The journey up to Chiang Mai (the second largest city in Thailand) was either 10 hours by bus or 14 by train. Obviously it sounds a little a silly to go for the longer option, but the bus is just seats and for a few more bucks we got air con sleeper cars. Naturally, we went in style by train up to Chiang Mai. Both Will and Karl needed some comfort while suffering from a nasty head cold. Chiang Mai is a really different city from Bangkok. It is much smaller and by comparison much cheaper. The city used to be surrounded by walls and a moat, and to this day there are still portions of the (crumbling) walls and most of the moat around the city.
Chiang Mai is Will’s turf. He has been there many times before on past travels and always adored it, so we were happy to let him lead us to a guesthouse. The streets inside are not exactly a grid, but there are main roads and small roads. The North Eastern corner seems to be the backpacker hangout. The food is good, but mostly international fare, and the accommodation is very reasonable with good rooms for £4 per night. Obviously the city has grown to be bigger than the old square (I say obviously because you could walk from one corner to the opposite one in about 20 minutes.) All of the fancy hotels are outside of the wall, but I think you miss something by not staying in the old part of town. We stayed at Libra Guesthouse on Moon Muang Soi 9. Very sweet and reasonably priced, but the best part was the free wifi; it only worked for parts of the day, but I find that when I have internet at home I use it more frequently in time that I would only use as down time.
Will headed up to Pai and then to Mai Haad Song (sp?). He wanted to check out an orphanage his ex-girlfriend had set up. They are still good friends and he had supported her in that mission and wanted to see it in person. So he left Chiang Mai after a couple of days and we would meet back up either there or in Laos.
There were definitely some pretty cool things to do in Chiang Mai. We organised a cooking course. There are many courses on offer in Chiang Mai but for me Alex and Karl we all wanted to know how to cook these amazing dishes instead of, say, know how to give a Thai massage. So for£36 we spent two days learning how to make 12 dishes, 6 each day. The class consisted of the three of us and a teacher. First she would show us how to make the dish then we would get to make it ourselves on their brand new equipment. If we didn’t finish every dish we made that day (which was not advisable, it was so much food) we even got to take it home with us. We got to take away a cookbook with all the recipes we learned plus a few more. My two favourite dishes were the green curry and banana steam cake. Both I will have to make again. Everything else there was incredible (except the Massaman curry, which was really hard) and would be happy to try to make again.
We also got to do the flight of the Gibbon; a series of ziplines in the tree tops. Alex was all set to come despite his fear of heights, but at the last moment the night before he came down with flu like symptoms. Convenient, no? There were something like 18 platforms, 11 ziplines and three abseils/belays. It took about three hours and I’m glad I did it, but I don’t think I will do it again. The problem is that this one seems the safest because they seem to know what they are doing, they don’t let you hook yourself up but then it takes longer between the ziplines and the ziplines themselves are comparatively short to other similar gibbon experiences. I decided to go ahead without Alex, unlike diving, Alex may never want to do the Gibbon experience again. So Malia, Karl and I went to soar through the trees like monkeys. I did not bring my camera along, but I have attached a picture, compliments of Karl Renner.
We ended up spending a little more time in Chiang Mai than we had planned as we were waiting for Malia’s lost card replacement to be sent to her. After many days of talking and emailing and faxing, communication with a US bank that was only made cheap in the last few years, did a new card finally arrive by DHL. Yay new, cheap communication!
Alex could not find anyone to maintain the dreads he had gotten done on the last day in Bangkok. So short of getting a tool for me to do it for him, which we failed to do, he decided to get them shaved off the day we left Chiang Mai. I love it!
We parted company with Malia in Chiang Mai, it was a little weird and sad, but we’ll see her again somewhere in SE Asia. Malia was going to spend a few more days there then head to Pai. Will wasn’t ready to meet back up with us, so we caught a bus up to Chiang Khong, the border town with Laos. We stayed at a sweet little guesthouse with good food and a fantastic view over the Mekong. We met two sweet women travelling alone but had decided to travel together. Caroline from Paris and Franziska from Berlin. They were going on the slow boat too, so we joined forces the next day. The room was a little worse for the ware and had more than a few bugs in it. I didn’t get the best night’s sleep. The next morning we bought our tickets for the slow boat and crossed the border into Laos. Goodbye Thailand.
We bought some food and some alcohol to while the day away. We were told there would be nothing on the boat, which was of course, not true. We also bought some cushions for 80p as there were thin wooden benches and that’s it. The first day was 7 hours on the boat. The view was unbelievable. It reminded me a lot of the Yangtze river. As the boat was all foreigners it was fun to get to know everyone. Chat above the screaming engine and when you got bored of the person you were talking to or they got bored of you, all you had to do was look up and realise you were in a beautiful unforgettable place. It was truly amazing. We didn’t often get bored of one another, it was more when there was a silence or to point out a massive eddy (it looked like a really dangerous river, I’m glad we were on the slow boat and not the fast boat). We stayed that night in a tiny town whose only purpose was as a stopover for the boats travelling down or up the Mekong.
Pak Beng gave me the creeps. It went past charmless, the town felt ghostlike (with no real reason for existence) and over-inhabited (with all the tourists and locals to take care of those tourists) at the same time. The electricity gets turned off at midnight so the fan, the only thing keeping us from dripping sweat turned off for the rest of the night. When I say dripping, I quite literally mean dripping, even at 4 in the morning. It was hot, but mostly it was the lack of moving air. The next day we boarded a smaller boat than the previous day and yet spend 9 hours on this on (or so they said it would be). We met Joe and Laura a couple from London whom we got on famously with and are still travelling with. They had missed the slow boat the day before because of the world slowest service in a restaurant and had taken the fast boat to Pak Beng.
That evening we arrived in Luang Prabang, the second city of Laos. Officially, it is not the capital, but in terms of charm and draw it wins hands down the title of best city in Laos. It was small enough to walk around the centre of town, it had two rivers bisecting it, the feel was truly French, it had reasonable accommodation, and best of all it had delicious food and wine at reasonable prices. Will managed to meet us there by flying in. He saved the time of the slow boat but also money for flying out of the country and reclaiming the VAT he paid for his computer.
After Luang Prabang we headed through the mountains and into Vang Vieng.
The town used to be unpaved and in the three years between Will’s two visits it had grown quite considerably. It is a strange little town but not creepy in the way Pak Beng was. We stayed over the river which you had to get to via a rickety little bridge. We went tubing and we survived. It is a lot of drinking and very little tubing, which is probably for the best anyway. The amazing thing about this town too was the beautiful backdrop of the mountains there. This is the place that is known as the place to get laid and when I saw tubing I understood why: it is one huge westerner meat market. Pretty crazy. 
Afterwards, bruised and sore, we headed to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. As I’ve said before it is an almost completely uninteresting place in my opinion. But it provided a place for us to get our Vietnamese visas without any difficulty. Will and Karl tried to change their ticket to come with us to Vietnam, but were not able to without spending a lot of money. So we will have to see them in London in a few months. Sad to leave them after 2 months of travelling together, but at least it won’t be too long before we meet up again. It was absolutely amazing making such great friends while travelling. Here’s to you two! See you soon.
We flew from Vientiane to Hanoi to avoid 24 hours straight on a bus (there is no train). We are now here with Joe and Laura and have about 3.5 weeks to make it through Vietnam, Cambodia and back to Bangkok for our flight to Hong Kong on June 17. We can do it!
