Similan Islands Diving

Instead of doing day trips off of Phuket we decided to shell a bit more money (with more dives) for the 2 day live aboard to the Similan Islands. This national park was established in 1982. This group of 9 plus islands is situated 40kms off of the coast north of Phuket.


We finally found a use for Kari's new expensive leg brace, as she hasn't been wearing it that much on dry land.




Cuttle Fish

Cuttle Fish & Jason

Famous Disney personality


There was a plankton bloom with the full moon the night before our first day and although it reduced visibility it did allow us to see 3 Manta Rays, 2-3 meters across.

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya (76kms north of Bangkok) was the capital of Thailand for 416 years, from 1351 until the Burmese sacked it in 1767. Today the small city still resides amongst the ruins of the great former capital. It was very hot in the middle of April supposed to be 100 degrees F. It was probably our longest hottest day yet.

Elephant Nature Park

We spent 3 days at the Elephant Nature Park
http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/
Lek, the founder works to rescue sick, old, and young elephants from trekking, illegal logging, or street begging jobs around Thailand and brings them to her park north of Chiang Mai. These elephants are often overworked and undernourished. One of the elephants at the park had stepped on a landmine at a logging operation on the Burma boarder, another was given speed in order to work both tourist trekking and a logging jobs concurrently, and some were just abused for years. By tying blessed monks robes around trees in the local area around the park Lek helps to preserve natural forest area for the elephants and other wildlife.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

We cheated, instead of spending two days on the slow boat along the Mekong and one day on the bus, we flew for an hour and landed in Chiang Mai. It is one of the most popular places in Thailand to celebrate Songkran. The most popular activity it seems is to find 5 to 10 of your friends, a truck, and a large barrel of water. The group of you then drive around the city for three days throwing water on people on the street or other trucks of like minded people. This activity continues from 9am to 7pm on the streets and sidewalks, and no one escapes the water (some of it iced).

Like always we didn't have a reservation for a place to stay in Chiang Mai, we were fortunate that an exchange student, who spent a year in Estes Park, was able to host us during our stay. Thanks Bell!! When you come back to the US we will do some snowboarding together.
We though we found a scene straight out of a National G magazine when we stumbled upon the traditional flying paper lanterns being launched from a wat one evening in the old city.
We had seen courts and games of Kataw being played in the back yards in Laos, but we were fortunate to see the regional championship of Takraw. This game is played on a court about the size of a badminton court, with 3 players per team. The rules are similar to volleyball but only with the feet and head, like soccer. The ball is traditionally woven wicker but today professional balls are made from plastic, about the size of a #5 soccer ball, or a large grapefruit. The service and spiking portion of the game is part contortionist and part gymnastics at lightening speed.
Sunset

Luang Prabang: Wats, Smoke, & Water

Luang Prabang was the former capital of the Laos Kingdom until the 1970's. In 1995 it was designated as an UNESCO World Heritage town. The lack of economic growth between the 70's and 90's due to the war and socialist government has helped to maintain this city as a unique mix of traditional Lao and 1920's French architecture. Luang Prabang sits approximately 4/5ths of the way up the Mekong, which snakes it's way from the Himalayas to its Vietnam delta. According to the Lonely Planet in French colonial times it would take longer to travel the journey up the Mekong to Luang Prabang than it would to take the steamer from France to Vietnam.
For this relatively small city Luang Prabang has over 300 Wats, some of them over 500years old.

When were there it was stiflingly hot (90+/- degrees & 90% humidity) and it was also the middle of the burning season. We were showered in the afternoons with ash from the nearby forests that were being burned in order that the local villagers could claim the area as their agricultural land. So we went to the waterfall to swim and cool off.

The other prominent form of heat relief came from the New Years Festival Tradition (Songkran.) This festival traditionally is a time of cleansing for home and person. The ritual pouring of water upon elders and friends has turned into a 5 day water fight in many areas of Laos and Thailand. But as this is one of the hottest times of the year it is a welcome event. (Except when the other foreign tourists forget etiquette and turn it into a time to throw water in the face/ears)

Vang Vieng (Friends on 10 TV's at once)

