Made it to Luang Prabang...barely

Bare with me, this will be a rushed, sporadic post because I just made a quick internet cafe stop with a group of people that we've been traveling with for a few days.

I don't remember where I left off in Pai, but I don't think much else happened save for some good (or so I thought) food and more walks around town with the Poly crew.

We boarded our mini-van to the thai/laos border (I felt more or less fine at the time...slight upset stomach), and it was pouring rain.  It was a pretty nice van (think supershuttle), with about 10 seats and only 6 passengers.  We had to drive pretty slow around the same 5000 curve road that we took to get up to Pai (might have been a different road, just as many curves), and the drive went well for a while until we ran into the first tree that had fallen over in the road, blocking our way.  It was the first, but wouldn't be the last.  We ran into about 5 more, and each time all of the drivers would hop out of the cars to go help the road crew cut the tree to get it out of the road (still pouring rain).  About an hour into the drive I started feeling really sick to my stomach...about two hours in I felt more sick to my stomach...and three hours in I was in pain.  No more detail needed there, but the rest of the drive was miserable. We finally made it to our guesthouse by the border at around 4am, and I was struggling, and had to have some water or I really thought I might pass out--no exaggeration--and that's how I met one of the 3 new people we've been exploring with since, Cameron from nevada/slo (awesome coincidence), who graciously gave me his bottle of water (he later told me he wondered if I was mentally handicapped or something because of how curled up and terrible I looked on the bus--thanks, cameron).

The next morning I woke up feeling a tiny bit better, so we boarded the slow boat with our new crew of cameron, his girlfriend (also from CA), a finnish dude, Oscar, and two Israelis, and were off to luang prabang.  And it was all downhill from there for me...when we finally made it to our halfway point (a tiny village in bumf nowhere, laos, called pakbeng), I was a zombie.  We ended up staying the next day as well instead of taking the slow boat the rest of the way to luang prabang as planned, both because I was in no condition to boat and because the group liked the village we were in.  I can safely say I've never felt so sick/weak/like pakbeng might be my last stop.  The awesome couple that ran our guesthouse ended up taking me to the French doctor in town (it was an NGO run operation--free, and pretty interesting), who gave me a shot and pills and god knows that else...chances I was more than willing to take at that point...and he was overall a really helpful guy.  Special thanks to Emily, Cameron, his girlfriend Linda, and Oscar for taking care of me and not letting me die in the Laotian jungle.

By the night I was coming back to life, and got to enjoy the awesome view of the mekong from our guesthouse for an hour late in the evening--i'll post a picture...While we were sitting out there--around midnight--the power went out in the town (this happened about 10times while we were there), and it was silent and pitch black.  The only light was from the moon and the only noise came from the flowing mekong river, the birds, and the bugs.  It was so surreal--sitting there, just me, a guy from the states, an Israeli I had just met, the mekong river, and the Laotian jungle.  

I'm feeling a hundred times better now, and don't know what exactly was wrong with me, but i had severe acute dehydration, that I know for sure.  Glad I got that probably-gonna-happen-at-least-once-when-you-backpack-SEasia experience out of the way...i hope to never feel that way again.

We boarded the boat to luang prabang from pakbeng a day late, and I got to enjoy the slow boat this time unlike the first leg of the trip, and it was awesome.  The scenery was incredible--jungle everywhere and local villages I couldn't even imagine existed sprinkled along the way.  Near every village there would be a bunch of fishing boats and people fishing--clearly how these people survive.  It was really interesting to see that so many people still survive the way that these people did.  We stopped at a few of the villages and the village kids stared at us white tourists like we were aliens unlike anything they'd ever seen.  We got to Luang Prabang around 630pm, found a cool hostel, and explored the town.

So far, cool town, but definitely not quite what I was expecting.  Last night we all agreed that it felt like a wannabe European cruise stop or something---very touristy, too western, too many restaurants...I don't know, just not the same charm as the places we went in Thailand, even though they were also very touristy.  We did decide to give it a chance today, so we'll go around and explore the temples (of which there are many), and check out the nightlife tonight, and then I'll give a new luang prabang opinion.  All 7 of us are off to Vangvien (the main reason we came to Laos) tomorrow.  Hopefully I'll have more interesting non-illness related things to post next time, and sorry for the all-over-the-place with terrible writing and grammar post.  I'm gonna try to post a few pictures above..sorry, no time for captions.  [Note:  If you didn't already realize this, if you click on a picture you get a much larger version.]  Hope all is well in CA!

