Hello ( I don't know how to spell Hello in Thai or really how to say it)
This morning we woke up and caught up with good ol BBC and realized that President Bush was in Bangkok this morning giving a speech. We thought about protesting and making a big deal about how terrible he is, but then we decided going to Jail on our last day wouldn't be much fun for a last day. So we just went for breakfast instead.
After breakfast we waited for Tyson's suit to come. It came, and it looks like they fixed the issues he was having with it, button holes being sown(sp?) properly. Hey Chandra you could probably fix it if anything else goes wrong eh? From there we decided to go to the mall again to finish our shopping. We thought we would check out the Siam center mall.
What a mistake that was! That mall was the cleanest, brightest, biggest bling bling I have ever seen and the most expensive. Pretty much all the brand name REAL stuff, like Dolce and Gabanna, Versace, Gucci, Marc Jacobs, Armoni, the list goes on and on .. like fashion model stuff. They had a whole floor dedicated to diamonds pretty much. I don't know why Tyson just didn't get me that huge ring i saw.. really? (It was from Cartier and probably wieghed more than me.. it would cost an extra seat on the plane) We decided that Tyson should make more money so Sara could shop in the fashion world.. but we realized quickly we needed to get out of there.
From there we walked the wrong way to find the MBK (a.k.a cheap knock off mall) Once realized we went the wrong way we just took the sky train back. At MBK Tyson wasn't feeling all that well. So we had a rest for a bit and then he got his energy back and we hit the mall hard. We found the big hanging picture of the buddha face that he wanted and he wasn't as picky today because he was tired. He is whinning now, blah blah blah... But it looks good i think. None of them would have been perfect anyways.
We found everything we wanted. The searching for the jeans was still difficult.. but we found one.. maybe not the best but whatever i was losing hope. Good thing there is always the Gap.
By the time we finished it was about 3:00pm but we didnt start get there till 12:00pm. We had lunch at a place that resembles BP's pretty much and then headed back because Tyson had to lug the huge pieces of wood for the picture. By the time we gotten back it was too late to go to the other temples. So we had a nap (I only had like 20 minutes, Tyson was a sleepy head and slept on and off for about 1.5 hours).
We then paid our bill here at the hotel and made sure taxi's would be around at 5:20 am.
Had dinner and then our last massage :(. We are sure going to miss those. Maybe our insurance plans have something where you get some free a year or something. But man that Thai guy had me melt.... as well as cracked my back in 50 different places.. apparently it misses my bed alot.
Well we need to figure out how we are going to get everything on the plane and then go to bed 5:00 am comes early. We will see some of you tomorrow afternoon-ish.
Looking forward to seeing everyone.
Laters,
Sara and Tyson
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
How do you say, "Do you want to come back to Canada with us in Thai?"
Hello,
This morning we slept in a little (8:30am), Tyson still slept while I used the internet in the morning for a little bit. We had breakfast and I finally got a crepe. We were both a little upset that our hotel had changed the way they do breakfast no more buffet style, which means no more 3 plates of fruit, and Tysons fried rice and noodles and such, but the adding of now being able to get a pancake is nice.
After breaky we went on the sky train down to the boats, to take a boat to see the Royal Palace. Man that place is HUGE! With a lot of tourists ... sigh. We were in no mood to get ripped off or scammed anymore so when a lady was like yelling at me to come there.. we quickly ignored her and kept walking. There was scam artists left right and center "Come on boat trip", "The palace is closed right now, we take you somewhere else", etc. When we got to the gate to get in, I was not allowed in, my capri pants .. literally were 1-2mm from the cut off point. We thought for sure they just had to cover the knees, which they did, but no dice. So we had to go back to the front to rent a long skirt which was fine and free. From there we did the palace in about an hour. Part of it was closed do to a "lying in state ceremony" whatever that is?
From there we did the unimaginable... went to Koh San Road... For anyone whos been to Bangkok you probably know this road all too well, we try to stay clear of it. But we thought we should check it out to say we did. That we did... a little overwhelming, at times i didn't even feel like i was in Thailand but in downtown calgary on kennsington street. English music, mcdonalds, burger king you know the usual. We looked around for a bit and then decided to get some lunch at this great italian place. Pricey but good.
After lunch we went to go pick up Tysons suit. He tried it on, it looks good I think.. but he inspected it thoroughly because he knew he had been scammed so he was going to give them a run for thier money. He found a few easy flaws to fix but he was going to make sure they fixed them. So they are going to fix them and have the suite delivered to our hotel room tomorrow morning. Other than that, i think he looks sharp in it. It is well fitted for once.. being a skinny man and all he tends to buy all his things WAY to big. Tyson says he disagrees.. but i guess he has to wear them.. but maybe he is just self conscious about his skinnyness. But its ok we love him for it :). He is really tired right now and kind of out of it so i can poke at him and make fun of him right now so i am taking full advantage.
After the suit we went to the giant shopping mall MBK. Man that mall sucks the time right out of you.. before you know it its 7:30pm. I was looking for another pair of jeans.. but its still not any eaiser ha-ha... Tyson took forever trying to find this wall buddha made out of wood that will never be perfect for him... he finds some flaw everytime we find one. It might be a long day tomorow. On the jean hunt we did find a sale for Puma shoes.. REAL puma shoes.. as they were still pricey but not as pricey as at home and they are pretty sweet looking. I am also on the hunt to find a shirt that I saw on Koh San Road and thought for sure i would find at the MBK.. but we looked and i don't think they have it..
We came back to our hotel and ate some dinner and then got massages.. hence where the title of the blog comes from. Man i really want to take a massusse (sp?) home. Like seriously 3 dollars for an hour massage its like 65 dollars in canada.. and were suppose to take care of ourselves and healthy living they need to make massages cheaper. I had a foot/leg massage which was amazing, and Tyson had the Thai massage which he says is really no different than a Lao one but still good. He says his stuffy nose got in his way to relax... Now we are writing you.
Tomorrow is our last day before flying the gruelling 16 hours home. Hopefully good movies and quiet planes. Tomorrow the agenda is back to more malls (this is the most shopping i have done since christmas time shopping.) And maybe one or two more temples well see how the day goes, we also have to get our bags all packed, make sure we have a taxi for 5:30am the next morning, and get some plane food because I hate the plane food on the plane, Tyson will eat anything put in front of him.. but i think its all nasty. Except for the little snack bags of like those pretzels japan air has a good combo of that.
Alright, off to bed.
Sara and Tyson
This morning we slept in a little (8:30am), Tyson still slept while I used the internet in the morning for a little bit. We had breakfast and I finally got a crepe. We were both a little upset that our hotel had changed the way they do breakfast no more buffet style, which means no more 3 plates of fruit, and Tysons fried rice and noodles and such, but the adding of now being able to get a pancake is nice.
After breaky we went on the sky train down to the boats, to take a boat to see the Royal Palace. Man that place is HUGE! With a lot of tourists ... sigh. We were in no mood to get ripped off or scammed anymore so when a lady was like yelling at me to come there.. we quickly ignored her and kept walking. There was scam artists left right and center "Come on boat trip", "The palace is closed right now, we take you somewhere else", etc. When we got to the gate to get in, I was not allowed in, my capri pants .. literally were 1-2mm from the cut off point. We thought for sure they just had to cover the knees, which they did, but no dice. So we had to go back to the front to rent a long skirt which was fine and free. From there we did the palace in about an hour. Part of it was closed do to a "lying in state ceremony" whatever that is?
From there we did the unimaginable... went to Koh San Road... For anyone whos been to Bangkok you probably know this road all too well, we try to stay clear of it. But we thought we should check it out to say we did. That we did... a little overwhelming, at times i didn't even feel like i was in Thailand but in downtown calgary on kennsington street. English music, mcdonalds, burger king you know the usual. We looked around for a bit and then decided to get some lunch at this great italian place. Pricey but good.
After lunch we went to go pick up Tysons suit. He tried it on, it looks good I think.. but he inspected it thoroughly because he knew he had been scammed so he was going to give them a run for thier money. He found a few easy flaws to fix but he was going to make sure they fixed them. So they are going to fix them and have the suite delivered to our hotel room tomorrow morning. Other than that, i think he looks sharp in it. It is well fitted for once.. being a skinny man and all he tends to buy all his things WAY to big. Tyson says he disagrees.. but i guess he has to wear them.. but maybe he is just self conscious about his skinnyness. But its ok we love him for it :). He is really tired right now and kind of out of it so i can poke at him and make fun of him right now so i am taking full advantage.
After the suit we went to the giant shopping mall MBK. Man that mall sucks the time right out of you.. before you know it its 7:30pm. I was looking for another pair of jeans.. but its still not any eaiser ha-ha... Tyson took forever trying to find this wall buddha made out of wood that will never be perfect for him... he finds some flaw everytime we find one. It might be a long day tomorow. On the jean hunt we did find a sale for Puma shoes.. REAL puma shoes.. as they were still pricey but not as pricey as at home and they are pretty sweet looking. I am also on the hunt to find a shirt that I saw on Koh San Road and thought for sure i would find at the MBK.. but we looked and i don't think they have it..
We came back to our hotel and ate some dinner and then got massages.. hence where the title of the blog comes from. Man i really want to take a massusse (sp?) home. Like seriously 3 dollars for an hour massage its like 65 dollars in canada.. and were suppose to take care of ourselves and healthy living they need to make massages cheaper. I had a foot/leg massage which was amazing, and Tyson had the Thai massage which he says is really no different than a Lao one but still good. He says his stuffy nose got in his way to relax... Now we are writing you.
Tomorrow is our last day before flying the gruelling 16 hours home. Hopefully good movies and quiet planes. Tomorrow the agenda is back to more malls (this is the most shopping i have done since christmas time shopping.) And maybe one or two more temples well see how the day goes, we also have to get our bags all packed, make sure we have a taxi for 5:30am the next morning, and get some plane food because I hate the plane food on the plane, Tyson will eat anything put in front of him.. but i think its all nasty. Except for the little snack bags of like those pretzels japan air has a good combo of that.
Alright, off to bed.
