Vientiane

Is Vientiane Asia’s sleepiest Capital City? Well, I never thought I’d be able to say I’d visited a Capital smaller than my home town Neath, but I have now! For those of you who’ve never seen Neath, to give you an idea Vientane is probably about the same size as Newbury or Epping – much smaller than Cambridge!

But Vientiane is much quieter than all of these towns. This place makes the dreamy Louang Phabang look like a hive of activity. It’s a low rise, leafy, incredibly quiet town on the banks of the Mekong River. A pleasant enough place for whiling away a few days – especially as the French colonial past means that there are several excellent bakeries and you can get a great espresso! There’s the usual quota of nice Wats and Chedis too. These seem to be more delicately decorated than those we’ve seen so far in Thailand (although still heavy on the gold paint), but they are generally fairly modest structures. This is apparently because many the temples were destroyed in Siam-Lao Wars, and only enthusiastic restoration has returned any to something of their former glory.

One slight drawback to coming here in July is that it is in the midst of the rainy season. And here the rainy season is a little more than a shower or two a day – you get truly psychotic weather. One moment it’s a nice warm morning, with friendly white fluffy clouds in the sky. A few minutes later a 10 second gust of wind seems to bring in huge grey storm clouds that instantly drop a small lake of water on you! This is intense rainfall - you can’t see more than 20 meters because of the density of raindrops, and the streets become small rivers and ponds in no time, leaving you trying desperately to keep your flip-flops on as you dash for shelter wading through water up to your ankles! But this doesn’t last long. Within a quarter of an hour the clouds will have swept away, and a startlingly hot sun will dazzle you from a brilliant blue sky, making you quickly don sunglasses and suntan lotion to avoid becoming a sun-scorched frazzle. But don’t worry – the lotion will be washed off thoroughly in half an hour when the whole process gets repeated and you are left drenched and dripping again!

Vientiane Photos

Gary on the banks of the Mekong river. That's Thailand in the background, with some ominous clouds looming (that probably soaked us later). It's a very quiet capital - you wouldn't believe from the reeds that this is actually the riverside walk at the centre of town!

Of course Laos was once a French colony, and this inspired some fantastic baguettes, and some less fantastic town planning. This is the Patouxi: Laos' answer to the Arc de Triomphe. Complete with pictures from the Ramayana and spiky Lao adornments. It's at the end of a road that doesn't quite match the Champs-Elysees...

They do like gold paint out here! This is the Golden Stupa of Pra That Louang - one of Vientiane's most celebrated Buddhist complexes (and a symbol of Laos we've been told). And everything possible is covered with Gold. Not very French.

Louang Phabang

This town is an odd place. Completely different from anywhere else on our travels so far. It’s absolutely beautiful – a very quiet small town perched on an outcrop of land at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. Louang Phabang is literally in the middle of nowhere, completely surrounded by mountains covered in lush tropical forests, with little fluffy white clouds rolling picturesquely between the peaks. But despite this remoteness the town is literally teeming with westerners! Millions of them! We were surprised by the numbers of tourists in Chiang Mai, but this is something else again. Perhaps it’s the density: a relatively small number of visitors crammed into a tiny town. But the result is just weird – in this distinctly oriental backwater you are far more likely to meet a westerner walking down the street than a local.

I suppose this is because Louang Phabang is considered one of Lao’s most important historical sites. It has the old imperial palace and numerous Wats – but in all honesty these are sweet, modest buildings for the most part, and the we found the real attraction to be the town itself and the surrounding countryside. Louang Phabang has no big buildings – no huge hotels, 24 hour stores, carparks etc – not even a McDonalds or Starbucks!!! Instead you have lovely quaint Oriental-French colonial houses clustered in quiet palm-tree lined streets. It was deemed a protected site by UNESCO in the 1990’s, so modern monstrosities literally can’t be built (legally anyway). As a result, despite the influx of visitors, it remains a quaint, untouched, pretty place. But with lots of nice hotels and stylish shops selling local textiles and handicrafts. A kind of boutique tropical-mountain lost paradise. With millions of westerners everywhere!