Some random pictures from Pai

A few random pictures from Pai...  There are a few more [better pictures] I'll have to post later since this internet connection is really slow and I have to catch a bus

Off to Laos tonight

So I hit a low point on my trip last night...I woke up this morning with a terrible hangover and a giant tattoo across my back.  The worst part is, it's in Thai so I can't even read it.....Just kidding, mom. 

The last two days in Pai have been as relaxing as the first.  The only difference is that it has been hot, hot, hot, and now that Songkran is finally over..man, what I would do for a little thai kid to douse me in an ice cold bucket of water.  The high today is 38 degrees Celsius, or about 100 Fahrenheit, and yesterday was definitely hotter than today. 

The day before yesterday, I wondered around Pai solo looking for a good place to eat and stumbled on a cool looking veggie place (no, I'm not a veggie) with a white guy working the counter (rare).  I decided to check it out, and it turned out to be really, really good (I'll be having lunch there after this post), and the guy that ran it was really interesting.  He was from London, packed his bags and decided to start traveling 6 years ago, and about a year ago stumbled upon Pai and loved it so much that he opened this restaurant and decided to stay a while.  He had great stories to tell, and some detailed advice for the rest of this trip...cool dude for sure.  While eating there, I ran into to Julie, one of the girls from the Poly Thai study program, and ended up wandering the town for a bit before we wound up back at the riverside bar/chill area that we were at the night before.  I had a Leo (I've graduated from chang...it's a bit like the moment when you decide you'll no longer drink keystone light), and we met two [very different] guys from London--one a hippie probably in his late 30's that had been traveling for 6 years, the other an ex-car salesman in his late 20s who is "in between careers" and is traveling for a few months...both were super interesting and were definitely more well-traveled than I, so we hung out for a few hours and listened to their stories.  When the sun went down, I decided it was time to go find emily and the rest of the group...which turned out to be as easy as walking back towards our guesthouse and running into two guys from the thai study program (it's amazing how easy it is to find people in Pai...everywhere you go you see people that you met on the bus, at the bar or restaurant the day before, people in thai study, etc...you can literally say, "let's hang out later, i'll find you in town"...and chances are you'll have no problem meeting up).  We went back to the rest of the group, had a beer at this huge Rasta bar with a bonfire and a ton of outdoor seating, hung out for a while, and called it a night at a reasonable hour.

Yesterday, I woke up with a runny nose/sore throat, which put a damper on the day (feeling better now)...I was originally planning to go check out some waterfalls, but opted to lay by the pool all day, and walk the town for a couple hours in the afternoon.  I finally got some [random] pictures of the town since Songkran is over, so I'll post a few below. The day before we had met a cool lady in her late 30s from Munich staying at our guesthouse, and I ended up grabbing some thai food with her last night.  She'd been traveling for 6months, and was a market research analyst back in germany, so we had plenty to chat about considering she was sort of old (haha, sorry to everyone over 40 reading this).  Unfortunately, I had taken benadryl an hour before, and was literally falling asleep at dinner.  When I got back to the guesthouse around 830, I laid in the hammock planning to take a short nap and then go find emily in town....and then I woke up at 1am.  Called it a night.

Today I'm feeling better, and am excited for our next adventure.  We've opted to take the slow boat down the Mekong River into Luang Prabang, Lao.  It's a 2day,2night trip, which is longer than just taking the bus but it's the same cost and I think it'll be really cool (google image: laos slow boat).  We leave at 8pm tonight on a bus to the thai/laos border, hop on a boat tomorrow morning, and unless our boat sinks, we'll arrive in Luang Prabang on the evening of the 19th. 

That's all for now.  Unfortunately I just realized I left my sdcard-->USB converter back at the guesthouse, so pictures will have to wait...Hopefully later today. 

Pai = Paradise

I'm sitting here posting from an internet cafe in Pai, soaked, of course.  I've officially been dripping wet for 90% each day the past 4 days, and I must admit, it's getting old.  Day 1 was funny and entertaining, Day 2 was wild and unlike anything I've ever seen---imagine an entire city in the US getting all day off work to have water fights all day...wait, a day off work? in America? Day 3 started to get annoying, but was still fun at times.  Day 4 of this festival is finally just annoying.  You can't walk 100 yards without getting soaked! Anyways, that's my rant for the day, and I suppose it's a good thing that my only real complaint of this week is being persistently wet from an amazing thai tradition. 

