Laos

hello from Laos,
we are here for the last 5 days and must say Laos is fantastic! We arrived across the border from Thailand at Huay Xai to take the slow boat to Luang Prabang down the Mekong River, slow being the word alright, it takes 14 hours!!! But it does stop for a night halfway. The guidebooks all say - don't get on if the boat is overpacked etc, so when we arrived with the 30 or so other people who were staying in our guesthouse to see a nearly full boat, the last one to leave that day, we had a stand off, with all of us on the shore looking for a new boat to be put on. Half hour later and no movement from the increasingly irate driver and someone broke ranks and went on. turns out there was enough seats, but we suspect locals were 'moved' to the back of the boat to make room. Brian & I were last on and thought we'd be standing but luckily got the best seats in the house!! On the luggage. Brian has a photo of this and i'll get him to put it up soon.
locals on the slow boat wondering what all the fuss was about while the standoff was on.

Not much to do on the slow boat but read, watch the world go by and chat to the other people around. another slow boat goes by
Both days the slowboat had to make unscheduled stops to ease the thirst of the boats passengers - see photo!!


Now we are in Luang Prabang, it used to be the capital of Laos and has a great laidback vibe and lovely coffee shops with good coffee and baguettes (french legacy) which makes a nice change to rice!! We went on a 2 day trek and kayaking to the Hmong tribal villages in the mountains for the last 2 days with Lucas from Switzerland and Mark from Sydney and our two local guides Chou and Guy who are brill craic. Met loads of really friendly villagers, especially the kids, and stayed the night in a village chief's house. Great night sleep here after the tough trek but woken but cockcrow, kellogs cornflakes have a lot to answer for, cockcrow doesnt start at dawn, more like 4am!!!!

The chief had been out hunting the night we were there and we were offered jungle rat stew as part of our breakfast, yuck!!!! Brian tried it and I declined, I'll let him describe the taste in his next post!

A nice stroll down the mountain to the river where we went kayaking finished up the day, we kayaked over some whitewater rapids and all of our kayaks ended up upsidedown. Two old ladies in their 70s kept us with us on the walk while carrying a sack of rice each on their heads - amazing!!

who needs bridges!!local kid at work

The Pied Piper of Laos
Brian showing kids photos he took

farming Laos style

A makeshift dam that powers one house on a village we visited





Kids at their front door, the mobile is for catching bad spirits, like a dreamcatcher. Interesting because the Hmong tribe have travelled to Laos from North America - Alaska - Mongolia - China to Laos.
lady at work in local costume

kids grinding corn - and having a great time doing it!


so Brian gives it a go in the next village.


Brian having a game of Rattan (like volleyball but you can only use the head and feet to get the ball over the net) while a local lady looks on.

Brian is gone mountain biking today and I chose to do some shopping (browsing) and pampering - an hour massage plus pedicure for 6 euro, I know the girls reading this are envious :)
Chat soon, hope you all are well, Jeanette

There's a rat in the kitchen, what am I gonna do?

Heh,

Back on the main land again. After Ko Mook (last post) we headed north again to Railay (or more specifically Tonsai beach).

Jeanette says 'hi' from Railay West

Railay is rock climbing central in Thailand so we had to give this a go. As you can see Bob Marley was drafted in to belay Jeanette.
Jeanette v the wall

We met up with Eimear O'Malley and her cousin Helen in Tonsai for a few days. We booked into some lovely!! bungalows until we found that we had some intruders(rats!!!). One of them took a liking to Jeanettes vitamin C container and ate the top clean off (unfortunately no photos). So we upped and left the next day and headed to another resort. And here we were paid another visit by the first cousins from the first accommodation. Not good. To distract ourselves from the rats we headed off on a couple of day trips to the surrounding islands. The following day we headed off on a kayaking trip to Ao Thalane to visit the mangrove forests (forests that grow on sand and feed off the salt water. It was pretty spectacular. After the mangroves it was on to Hong island.

Even with our rodent experience we all had a great time!!

After saying goodbye to the two girls it was onto Bangkok via the night train. Bangkok was a fly by visit, we got to see the grand palace, the emerald buddha, and Wat Pho - the thai massage school. Having spent only a few hours we flew onto Chang Mai.

