Chiang Mai is a nice little town in the north of Thailand with lots of temples and wats. It's the ancient capital which you can tell from the remains of the massive walls and moat that encircles the Old City. We did a good bit of walking around looking at the temples – one of which contained a freaky life-like statue of a monk meditating, which I thought was real! We also had some really nice Thai food (I love a bit of Chiang Mai sausage…) and obvioulsy did the Funky Gibbon while we were there.
One of the main things I noticed walking around the town was how much street art, graffiti and stickers there were all over the town, which I thought was quite cool. I've been taking photos of different bits of designy stuff over the whole trip and I've been collecting them in a Flickr set – Design/Art/Graffiti/Type.
If you want to see the shots from Chiang Mai check em out on Flickr. Toodles!
As promised, here's some loverly photos from the day at the Flight of the Gibbon. Check 'em out on Flickr. I put some on Facespace too, if anyone has one of those. I hear the kids are all into it these days…
Do, Do, Do the Funky Gibbon! We are here to show you how.
I didn't get to see any gibbons in Laos but I got a second chance in Thailand. OK, so I didn't actually see any in Chiang Mai, but I did hear some in the forest canopy while doing the Flying Gibbon. We set out around 6.30am for some fun swinging through the trees. There were zip lines, abseiling and rope bridges to caper along in the green treetops of the hills above Chiang Mai. Our guide, Dave, was a little hung-over from too much rice wine the night before, but zipping through the trees soon cheered him up. It was all over very quickly, but time flies when your hanging upside down from a tree…
I'll have some photos up on flickr soon, but if you get sick of looking at me doing the funky gibbon, then check this out.
That's not the boat we took. It was a lot smaller than that. I basically had to swim all the way…
To get from Luang Prabang to the Thai border at Heuy Xai we had to take a slow boat for two days up the Mekong. Most people do the trip in the opposite direction so it wasn't as packed with annoying backpackers, though there were still a few on the boat. The trip was pretty uneventful, I got to read about 200+ pages of a book and watch a few movies on my iPod. The scenery was pretty fantastic and it got better and better the further upriver we went. The view out from our hostel window where we stopped for the night was amazing; the full moon was shining through the clouds, lighting up the river that is normally a dull, rushing brown during the day into a silver arc cutting through the blacked out hills.
The second day was a lot quicker but less comfortable than the first day. We had a lot of kids waving at us from the shore, some jumping into the river and trying to swim out to the boat for fun. There was also a point where the boat stopped to let a load of locals on to sell food and beer. When we got to Huey Xai we looked at doing the Gibbon Experience, which is three days trekking through the jungle and staying in a tree-house, but it was too expensive, so I'll have to find some monkeys somewhere else :(
Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you, to stop what you're doing and listen… CANNONBALL!!!
The Kuang SI Waterfall in Luang Prabang is such a beautiful place. Six of us took a tuk tuk out there and spent the day climbing around the different levels and jumping into the swimming areas, which was great in the heat. There was also some cool rope swings that I had a good time flying off… Elaine even had a go jumping into the water, she's hardcore!
Luang Prabang is really chilled out and there's a cool night market every night. There's lots of food and clothes and trinkets on sale, and it's good fun to walk around being nosey. Luang Prabang is also home to a lot of monks who live in the Wats around town. If you get up early enough – around 5am – you can go and see them on their daily trek around town, where the local people give them rice and food in return for blessings. It's really something to see, with their bright orange robes lighting up a rainy morning.
Check out the Flickr and drop a few comments. And stay classy.
Martyn was kicking ass in the Under-12's regional final.
So we finally moved on from Vietnam and Laos is almost the exact opposite; the people are chilled out and friendly, not in your face and trying to scam you! We crashed in Vientiane for a few days, enjoying the finer things in life, like foot-long sandwiches, outdoor swimming pools and bowling! Yes, bowling, the sport of fat people and Amish miscreants. We met up with Martyn and Emily, a couple we'ld met in Vietnam so it was cool to go for a few beers and make some strikes!
We're all headed up to Vang Vieng, the tubing capital of the world, for much debauchery and floating down the Nam Song river. As always check that shit out on Flickr and drop some comments y'all. Word to yo mommas!
The engine only stalled a few times during the flight
So we're off to Laos. None of this torturous 30 hour bus journey malarky for us, we're flying! We went with Laos Airlines, which was interesting, to say the least. I've really enjoyed Vietnam, it got a lot better the further north we went, maybe that's just because we got used to the abuse. Anyway Laos should be interesting and I've got a load of good stories and memories from Vietnam.
Who's that pervert with the camera? He's put me right off.
Oooh, Halong Bay was lovely. We did a 3 day/2night thing, were we got to sleep on a boat, which was quite soothing and not as sea-sick inducing as I thought. We got to see Surprising Cave (use your imagination!), there was a spot of kayaking around the sheltered bay where we had harboured and some jumping off the boat into the sea. On the second day we left our boat and went on a trek through Cat Ba Island with our guide Tuan, and two Canadian girls. We me this lovely 68 year old lady who lived on the island with her 70 year old husband (who had left to row 4 hours to the nearest village). She made us some tea and little bananas. Then Tuan showed me a jar which reeked of alcohol with 2 or 3 snakes – dead ones – coiled at the bottom. The converstation went like this:
Me — "What's that for Tuan?"
Tuan — "It's Snake Wine. It make the man strong. That make the lady happy!"
Me — "Oh, that's nice. Not much to do around here I suppose."
Tuan — "Yes, it gets dark at 6pm here. So they go to bed."
Me — "OK…"
Tuan — "Maybe not to sleep though."
Me — "How old are they again?"
Tuan — "The lady 68, the man 70."
Me — "Fair play."
So after that we had seen some frogs having sex, then some cuttle fish having sex, then the old couple having sex… no, only messing. Halong Bay was very sexy. We had a massive lunch and then headed off to our 3 star hotel, in our 5 star boat, then left the next day in a 5 star bus for another 5 star boat and then back in another 5 star bus back to Hanoi. Stars!
Check out the photos on Flickr and lemme know what you think.
Handy Andy had really fallen a long way after Changing Rooms was cancelled
Hanoi is a really nice city, full of stuff to do and most importantly, it has a cinema! We went to see Wolverine (rubbish, but Elaine gives it bonus points for Huge Jackman's naked arse) and Star Trek (top notch reboot, although they made a bit too much of the whole "history has changed" thing). I'm thinking of writing a few reviews of movies we've seen while we're away, I miss the whole recommending films to people thing.
Anyway, Hanoi is cool, we got to meet up with some people we'd been travelling with further south. We also got to see Ho Chi Minh in his mausoleum, which was very serious, they had a guard outside whose job it was to shush people if they were talking. There was also the Temple of Literature, with it's stone tortoises and Ngoc Son Temple, with it's real live tortoises. One of the things that was most interesting to me was the typography all over the city. Vietnamese uses a load of diacritics to represent the 6 different tonal sounds of each vowel, and they use about 5 different typefaces on each sign or poster, which can be really overwhelming, but charming in a weird kind of way. Painted all over walls around the city were these odd groups of numbers in red, blue and black paint and it took us a few days to find out that, no they're not numbers for hookers or ladyboys, they're actually phone numbers for builders and handy-men who can come out and fix up the mess they've made on the wall. Industrious.
Check out the photos on Flickr and drop a few comments, especially if there's any love for the movie reviews idea. Peace out.