Yesterday we woke up early, packed up at Julie's hostel (which I highly recommend if you're ever in Chiang Mai), said bye to Cael and Andy, guys from Canada and England that we had been hanging out with quite a bit, and then were off to the bus station.  We boarded our bus (ok, maybe a bus isn't the right term) at around 12:30 for a ride to Pai that would take an undisclosed amount of time.  I wish my vocabulary was sufficient to describe this bus, but words just can't explain.  The seats were about 12inches apart--no, I'm not exaggerating--such that I literally could not sit in my seat and put my feet in front of me--they had to rest in the isle the entire ride.  There were fans similar to the free-standing kind you would have in your college dorm bolted to the ceiling, and all luggage was tossed in this open area in the very back of the bus, which doubled for a place for people to sit since the bus was overbooked by about 150%.  Shifting gears was a trip, as the bus would roar and sound as if it was about to blow up or at least break down with every shift.  We stopped at about 10 bus stations along the way to pick up more people--uhh, more people? Every seat was already full and there was already 3 guys laying on the luggage in the back. Yes, more people.  There were about 60 people on this bus with 40 seats...they just stood in the isle or sat wherever there was open space on the floor.  Oh, and the ride to Pai in this sweet bus---supposedly, it's the ride with 752 curves or sharp turns (or something like that).  Clearly, whoever did that count was drunk or sleeping--there were at least 2000 sharp turns...enough to make even a non-carsick prone person sick.  The drive, however, was amazing.  We were riding through the jungle straight up a mountain for 3 straight hours, letting out sighs of relief at every curve that didn't throw us off the edge of the cliff.  I wish I would've taken more pictures of the scenery on the way up, but google image the drive to pai and i think you'll get the point--breathtaking, really.  When we finally got within a few miles of Pai, the inevitable happened--the bus broke down.  How this didn't happen sooner was a pure miracle. While we sitting there watching the driver trying to play mechanic, the bus started smoking and made a loud noise and I swear it almost blew up. Everyone standing near the bus jumped backwards and ran up the hill...I jumped forwards and ran into the bus to get out crap out before it caught fire.  Luckily, it was a false alarm, and the bus didn't catch fire.  After about 30minutes of waiting, the driver miraculously got the bus to start again, and we were off to Pai. 

The place we are staying in Pai, Pai Chan cottage, is quite possibly the coolest place I've ever stayed.  There's a swimming pool, incredible mountain views, a HOT shower the sits inside of a real bathroom (not just a showerhead coming out of the wall above the toilet), and we stay in a wooden hut with a straw roof.  I'd like to avoid overusing the term, but really, it's paradise.  Oh, and it's 400baht per night, 200each, which is less than $7.  I'll post a few pictures at the end.

Pai itself is an awesome, small town.  It may be fair to call it the SLO of thailand--it's quite a bit smaller, but the vibe of pai compared to the vibe of chiang mai and bangkok may be comparable to the vibe of slo compared to the vibe of san jose and san francisco.  We got in around 430, and were starving, so we walked down the street (yes, we were soaked within 100yards), and stopped at a cool little restaurant/bar near our guesthouse, and I had some great pangang pork (my second favorite dish here so far).  After dinner, we decided to walk around the town and as we were doing so we saw a couple girls sitting down to eat that we recognized from somewhere else...but couldn't put a finger on it.  Turns out, they were from Cal Poly and we had met them in Chiang Mai when we hung out with the poly kids doing Thai study.  They pointed us to the rest of the crew, and there we were in Pai with 15 other people from Poly--awesome.  We went back to where they were staying, which had a little hut bar right by the river and a cool sitting area situated around a bonfire (google image: riverside bar, pai)...we hung out here the whole night, and I met some cool people both from Poly and thailand.  A few of us hung out with a guy from bangkok, Ton, for quite a while...he taught us some Thai and was great on the guitar.  It was awesome to get to hang out with a local who spoke english and was about our age--I'm finding that my favorite and the most rewarding part of traveling is meeting people from all over the world and hearing their stories.  Anyways, great night over all.  Today I woke up late and hung out by the pool literally all day until now...super relaxing and a great way to avoid Songkran for most of the day.  Can't wait to do some more exploring in this town...it's pretty touristy, but it just has a cool vibe about it and there are tons of interesting cafes, restaurants, and bars, with live music and celebrations everywhere due to songkran.  What a cool place. A few GoPro pictures from the last few days (the s90 has unfortunately been left at home all week courtesy of the Songkran).  Hope all is well in CA. 

