Taking Thailand by Scooter, the Mekong by Boat

Louang Prabang, Laos

Ok, ok. It's been a week. And we know we are behind, but we were so busy having fun, you have to forgive us. So much has happened, I'll try to remember..

At Phuket, we had only one full day, so we rented a scooter to see some more of the island since Patong Beach was quite a crazy scene. We rode up the coast and stopped at Laem Singh (another beach) for the afternoon. We got back to Patong in time to watch the sunset and the paragliders in the air. Although Patong Beach was not ideal from the crowding perspective, it did have the finest white sand of all the beaches we went to.


The whole reason we went to Phuket was to fly north to Chiang Mai, which we loved. The old city (although it did not look so old to me) has a moat around it with some crumbling remnamts of the ramparts and a reconstructed section of wall at one of the gates. The area is very well maintained, with trees and flowers planted along the moat and fountains in the moat itself. They keep the water super clean (unlike some other waterways we've seen) so it was really pleasant to walk around. Our first day in town we rented a scooter and visted two Wats and two waterfalls. We also went to the zoo which was extremely impressive, especially since the admission is only $3 even for tourists (most places, especially India, have the tourist admission 10 times the nationals admission). We ended the day with a night safari at a resort just outside town. Although it was pricey, it was a really interesting way to observe animals, especially the predators since the big cats hunt at night. As we went by on our tram, you could tell they were trying so hard to devise a plan to eat us.



Our second day in Chiang Mai we split up for the first time all trip. Noah went downhill mountain biking and I did a day tour of the area. I got to go to an orchid farm, a local village, a nice waterfall, an elephant ride, a short white water rafting excursion, and a bamboo raft ride. The main highlights for me were feeding the elephants. I learned that elephants can eat bananas faster than you can hold them out and that baby elephant cannot eat bananas and need watermelon cut up for them. The white-water rafting and bamboo rafting was also fun mostly because we had a great group and the guides were hysterical. Although you could have gotten through the entire trip without getting wet, it was their goal (of course) to get us as wet as possible which included putting all 12 of us on one bamboo raft which only had enough boyancy so that it floated 6 inches underwater. If we had done the trip at 2pm as intended it wouldn't have been an issue, but since we waited 2 hours for our rafts (since they did not have any where near enough for the amount of tours they booked) it was getting a little chilly by the time we finished.
From Chiang Mai we took a mini-bus to the Laos border which was pretty uneventful except that we stopped at a modern temple which we found to be the most impressive one we have been to yet. The temple is all white with reflective metal embedded into it so that it sparkles in the sunlight. Even more impressive i the mural inside the temple. It was the creator's view of good and evil. The back wall had dark scary eyes, monsters, and a lot of negative images. There were also specific political references such as a vision of the twin towers on fire with two serpents coming out of them. Then if you followed the tail of the serpents they became petrol pumps which dripped into the mouths of the masses. I think it may have been suggesting that the people's hunger for petrol is fueling terrorism. There were other images that we didn't quite understand, like why they decided to include several movie images such as the Alien, Predator, Batman, Superman, and most surprisingly Neo (from the Matrix). On the side walls there were people floating on clouds away from the bad toward the front wall which depicted Buddist Shangri-la with glittering temples and flowers, and of course a giant Buddah image. It was really beatiful, and it was only the first temple of several that they are builing in the complex.


Crossing the border was different, we went to the water and got in a boat and went across the Mekong. That was pretty much it. We've spent the past two days on the slow boat floating down the Mekong which was very relaxing and quite pleasant, although they crammed a few too many of us onboard, and with the wooden benches and people on the floor it looked a little like a refugee ship. There were a lot of nice people to talk to, great scenery, and really truly perfect weather. Today we arrived in Luang Prabang, which is my favorite town so far. It has a lot of french influence so many of the buildings are french colonial, and a really great night market.