This town is a backpackers episode of the Twilight Zone. Because Vang Vieng has a great river for tubing, as well as some climbing and caving, it has become very popular on the SE Asia backpacker circuit. So popular is it now that it seems backpackers support 75% of this small town's economy. The town is now loaded with guest houses and TV bars. We didn't really believe it when Lonely Planet said you could find 5 different bars each playing a DVD from one of the many seasons of "Friends." We found 6 bars playing Friends and one that alternated between The Family Guy and The Simpsons, through all open hours. In each location there were at least 4 large TV's so that one's view is not obstucted. The seating consisted of raised platforms with cushion recliners, with tables for drinks (of course), to give that living room feel. If this wasn't enough the tubing business is so organized that the companies in town alternate days on the river providing tubes and taxi service. The river came complete with numerous bars along the banks at which one could stop to listen to your preferred music style, drink beer or other alcohol, and partake in the semi-safe zip lines and rope swings. All in all not a bad place to relax, but defiantly surreal.

Creature Comforts

Vientiane the more recent capital of Laos sits mid way up the western boarder of Thailand and Laos. This cosy cosmopolitan city is filled with embassies, NGO's, expats, and their food, wine, and coffee. Upon arrival at 6:00am we stumbled into the Laos version of Starbucks, JoMa. Were you can get you $3 watered down mochas and cappuccinos, instead of a traditional Laos coffee for 50 cents to a dollar. We were able to enjoy an authentic French dinner for 2 for under $20, a person couldn't do that in France or the US. While atop the Laos version of the Arc de Triomphe we spotted a set of water slides, after searching the city we found them, with another JoMa, but they were not going to open for another week. Fortunately we had spotted a swimming pool at a former soviet era hotel/spa that we were able to use 'gratis' which kept both of us from heat exhaustion. It has been hot!!!
Oh and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting another beautiful wat.

Laos-The most heavily bombed country in the World

Who knew?
http://www.mag.org.uk/page.php?s=4&p=684
The Geneva Conference 1954 declared Laos as a neutral country and that no outside forces should be acting there. Even so northern Vietnamese forces were remained present supporting the Pathet Lao and keeping their supply lines open to the south. This was enough validation for the US as they had not even signed the accord, to start training Laos troops and pilots and intensively bombing areas under PL control. Laos also became the dumping grounds for munitions in planes returning from bombing missions in Vietnam. Over a 10 year period 2 million tons of bombs were indiscriminately dropped on Laos. Many were cluster bombs, of which an estimated 10% to 30% did not detonate upon impact. Check out the link below for a movie about the current situation on the ground with all of this unexploded ordinance.
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/bombie.html


On a lighter note, don't walk off of the Mine Action Group cleared walking paths while visiting the Plain of Jars. These sites contain thousands of stone carved jars some as large as 6 tons. The locals believe that they are rice whiskey making jars from a party after a military victory, while the archaeologist hypothesize they were burial containers. Both theories date the containers from 2000-1500 years ago.


Title of Photo: Tread Lightly Laos Style
Although we were just outside of the largest town in the province, where people have been farming continuously for the past 30 years, one must still tread lightly due to the treat of discovering live ordinance. We were just taking a short cut through some rice patties and the walking paths were the closest thing available to single track in the entire country. But once they clear the entire country there will be some nice mountain biking, I give it a hundred plus years.

Pathet Laos Secret War Capital

The first town we arrived at in Laos is one of the most remote locations that tourists visit. It is close to the Vietnam boarder and far from most other tourist sites, yet it is being actively developed by the Laos tourism board due to its political and nostalgic significance to the government. This town and the limestone caves surrounding it were the homes of the Pathet Laos during the "Secret War" of 1964 to 1975. In the next blog we talk a bit more about the bombs left here. But after the French pull out of forces in the 60's, a civil war broke out between the northern Vietnamese backed Pathet Laos and the US backed government in Vientiane. This northern city of Vaing Xei became the capital for the PL leaders. They expanded existing limestone caves up to 140 meters in the hillside to create safe shelter for the government bodies and families during the bombing raids of the American supplied planes. Other caves in the area were used as hospitals, schools, factories and locations for anti-aircraft installations. At the end of the war many of the leaders built new homes in front of their old caves.

