Emily and Catherine’s Excellent Adventure

 

So after an extended stay in Chiang Mai, half of that time reaching enlightenment-and that worked out well, we finally headed of to Laos.  The picture below is our goodbye with our favorite papaya salad maker in all the world….and there is some hardcore competition let me tell you.  But we digress, so, off to Laos. 

(but quickly, we need to send our love to gio, a wonderful man to whom we did not devote even close to enough time in our last blog entry-you may remember him as the wino/tattoo artist from chiang mai)

 chiang mai, us and june

   

            

 A pretty unremarkable busride to the border took us to where we would catch “the slow boat” down the Mekong the next morning.

We took the slow boat down the river for the next two days, for about 6-7 hours each day.  The ride itself was actually really relaxing (especially with a little lao lao), the scenery was beautiful and we met incredible people with whom we spent the next few weeks travelling through Laos. 

 So, the A Team goes as follows (in no particular order—except obviously the first person we talk about is our favorite and the rest is color-coded)

Toby: British, bad-ass musician, you should see the boy dance, “yeah-no-yeah-no–mmm mmm”, lived in India for a few years–that gives you some idea of his coolness, quirky (Emily and I just had a discussion on how much we love quirky, so take that Toby)

Lauren: Posh, o yeah….and you know that means British as well (proper British), funky and so loves to take the piss out of “Proper” Brits, blonde beauty and so cool

Tom: British (do you see a theme here? Even we developed an accent ), loves sticking his tongue out, great taste in music (thanks), spins like a maniac and a musician to boot, (Digweed who?), hysterical (even though sometimes he was the only one who thought so—we could tell when he stuck out his tongue and started laughing harder-just kidding) 

Hannah: why don’t you guess this time…yeah she’s British too, such a lovely person and a real sweetheart, comes out with the funniest one liners when you least expect it

Matt:  Bhutanese…wouldn’t that be cool, but no he’s British, great conversationalist and recommender of books, will be remembered for saying “we are the movers and shakers, we are the music makers” and he is too, is just an all around pleasure to be with

Caroline:  O goodness …see below—and in blogs to come, we’ll be in India together (like we’ll ever get around to that blog)

Stijn:  Belgian, seriously.  Have you ever read The Fountainhead?  Striking red hair, shacked up with us for a few nights when he was a would-be homeless man, “Hey Mister”, accompanied us on our Pakse adventure. We decided we could write forever about him, so what can we say….Supastar.  Perfect.  (More in Vietnam)

Damien: Brit, we’d write stuff here, but Damien refuses to join the 21st century and use internet and we all know that these are all really written for the people that we’re talking about, and no one is actually reading this now and actually hasn’t been reading this part since we started talking about other people.  It’s like after the end credits in a movie when there’s still some movie left-nobody ever sees that stuff. For that matter, does anyone read this at all, or just look at the pictures?  (we could use some feedback, you know you can write comments-just a suggestion) In summation, Damien was a lot of fun and would eat anything you put in front of him

We had not before and have not again travelled with a “group” as such, but the time that we all spent together was unforgettable and how we managed to get to spend virtually a month with ten such awesome people is pretty unbelievable.

                                  

We tried our hand at guitar, but preferred to be entertained-this guy serranaded us in french spanish and italian, watch out manu chao

  

Life on the slow boat wasn’t all fun, games and lao lao (although most of it was)…just like the pilgrims we slept, brushed our teeth and caught a tan amidst our cat naps….the pilgrims got tans, what do you know? 

       

first class seating, you could move them wherever you wanted!  true to form, we preferred the floor.

 

                                          

The views, as you can see, were stunning. But, we must apologize, you must be bored by now seeing as how every single place we’ve been is ridiculously good-looking. Sitting on the slow boat, lazily dangling our feet into the river watching the land go by was truly a highlight. 

 

our welcoming comittee at a pit stop along the way: “you buy lao lao, you buy beer lao” (do you see a trend?)

Enter:

Caaroliiiiiiiiiine, she’s the reason for the word great!

                                    —– A, from canada (the only intelligent thing out of his mouth)

Above, doing a reading of Tenacious D’s ode to conjugal love….it brings a tear to my eye still.  This was our very first impression, and it only gets better.

Wow, this girl is a riot.  Most of the things that come out of her mouth would have you in hysterics.  Ultimately, Caroline knows what’s important and is living it.

luang prabang

       

Luang Prabang had a charming sleepy colonial feel about it—filled with beautiful architechture, great little restaurants and nice views of the Mekong surrounding the town.  What turned out to be a group of 10 of us essentially took over a guesthouse where we spent the next few days lounging, daytrips, lots of eating and a few nights around a bonfire.  We only spent a few days, but Luang Prabang was a great place and we had-as should be expected at this point-a good time.  

                                                  

                                                        

 

                                                                 

We had heard about a spectacular waterfall and spent our second day there.  We took a few sangtaews (what you back at home might call taxis, but were really just reconstructed backless pick up trucks-supersafe-a la ko chang). We took a remarkable drive through backwood villages of Laos-our first such encounter, and very eye-opening.  We followed a path through the woods…encountered some bears and a tiger, we’ll get to that later.  The waterfall was especially cool, and we’ve learned that there IS such thing as a not-cool waterfall, some would call this a “tourist trap”.  Anyway, the waterfall itself is not really one waterfall, but a series of waterfalls along the path that get progressively more impressive.  “Wow—a series of waterfalls!”, you might say, “that’s amazing.  Could it get better?”.  Yes.

 The color of the waterfall is not the turquoise blue of the water of Ko Chang, nor the crystal clear water of Sihanoukville, the beach in Cambodia that we just left three days ago and will probably get around to writing about next year—but an entirely unique glowing pastel blue.  This could be due to the mineral composition of the water, but we attribute it to something we don’t even know about.   