Sara and Tyson
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Back in the Big B
This morning i actually woke up.. at 5:30am to go watch the Alms giving. It was good, except the stupid tourists who are not respectful of space of people and the monks. That kind of ruined the atmsophere. Tyson said the morning he went it was quieter.. hmm interesting. We think it was because it was raining that morning and today it wasn't. The people were basically 2 feet away from the monks face, and like the people of Laos faces with flashes going off from thier camera. There is signs all over town saying DO NOT DO THAT. Clearly they don't get it. If i was a monk i would have punched them... then Tyson kindly said "thats not really the way monks act". Still man that is so rude, and they weren't even kneeling or sitting which your supposed to be because you are lower than a monk. As annoying as the tourists were, what did you think of the actual alms giving Sara? I thought it was good i thought i already explained that part. See other post if you don't know what the early morning alms giving is.
From there we went back to the hotel to sleep since it was 6:30am. Tyson actually watched HBO and saw the last tail end of Blades of Glory while i Cat napped.. and then we both watched the beginnings of Memoirs of a Geisha, that is a good movie i forgot it was that good. Then we packed up all our stuff and went for our usual breakfast at the Scandinavian Bakery.
From the bakery we went to check out the last Wat (temple) that we wante to see before departing Laos. The temple was nice, they were restoring it as we were there putting new sequences on (shiny glass on the outside). From there we had one stop to shop to get a couple more things and then some food for the plane.
We left the hotel at around 11:30 to be at the airport super early (2 hours)... good thing Bangkok airways had a special guest lounge and we were not to scruffy to get asked to go in. At first I thought it was a scam like they were going to plot something on us.. or get us to buy something like that first class lounge in China we went to in our last adventure. I thought this because NO ONE ELSE was there.. I guess we were really early but there was free internet and some snacks. But within half an hour a flock load of other white people came in. We boarded at 2:00pm and got to Bangkok at 4:00 got through customs fast and then we had an hour or so long taxi ride to the hotel. We didn't get scammed this time because Tyson said we want the meter price and the guy said ok but its going to be 450bhat either way.... it was really only 285 bhat with the airport fee. So no more scams for us!
We realized at the airport in Luang Prabang, while reading the bangkok guide book that Tyson pretty much got scammed on his tailor made suite. Like word from word what they explained in the book happened to us. Dang! Good thing i didn't get scammed.. haha.. just kidding Tyson I didn't want anything anyways. Still cheaper than Canada but we will have to thoroughly inspect the makings of it tomorrow when we go pick it up.
Its a little wierd being back in the big B... its so massive. And the 7-11's every block through me off. We kind of miss the rice paddies already and the nice greenary. Oh well Fall will be soon in Edmonton and that is always pretty.
I pretty much have a cold.. and Tyson is dead tired. I guess that means we are done like dinner. So we are going to go have dinner and chill out, maybe watch a movie... free movies here at the hotel.
Tommorrow maybe see more sights get Tysons suit and well see from there how we're feeling.
Laters
Sara and Tyson
From there we went back to the hotel to sleep since it was 6:30am. Tyson actually watched HBO and saw the last tail end of Blades of Glory while i Cat napped.. and then we both watched the beginnings of Memoirs of a Geisha, that is a good movie i forgot it was that good. Then we packed up all our stuff and went for our usual breakfast at the Scandinavian Bakery.
From the bakery we went to check out the last Wat (temple) that we wante to see before departing Laos. The temple was nice, they were restoring it as we were there putting new sequences on (shiny glass on the outside). From there we had one stop to shop to get a couple more things and then some food for the plane.
We left the hotel at around 11:30 to be at the airport super early (2 hours)... good thing Bangkok airways had a special guest lounge and we were not to scruffy to get asked to go in. At first I thought it was a scam like they were going to plot something on us.. or get us to buy something like that first class lounge in China we went to in our last adventure. I thought this because NO ONE ELSE was there.. I guess we were really early but there was free internet and some snacks. But within half an hour a flock load of other white people came in. We boarded at 2:00pm and got to Bangkok at 4:00 got through customs fast and then we had an hour or so long taxi ride to the hotel. We didn't get scammed this time because Tyson said we want the meter price and the guy said ok but its going to be 450bhat either way.... it was really only 285 bhat with the airport fee. So no more scams for us!
We realized at the airport in Luang Prabang, while reading the bangkok guide book that Tyson pretty much got scammed on his tailor made suite. Like word from word what they explained in the book happened to us. Dang! Good thing i didn't get scammed.. haha.. just kidding Tyson I didn't want anything anyways. Still cheaper than Canada but we will have to thoroughly inspect the makings of it tomorrow when we go pick it up.
Its a little wierd being back in the big B... its so massive. And the 7-11's every block through me off. We kind of miss the rice paddies already and the nice greenary. Oh well Fall will be soon in Edmonton and that is always pretty.
I pretty much have a cold.. and Tyson is dead tired. I guess that means we are done like dinner. So we are going to go have dinner and chill out, maybe watch a movie... free movies here at the hotel.
Tommorrow maybe see more sights get Tysons suit and well see from there how we're feeling.
Laters
Sara and Tyson
Monday, August 4, 2008
So the story goes...
So the story goes that Tyson ripped off an old Lao man at his silver shop. You will have to keep reading if you want to know more.
The day began with the alarm going off at 5:30am.. to which i rolled over and Tyson asked.. are you getting up to see the alms this morning? To which i some what grunted a no. But i really could have since before the alarm went off this really really wierd noise was heard from outside our room, or in our room or something.. it sounded like some exotic animal.. and I thought here was my chance to capture a helper monkey.. but no dice.. i also thought maybe it was a snake coming up into my bed.. (last night at the market we saw a snake, the first one i have ever seen in the wild.. it was freaky and all the Lao people were freaking out.. but the Aussie girl next to me was like.. "what is everyone freaking out about?" To which I replied "oh there is a snake right there." To which she said, "oooo big deal a snake and everyone freaks out." They have a lot of snakes in aussie land. Anyways I wasn't getting up my throat was still sore and sleep was good. The alarm kept going on and off on and off on and off until Tyson let it ring the whole way through at 7:00am... (at 5:30 I reset the clock to 7am, not keep ringing) Oh anyways i thought maybe he had given up on going on the 8am boat tour to the caves and that we were going to sleep in. No dice.. he politely woke me up saying we have 20 minutes if we want breakfast. So up i got and we rushed to get breakfast and buy our boat tickets.
The boat ride was nice about 2 hours on a slow boat to the cave. We stopped at a floating gas station.. which had no gas.. so we had to go back to the city to get gas... typical haha. So we got to the caves last.
The caves was a tourist destination. I hadn't seen that many tourist the whole trip in one place and not at downtown and it kind of ruined it for me. Kids haggling you to buy a bird in a cage and let it go at the top of the cave only to get captured again... so we think. The caves are a place to store (the book said 400,000 old war torn buddha statues) There was more like a couple hundred maybe a couple thousand. It was nice, but not like WOW! The boat journey was the best part of it. Since it was only 6 people per boat and it was slow and the wind was nice and the mekong and the jungle were nice to look at as well. I even had a cat nap.
On the way back we stopped at a tourist village (how disappointing) that was a Whiskey village... (basically they made whiskey) along with selling scarfs and such. It took me like 30 seconds to walk the joint and then decided to go back to the boat hoping others would follow suite. The couple from the UK did, but these two other ladies took forever! Oh well. (Tyson says like 20 minutes.. but that was all the time we got was 20 minutes). I actually think the boat driver went and got them. We got back to the city at 1:30pm and decided for lunch.
I won't say what i had for lunch because it wasn't healthy. Tyson had wood. Literally.. bamboo shoots. It was nasty.. it tasted like earth. But he ate it all. Now to the best part...
After lunch we took a tuk tuk to the sliversmith because it was like 2074302740297 degrees outside... maybe we were on mars? Anyways it was hot too hot to walk 1km.. maybe a little more than that. Anyways we went to the sliversmith to pick up another item. The shop was closed but the silversmiths were working outside. So we asked if we could get in, they got the old man who i presume ran the buisness with his wife who we dealt with ealier in the week must be the person who does all the books for him while he does the silversmithing. Anyways the little old man was cute and old... and really didn't know how to work the calculator all that well. He actually didn't even know the price but we did because we had gotten something similar for the same price. Well this is how it went, Tyson told him the real price in dollars and since we didnt have US cash we convereted it to KIP. He struggled to do it himself.. poor guy.. and gave Tyson a better exchange rate (8500 to the dollar, when it is actually 8650.. or 8700) anyways the man had no idea and just said ok.. i felt bad because we knew the price and the exchange rate and Tyson just basically took this man's lunch money.. poor poor old man. (Poor old man that chargers the highest rates in town (for the best stuff, but still) and has 5 full time employees silversmithing for him all day long, who's customers are some of the wealthiest people in southeast asia). Poor poor cute old man. (I just did the math, and I underpaid what I paid last time by 6000 kip, or 75 cents) Like I said the poor poor cute old man's lunch money. Anyways.. thats the story.
We then retreated back to our guesthouse but we stopped for something that starts with an I and ends with Cream... which is STUPIDLY hard to find here... Two things i would do if i was to run a buisness in Laos. 1) Build a guesthouse with a pool, and 2) Have more ice cream stalls that are safe icecream.
Anyways Tyson finished life of pi it amazes me how he can read for soooo long with out falling asleep. I as usual had my read and siesta.
We then finished our shopping since we leave tomorrow to go back to Bangkok. Then had dinner and now we found an internet place (we used this one last night too) that is the hub of where monks come to use the internet.. there is currently 6 monks in here right now.. and they use hotmail.. how society evolves blows my mind away.
Tomorrow we fly to bangkok in the afternoon, maybe i will make it up to see the alms giving. (i don't see why you couldn't make it, the monks are here with us now, and they have to get up that early) If i wanted to get up early then I would become a monk wouldn't I? (No because you are a girl, a nun if so choose, they get up early too, but not a monk.) Whatever, am I a nun? Noooooo... am I on vacation... Yesssss. Then we will be home in a couple of days.
Till tomorrow.