To Laos through the back door

This was one of the most interesting "travel" days so far. After spending much time trying to find traditional housing and people we saw more on this one day than we have in the last two weeks. We unsuccessfully tried to get information on Nameo, a relatively obscure boarder crossing, a week before. We got our visas ahead of time in Hanoi, as they are not available at this boarder.
The day started at 4:00, with a quick packing session so that we could make it to our 5:30 bus. Once we were on the local materials and supply bus, all the rice was loaded down the center aisle, then the bus ticket taker quoted us the price of $35 each for our ride. We recognized this as the "market" economic system at work. We were western tourists, he wanted to charge us 5 times the normal rate and if we wanted to get to the boarder that day we needed to come to an agreement upon value. By the way the next boarder crossing would have taken us at least another day to get to, and put us in the wrong area of Laos. After threatening to get off, and some minor theatrics on both sides we agreed upon $30 each to get us to the boarder. The bus took off around 6:15, stopped in the next town around 8:00. Then it continued to wind it's way up the hill through some very picturesque country side, past your typical rice fields and your not so typical traditional wooden or bamboo homes. (See picture of boys above) After numerous stops to offload good and some live stock we made it to a small town 60k from the boarder. At this point we were the only two passengers left on the bus and the driver said that they were stopping for lunch, and asked if we would like to join them. When we said that we had food with us, the subject turned to our continued travel to the boarder. Since the bus did "need" to continue to travel the next windy 60k, we were offered a complementary motorbike ride to take us "close" to the boarder. We had to ask how close? He said 10 meters. We agreed, the scooters arrived, Kari tied her helmet on, but at least she had one, and we were off. The scooter drivers picked nice clean lines up the paved but bumpy and sandy road, and within 1.5 hours we were standing at the empty Vietnamese boarder crossing looking for someone who might want to check our passports.
After lunch was over the workers filed back in, it seems like we were the only westerners who had been at this crossing in 8 days... at least that is how many clicks on the date stamp it took before he could stamp our passports. Then after a short walk up the hill we were going through the Laos entry point. The immigration officers were nice enough to let us know that the bus had gone for the day. Hummm...
We hung out at the boarder for an hour and saw no traffic going west except the truck that was hauling bags of concrete that was waiting in customs. We were able to hitch a ride in the back on top of the concrete, so we had a great view of the hills above and the valleys below. After around an hour we stopped, which was good as Kari had to pee, and 20 Laos proceeded to move all 500 bags of concrete from the back of our truck to the back of a flatbed truck that was waiting. For an hour we sat on a grass mat with our driver and other hitch hikers chewing on sugar cane that was kindly offered by our driver. Then we hopped back in the truck for another 2 hours while the sun set on the very traditional villages we passed. You should have seen the surprised looks on the locals faces, it is not often they see Caucasians trafficked in from Vietnam in the back of trucks. The driver dropped us at a fork in the road and pointed to the left for a place to sleep. The driver wouldn't accept the money we offered to him, and we were off to walk in the dark down the road to find our awaiting guest house. Final arrival at guest house approx 9:00pm.

Halong Bay in the rain

Surprisingly as good as the pictures. It is much like what you see in the post cards, it is impressive to sleep in a quite bay surrounded by enormous limestone rock formations, even if there are at least 30 other large junks (boats) around you.
But don't worry even out 5 miles from the dock you can still get your Oreos.

Hanoi

The charming part of Hanoi consists of old men in berets sitting by the lake and all facets of the population out exercising in the morning or early evening. Oh and there was the corner in backpacker alley, where each of the 4 corner shops had a keg of beer where you could sit down of their plastic stools and have a drink for 3,000 dong. (the exchange rate is 16,109 dong/$1)
But after travelling over much of Vietnam looking for information and examples of Vietnamese "Ethnic" Minorities we found the Ethnology Museum in Hanoi to be very educational and complete. Little did we know at the onset of this trip that along Vietnam's boarders live over 40 different distinct populations. Some of these peoples have migrated to Vietnam within the past 200-400 years from China, Tibet, Laos, etc. The museum included demonstration homes built by villagers brought to Hanoi for construction over the past 20 years, as well as photos, costumes, and artifacts all with through descriptions.

Vietnam's first national park

Even though Uncle Ho was busy with that little american problem, he had time in 1962to establish Cuc Phuong National Park about 60km south of Hanoi. Vietnam's current demand for lumber and other building materials is pushing quarying and harvesting right up to the park boarders. The park contains pristine old growth tropical forest, limestone cliffs and caves, and only one access road. Just outside the park is the Cuc Phuong Endangered Primate Conservation Center http://www.primatecenter.org/center.htm , which contains 140 primates of 15 different species, some of which were rescued from markets or pet stores. Even today the boarders of Cuc Phuong are being crossed by local villagers for subsistance needs like food and firewood, while the wild life is threatened by poachers.