Perhaps we should stop and apologize for how obnoxious we’re being;  that too is attributed to something we don’t even know about. 

Did we mention that you could swim at the point where the biggest waterfall crashes down into a pool below.  Silly us, of course you knew-we took pictures.

ok, we’re done with the waterfall now.

 On to the sunset.

           

A group of us climbed to the top of a wat on a hill with a 360 degree view of Luang Prabang, and watched the sunset.  It was a bitch to climb, but it was glorious.

Sarah, I know you’re laughing…God bless you.

                 

                                          

 

                                                   

Catherine, highly disguised for a reconnaisance mission to check out the patrons of the bar next door…and who is this guy in the wig?  Hmmm…

Vang Vieng

monkey

                                                 

The ride from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng was so beautiful, through lush green hills and stunning limestone mountains surrounded by blue lakes.  It was a gorgeous day and we were able to take the four hour trip in a chartered minibus—as we had our group of ten heading down to Vang Vieng together, which only added to the fun.  Our bus driver and accomplice were characters (pains in the ass, we found out later) and nice enough to stop at this ridge—that you can’t really see above, but is in the pictures—where we were joined by the photogenic family.  We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere but around the bend was a very primitive small village literally hanging to the cliff and that is where this family calls home. 

In Vang Vieng we stayed at this place called The Other Side, because as the name suggests, it was on the other side of the river that ran along the border of V.V.  The town itself is comprised of just a few roads filled mostly with TV bars playing re-runs of Friends.  Despite the fact that we had been gone for a few months at this point, that didn’t quite hold the same appeal for us as it did other travellers.  We were lucky to have found the otherside and spent most of our time there.  

                                                     

This lovely little bridge might look picturesque…but come midnight the prospect of crossing over to the otherside seems akin to a death wish.     

   

Chilling riverside: Tom sticks out his tongue while Catherine ignores him, and Matt stands by oblivious (tom we’re just kidding, we know you’re sensitive)

                          

Stijn and Matt, Catherine showing off her moves with a hackey sack and canadian-whats his name?  chilling at the bonfire

 

View of mountains (from right outside our bungalows)

 

Bats…BATS!

One of the coolest natural things that we’ve seen.  Now, it may seem that we are prone to hyperbole, but this was seriously impressive.  Toby and Matt witnessed this the first night, “like a million bats flying from a cave in the mountains just after sunset”—and we thought the boy was blowing the story up a tad.  Sorry, Toby, you proved us wrong.  The next night as the sun set we watched literally thousands upon thousands of bats fly in a long black wavy snake through the mountains and across the sky.  it lasted something like 10 minutes.  and it just blew your mind to think about the sheer number of bats that could even form such a dense black cloud literally kilometers away (we’re working with the metric system over here).  you may not be able to make them out because bootsnall switched all this blog administration stuff up on us and we don’t know how to make the pictures bigger.  take our word for it, it was unbelieveable. 

Funny face caroline

 

Breakfast at the Otherside over the river, Caroline and the cuddliest puppy-who had an earring-weird, and Hannah

Toby dancing, is he cool or what?

  

Chillaxing…

 

Toby being cool, obviously

 

Doesn’t Caroline look like Rachel Griffins looking really shocked or horrified in this picture?

 

Caroline (do i look like…? yes, you do) and Asian restaurant fam (yum food and the most wonderful family)

“Toilet”…it’s written in braile next to the door as well

                 

We met this German woman Joy (her name says it all) who had run out of money and started making clothes and jewelry so that she could continue travelling.  We took it upon ourselves to play dress-up one afternoon while we were waitng for the sunset…Emily got a bit carried away.  Interesting twist of fate: Joy and Toby found they enjoyed each others company so much Toby extended his flight and home.  What ever happened with that, boys? 

   

caroline on the path to the bridge to the other side

                                             

Emily’s considering a career in photojournalism (or maybe investigatory journalism)

 

Tom looking sexy, but that goes without saying 

 

Sunsets Vang Viang

Vientiane

Don’t have too  many pictures, as we were too busy fine-tuning our badminton skills, plus vientiane isn’t overly picturesque-actually it sort of is, but we neglected to download the pictures and we left the disks at home.  oh well.  you’ll see them soon enough when Catherine gets back.  Most people don’t like the capital, but we really felt some affinity towards this laid-back French colonial city.  In fact, it’s been called the most laid-back capital city in the world, and we’d have to agree. 

  

At the beginning of each Lonley Planet there is a list of Do’s and Don’ts that pertain to whatever country the book focuses on.  One of the major Don’ts throughout Asia is Don’t touch anyone on their head, as it brings bad luck.  We always laughed at that one, cause why would we touch the top of anyone’s head…    

We were wandering around one day and came upon a wat/orphanage (we think) and all these kids came running out and wanted to play.  We thought we would teach them duck duck goose, and the group of us played for an hour or so.  The kids caught on pretty quick and really seemed to enjoy it.  Only when we were walking away did we remember that Don’t…oh well

 

Who can resist a man-hug? more goodbyes

Last day in Vientienne with our friends, we splurged on $3 sandwiches-if you can believe it, we actually had a hard time justifying a $3 lunch

Superstar hotel clerk-Stijn actually speaks chinese and took over the administrative duties for a bit

 

Emily and Catherine in side car…shot taken by Stijn on accompanying motorbike, drunken Tuk-tuk driver…he admitted this to us only after we reached our destination—did he mean drunk on life? 

Bus Station, but that’s obvious

Stijn is Howard Roark

Stijn and the ladies….boy do we miss you Mister, it’s a good thing we’ll see you by chance in vietnam (but that already happened and we miss you again)

 Bye, catch you in a few months (those silhouetted figures are us, by the way)