Sara and Tyson
The day began with the alarm going off at 5:30am.. to which i rolled over and Tyson asked.. are you getting up to see the alms this morning? To which i some what grunted a no. But i really could have since before the alarm went off this really really wierd noise was heard from outside our room, or in our room or something.. it sounded like some exotic animal.. and I thought here was my chance to capture a helper monkey.. but no dice.. i also thought maybe it was a snake coming up into my bed.. (last night at the market we saw a snake, the first one i have ever seen in the wild.. it was freaky and all the Lao people were freaking out.. but the Aussie girl next to me was like.. "what is everyone freaking out about?" To which I replied "oh there is a snake right there." To which she said, "oooo big deal a snake and everyone freaks out." They have a lot of snakes in aussie land. Anyways I wasn't getting up my throat was still sore and sleep was good. The alarm kept going on and off on and off on and off until Tyson let it ring the whole way through at 7:00am... (at 5:30 I reset the clock to 7am, not keep ringing) Oh anyways i thought maybe he had given up on going on the 8am boat tour to the caves and that we were going to sleep in. No dice.. he politely woke me up saying we have 20 minutes if we want breakfast. So up i got and we rushed to get breakfast and buy our boat tickets.
The boat ride was nice about 2 hours on a slow boat to the cave. We stopped at a floating gas station.. which had no gas.. so we had to go back to the city to get gas... typical haha. So we got to the caves last.
The caves was a tourist destination. I hadn't seen that many tourist the whole trip in one place and not at downtown and it kind of ruined it for me. Kids haggling you to buy a bird in a cage and let it go at the top of the cave only to get captured again... so we think. The caves are a place to store (the book said 400,000 old war torn buddha statues) There was more like a couple hundred maybe a couple thousand. It was nice, but not like WOW! The boat journey was the best part of it. Since it was only 6 people per boat and it was slow and the wind was nice and the mekong and the jungle were nice to look at as well. I even had a cat nap.
On the way back we stopped at a tourist village (how disappointing) that was a Whiskey village... (basically they made whiskey) along with selling scarfs and such. It took me like 30 seconds to walk the joint and then decided to go back to the boat hoping others would follow suite. The couple from the UK did, but these two other ladies took forever! Oh well. (Tyson says like 20 minutes.. but that was all the time we got was 20 minutes). I actually think the boat driver went and got them. We got back to the city at 1:30pm and decided for lunch.
I won't say what i had for lunch because it wasn't healthy. Tyson had wood. Literally.. bamboo shoots. It was nasty.. it tasted like earth. But he ate it all. Now to the best part...
After lunch we took a tuk tuk to the sliversmith because it was like 2074302740297 degrees outside... maybe we were on mars? Anyways it was hot too hot to walk 1km.. maybe a little more than that. Anyways we went to the sliversmith to pick up another item. The shop was closed but the silversmiths were working outside. So we asked if we could get in, they got the old man who i presume ran the buisness with his wife who we dealt with ealier in the week must be the person who does all the books for him while he does the silversmithing. Anyways the little old man was cute and old... and really didn't know how to work the calculator all that well. He actually didn't even know the price but we did because we had gotten something similar for the same price. Well this is how it went, Tyson told him the real price in dollars and since we didnt have US cash we convereted it to KIP. He struggled to do it himself.. poor guy.. and gave Tyson a better exchange rate (8500 to the dollar, when it is actually 8650.. or 8700) anyways the man had no idea and just said ok.. i felt bad because we knew the price and the exchange rate and Tyson just basically took this man's lunch money.. poor poor old man. (Poor old man that chargers the highest rates in town (for the best stuff, but still) and has 5 full time employees silversmithing for him all day long, who's customers are some of the wealthiest people in southeast asia). Poor poor cute old man. (I just did the math, and I underpaid what I paid last time by 6000 kip, or 75 cents) Like I said the poor poor cute old man's lunch money. Anyways.. thats the story.
We then retreated back to our guesthouse but we stopped for something that starts with an I and ends with Cream... which is STUPIDLY hard to find here... Two things i would do if i was to run a buisness in Laos. 1) Build a guesthouse with a pool, and 2) Have more ice cream stalls that are safe icecream.
Anyways Tyson finished life of pi it amazes me how he can read for soooo long with out falling asleep. I as usual had my read and siesta.
We then finished our shopping since we leave tomorrow to go back to Bangkok. Then had dinner and now we found an internet place (we used this one last night too) that is the hub of where monks come to use the internet.. there is currently 6 monks in here right now.. and they use hotmail.. how society evolves blows my mind away.
Tomorrow we fly to bangkok in the afternoon, maybe i will make it up to see the alms giving. (i don't see why you couldn't make it, the monks are here with us now, and they have to get up that early) If i wanted to get up early then I would become a monk wouldn't I? (No because you are a girl, a nun if so choose, they get up early too, but not a monk.) Whatever, am I a nun? Noooooo... am I on vacation... Yesssss. Then we will be home in a couple of days.
Till tomorrow.
Sara and Tyson
Sunday, August 3, 2008
There are a lot more things to look out for when pooing in the jungle instead of the woods
So the day started out really really early. The alarm went off at 5:30 am and after hitting it off twice, Tyson was out of bed and getting dressed. Sara rolled over and went back to sleep. At 5:45 Tyson was trying to figure out how to get out of the guesthouse because the gate was locked and the people at the front were asleep. At the same time Sara started a nice dream. At 5:50 the guards had woken up, let Tyson out, and I was walking towards downtown, at the same time I don't know what she was doing, but it had nothing to do with walking in the rain. At a bit before 6am Tyson was trying to be sold rice and bananas by two very agressively selling women, Sara was still in bed. At 6am the alms giving began down the main street in town, Sara was still tucked nicely under the covers.
The alms giving is when all the monks and novices in town walk single file down the main street in town receiving alms (in the form of food, mostly sticky rice) from people who line the street to give the food away in return for a prayer or something. There wasn't a lot of locals, maybe 5-10 on the street where I watched, but there were hundreds, of monks all in their orange, walking down the street, each with a jar for the food to be placed in. The people would give a little sticky rice to each monk. It was an impressive sight, well worth the early alarm clock. Sara is somewhat interested in going tomorrow. (Raised eyebrow by Sara in response.)
After the monks finished around 6:30am, I wondered the empty streets for a bit, then returned to Sara still sound asleep in bed. I read the wildly entertaining Life of PI until she woke up. We were slow getting going today and didn't make it to the Scandnavian bakery until 10am. We enjoyed the typical fruit, cheese crossiants, and somehow now a cookie too???
Then we went to the pier to inquire about going up to the buddha caves. We were too late to get on with everyone else headed that direction, so would have to rent a boat for ourselves. The price was too steep to do this, so we decided to get to the pier at 8am tomorrow to pay for seats, not the whole boat. We decided, well I decided and Sara agreed to just get a boat to cross the Mekong, and walk through a town and to some temples on the other side.
The other side of the Mekong, was a very different place indeed. We could tell they were well off compared to most villages, but it was just that a village. We walked up and down the main street in the village once, and then made our way towards the temples. It was so hot. The locals were sweating and taking cover. We were soaked in sweat from head to toe.
The first temple was on top of a hill and abondoned. It had a very nice view of Luang Prabang from it. This is were I needed to go to the washroom. I had to wait till a number of other tourists left before I made for the jungle. The difference between the jungle and the woods is how many directions you have to look. Not only down, but all around up and behind, this is due to the abundance of creepy crawly, bitting things that live in the jungle.
The next temple wasn't much to look at, although inhabited. The nice thing was there was about 25 butterflies resting in the sun at the enterance. Very calm, beautiful experience to stand in the middle of that number of butterflies of large size and amazing (by Canadian standards) colors flying around you.
The last temple was actually a cave, and a set of tourists we saw at the first temple (wat) said there was bats inside, so Sara decided to wait for me at the second temple instead of going in. While waiting she got cased by a giant stingy thing. She required the help of a couple of locals to bring the thing under control. The cave was not that impressive, but I did see at least two bats. Freaked the stink outta me when they suddenly flew through the light generated by my headlap. The cave I understood used to have lots of buddha images in it, but not anymore. I continued walking further past this temple for a bit, through some banana and papaya farms but the trail got small, I was getting very muddy, it was still super hot and thus sweaty, and Sara was waiting so I turned around.
We got back to town, and a bit of a snack of a late lunch and then had massages again. I went for the Lao massage while Sara went for the shower and aromatherapy one. She said it was great, full body, but felt sorta weird with only a towel on.
After that we retreated to our guesthouse for two hours, I read again, and Sara had a read/nap. Then it was dinner time, totally western this time, and then a bit more shopping. Sara has a bit of a sore throat and is looking very tired.
The end for today.
Tyson and Sara
The alms giving is when all the monks and novices in town walk single file down the main street in town receiving alms (in the form of food, mostly sticky rice) from people who line the street to give the food away in return for a prayer or something. There wasn't a lot of locals, maybe 5-10 on the street where I watched, but there were hundreds, of monks all in their orange, walking down the street, each with a jar for the food to be placed in. The people would give a little sticky rice to each monk. It was an impressive sight, well worth the early alarm clock. Sara is somewhat interested in going tomorrow. (Raised eyebrow by Sara in response.)
After the monks finished around 6:30am, I wondered the empty streets for a bit, then returned to Sara still sound asleep in bed. I read the wildly entertaining Life of PI until she woke up. We were slow getting going today and didn't make it to the Scandnavian bakery until 10am. We enjoyed the typical fruit, cheese crossiants, and somehow now a cookie too???
Then we went to the pier to inquire about going up to the buddha caves. We were too late to get on with everyone else headed that direction, so would have to rent a boat for ourselves. The price was too steep to do this, so we decided to get to the pier at 8am tomorrow to pay for seats, not the whole boat. We decided, well I decided and Sara agreed to just get a boat to cross the Mekong, and walk through a town and to some temples on the other side.
The other side of the Mekong, was a very different place indeed. We could tell they were well off compared to most villages, but it was just that a village. We walked up and down the main street in the village once, and then made our way towards the temples. It was so hot. The locals were sweating and taking cover. We were soaked in sweat from head to toe.
The first temple was on top of a hill and abondoned. It had a very nice view of Luang Prabang from it. This is were I needed to go to the washroom. I had to wait till a number of other tourists left before I made for the jungle. The difference between the jungle and the woods is how many directions you have to look. Not only down, but all around up and behind, this is due to the abundance of creepy crawly, bitting things that live in the jungle.
