The land border between Laos and Cambodia is just a dusty little town filled with dollar noodles and stalls selling batteries and flip flops. Yet just beyond in each country are two little gems worth a day or two stop whilst traveling overland. Southern Laos possesses the 4,000 islands, also known as Siphandon. A riverine archipelago in the Mekong, most of the islands were submerged due to heavy rains. Yet the three largest and only inhabited islands remained, all encircled by cheap waterside bungalows adorned with hammocks. A good book and a fruit shake were the order of the day, a welcome retreat from weeks of daily activity.
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A Short Loop Around the Bolaven Plateau
If there’s any one place that can reflect the experience of the Lao people and their land, it’s the Bolaven Plateau — a beautiful place marked by a tragic past and facing a challenging future. The Bolaven Plateau is an elevated region in Southern Laos named after the Laven ethnic group that historically dominated the land. During the French occupation it was deemed fitting land for growing coffee, a crop they still grow today. In 1901, the ethnic groups that populate the Plateau heavily revolted against the French occupation. But it was the Vietnam War that earned the region most of its scars.
Vientiane: Moving at the Speed of Laos
The world is changing fast, especially in Asia. Yet Laos seems resistant to the pressures of modernization and globalization; its capitol city Vientiane as evidence. There are no high-rises or mega malls, and few if any movie theaters (that I noticed). Entertainment is mostly limited to karaoke bars and bowling lanes and the city has a curfew of 11:00pm. Lao women working or entering government buildings are required to wear a traditional sarong and most ride on the back of motorbikes side-saddle. It’s a quiet city in which you can wander into the courtyard of a nearby Wat and hear little more than the sounds of monks shuffling by.
I did not go tubing in Vang Vieng
Wherever we’ve gone, we’ve seen young European travelers wearing the same t-shirt emblazoned with the words: “Tubing in the Vang Vieng,” an activity travelers through Southeast Asia have deemed a right of passage. But floating down a river among drunk backpackers and stopping at riverside bars was not a passage I was interested in taking and so we had planned to skip Vang Vieng altogether. I’m glad we decided not to.
Luang Prabang: Traveling Back in Time
Strolling through the sleepy streets of Luang Prabang, Laos is like being transported in time. For me, I was living in the 1942 classic movie Casablanca, wandering through colonial hotels and bars replete with wooden shuttered windows and courtyards filled with lush green palm trees and exotic plants. Ben felt as if he was in old Havana, Cuba with the dated cars, dilapidated sidewalks and children riding on rusty bicycles. With a world moving so fast, it is incredibly invigorating to be in place so firmly planted in the best of times. Luang Prabang has naturally attracted tourists but its UNESCO world heritage status has prevented the crumminess that tourism has brought to other Asian cities. All store signs are carved in wood and the narrow streets make passage by tourist bus impossible.
Elephant Ride to the Hills of Chiang Dao.
I rode an elephant once in my life as a child at a carnival in my hometown. He was chained and led to walk in a circle. I was at the back of the line of children riding the butt, which was so wide my legs shot straight out in each direction. The experience wasn’t especially memorable and so when I heard about elephant riding in Thailand, I wasn’t as excited about it as Ben.
Playing Seepak Takraw
There’s something romantic about traveling by motorbike. Perhaps its the open air, the winding and unknown road, or maybe the people you meet along the way. We’d been hesitant to try it because we’ve never driven a motorbike before. But Chiang Dao is a small area with little traffic and most residents drive slowly, conserving petrol by turning off the engine to glide down the hills. So we thought it the perfect place to practice. We rented a shiny red automatic from the neighbor for a total of $200 baht ($7) and set out with a hand drawn map from the Nest. We rode across town up through the jungle-filled mountainside and turned at whatever road seemed most intriguing.
Chiang Dao: Fairytale Thailand
I’ve been dreaming of glistening rice paddies, families packed four to a motorbike, hillside villages overrun with cute children and mist covered mountain tops. They’re the fairy tale images I had of Thailand. And I discovered them all in Chiang Dao, a small town just an hour and half bus ride north of Chiang Mai. So beautiful this place was, we lingered an extra day.
Chiang Mai: Farang City
We spotted them in Bangkok on occasion. Tall, long-limbed and mostly white, they walk around wide-eyed in Nike sneakers and toting Lonely Planet books. One can usually find them at the places their type is told to flock — museums, monuments and temples. Farang is what they are called in Thai. And though we like to think we blend in, we do not. We are one of them. As the bus drew near to the old city of Chiang Mai, we spotted them in herds at burger joints, bars, motorbike rental shops and street side vendors. And so Chiang Mai, our next stop in travel and the second largest city in Thailand, we aptly dubbed Farang City.
Sukhothai by bicycle
We’re officially on Thai time now. Our promised six hour bus ride to Sukhothai took a total of eight hours and included only one stop for the squat toilet. In all that time, the Thai children on the bus not only managed to hold their bladders but sat silently during […]
Bangkok Pt. 2
We apparently didn’t learn our lesson about going out in mid-day heat as we found ourselves wandering through old neighborhoods of Bangkok as the heat spiraled. We managed to find a small local spot for fried spicy crumbled catfish and fried crispy noodles and lots of water to cool off… […]
Steamy Bangkok
It’s hard to sum up Bangkok in one word or even a set of words. Crowded, bustling, overwhelming, disorganized, stinky and hot might help to set the stage. Yet what’s most striking about Bangkok is its extremes. From the rickety open-aired tuk-tuks attempting to weave between lines of traffic to […]