To be fair to the visitors here, most are pretty untouristy-tourists. Not the type to follow the flag around with tour guides, bum-bags, giant cameras, and chequered shirts, constantly shouting ‘Wow!’ or ‘Gee!’ at the tops of their voices. The people here are generally the quieter, independent traveller (although a few groups – mostly from the USA – do exist).There are a fair number of families too, although the kids generally look a but bored wandering around Wats with Mum and Dad.

One lovely legacy from the French connection in Laos’s history is that they do bake wonderful bread here. You’ve no idea how good it is to have a fresh crispy baguette after a few months in Asia! The drawback is paying for it. The currency here in Laos is a nightmare. The official currency is the Kip, which is one of these incredibly volatile, silly currencies – to give you an idea £1 is about 17,000 kip. So paying for our bus tickets to the Capital city Vientiane cost over a quarter of a million Kip! As a result the hotels, shops, and even tuk tuk drivers are happy for you to pay in American Dollars or Thai Baht – but prices are stated in kip. So for the last few days we’ve been busy converting between 4 different currencies just to work out how much a can of coke costs! Ah well. I suppose a bit of mental arithmetic is probably good for us in our year out. It wouldn’t be on for us to have a holiday or anything now, would it?

Louang Phabang Pictures

Louang Phabang. In the middle of nowhere isn't it? This beautiful view over the Nam Khan river fascinated us - fluffy clouds would roll by between the mountains making it quite ominous at times. And the little island village in the background with wooden huts is incredible!

It rained quite a bit here as usual. The small streets were all like this - lined with jungle plants.

The Mekong river just before sunset from a lovely hill in the middle of Louang Phabang. The hill was capped with a golden Chedi of course, and had an impressive collection of Wats and Golden Buddhas.

Chiang Mai

After a few months in China and Japan it was really strange to see loads of Westerners in Bangkok. OK, this was no big deal. But we were really REALLY surprised at the number of Westerners in Chiang Mai. It's incredible. You can walk down a street in the middle of town and expect to see more westerners than Thai people. Really weird! And a bit of a culture shock after our relative solitude in Eastern Asia!


Chiang Mai is fun none the less, and deserves it's place on most tourist's itinerary in Thailand. It is a relatively sleepy town surrounded by mountains, a painfully slow 12 hour train ride north of Bangkok. Unfortunately we've lost the Chinese and Japanese Shinkansen... The main area of the town is surrounded by a (almost totally ruined) city wall, and an impressively geometrical moat full of really aggressive fish. Everywhere is leafy, green, quiet and laid back - if you forgive the noise made by tuk tuks and sawngthaews (4x4 trucks converted into minibuses) as they roar past.


And it's really cheap. Our plush guest house was only 10 pounds a night, and we'd eat out for about a tenner every evening too. We even picked up a lovely wall hanging for around six quid (after careful tactical haggling). This place is even cheaper than India and China - which is saying something. But then again it is the 'low season' - i.e. the 'rainy season'. Hot and humid, and you're guaranteed to get soaked at least once each afternoon! Actually, it's not too hot compared to Delhi (we can take anything after that oven), and if you do get soaked at least you dry quickly. Usually!


Chiang Mai is probably most well known for its temples. This small town actually has almost as many as Bangkok, which is saying something. On every corner you have a golden Wat, or a wooden Wat, or sometimes even Wats with huge stone centrepieces. We visited the most famous today - Wat Phra That, with it's famous Golden plated Chedi (big pagoda-tower thing). It's situated in a fantastic position on top of a mountain overlooking Chiang Mai - great views (of a weather front which shortly rained on us as it happens), but as it's so far from town you have to brave a very twisty hair-pin-bend-filled ride on a dreaded sawngthaew to get there.