The next temple wasn't much to look at, although inhabited. The nice thing was there was about 25 butterflies resting in the sun at the enterance. Very calm, beautiful experience to stand in the middle of that number of butterflies of large size and amazing (by Canadian standards) colors flying around you.
The last temple was actually a cave, and a set of tourists we saw at the first temple (wat) said there was bats inside, so Sara decided to wait for me at the second temple instead of going in. While waiting she got cased by a giant stingy thing. She required the help of a couple of locals to bring the thing under control. The cave was not that impressive, but I did see at least two bats. Freaked the stink outta me when they suddenly flew through the light generated by my headlap. The cave I understood used to have lots of buddha images in it, but not anymore. I continued walking further past this temple for a bit, through some banana and papaya farms but the trail got small, I was getting very muddy, it was still super hot and thus sweaty, and Sara was waiting so I turned around.
We got back to town, and a bit of a snack of a late lunch and then had massages again. I went for the Lao massage while Sara went for the shower and aromatherapy one. She said it was great, full body, but felt sorta weird with only a towel on.
After that we retreated to our guesthouse for two hours, I read again, and Sara had a read/nap. Then it was dinner time, totally western this time, and then a bit more shopping. Sara has a bit of a sore throat and is looking very tired.
The end for today.
Tyson and Sara
Saturday, August 2, 2008
AC set at 27'C and not hot???
So even though it sounds like we are getting aclimitized, we definetly have a long way still to go. We leave our comfortable 27'C in our room and are instantly sweating at whatever the temperature is outside, (much in excess of 27'C). I think the malaria pills are giving us strange very vivide dreams. Crazy, good thing we are almost done taking them, but that also means we are nearing the end of our trip. Ho hum..
Well today we slept in. We really did. We got up at around 9am, I didn't even hear the alarm go off today. Did it go off? Sara says yes. So we slept in, then had to pack our bags as we had to move rooms again, this time upstairs. After that we headed off to breakfast. Cheese crossiants, and fruit. We keep getting this green sorta cantalope tasting thing that isn't very good, but we eat the banana, watermelon, and the very delicious but painful to the sore on the inside of my lip pineapple. After that we did the great money trick. The money trick is where we take kip out of the bank machine then walk 2 blocks up the street to the fairest money exchanger where we change to kip to US dollars. The dollars we use to pay for the hotel which charges in dollars and gives a terrible rate for kip. It really doesn't take all that long, but it is a little annoying. Basically anything here over $20 is told in dollars as to not scare away the purchaser. As $20 dollars sounds much smaller than 173000 kip. After that we headed south to the silver smith recommended in the travel book. Normally I wouldn't go out of my way for such a place however they said the princess of Thailand made sure on her trip to here to visit the shop. So we went in, the place looked like any shop, except for the business cards showing the past patrons, the embassador of Mexico, the US secretary embassador, and a bunch of big corporation CEOs and regional head managers. We looked around, saw some things we liked, but decided to check out another shop we saw in the lane before, before we bought. The other shop, was the same looking, and we ended up getting a very nice elephant ring for Sara, after waiting a long time for service. We're just standing in the living room of someone's house, with the kids watching tv, looking at silver, with no assistance for a long time. Then we went back to the first store to get a really nice bracelet, the old woman in the shop did not budge a penny on her price. I guess when you are buying one bracelet and are use to dealing with some big wigs, prices don't move. The thing was nice, and the price affordable, so we walked away with it.
We then went through a temple to another market, looking for artwork. There was no artwork to be found, and the place was set up for Thai or Chinese tour groups as well as locals (hardware stores etc.) We did end up finding birdies to replace the birdies Sara had earlier lost. After that we walked back towards the really touristy part of town, stopping in a number of boutiques on the way. They call them boutiques, not that they are really any different from the boutique next door, but the quality is higher than in the markets, but the price is also ten fold higher.
We walked back and since we had a late start decided to check out the old royal palace, now museum before going for lunch. The palace was like any other palace, with meeting rooms, throne rooms, bedrooms, etc. It wasn't overly large or over-the-top like one has seen in St. Petersburg to say. The place was rebuilt in the 1930's about and then renovated in the 1960's before the monarch was finally ousted at the end of the second Indo-China war.
After that we had an only sorta okay lunch, and watched part of a terrible HBO movie with the owner. (In english with Lao subtitles.) We thought about heading off to see the remaining Wats on the list, but Sara was tired, and I wasn't full of energy so happily agreed to have a relaxing afternoon, (from 3pm-6pm). On the way back to the hotel we located the kids who were missing their original birdie and replaced it with three new ones (good ones with real feathers), which they were very happy to recieve. I relaxed by starting the "Life of PI" and Sara read too before falling asleep.
At a bit after 6pm we headed for the market. The kids where in the street trying to retrieve one of the birdies from a tree. Good thing we got them 3 replacements. We hit the market hard, but fizzled out after spending a bunch of money, making it only halfway through, but crossing a number of items off our list. We were bargining over a coconut wood serving dish with this woman, who child was having a temper-tantrum. Sara was not impressed, and I think that is when she decided she had had enough for the day. I was trying to get the best price, (Sara: the kid was screaming his cute little head off for like 30 minutes and the mom was trying to bargin and calm him down... i just said pay whatever so she can tend to her child!). It is what she said. We do have to return to the market at least one more time, but we're almost done, I think....but just when you think your done you see something else... Anyways, we gave up before crossing everything off our list, and went for dinner. Sara had Pasta, Tyson fried beef in ginger and rice.
Tomorrow we are going to go up to the buddha caves, and maybe to a waterfall.(Sara: the water is not exactly pretty right now since it is rainy season and flowing fast and is high it is not sparkling blue but dark chocolate mud colour... makes swimming seem unappealing unfortunantly).
Tyson and Sara
Well today we slept in. We really did. We got up at around 9am, I didn't even hear the alarm go off today. Did it go off? Sara says yes. So we slept in, then had to pack our bags as we had to move rooms again, this time upstairs. After that we headed off to breakfast. Cheese crossiants, and fruit. We keep getting this green sorta cantalope tasting thing that isn't very good, but we eat the banana, watermelon, and the very delicious but painful to the sore on the inside of my lip pineapple. After that we did the great money trick. The money trick is where we take kip out of the bank machine then walk 2 blocks up the street to the fairest money exchanger where we change to kip to US dollars. The dollars we use to pay for the hotel which charges in dollars and gives a terrible rate for kip. It really doesn't take all that long, but it is a little annoying. Basically anything here over $20 is told in dollars as to not scare away the purchaser. As $20 dollars sounds much smaller than 173000 kip. After that we headed south to the silver smith recommended in the travel book. Normally I wouldn't go out of my way for such a place however they said the princess of Thailand made sure on her trip to here to visit the shop. So we went in, the place looked like any shop, except for the business cards showing the past patrons, the embassador of Mexico, the US secretary embassador, and a bunch of big corporation CEOs and regional head managers. We looked around, saw some things we liked, but decided to check out another shop we saw in the lane before, before we bought. The other shop, was the same looking, and we ended up getting a very nice elephant ring for Sara, after waiting a long time for service. We're just standing in the living room of someone's house, with the kids watching tv, looking at silver, with no assistance for a long time. Then we went back to the first store to get a really nice bracelet, the old woman in the shop did not budge a penny on her price. I guess when you are buying one bracelet and are use to dealing with some big wigs, prices don't move. The thing was nice, and the price affordable, so we walked away with it.
We then went through a temple to another market, looking for artwork. There was no artwork to be found, and the place was set up for Thai or Chinese tour groups as well as locals (hardware stores etc.) We did end up finding birdies to replace the birdies Sara had earlier lost. After that we walked back towards the really touristy part of town, stopping in a number of boutiques on the way. They call them boutiques, not that they are really any different from the boutique next door, but the quality is higher than in the markets, but the price is also ten fold higher.
We walked back and since we had a late start decided to check out the old royal palace, now museum before going for lunch. The palace was like any other palace, with meeting rooms, throne rooms, bedrooms, etc. It wasn't overly large or over-the-top like one has seen in St. Petersburg to say. The place was rebuilt in the 1930's about and then renovated in the 1960's before the monarch was finally ousted at the end of the second Indo-China war.
After that we had an only sorta okay lunch, and watched part of a terrible HBO movie with the owner. (In english with Lao subtitles.) We thought about heading off to see the remaining Wats on the list, but Sara was tired, and I wasn't full of energy so happily agreed to have a relaxing afternoon, (from 3pm-6pm). On the way back to the hotel we located the kids who were missing their original birdie and replaced it with three new ones (good ones with real feathers), which they were very happy to recieve. I relaxed by starting the "Life of PI" and Sara read too before falling asleep.
At a bit after 6pm we headed for the market. The kids where in the street trying to retrieve one of the birdies from a tree. Good thing we got them 3 replacements. We hit the market hard, but fizzled out after spending a bunch of money, making it only halfway through, but crossing a number of items off our list. We were bargining over a coconut wood serving dish with this woman, who child was having a temper-tantrum. Sara was not impressed, and I think that is when she decided she had had enough for the day. I was trying to get the best price, (Sara: the kid was screaming his cute little head off for like 30 minutes and the mom was trying to bargin and calm him down... i just said pay whatever so she can tend to her child!). It is what she said. We do have to return to the market at least one more time, but we're almost done, I think....but just when you think your done you see something else... Anyways, we gave up before crossing everything off our list, and went for dinner. Sara had Pasta, Tyson fried beef in ginger and rice.
Tomorrow we are going to go up to the buddha caves, and maybe to a waterfall.(Sara: the water is not exactly pretty right now since it is rainy season and flowing fast and is high it is not sparkling blue but dark chocolate mud colour... makes swimming seem unappealing unfortunantly).
Tyson and Sara
Friday, August 1, 2008
We would now like to add "Class E" to our drivers license please.
PAI PAI!!! (Go, Go).
Those are the famous words of a Mahout driver. Today we got up and suddenly it was my birthday.. wierd? I showered to the song of the beetles in my head "They say its your birthday.. daaadadd addda happy birthday". We went to the bakery and mixed it up a little got a cheese croissont and no fruit (the watermelon is going out of season and the last bowl we had wasn't that great... pineapple is still amazing though).
