On the Road

When travelling through Thailand, Laos and now Cambodia, we've established a love/hate relationship with public transportation. Travelling in various levels of comfort - from open-air bouncing on your seat tuk-tuks, 2 days packed on a boat on the Mekong River to sharing a local bus with enough material on the roof to build a whole house (and make it move by itself) and enough rice bags on the floor to feed a whole village - is definitely the authentic way to see Asia. All you can do is just do what the locals do: squat pee in the bushes by lack of countryside toilets, "enjoy" local ballads blaring out of the speakers at 6 in the morning (thank God for ipods!), and accept that full never means full, 3 hour breaks in the middle of the night are totally fine, it is either too hot or way too cold, nobody speaks English, and you won't ever arrive at your destination within 2 hours of the said time.
But what you get to see in return is priceless! Glued onto the window, everything you won't get to see in a tourist destination comes gliding by. Village life that has only just got to the electricity and TV era and where the women wash themselves, their clothes and food in the local well or river, children biking to school in their uniforms or playing the most fun games with whatever they can find and always stopping to wave and smile, old ladies hanging at the porch and chewing leafs and the men working in the fields and rivers. We've seen houses made from no more than bamboo, straw and wood to two story stone palaces with huge satellites, millions of motorbikes, dogs, cows and roadside shops selling everything from gasoline in whiskey bottles to coffins. And not to mention the most enhancing scenery!

Northern Thailand

                         

Since the last time I wrote one month ago we've travelled to the north of Thailand and through the floods of Bangkok to get there. The centre was at the time spared from most of the drama and we got to wander the infamous Koh San Road at 6AM. Even at that hour is was an interesting sight: orange-clad monks going around for their alms, next to drunk English boys nursing their last beer and garbage men cleaning up last night's mess. We didn't feel like we were missing out by not staying. Instead, we went north to the town of Kanchanaburi. Next to the river Kwai, with lots of green and rolling hills on the horizon, we finally made it out of the mass-tourist destinations and into Thailand! At the night market, I was actually being started at! The highlight of our stay was a full day tour that took us to the areas sights including the best natural waterpark you can imagine: 7 levels of waterfalls - one more amazing than the other - rolling down the hill in which you can swim, climb under and slide off! But even better was the ride we got to make on an elephant! Instead of sitting on the bench, we actually got to sit on the neck of the elephant and to feel its muscles move under you and have its ears flap against your legs is so amazing! After the ride, we undressed and went into the river to bath with another elephant! Or more, to be bathed by the elephant as it totally soaked us with water spraying from its trunk! So much fun and truly unforgettable!

Due to the floods in the middle of Thailand, we had to travel via Bangkok to get further north. And instead of improving - as we'd hoped - the situation had only worsened and we had to drive through flooded streets and deal with hour long traffic jams getting in and out of the city. It was heartbreaking to see the kilometres of streets, buildings and houses under water and people paddling on little rubberboats with nowhere else to go... But the Thai are strong people and even in situations like these they smile and invent ways to make the best of it - like using all the higher-up roads as parking lots and building bicycles with double frames to stay high and dry.
So at last we made it to Thailand's most colourful and charming city, Chang Mai! Full with monks, beautiful Wats (temple complexes), small back streets, cute cafes, tasteful restaurants and lots of green. During the days we explored the small streets and numerous Wats with lots of colourful paintings, Buddhas, wishing bowls, praying incense, and friendly monks. And during the evenings there were various markets with heaps of local crafts and food to be strolled on! One day we made a motorbike trip up the windy roads to visit the most serene and beautiful temple on top of the hill and further onto a small village in the middle of the jungle where they grow coffee and bananas. We finally had a case of good timing when our stay coincided with the Yeepang Festival celebrating the light and the letting go of your troubles. The streets and Wats were full with colourful lanterns and candles and the rivers overflowing with Kratons - flower decorated 'boats' with lit candles. But best of all where the lit up papers lanterns filling the skies above Chang Mai! It was a very magical experience to light some of those up ourselves :).