Pool on the roof a mall, Chiang Mai

View from top of mall, and an old school court below

Small side street in Pai

River near Pai Chan guesthouse, Pai

Not sure what this is

Not sure what this is either

Bridge to our guesthouse, over the river, Pai

Pool at Pai Chan

View at Pai Chan

Songkran is absurd

I wasn't really planning to post today, but since it's pouring rain today, and the Songkran is the most intense water festival on the planet, indoors on the computer is a great place to be. 

Yesterday we decided to have a much needed day to chill out and catch our breath as we had been going non-stop the two days before, and it was a great call.  During the day we took a tuk-tuk over to a nearby mall with two other people from our hostel to go to the rooftop pool to relax and catch some rays.  Yes, there is a pool on the roof of the mall--only in thailand, hah.  The tuk-tuk ride there was absolutely brutal since the songkran is going on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songkran), which essentially means that you can't go outdoors without getting soaked by buckets of water and supersoakers.  To make matters worse, tourists in tuk-tuks are definitely the preferred target of the locals.  So, imagine riding in an open tuk-tuk (i guess that might be hard to imagine...) and every stop sign, stop light, traffic slowdown, etc, you get drenched by 10buckets of ice cold water and 5 more of dirty nasty warm river water.  The ride was about 20minutes, and by the time we got to the mall we were SOAKED...it was pretty fun/funny/entertaining since it was warm out and we were going to the pool anyway, but wow what an intense ride.  We made it to the mall, took an hour to find the pool (the directories are all in thai, and we couldn't find anyone that spoke good enough english to give good directions), and then relaxed in this giant (probably two olympic pools) pool for about two hours.  We struck up a convo with 3 girls lounging poolside, and turns out they went to cal poly...what a weird coincidence.  They were doing the thai study program, so i guess it's not that weird, but still to bump into cal poly kids in a city of 400k people in northern thailand was pretty cool. 

At night we decided to go to a muy thai fight near our hostel.  It was in this old warehouse type building with lawn chairs surrounding the ring and little tables in front of your lawn chair...interesting set up to say the least.  But they served beer and food, and we sat next to an interesting french couple on one side and a cool dude from london on the other, so it was all good.  [Sidenote: the french couple kept saying they were from france, but turns out they were really from some small island off the coast of africa that is a french colony/protectorate/whatever you call it...i guess even people that live in these colonies claim to be from france--kind of weird, i don't think that people from puerto rico claim to be from the US].  There were 8fights, including an awesome girl fight, which was interesting to say the least, and a "special fight" where they blindfold four dudes and they just throw haymakers for 5 minutes...it was hilarious.  After the fights we wandered the streets of chiang mai checking out other markets and bars we hadn't been to (we walked by a "ladyboy" bar--well, i walked by, emily walked IN...it was just disturbing, i have no other words to describe it {ladyboys are what they call trannys here, if i haven't clarified that in any previous posts, and there are a TON of them). On the way back we picked up some rotee (like crepes) from a street vendor--which was awesome, and then were back to our hostel and called it a night.  Great day.

Today we woke up to cold weather and pouring rain--unfortunate since today (the 13th) is the actual day of the Thai New Year, so the celebration is supposed to be in full effect.  We needed to get to the bus station to buy our ticket to Pai tomorrow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pai,_Thailand), and figured that the rain would keep people inside and we'd be able to stay dry enough in a tuk-tuk.  WRONG.  We got absolutely murdered by ice cold, filthy water for a 25 minute ride in 65 degree cloudy weather...oh, and then we had to ride back the same way.  On the way back we finally decided to fight back, and when people would approach our tuk-tuk with buckets of water, we'd wrestle the buckets away and a douse them with water...Of course we couldn't win, because it was always 20 vs us 2, but it at least made the otherwise brutal ride pretty entertaining.  We made it back to the hostel drenched, freeezing, and shaking, but with two bus tickets to pai...small victory, though it  definitely took away from my interest in the songkran festival. 

Chiang Mai has been a really great time...Off to pai at noon tomorrow, and hoping for better weather in the next few days.  Happy thai new year.

Pictures from the past few days

This is the "whitewater" that we rafted down

Me under the waterfall

Cool scenery at the Mesa Elephant Camp

Elephant show

Elephants can hoola-hoop better than me

This is without zoom

As close as I was going to get

Again, this is without zoom

The 3 course meal I prepared

Kitchen where we cooked

Sunday night market, chiang mai

Elephant ride #2 (the one where we didn't touch death 4 times)

Waterfall

Hill tribe

3 year old boy at hill tribe--yes, that's a knife

Time to go make a super-soaker purchase and get sweet revenge on the people who flooded the bed of our truck yesterday