After that we went to the place where we were going to get picked up to be taken to elephant camp. WAAAAAAAAAAAAY cooler than band camp. It was a bumpy ride, and a full mini van full (literally the guides were sitting on wicker baskets and there was not any seats missing). It was about 30 minutes to the elephant base camp. When we got there we were taken to a bungalow to change into our mahout suites.. really classy... not! Anyways they were funny and we all looked ridiculous in them (there was us, a couple from the UK, and a couple from Holland) We had to wait about 15 minutes for the morning tour to finish riding the elephants and then we got our turn. I was really excited, and elephants are MASSIVE.. but i think there cute, and ours weren't that smelly. Although they do take VERY long pees and well you can think of what else big they do... they also fart loud. But still cute in a wierd way. Elephants are also very bristly and not soft, not that i thought they would be like i did a Panda. (tyson: just because you think everything should feel like a teddy bear, well now you know a panda, and an elephant aren't soft and cuddley)
From there on we went for an hour and a half jungle ride on the benchs while our driver drove us around. The jungle was hot, and there was really big spiders and they were gross. About 3/4 of the way into our walk the driver asked if we wanted to switch and of course i said yes. It was cool and i wasn't afraid at all. The elephant was pretty easy going but i didn't enjoy when the guide would attempt or did smack her with a branch when she misbehaved (misbehaved being she wanted to eat the branches off the trees.. i was ok with that) When Tyson got to drive the guide was going to smack the elephant again but i grabbed the stick from him and said no... he just lauged and put it down. But i really hope they are nice to them. Who really knows... I gave the elephant who's name was (Bouy yang) a head massage for the most part.
After our walk we fed our elephant some bananas and then we ourselves had lunch. After lunch we got our elephant training course. Basically a list of 10 commands to drive an elephant. Go, move right, move left, stop, no!, lay down, get up, turn around, take this, spray water. We practiced on eachother quizzing eachother but really when it was time to drive our elephants ourselves (with the guide in the back) we forgot everything but PAI!!! PAI!!! go, go. (tyson: you could also tell the elephant to go left or right by using your feet behind the ear opposite to the direction you wanted it to turn, that's how I turned my elephant) I also did that too but in a gentle way. Anyways we drove our elephants for about 20 minutes. Then came back and had much waiting time which was the only bad part. We basically walked through a village that took 4 minutes and then took a boat to the other side where the lodges were and sat there for about 1.5 hours at least. We eventually fell asleep and then it was time to finally bath our elephants.
I had a hard time getting on my elephant when it was lying down, but eventually made it. The bathing was a little bit disappointing we didn't get to scrub them, just splash water all over them and get them to splash other people for a bit, but then we went for another ride to the jungle to put the elephants to bed. I think i could use an elephant i think i would be a good Mahout! (tyson: i don't know if it was just because the river was really high that we didn't get off and scrub, or what. The walk through the jungle was really cool, as we walked along a stream with the water up to the elephant's neck. It was really pretty, but I didn't have my camera.)
Once we took the elephant to rest we got changed and waited about 15 minutes for the bus to take us back to town. Overall it was a good day. An experience I won't forget especially on your birthday, not many people can say they rode an elephant on thier birthday (and Franko this isn't a lie... I really did ride an elephant unlike you getting bitten by a shark).
When we got into town we were hungrier than hippos.. haha i am so funny, but really hungry. We went back to the guesthouse to change into our evening wear (basically misquitoe wear) and had to grab the malaria pills. We went for pizza again (I know I know im in Laos eating pizza but its my birthday and i like pizza so leave me alone! we had spring rolls too!!!) (Tyson: good thing everyday isn't her birthday, jk....) We then went searching for cake. We found dessert pastries instead in a quite bakery and it was good, we had a debate rather travelling was good or bad for a country.. wasn't really a debate but a discussion. Sometimes we feel bad for trying to experience a culture and record it in our memories and our film... maybe we feel this way because it is sooo touristy here, compared to our last wild adventure. At the same time it is still easy and relaxing and so its a toss up.
Anyways that was the day in a nut shell. Pretty fun all and all. Tomorrow not sure what the agenda is, maybe a slow boat up the mekong for the day, or just kick it around here and see some more wats. We only have 3 days left in Laos before heading back to Bangkok before flying home. It feels really strange not thinking this is for 4 months but only three weeks.
Talk to you later!
Sara and Tyson
Those are the famous words of a Mahout driver. Today we got up and suddenly it was my birthday.. wierd? I showered to the song of the beetles in my head "They say its your birthday.. daaadadd addda happy birthday". We went to the bakery and mixed it up a little got a cheese croissont and no fruit (the watermelon is going out of season and the last bowl we had wasn't that great... pineapple is still amazing though).
After that we went to the place where we were going to get picked up to be taken to elephant camp. WAAAAAAAAAAAAY cooler than band camp. It was a bumpy ride, and a full mini van full (literally the guides were sitting on wicker baskets and there was not any seats missing). It was about 30 minutes to the elephant base camp. When we got there we were taken to a bungalow to change into our mahout suites.. really classy... not! Anyways they were funny and we all looked ridiculous in them (there was us, a couple from the UK, and a couple from Holland) We had to wait about 15 minutes for the morning tour to finish riding the elephants and then we got our turn. I was really excited, and elephants are MASSIVE.. but i think there cute, and ours weren't that smelly. Although they do take VERY long pees and well you can think of what else big they do... they also fart loud. But still cute in a wierd way. Elephants are also very bristly and not soft, not that i thought they would be like i did a Panda. (tyson: just because you think everything should feel like a teddy bear, well now you know a panda, and an elephant aren't soft and cuddley)
From there on we went for an hour and a half jungle ride on the benchs while our driver drove us around. The jungle was hot, and there was really big spiders and they were gross. About 3/4 of the way into our walk the driver asked if we wanted to switch and of course i said yes. It was cool and i wasn't afraid at all. The elephant was pretty easy going but i didn't enjoy when the guide would attempt or did smack her with a branch when she misbehaved (misbehaved being she wanted to eat the branches off the trees.. i was ok with that) When Tyson got to drive the guide was going to smack the elephant again but i grabbed the stick from him and said no... he just lauged and put it down. But i really hope they are nice to them. Who really knows... I gave the elephant who's name was (Bouy yang) a head massage for the most part.
After our walk we fed our elephant some bananas and then we ourselves had lunch. After lunch we got our elephant training course. Basically a list of 10 commands to drive an elephant. Go, move right, move left, stop, no!, lay down, get up, turn around, take this, spray water. We practiced on eachother quizzing eachother but really when it was time to drive our elephants ourselves (with the guide in the back) we forgot everything but PAI!!! PAI!!! go, go. (tyson: you could also tell the elephant to go left or right by using your feet behind the ear opposite to the direction you wanted it to turn, that's how I turned my elephant) I also did that too but in a gentle way. Anyways we drove our elephants for about 20 minutes. Then came back and had much waiting time which was the only bad part. We basically walked through a village that took 4 minutes and then took a boat to the other side where the lodges were and sat there for about 1.5 hours at least. We eventually fell asleep and then it was time to finally bath our elephants.
I had a hard time getting on my elephant when it was lying down, but eventually made it. The bathing was a little bit disappointing we didn't get to scrub them, just splash water all over them and get them to splash other people for a bit, but then we went for another ride to the jungle to put the elephants to bed. I think i could use an elephant i think i would be a good Mahout! (tyson: i don't know if it was just because the river was really high that we didn't get off and scrub, or what. The walk through the jungle was really cool, as we walked along a stream with the water up to the elephant's neck. It was really pretty, but I didn't have my camera.)
Once we took the elephant to rest we got changed and waited about 15 minutes for the bus to take us back to town. Overall it was a good day. An experience I won't forget especially on your birthday, not many people can say they rode an elephant on thier birthday (and Franko this isn't a lie... I really did ride an elephant unlike you getting bitten by a shark).
When we got into town we were hungrier than hippos.. haha i am so funny, but really hungry. We went back to the guesthouse to change into our evening wear (basically misquitoe wear) and had to grab the malaria pills. We went for pizza again (I know I know im in Laos eating pizza but its my birthday and i like pizza so leave me alone! we had spring rolls too!!!) (Tyson: good thing everyday isn't her birthday, jk....) We then went searching for cake. We found dessert pastries instead in a quite bakery and it was good, we had a debate rather travelling was good or bad for a country.. wasn't really a debate but a discussion. Sometimes we feel bad for trying to experience a culture and record it in our memories and our film... maybe we feel this way because it is sooo touristy here, compared to our last wild adventure. At the same time it is still easy and relaxing and so its a toss up.
Anyways that was the day in a nut shell. Pretty fun all and all. Tomorrow not sure what the agenda is, maybe a slow boat up the mekong for the day, or just kick it around here and see some more wats. We only have 3 days left in Laos before heading back to Bangkok before flying home. It feels really strange not thinking this is for 4 months but only three weeks.
Talk to you later!
Sara and Tyson
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Stroll around the town
Good evening (or morning wherever part of the world you are at)
Today was a relax day (sort of?) Got up this morning and got caught up with the world , funny how your on the other side of the world where you usually see this side on your television at home but yet here you are on that side and catching up with the rest of the world, good ol BBC.
Anyways off to the bakery for breaky fresh croissonts and fruit yum yum. Then we started our stroll. We found a stupa/wat/giant stairs to climb up to get a view of the mekong and the town. What a better way to start your day with some stair climbing :). The view was peaceful and relaxing it was about 9:00 am and in Laos things are laid back, no one is rushing to open shops or anything everyone kind of lazes the day away .... my kind of place. On the way around the Stupa we found some monks who spoke some english and wanted to talk to us. So we talked to one of them for about 10 minutes or so and he showed us what was apparently Buddhas footprint... Tyson was not believing it, it pretty much looked like big foots footprint... but you never know i guess. The monk was kind of enough to tell us how he came to Luang Prabang to study english and that it was expensive to study english here. He kindly asked us for some money .. i really couldn't resist i highly doubt it a monk would rip you off and so we gave him some money, plus monks are a higher class than normal people so i would not want to offend.