Anyway, in order to get back into the middle of nowhere (away from all this western influence), we've decided to leave Thailand temporarily tomorrow and fly to Laos. Most people haven't heard of Laos - it's a little country nestling between Thailand and Vietnam, north of Cambodia. Scarily for us it's airline 'Lao Air' has one of the worst safety records in the world, although after extensive online research this appears to be for internal flights only. Their international aircraft are meant to be much safer. As safe as any other regional airway. We hope this is right! Oh well, we'll tell you in a few days time with any luck...

Chiang Mai Pictures

At last! After many attempts we've finally found an internet connection in Laos that is just about fast enough to let us upload Piccys. So here is Gary in Chiang Mai by the lovely tree-lined moat.

Our favourite Wat in Chiang Mai - complete with impressively ruined Chedi. To give an idea of size, note the small Vicki at the base. It must have been REALLY impressive before it crumbled!Below you can see a few more pictures of us by Wats - Gary at a particularly Golden Chedi, and Vick at the base of the steps up the mountain to the same Chedi. We particularly like the serpentine statues lining the sides of the steps - many headed 'Nagas' (like the Hydra of Greek mythology I suppose).

Gary with some more serpents - this time with beaks...?!

A night time photo of a float paraded around during the festival of lights (it past our internet cafe just as we finished writing the Chiang mai blog entry above). There were loads of floats like this one - very festive, bright, colourful - and lots of Thai ladyboys!

Bangkok

Strangely, the first thing that struck us about Thailand was the huge number of Westerners around. They’re everywhere! Not just in the hotels and around major sights, but just wandering around town like we do. It’s absolutely bizarre after months in China and Japan where you get used to being the only European for a 10 mile radius. If you do happen to meet another ‘gaijin’ in the depths of Toyako Onsen or Luoyang you say hello out of sheer astonishment!

But no, here in Thailand foreigners or ‘farang’ are very common. And as a result, Thais speak excellent English. Or at least it seems superb to us after our Chinese experiences! Just as well as Thai is another nightmare tonal language, so we can have a bit of a rest from the mime / draw / struggle technique.

We arrived in Bangkok about a week ago, and have spent a very restful few days wandering around various parts of town. Our hotel had a very relaxing swimming pool on the roof, and an even more relaxing Irish Bar directly below it, where you could get bargain soothing margaritas in the day-long happy hour! This is in a way just as well, as Bangkok is huge, and a bit of a struggle to get around if you want to avoid tuktuks and taxis. Since we trust the drivers about as far as we could throw them that leaves only the metro, skytrain, and lovely boat rides down the river. And walking of course. All nice options, but given the heat (and the daily downpours you get in the rainy season) it’s good to go somewhere calm afterwards.

One other option to de-stress is a Thai massage. Erm, unfortunately we stayed very near to one of the red-light districts, so we were never sure if the cries from shop fronts of ‘massagee?’ meant a nice foot rub, or a more comprehensive service! We’ll have a go at out next stop Chiang Mai instead where apparently there are safe shoulder rubs on offer everywhere.

While in Bangkok we had a quick wander around several Wats (temples or monasteries), and the Grand Palace. The buildings here are very different from those in China. OK, they all have an oriental slant, but in Thailand they are seriously into gold leaf decoration, and very edge must be as pointy as possible. The Wats in the Palace were particularly sharp – everywhere you look there were building edges, mounds, statues all topped with at least one spike directed to the sky. Basically a parachutist’s nightmare! The dominant religion here is Buddhism, and so you get your fair share of Buddhist images and statues too. We saw a particularly impressive golden reclining one in Wat Pho about 46m long! It had absolutely huge ears and toes.

Anyway, our next stop is Chiang Mai, before hopefully popping across the boarder into Laos. Gary’s parents had to leave us to start their long journey home yesterday – interrupted of course by a luxurious stay in Bombay where they’re booked into a Taj - the poshest 5 star hotel in town (well, it is their wedding anniversary!). In contrast we’re off to a £10 a night jobby up North! We’ll be returning to Bangkok several times in the next month or two, so we’ll probably end up posting more pictures of pointy Wats soon. You never know, we may even brave a ‘massagee’. Just maybe.