse, where I took some painkillers and went to bed.
The following morning the situation wasn't much better and so the day wasn't as pleasant as it could have been for me, walking up and down to see the sights of the city. To make matters worse the weather was now EVERY BIT as bad as it could have been, extremely hot and sticky, pretty much unbearable. Despite all this, somehow I managed to carry on and we explored Luang Prabang - a truly beautiful place, full of temples and interesting buildings, and with beautiful views of the Mekong from the riverside. During our meandering at some stage we also saw a fairly big snake crawling on the pavement, but a bunch of kids saw it immediately too and started chasing it until it disappeared down the river bank in the vegetation. In the afternoon, as if my back hadn't had enough yet, we climbed to the top of a hill in the middle of the town, at the top of which there's a temple and from which you get beautiful views of the town and of the sunset over the Mekong. The views were really worth it, though we slightly miscalculated the time of sunset - we thought the sun would set around 6 so we made our way in order to be up by around 5.30... and then waited till past 7 for the effing sun to go down! The evening was then finished with an excellent dinner at a restaurant specialised in traditional Lao cuisine, where they actually explained to you what the food was and how you were supposed to eat it etc.
The following morning fortunately my back was a bit better - just as well cos we had booked a half day trip to the Kuang Si waterfall, some 30 odd miles out of town. The waterfall is beautiful, very tall and surrounded by the luscious jungle vegetation. At the bottom there are also a couple of swimming areas where, despite the high number of tourists, it was quite nice to swim/paddle in the cold water, finding some much needed respite from the intense heat. At the entrance of the waterfall park there is also a sanctuary for bears rescued from poachers - the irony though is that in order to save them they have to put them in enclosures; I mean, I suppose living in captivity is better than not living at all, but still I bet the bears would rather be free.
On the way back to town the minibus stopped at what was described as a 'ethnic minority village'. Ethnic minority might well have been, and it certainly was a village, but authentic it definitely was not - the bus drops the tourists at one end of the village, where there is a concrete-paved path lined with stalls selling souvenirs and other supposedly 'authentic' handicraft from the villagers going through it till the other end, where the bus picks you up again to take you back to Luang Prabang.
Having got back into town we still had time for a wonder through the stalls on the riverside, including one that had jars of Lao snake wine - some sort of rice spirit with all sorts of snakes and other similar animals marinading in it, you know, like the worm in the mezcal bottle. We took a photo but we didn't taste it, didn't look too appealing to be honest; after this it was time for a massage - massage is quite a big thing is Laos, like in Thailand (stop sniggering, I'm talking about real massage, not the 'other' type!) and Donia wanted to have one and persuaded me to have one too - which I must admit was very nice and certainly helped making my back a bit better. Finally, we went for dinner in a very colonial-looking restaurant, with lots of geckos climbing its white walls looking for THEIR dinner while we were having ours.
The next day we were gonna fly to Vietnam, but not before getting up at the crack of dawn to see the daily procession of the monks from all the city temples, who go about the streets collecting alms from the locals. That morning was also the first we saw any rain - it was supposed to be the rainy season and a week into our trip we got 1 hour of rain, and on top of that when we were already back in the hotel and in bed... and after that it would be another week before we saw anymore of it, rainy season my arse! Anyway after a last brunch we made our way to the airport to fly to Hanoi and the next country in our itineray: Vietnam
A stay of not even a week is certainly not enough time to get a good idea of a country, however we both liked Laos quite a lot. Of the 3 countries we were gonna visit it was the one we knew less of, we didn't really have any expectations about it and all in all we found it a very pleasant, laid back and beautiful country, certainly very poor but (we would also see it in comparison with the other two) where on the whole the population seemed more content and 'happier' than in the others. Like I said ours are very superficial ideas formed in the limited time we spent there, so it might be all wrong, but the feeling we got was fairly relaxed.
Which was certainly very different from our next destination, Hanoi - but this will be dealt with in the next chapter of the East is East travel report.
Photos: on Facebook, or in the unlikely event there is still somebody who's not on there, here:
Bangkok
Laos