He showed us where he studied at school and then we needed to be going because we had to pick up our plane tickets to bangkok at a travel agent. After we picked up our tickets we went back to the hotel to switch rooms to a cheaper room and then decided to see if the morning market was set up along the river... to which it wasn't.. Tyson is not sure if there actually is a market there. We then proceeded to keep walking before picking up our laundry (yay clean clothes ) I decided that I needed a nap, still recovering from all the activities we did in Vieng Vang. So i took an hour and a half off to relax and nap. Tyson continued to stroll and he can tell his tale.
So I left Sara to her rest and headed out on the town. I decided to try and find a quiet bench beside a busy corner where I could grab people pictures. I went around looking without much success, so I decided to wander into a temple. As I entered the grounds a group of monks were studying something. As I was walking right by I decided to ask if they were studying english which they were. The one had a number of questions for me, so I sat down and helped with some grammer. We had to choose from on/for/to. Plus I helped explain a number of words such as cruise, and jogging. I sat and talked with them for the better part of an hour being tormented by red army ants at the same time. Those little buggers, once they start bitting they don't let go. At this point it started raining quite hard, so I agreed at their request to come back later (we agreed on 3:30pm to help some of the novices with english).
After than I checked out a couple of shops and headed back to Sara, because I was getting really hungry. Still need to find a busy corner for people shots. I choose to eat at this little place that always seemed to be busy. It was a Lao food place run by a Lao man and his white wife. The menu was very informative of the culture of the city and the food of the Lao people. We decided on two sampler trays (top shelf kinda place) and the food was good, I thought, very complex layering of flavors. Sara was nervous about eating off lettace but enjoyed half of the sticky rice samples. Sara didn't enjoy the flavors.
We headed back to the temple to talk with the novices, but when we got there the monk I had spoken with earlier had forgotten I was coming back. Oh well, at least we came back. Then we went over to another temple with mirrored stucko picture stories all over the outside walls. There we heard the monks sound the 4pm drum, quite a nice sound with the large drum and the brass dongs sounding.
After that we walked down bought our tickets for tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going on an elephant mahout training course. Where after being driven around on the elephants in the morning, we get taught how to drive the elephants in the afternoon, wash the elephants in the river, and then get to drive the elephants ourselves into the jungle where they sleep. We are both very excited about tomorrow.
Then we went shopping in an outdoor evening market that they set up by closing down the street. It is all tourist stuff, but if you look hard some of it is nice, and a little bargining and the price is reasonable. We got hungry before we finished the market and went for pizza, spring rolls, and beer. Now we are here catching you up with our day's activities.
See you tomorrow.
Tyson and Sara
Today was a relax day (sort of?) Got up this morning and got caught up with the world , funny how your on the other side of the world where you usually see this side on your television at home but yet here you are on that side and catching up with the rest of the world, good ol BBC.
Anyways off to the bakery for breaky fresh croissonts and fruit yum yum. Then we started our stroll. We found a stupa/wat/giant stairs to climb up to get a view of the mekong and the town. What a better way to start your day with some stair climbing :). The view was peaceful and relaxing it was about 9:00 am and in Laos things are laid back, no one is rushing to open shops or anything everyone kind of lazes the day away .... my kind of place. On the way around the Stupa we found some monks who spoke some english and wanted to talk to us. So we talked to one of them for about 10 minutes or so and he showed us what was apparently Buddhas footprint... Tyson was not believing it, it pretty much looked like big foots footprint... but you never know i guess. The monk was kind of enough to tell us how he came to Luang Prabang to study english and that it was expensive to study english here. He kindly asked us for some money .. i really couldn't resist i highly doubt it a monk would rip you off and so we gave him some money, plus monks are a higher class than normal people so i would not want to offend.
He showed us where he studied at school and then we needed to be going because we had to pick up our plane tickets to bangkok at a travel agent. After we picked up our tickets we went back to the hotel to switch rooms to a cheaper room and then decided to see if the morning market was set up along the river... to which it wasn't.. Tyson is not sure if there actually is a market there. We then proceeded to keep walking before picking up our laundry (yay clean clothes ) I decided that I needed a nap, still recovering from all the activities we did in Vieng Vang. So i took an hour and a half off to relax and nap. Tyson continued to stroll and he can tell his tale.
So I left Sara to her rest and headed out on the town. I decided to try and find a quiet bench beside a busy corner where I could grab people pictures. I went around looking without much success, so I decided to wander into a temple. As I entered the grounds a group of monks were studying something. As I was walking right by I decided to ask if they were studying english which they were. The one had a number of questions for me, so I sat down and helped with some grammer. We had to choose from on/for/to. Plus I helped explain a number of words such as cruise, and jogging. I sat and talked with them for the better part of an hour being tormented by red army ants at the same time. Those little buggers, once they start bitting they don't let go. At this point it started raining quite hard, so I agreed at their request to come back later (we agreed on 3:30pm to help some of the novices with english).
After than I checked out a couple of shops and headed back to Sara, because I was getting really hungry. Still need to find a busy corner for people shots. I choose to eat at this little place that always seemed to be busy. It was a Lao food place run by a Lao man and his white wife. The menu was very informative of the culture of the city and the food of the Lao people. We decided on two sampler trays (top shelf kinda place) and the food was good, I thought, very complex layering of flavors. Sara was nervous about eating off lettace but enjoyed half of the sticky rice samples. Sara didn't enjoy the flavors.
We headed back to the temple to talk with the novices, but when we got there the monk I had spoken with earlier had forgotten I was coming back. Oh well, at least we came back. Then we went over to another temple with mirrored stucko picture stories all over the outside walls. There we heard the monks sound the 4pm drum, quite a nice sound with the large drum and the brass dongs sounding.
After that we walked down bought our tickets for tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going on an elephant mahout training course. Where after being driven around on the elephants in the morning, we get taught how to drive the elephants in the afternoon, wash the elephants in the river, and then get to drive the elephants ourselves into the jungle where they sleep. We are both very excited about tomorrow.
Then we went shopping in an outdoor evening market that they set up by closing down the street. It is all tourist stuff, but if you look hard some of it is nice, and a little bargining and the price is reasonable. We got hungry before we finished the market and went for pizza, spring rolls, and beer. Now we are here catching you up with our day's activities.
See you tomorrow.
Tyson and Sara
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Over the mountain, through the rain, and to Luoang Prabang
Hello, and grettings from Luoang Prabrang or however you spell it.
This morning was just packing up, picking up some delious coconut bread, and getting the tuk tuk out to the bus station. The bus was suppose to leave at 10am but was delayed 30 minutes by the fact that one group of passangers slept in due to massive overconsuption of cheap alcohol the night before, as one could tell by how they sheepishly dragged themselves onto the bus.
Then we were off, Sara by request had the window seat. The air conditioning crapped out about 30 minutes in, but the windows could open so it wasn't so bad. The trip winded its way over the mountains twisting and turning every which way. Luckily no one ended up throwing up that we were aware of. I had my bets on a particularly hung over girl, but she didn't pull through for me. The scenery was some limestone krats to start then just rolling but very steep red clay mountains. The villages we passed especially very high up were quite poor. You could easily tell the difference between the wealth of each house. Poorest houses were built on wooden posts raised off the ground (all were raised off the ground at least a foot) and were weaved bamboo sides with a thatched roof. Next was either the thatched roof and weaved sides built on concrete pillars, or the wooden pillars with weaved sides but a metal roof. Next was the concrete pillars with the thatched sides and metal roof. Following that was the concrete pillars, wooden sides and metal roof. After that was the most expensive looking homes in town which were a full town stories with concrete pillars a metal roof, wooden upper story and concrete bricks filling in the area for the first floor. I had great interest in hopefully correctly figureing this out during the trip.
We passed through a number of rain storms, through the clouds once or twice, and had to stop twice once for the engine starting to overheat and once for the breaks starting to smell. Sara doesn't remember or disagrees that we stopped because the breaks smelled.
At the lunch stop, since we had brought food I was just walking around when I was approached by a number of kids. They ended up being from the local school and I figured that they probably came down here often, as their goal was to practice their english. I was happy to help and spent 15 minutes answering whatever questions I could. One of them was quite skilled, basic but skilled compared to most.
We arrived in Luang Prabang around 4:30pm (left at 10:30 after delay) and failed to reduce the price of the tuk tuk into town. We hoped that the hotel still had our reservation, which they didn't. But they still had a room open at their second hotel, which was the most expensive room in the place, but was very nice. So we took it.
We caught up with the world via BBC, and then went looking for dinner. On the way we dropped off our laundry, and Sara was invited to play badminton with some kids. As per usual she got competitive (go figure eh?) (note the kids looked no older than 8) and the birdy ended up in the sewer. Sara felt really bad and sent me back to the hotel for stuff from Canada. So we unloaded pencils, stickers, and an inflatable ball on the kids. Sara says if she finds a birdy she will buy one and go looking for the kids. Also on the way to dinner we saw a group of young men playing takaraw (a game like volleyball but no hands allowed we think) I remember trying it in gym once, and the whole class failing terribly. We would have watched for a while, but we were both hungry as we didn't eat much of a lunch.
We didn't bring the guidebook because we had an idea where we wanted to go for dinner, but we weren't impressed by the price or the lack of customers, so walked blindly around looking for a busy and nice looking place. It turned out to be only so-so and the menu didn't reflect what we got very well (I ordered from the stirfry part and got a soup). Sara has a bit of a headace and has had it all day, probably I think for dehydration, but we'll go relax and drink some water now.
Tomorrow will be an easy day, lining up a plane ticket to Bangkok for the fifth, shopping, and lining up tours, and maybe a Wat (temple) or two after we get our more appropiate clothes back from the laundry.
Tyson and Sara
This morning was just packing up, picking up some delious coconut bread, and getting the tuk tuk out to the bus station. The bus was suppose to leave at 10am but was delayed 30 minutes by the fact that one group of passangers slept in due to massive overconsuption of cheap alcohol the night before, as one could tell by how they sheepishly dragged themselves onto the bus.