In Chang Mai we met up with a friend of mine from home, Paddy Fahey and his girlfriend Lindsey. The following morning we joined a 2 day trek to visit the hill tribes in northern Thailand. Unfortunately Jeanette wasn't feeling the best so had to give it a miss.

The trek for me was one of the highlights of the holiday so far - its was great when you have walked for a couple of hours in the blistering heat to be able to jump in under a waterfall to cool off. Much of the trek was spend walking through rice paddy fields and watching the local people at work in the fields still using traditional methods to cultivate their crops. After a climbing to a height of about 1,500 metres, our guides asked us to join in a soccer match with some of the local villagers. It was the last thing we wanted after trekking 4 hours but turned out to be great craic. The mud pitch (with spectator stand!!!) was dug out from the side of a mountain and every time the ball went out of play 'mountain resuce' had to be called to retrieve the ball. It was great for the unfit (me!) for catching a breather.

Afterwards it was back to our lodgings to enjoy some local thai food, singing, dancing, rice whiskey and plenty of card games.

No real story to the next picture except that we had to get our picture taken with a Tuk Tuk driver so here it is. Tuk Tuk's for those who don't know are like taxi's except you get a free ticket to the Merries at the same time. Some experience!

Mr. Tuk Tuk, Me, Paddy

Off to do a thai cookery course tomorrow in Chang Mai. Looking forward to seeing Ireland playing Scotland aswell in O'Malleys Irish bar. Then its off to Lao for the next week or two. Talk soon,

Brian

PS. Jeanettes phone is working again

The Islands of Thailand Update

Hello, both of us here writing this post -alls well here :)
So, we had planned to come to Thailand for a week or so and now its week 3 in Thailand!! We were well warned before we left that Thailand would be fab but didn't think we'd get this sucked in.

The last post was a quick overview, we were in Ko Lipe for 3 nights, the most southerly island in Thailand. Took the culturally scenic route to here via the 'dont go there zone' according to the government websites but sure 'twas grand, although it was hard to find a public bin, something about them expoding according to a vendor. We didn't see any other tourists there and the bus conductor (on a psycadellic bus) thanked us for visiting this section of the country, the reason why became obvious a few days later but after a noisy overnight train we were oblivious!!



Ko Lipe - view from our accomodation

Ko Lipe is lovely, really laid back vibe. Nice beaches, 6 euro hour long thai massages, nice food, we didn't do much on Lipe to tell the truth but relaxed after the hectic first few weeks in Malaysia. The most activity was when a longtail boat sank when the boatman was loading bricks into it!!


Then onto Bulone Lae island for 4 nights which was really really quiet, we were amongst about 50 other tourists, as you can see from the police station photo, not much happens here. We kayaked around the island, went for walks, swims, massages, read books on the balcony of our hut, etc. You get the drift!!

\Decided to move to a livelier spot - Ko Mook (Ko means island in Thai) which was gorgeous. It wasn't as busy as Lipe and more busy than Bulone so a good balance. Met some great people here who we celebrated Chinese New Year in fancy dress with in Mookies bar.



Chinese New Year with Paul, Susie, Jim and Brian the barman (aka Mr. Wong)




The main highlight at Mook is the Emerald Cave, a beach within a cliff that is accessed by swimming through a 80m cave - in parts in the pitch dark. We went with Paul and Susie (pirate and cowgirl in photos!!) before the crowds arrived one morning and it was fab. Thought our guide Yong was joking about swimming in with the seasnakes, turns out he wasn't!! but they aren't big enough to bite us - thank god!! The cave is fab, has a beach, trees etc and was where locals hid during WW2 and pirates hid loot in the good auld days of pirating.



Also went snorkelling on Ko Kradan that day, beautiful spot, where they have an underwater wedding ceremony every Valentines day with pink oxygen tanks etc. Unfortunately we heard about a young groom who took off his mask to kiss his bride and didn't survive a few years ago.


Ko Mook sunsets

Spent a week on Ko Mook and now are on the mainland in Krabi where we are planning our next few days with Eimear and Helen who arrive tomorrow.

Keep up the emails - its great to hear news from home (even if its about Ireland loosing in the rugby!!)

ps. My phone drowned in the Andaman Sea so didn't work for a week, it seems to like the mainland and is back working so if anyone sent me a text last week that i didn't reply to - sorry but i never got it, its with the fishes!!! J