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) 

We know you’ve all been waiting with baited breath for the next episode of our excellent adventure, so here it goes…(more than half of this was written over a week ago, but we just spent the most incredible 8 days on a remote island in southern laos without access to internet…)

UtoPai

Above you are getting your first glimpse of one of our favorite, and in our opinion, one of the most amazing places in the world Pai. But the story really begins where we left off in Bang Bao, Ko Chang…

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Bang Bao

After a bittersweet good bye to Lonely Beach and all of our wonderful friends there, we headed off with Thaddy for a couple nights in Bang Bao, before leaving Ko Chang. Bang Bao is a little fishing village that is completely situated on one pier that goes into the harbor. The main reason to go to Bang Bao, besides the beautiful harbor itself, is the delicious seafood. We have decided, and this is a huge statement, for those of you that know how much we love food-somewhat of an understatement, that one of the most memorable and amazing meals we have had thus far was in a restaurant overlooking the harbor in Bang Bao. No words can describe the crab and calamari with red curry paste accompanied by a cold Singha, as Stijn might might say…we’ll get to him later, it was perfect. It’s only rivaled by the runny luke warm rice porridge meant to sustain us for the day, served Oliver Twist style at the meditation retreat…EVERY SINGLE DAY. After dinner, we decided to have a quiet night in the cafe and for some reason, got it into our heads to convey to thaddy how funny Napolean Dynamite was (and as you know from our previous blog entry, we think we’re funny and we like to quote movies-that was apparently lost to most of you.) So anyway, we ended up sitting around for an hour or so tears streaming down our faces while thaddy looked on in horror-was something lost in translation? we think so, because it was damn funny.

After a few days on Bang Bao we began our 2 day trek up to Pai…

Public Bus to Pai

Beautiful Pai…the camera really doesn’t capture it

After taking a 13 hour night bus, sans bathroom, we arrived in Chiang Mai and then got on the first bus to Pai. The bus should seat 20, actaully seats 30, but crams on about 40, not including goods that are stacked in the back to bring to Pai…but all of this really doesn’t matter. The bus ride is so beautiful. Once you’re out of the Chiang Mai area (about 45 min) you start heading up into the hills. From then on, the ride is just stunning.

We had heard about Pai through some other travelers—that it was a truly amazing place, and it met our expectations and more. As we’ve learned on the backpacker trail in Southeast Asia, you run into people from months before in random cities, not infrequently…so in comes Greg. Our first week in Bangkok we stayed up talking into the morning and there he was on the street our first day in Pai. He told us of a great place with some live music, Walk-In. So we went that night and later were lucky to meet Mike from England. He and Jan (an awesome South African living in Pai for 3 years) took us and tom and nicola-a british couple- through the hills surrounding pai on the backs of their motorbikes. it was a really incredible day, the scenery was breathtaking. Next few days we walked around, really let pai sink in.

It is hard to convey how special Pai is. It has this energy and attracts certain like-minded people, many artists, musicians etc. and many come to Pai and just never leave. It’s easy to understand once you’ve been there….but I promise we will come home!
a friend of ours-who we met much later on, but felt similarly- captured a bit of what it’s like to be in Pai…

life in pai…
well what can one say…
lazily waking to the sun shining
through the windows…
to the mystical blue sky…
strolling over for breakfast…
sitting, staring, wondering
what one can do in a day…
the decided never gets done
but the undecided
takes you on a journey
of living
of being a part of pai…
what can one say…
one can only say
‘what can one do in pai…
that’s to just live in a dream’

and that’s what pai was like

night at Walk in, john and mike performing

We met thomas at Walkin and recognized him as the boy on the bicycle. He was kind enough to offer to teach us to ride motorbikes and show us the waterfalls, pai canyon, and the hot springs. We met up the next day and he took us out for a little practice session-brave boy on the back of our bikes-we had not a clue. I opted to ride on the back of Catherine’s bike for the day-that crash 10 years ago continues to haunt me! But we were ok, for the first half of the day anyway…

We rode all over the countryside surrounding Pai, and truly had a fabulous day. Thomas was a Pai veteran and had been to these places many times, but was so pleased to be showing them to us for our first time.

So all goes well and we plan to make one last stop a the Wat up on the BIG hill. We negotiate the small windy road to the Wat and go to park the bikes on the incline leading up to the Wat. Just as we are about to get off the bike…which was not in neutral yet, I hit the accelarator by accident and we very slowly and gracefully fell to the side. We weren’t actually even moving when we fell, but because there was two of us, it was hard to get up off the bike right away. Long story, long, my foot was resting on the exhaust pipe for a few momments and I am now the proud owner, like many before me, of a “Thai tattoo”….