Then we were off, Sara by request had the window seat. The air conditioning crapped out about 30 minutes in, but the windows could open so it wasn't so bad. The trip winded its way over the mountains twisting and turning every which way. Luckily no one ended up throwing up that we were aware of. I had my bets on a particularly hung over girl, but she didn't pull through for me. The scenery was some limestone krats to start then just rolling but very steep red clay mountains. The villages we passed especially very high up were quite poor. You could easily tell the difference between the wealth of each house. Poorest houses were built on wooden posts raised off the ground (all were raised off the ground at least a foot) and were weaved bamboo sides with a thatched roof. Next was either the thatched roof and weaved sides built on concrete pillars, or the wooden pillars with weaved sides but a metal roof. Next was the concrete pillars with the thatched sides and metal roof. Following that was the concrete pillars, wooden sides and metal roof. After that was the most expensive looking homes in town which were a full town stories with concrete pillars a metal roof, wooden upper story and concrete bricks filling in the area for the first floor. I had great interest in hopefully correctly figureing this out during the trip.
We passed through a number of rain storms, through the clouds once or twice, and had to stop twice once for the engine starting to overheat and once for the breaks starting to smell. Sara doesn't remember or disagrees that we stopped because the breaks smelled.
At the lunch stop, since we had brought food I was just walking around when I was approached by a number of kids. They ended up being from the local school and I figured that they probably came down here often, as their goal was to practice their english. I was happy to help and spent 15 minutes answering whatever questions I could. One of them was quite skilled, basic but skilled compared to most.
We arrived in Luang Prabang around 4:30pm (left at 10:30 after delay) and failed to reduce the price of the tuk tuk into town. We hoped that the hotel still had our reservation, which they didn't. But they still had a room open at their second hotel, which was the most expensive room in the place, but was very nice. So we took it.
We caught up with the world via BBC, and then went looking for dinner. On the way we dropped off our laundry, and Sara was invited to play badminton with some kids. As per usual she got competitive (go figure eh?) (note the kids looked no older than 8) and the birdy ended up in the sewer. Sara felt really bad and sent me back to the hotel for stuff from Canada. So we unloaded pencils, stickers, and an inflatable ball on the kids. Sara says if she finds a birdy she will buy one and go looking for the kids. Also on the way to dinner we saw a group of young men playing takaraw (a game like volleyball but no hands allowed we think) I remember trying it in gym once, and the whole class failing terribly. We would have watched for a while, but we were both hungry as we didn't eat much of a lunch.
We didn't bring the guidebook because we had an idea where we wanted to go for dinner, but we weren't impressed by the price or the lack of customers, so walked blindly around looking for a busy and nice looking place. It turned out to be only so-so and the menu didn't reflect what we got very well (I ordered from the stirfry part and got a soup). Sara has a bit of a headace and has had it all day, probably I think for dehydration, but we'll go relax and drink some water now.
Tomorrow will be an easy day, lining up a plane ticket to Bangkok for the fifth, shopping, and lining up tours, and maybe a Wat (temple) or two after we get our more appropiate clothes back from the laundry.
Tyson and Sara
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Spider pig spider pig does whatever a spider pig does!
Hello and welcome to the death defying adventure we had (ok a little overstatment but it was pretty scary).
We got up the usual 7am time and packed our bags because we had to move rooms. We ate breakfast and all last night i kept dreaming about rock climbing and wondering if i was mental for wanting to do this.. i tossed and turned alot and then dreamt about work YUCK!
We were at the green discovery place for pick up at 9am to start the day. It was just the 2 of us and our guide who spoke good enough english better than the kayaking guide whos name he said was porn star. We had a quick stop to get our climbing gear , harness, really incrediable tight shoes (normal climbing shoes), chalk, ropes, helmets and caribeeners. Then it was about a 10 minute ride to the drop off point from which we had to walk half hour through a riverbed that didn't have any water in it and then the intense part came. We had to pretty much scramble up through thick jungle and big rocks up to our rock climbing part it was about a 15 minute climb and already i was crapping my pants wondering how the hell i was going to get down with out killing myself. Finally we made it to our destination and the huge limestone walls.
We had a 10 minute overview of how to tie the figure 8 knot and how to belay although Tyson only had to belay the guide so that he could set the top rope up, other than that the guide belayed for the both of us (good thing cuz i was scared). We started with a 5a on the French climbing scale which is the easiest required rope in climb. Tyson went first cuz i wanted him to test it out to see if he would fall ... just kidding.. i was shaking in my shorts but looked great with my harness on. Anyways Tyson did the wall no problem he was a like a spider pig (simpsons reference) (Tyson: it wasn't that easy i got sorta stuck in one spot and needed direction on how to continue) But none the less he made it.. and back down he went safe and sound. Next it was my turn... the first attempt i made it to the little ledge about 30 feet high and then attempted to keep going but just couldn't figure out how to get through the tricky part (oh let us remind you that it was hot out and we were completley drenched in sweat even when not climbing) anyways i came back down... after sitting for a couple of minutes i tried again and got past the tricky part which was an adrenaline rush but then came to another tricky part and couldn't get past it. The hand holds were beautiful, but the feet ones were tricky and i had not mastered the push with your feet part yet so i was exhausted, but i got 3/4 of the way up and felt satisfied ... frick i was on a rock face in laos how cool is that? (tyson: I think she could have kept going, but after a couple of failed reaches looking for holds she got nervous, plus by not using her legs as much as she should have I completely understand how tired she was.)
The next one we went to was a 5b and the first part was tricky and a little wet from water dripping and wasn't completely covered by the overhang. Anyways Tyson went again first and conquered that one as well, he makes it look so easy and he didn't even really want to do it. I tried and got past the tricky part but then again with the lack of footholds got scared and got exhausted and had to come down.. but it was worth a shot.
The last climb of the day was staright vertical wall for Tyson he skipped 4 grades and was at a 6b and it was high and vertical. It was a long climb he says and took the full rope. I opted out I needed to eat the cliff energy bar by this point. He made it 3/4 of the way up and slipped (not like fall.. just got away from the rock the guide had him in lock). (tyson: what happened was I got to this section where only half the normal route was usable due to water and slick moss covering the other half. I couldn't find any good footholds or a arm hold that i could have used to pull myself up, so after hanging by my right hand for realistically 30 seconds I called for tension on the rope, and tried to move up but slipped and fell off the rock. After that I hanged for a bit to try and catch my breath, re-chalk and tried again, but failed at the same spot. At this point I was too tired to try again, and statisifed with my attempt. So I came down. The guide said that if the rock hadn't been wet, he thought I would have done it.)
Anyways it was kind of death defying and scary but fun at the same time. We wer both exhuasted once we got back to town after death defying climbing fdown the krast. It started to rain when we got down and then it poured and hasn't stopped.. we stopped at the bakery for a bite to eat thinking the rain would stop like it usually does but it didn't so we tried to make it back to the bungalow but the rain actually was cold to us... so we headed for the closest massage parlour and got massages with cream (more like tiger balm).
Death defying incident number 2:
The massage was going good, a little different than the first one we had in vientiane, the cream felt good but we were still cold so it wasn't as comfortable as it could have been but still really nice. A Lao massage is when they massage your muscles and Tyson thinks they push on pressure points but i disagree anyways they push and rub and chop on you.. and stretch you... then the scary part came which wasn't in the first massage.. all of a sudden my neck was being snapped like as if you were at the chiropractor.... and then she snapped my back.. and i thougth for sure i was going to be paralyzed no i didn't . i actually like the chiropractor but Tyson won't let me go anymore becuase he always tells me these stories about how they can paralyze you with one mistake especially with your neck. But it was already done and the guy did it to Tyson too. It was a little scary... But we're ok... with some lose necks.
After the massage it was still raining but not as hard. We went back to the bungalow to shower and change. We tried to pay for our bungalow but there exchange rate from KIP to US was outrageous it was 10,000 kip to 1 US dollar when in reality it is 8,500 to 1 US dollar. Tyson was mad.. and said he wasn't paying that because the room was in US dollars, so we said we would pay later once we found a good exchange rate in town. But we were hungry and needed food.
So dinner was had and then we found an exchange rate for 8,700 kip to 1 US dollar much better and Tyson is happy.
Sorry for lack of pictures it takes forever to download. I guess you will all just have to have dinner with us and see them then. Especially our wicked rock climbing photos.
Tomorrow we are off on a 6 hour bus ride (wish us luck) to Louang Prabang which is our last city in Laos before back to Bangkok. There we hope to explore the city and ride an elephant, and maybe kayak the mekong and maybe explore some mountain villages.
See you there.
Sara and Tyson
We got up the usual 7am time and packed our bags because we had to move rooms. We ate breakfast and all last night i kept dreaming about rock climbing and wondering if i was mental for wanting to do this.. i tossed and turned alot and then dreamt about work YUCK!
We were at the green discovery place for pick up at 9am to start the day. It was just the 2 of us and our guide who spoke good enough english better than the kayaking guide whos name he said was porn star. We had a quick stop to get our climbing gear , harness, really incrediable tight shoes (normal climbing shoes), chalk, ropes, helmets and caribeeners. Then it was about a 10 minute ride to the drop off point from which we had to walk half hour through a riverbed that didn't have any water in it and then the intense part came. We had to pretty much scramble up through thick jungle and big rocks up to our rock climbing part it was about a 15 minute climb and already i was crapping my pants wondering how the hell i was going to get down with out killing myself. Finally we made it to our destination and the huge limestone walls.
We had a 10 minute overview of how to tie the figure 8 knot and how to belay although Tyson only had to belay the guide so that he could set the top rope up, other than that the guide belayed for the both of us (good thing cuz i was scared). We started with a 5a on the French climbing scale which is the easiest required rope in climb. Tyson went first cuz i wanted him to test it out to see if he would fall ... just kidding.. i was shaking in my shorts but looked great with my harness on. Anyways Tyson did the wall no problem he was a like a spider pig (simpsons reference) (Tyson: it wasn't that easy i got sorta stuck in one spot and needed direction on how to continue) But none the less he made it.. and back down he went safe and sound. Next it was my turn... the first attempt i made it to the little ledge about 30 feet high and then attempted to keep going but just couldn't figure out how to get through the tricky part (oh let us remind you that it was hot out and we were completley drenched in sweat even when not climbing) anyways i came back down... after sitting for a couple of minutes i tried again and got past the tricky part which was an adrenaline rush but then came to another tricky part and couldn't get past it. The hand holds were beautiful, but the feet ones were tricky and i had not mastered the push with your feet part yet so i was exhausted, but i got 3/4 of the way up and felt satisfied ... frick i was on a rock face in laos how cool is that? (tyson: I think she could have kept going, but after a couple of failed reaches looking for holds she got nervous, plus by not using her legs as much as she should have I completely understand how tired she was.)