Laos

                           

From the busy festival town we drove up north and crossed the Mekong river into a quiet border town in Laos, to jump on the slowboat for a 2 day river trip. Due to all the bad stories we had heard about the comfort levels, we were happily surprised when we got a comfy seat for the whole ride. Yay for low season! There were some other less fortunate people who came late and had to share the the front with an ever increasing group of local people and their luggage. The boat was indeed very slow and we had plenty of time to observe local life at the Mekong before being absorbed into the town life of Luang Prahbang. By far the most pretty town in whole South East Asia with its gorgeous colonial French buildings with wooden shutters, painted walls and exotic gardens. The French have left a long time ago but their culture is still very much alive in the wine bars, boulangeries, language and cultural centres. Tom has already decided he wants to go back one day and be inspired by it all to write and sip coffee and eat croissants in the Parisian-style cafes with Lao prices and temperatures. I think I'll join! Only the amazing $1 vegetarian all-you-can-stuff-on-your-plate buffet on the market is enough reason for me to come back! After one of our days wandering around town, we heard chanting coming out of one of the Wats and we got invited by a monk to come inside and listen. So there we were, sitting on the floor and being hypnotized by the voices of a group of novice monks. Such an amazing place!

From Luang Prahbang we took one of those very authentic, very bumpy and very cozy (squeezed in between locals and tourists) rides up north to the small river village of Nong Kiew. In our idyllic bungalow above the river we slowed our pace and started falling in love with rural Laos, which only got increased by a hike trough the fields during the grain harvest. All the local people we passed were so friendly and greeted us with a welcome "sawadee!". So it was quite a shock when we arrived in the party town of Vang Vieng and were instead greeted by drunk neon-wearing tourists who come there to tube down the river and let loose. But we survived the madness and actually had quite a lot of fun! To avoid all the douchebagery, we went tubing in the morning and happened to be on the same tuk tuk as the French couple we met in Malaysia. So we ended up going down the river with a bunch of Frenchies and we got to enjoy the free shots, loud music, rope swings, slides and beer and the most beautiful limestone cliffs surrounding the river all by ourselves! The very next morning we took off to kayak down the river towards the capital Vientiane, with a bunch of white water rapids and a BBQ on the rocks. The kayaking was lots more fun than the city itself, which was kind of an unorganised collection of monuments and restaurants. But we did get the see the very informative centre for people with missing limps - mainly caused by the millions of unexplored bombs that are still lying around Laos countryside. It is so terrible that after all those years still so many people suffer from this and those that caused it all do not seem to be of much help to clean up their mess...
After a day of walking around we decided we wanted to go back to the countryside and took the bus to remote Kong Lo. The main reason was to see the 7,5 metre long carved out river that goes all through a hill, forming an amazing cave with pitch black 'rooms' and stalagmites and stalactites dangling from the ceiling! So far, we always ended up staying in tourist zones simply because that is where the guesthouses are. So when we (and 3 others) ended up sharing food, Lao Lao (very strong local rice liquor) and laughs with the owners and friends on the floor of our guesthouse, it was a very simple yet very fulfilling experience. Small things like that made our stay in Laos more memorable than that in the other countries we've visited so far. And I very much hope that the increasing influx of tourists into the country will not spoil that in the future!

While hobbling in old-age busses down even more old-age roads, we briefly visited some more rarely visited towns on the way to our last destination in the far south of Laos, the 4000 islands. Located in the middle of the muddy Mekong, the islands are not really tropical but very pretty nonetheless. The perfect antidote to the craziness of Lao bus travelling is reading in the hammock on the riverside balcony, biking through farmer villages and admiring rocky waterfalls. The slow pace gives you enough time to catch the children frolicking in the river, the buffaloes enjoying their mud baths, the men drinking their beers and the women gossiping.
I think/hope we're now ready for chaos that is Cambodia!