I don’t think this requires a label…accept for the fact this was all Emily’s idea and she insisted upon creating a photojournal of the progression of Catherine’s “Thai tattoo”
…yes, it is actually infected in the third picture, but a course of antibiotics got me back to full health. Turns out it was the water in the shower that infected it, which took me a good week or two to figure out, of course. I’m reading this draft of the blog, and needed to reiterate…Emily really took pleasure in the documentation of my wound(and now sharing it with you all)…she was agonizing at the mediatation retreat, not being able to see the progression for 10 days and just to really drive home the point, the FIRST thing she did when we got up from the bike when it happened was take a picture of it…but she is “squeemish”. HA
in my defense, who wouldn’t take pleasure in documenting something so disgusting, all of you who have ever slowed down to look at a car crash on the side of the highway know exactly what i’m talking about. secondly, i made sure she was okay before i took the first picture, and i was not agonizing, merely wondering-and by the way it’s looking good and is no longer picture-worthy

Quality time outside the supermarket with Thomas, our lovely motorcycle intructor and poo debator

“I love drinking outside the supermarket”
— Thomas (in an endearing tipsy British accent)

Contemplating what amazing feats Catherine will perform on her Hog tomorrow-that’s right, Hog

streets of Pai

local superstar, number one hit “Psychic Vampire”

Where to begin?…
the first night we met this guy we dubbed him “the dude”. his reawl name is unknown to all, but he is affectionately referred to as arro-short for arrogant. he as close as you get to celebrity in pai. he is actually a talented musician and singer(his lyrics could use some work…) as we said, his number one original hit is psychic vampire, a ballad which he so sweetly dedicates to his ex-wife before every single performance. here’s the chorus, just so guys can get a sense…”suck my life away, psychic vampire, suck my life away” and does he get into it. anyway, as you can imagine he’s quite a trip.

mr jans daughter, our neighbor for the first couple days

the best veggie burger in the whole wide world, there’s no use in even trying to describe how good this tastes, if you ever get to Pai, Boogie burger will rock your world

emilys view the first day

need we even say badass? the pictures speak for themselves

yoyo and catherine

toby and suzy, toby and suzy and thomas, us and suzy, toby mellow yellow

we met suzy and toby at misty view(our third guesthouse in Pai and favorite place thus far) and for the next five days or so, had quite a time. Conversations about the finer things in life…all very deep, intellectual and certainly proper, they are British you see….they even had works of art as pictures in Toby’s mobile. Let’s just say they are not anal retentive, and we’re on their side. ahem. cheerio

We, Toby, Suzy and Thomas on one of the first nights went to a party at Mellow Yellow, which was a fabulous time, the evidence of which is below.

thomas and toby at mellow yellow

mellow yellow

more mellow yellow

jay, the owner-with his wife Aor, of misty view

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jay and aor’s

Misty View was one of those places where you feel so comfortable all of the time, like home away from home sort of thing. as former service industry girls we would try and clear our breakfast dishes etc…and jay would tell us “no you should be treated like a queen” sweet man (you should all take a lesson…)

Misty View was set up with all of the bungalows in a circle facing each other, with a badmitton net in the middle (We started our season training there, are now what we like to call Badmitton hustlers, and foresee Lonely Planet adding our Badmitton Tour of Asia 2006 to their next edition so that travelers understand when they hear legends of our greatness..we’re kind of like Badmitton ligers, known for our skills in magic, but I digress). We had great people staying at Misty View with us and everyone seems to stick around for a while…there is really no reason to leave and it takes quite a bit of effort to convince yourself that you have to move on. Besides the people at Misty View, the view is really stunning. In the morning, as the name implies, the mist is covering the surrounding hills and is quite a view for breakfast. By about 10:30/11 everyday the mist clears and the whole place is surrounded by rolling green hills and farmland covering the valley. One of those places you know you must return to…and in fact, we decided to make a quick stop there before going to India.

Although we missed all of you over Christmas, if one must be away it was a great place to be. jay made us a traditional thai bbq chicken dinner. he set a chicken upright on a glass bottle filled with oils and spices and we’re not sure what else and he covered it with a tin box then built a bonfire over the whole thing and we all sat around the bonfire while our dinner cooked. after a few hours it was black and crispy and delicious (probably one of our last non-vegetarian meals, come to think of it, and really one of the few times we’ve eaten meat since we’ve been over here)

john on his bike

john ran the open mic at walkin and boasted permanant residence at misty view. he decided to leave everything he knew behind in england and move to pai to live out his days. he did what so many people dream they could do when they come to pai. You can tell by the smile on his face that he doesn’t regret it for a second, and we’re glad we know he’ll be there everytime we go back.

emily on a bike

road in pai

Leaving Pai was very hard and the only place that was equally so was Ko Chang….some of you might be a bit confused by that…as we’ve only really written about three places, but we’ve actually gone through all of Laos already and are about to go to Vietnam, but damn it we just haven’t gotten to writing it all yet. So we know what we’re talking about.

Chiang Mai

A cool city but definitly anti-climactic after pai, not to mention we got stuck there for a few too many days. we stayed at a pretty cool place (where we made our first real thai friend, tom), met some cool people and there were some beautiful wats and some nightlife, and we spent new years there-with ben and kate (friends from home), who it was great to see, but there’s not much else we can say-oh, there was an amazing woman, june, who made papaya salads outside our guesthouse and she was quite a trip-we spent hours talking with her. anyway, not much else to say,and we’re getting hungry- the pictures will speak for themselves.

us, gio, steve and dave, at a thai club

river at night, chiang mai

our cooking class field trip to the market

monks outside wat ram pong, little did we know…this is the site of our meditation retreat where we came to be enlightened…and that worked out well.

ben in a sangthaew

live music, chiang mai

Thai FASTfood—what more could you ask for, i mean really?

when you’re desperate to get your point across…(is it obvious we miss red wine?-shocking we know)
gio, you’re a gifted artist

praying in chiang mai

We finally stopped climbing all over the big Buddhas in all of the wats after we saw this sign. Really, what were we thinking?

wat

us in a tuk tuk

steps of doi sutep—a very holy wat in Thailand that we’re not going to write about because we don’t feel like it. Hope you like the pictures.

happy new year, our first new years kiss, midnight

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