The next one we went to was a 5b and the first part was tricky and a little wet from water dripping and wasn't completely covered by the overhang. Anyways Tyson went again first and conquered that one as well, he makes it look so easy and he didn't even really want to do it. I tried and got past the tricky part but then again with the lack of footholds got scared and got exhausted and had to come down.. but it was worth a shot.
The last climb of the day was staright vertical wall for Tyson he skipped 4 grades and was at a 6b and it was high and vertical. It was a long climb he says and took the full rope. I opted out I needed to eat the cliff energy bar by this point. He made it 3/4 of the way up and slipped (not like fall.. just got away from the rock the guide had him in lock). (tyson: what happened was I got to this section where only half the normal route was usable due to water and slick moss covering the other half. I couldn't find any good footholds or a arm hold that i could have used to pull myself up, so after hanging by my right hand for realistically 30 seconds I called for tension on the rope, and tried to move up but slipped and fell off the rock. After that I hanged for a bit to try and catch my breath, re-chalk and tried again, but failed at the same spot. At this point I was too tired to try again, and statisifed with my attempt. So I came down. The guide said that if the rock hadn't been wet, he thought I would have done it.)
Anyways it was kind of death defying and scary but fun at the same time. We wer both exhuasted once we got back to town after death defying climbing fdown the krast. It started to rain when we got down and then it poured and hasn't stopped.. we stopped at the bakery for a bite to eat thinking the rain would stop like it usually does but it didn't so we tried to make it back to the bungalow but the rain actually was cold to us... so we headed for the closest massage parlour and got massages with cream (more like tiger balm).
Death defying incident number 2:
The massage was going good, a little different than the first one we had in vientiane, the cream felt good but we were still cold so it wasn't as comfortable as it could have been but still really nice. A Lao massage is when they massage your muscles and Tyson thinks they push on pressure points but i disagree anyways they push and rub and chop on you.. and stretch you... then the scary part came which wasn't in the first massage.. all of a sudden my neck was being snapped like as if you were at the chiropractor.... and then she snapped my back.. and i thougth for sure i was going to be paralyzed no i didn't . i actually like the chiropractor but Tyson won't let me go anymore becuase he always tells me these stories about how they can paralyze you with one mistake especially with your neck. But it was already done and the guy did it to Tyson too. It was a little scary... But we're ok... with some lose necks.
After the massage it was still raining but not as hard. We went back to the bungalow to shower and change. We tried to pay for our bungalow but there exchange rate from KIP to US was outrageous it was 10,000 kip to 1 US dollar when in reality it is 8,500 to 1 US dollar. Tyson was mad.. and said he wasn't paying that because the room was in US dollars, so we said we would pay later once we found a good exchange rate in town. But we were hungry and needed food.
So dinner was had and then we found an exchange rate for 8,700 kip to 1 US dollar much better and Tyson is happy.
Sorry for lack of pictures it takes forever to download. I guess you will all just have to have dinner with us and see them then. Especially our wicked rock climbing photos.
Tomorrow we are off on a 6 hour bus ride (wish us luck) to Louang Prabang which is our last city in Laos before back to Bangkok. There we hope to explore the city and ride an elephant, and maybe kayak the mekong and maybe explore some mountain villages.
See you there.
Sara and Tyson
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tour de Laos
Hello!!!
Today can you guess what we did? Hahah we biked around the country side.
Stage 1:
We got hooked up with our bikes that were Giant brand moutain bikes because we figured since it rained last night (that is an understatement... it poured) we needed some bikes with thick wheels and thick tread to get us through the mud with more than one gear.
The terrain was flat with huge rocks sticking out everywhere and muddy it took us over a bridge to which you have to pay to cross and then through the village on the other side of the river. Our first stop was a cave to which we locked our bikes and walked about 600meters through rice paddies and mud.. thick mud... thich mud all over!! We had to pay to get into the cave and two little kids followed us and then turned around half way and said 10,000 kip each for guide.. we looked at eachother and said no.. no no... 5,000 for the both of you and we have our own torch (headlamp) they declined us and went the other way. So on our own we went. It was a steep climb up to what we thought was the cave but it actually was a cave just not the cave we were going to see, but we explored it anyways. It was dark and Tyson saw a bat he claims. But it was very slippery inside. Once out of the cave we found the real cave which was a very steep climb up the side of a vertical krat. We were sweating our faces off and it was slippery as hell. But the cave was skinny and long. Once inside we walked over a bamboo bridge and there was some crawl spaces to the sides but we didnt crawl into them for fear of bats.
Stage 2:
Uphill for a bit past some rice paddies with a beautiulf backdrop of huge limestone krats we peddled through the rocks of the road getting passed by tractor/tuk tuks in a farming sort of way. We past some options to other caves and to actually trek a limestone krat but by this stage of the race it was almost time for lunch and we were getting tired. We peddled to a lagoon which also had a cave nearby and it was written up in the guidebook as a good half day excursion. We locked our bikes and decided to start the climb up the vertical (not kidding it was pretty vertical slippery rocks/mud and bamboo railing to hold on to. We made it half way when I (sara) just couldn't go no more, legs were shaky i needed food. So we stopped on a rock and had our lunch (Cinnamon bun and a coconut bun and some water ... lunch of tour de france winners eh?) Or Tyson says POW. After the sugar kicked in we made our way to the top .. it was tiring.. but we did it and inside the MASSIVE .. massive is an understatemenet.. GIGANTIC cave we went. It was sooooo big with huge staclites (sp?) and it had a buddha shrine inside part of it. I was still tired so i just chilled inside soaking it all in .. then Tyson went more inside and climbing and he said it was even bigger further in but he got too scared to go all the way to the end by himself and tried to convince me to come with him but i was just too exhausted. Tyson says the cave he climbed into was the size of a football field.
Stage 3:
After our decent down the mountain... it was a little scary... we sat by the lagoon washing our muddy feet and legs. We then proceeded back to the road where the rain began to fall. On the way back we stopped by a little monestary to which we sat with some monks who just laughed and smoked... it was a little awkward at best... and the monestary was small. From there on we came accross a little hut where a women was weaving a silk peice of cloth. Tyson wanted to buy one so we did.. the lady was not much of a bargainer but it was still cheap. The peice he bought wasn't even finished yet and we had to wait 5 minutes for her to finish off the ends.
Stage 4:
The race against the rain began.. making things more muddy and slippery but fun none the less. We had a steady flat finish over the bridge again to cross the river and back into town. The rain was coming.. but not monsoon hard.. but enough to get wet. Good thing it is warm rain. We then took our bikes back and got a snack of champions some chips. Went back to the bungalow to shower up and read. Tyson finished his book, i as usual tried to read.. about 20 pages and fell asleep.
We then ate dinner, and booked a half day rock climbing adventure. Even though we are both physically exhausted... but i think the limstone krats will have some good holds. It should be fun. Might have to bust out the cliff energy bar.
PS: Ummm we go on a kayaking adventure and no one emails us? What gives?
Sara and Tyson
Today can you guess what we did? Hahah we biked around the country side.
Stage 1:
We got hooked up with our bikes that were Giant brand moutain bikes because we figured since it rained last night (that is an understatement... it poured) we needed some bikes with thick wheels and thick tread to get us through the mud with more than one gear.
The terrain was flat with huge rocks sticking out everywhere and muddy it took us over a bridge to which you have to pay to cross and then through the village on the other side of the river. Our first stop was a cave to which we locked our bikes and walked about 600meters through rice paddies and mud.. thick mud... thich mud all over!! We had to pay to get into the cave and two little kids followed us and then turned around half way and said 10,000 kip each for guide.. we looked at eachother and said no.. no no... 5,000 for the both of you and we have our own torch (headlamp) they declined us and went the other way. So on our own we went. It was a steep climb up to what we thought was the cave but it actually was a cave just not the cave we were going to see, but we explored it anyways. It was dark and Tyson saw a bat he claims. But it was very slippery inside. Once out of the cave we found the real cave which was a very steep climb up the side of a vertical krat. We were sweating our faces off and it was slippery as hell. But the cave was skinny and long. Once inside we walked over a bamboo bridge and there was some crawl spaces to the sides but we didnt crawl into them for fear of bats.
Stage 2:
Uphill for a bit past some rice paddies with a beautiulf backdrop of huge limestone krats we peddled through the rocks of the road getting passed by tractor/tuk tuks in a farming sort of way. We past some options to other caves and to actually trek a limestone krat but by this stage of the race it was almost time for lunch and we were getting tired. We peddled to a lagoon which also had a cave nearby and it was written up in the guidebook as a good half day excursion. We locked our bikes and decided to start the climb up the vertical (not kidding it was pretty vertical slippery rocks/mud and bamboo railing to hold on to. We made it half way when I (sara) just couldn't go no more, legs were shaky i needed food. So we stopped on a rock and had our lunch (Cinnamon bun and a coconut bun and some water ... lunch of tour de france winners eh?) Or Tyson says POW. After the sugar kicked in we made our way to the top .. it was tiring.. but we did it and inside the MASSIVE .. massive is an understatemenet.. GIGANTIC cave we went. It was sooooo big with huge staclites (sp?) and it had a buddha shrine inside part of it. I was still tired so i just chilled inside soaking it all in .. then Tyson went more inside and climbing and he said it was even bigger further in but he got too scared to go all the way to the end by himself and tried to convince me to come with him but i was just too exhausted. Tyson says the cave he climbed into was the size of a football field.
Stage 3:
After our decent down the mountain... it was a little scary... we sat by the lagoon washing our muddy feet and legs. We then proceeded back to the road where the rain began to fall. On the way back we stopped by a little monestary to which we sat with some monks who just laughed and smoked... it was a little awkward at best... and the monestary was small. From there on we came accross a little hut where a women was weaving a silk peice of cloth. Tyson wanted to buy one so we did.. the lady was not much of a bargainer but it was still cheap. The peice he bought wasn't even finished yet and we had to wait 5 minutes for her to finish off the ends.
Stage 4:
The race against the rain began.. making things more muddy and slippery but fun none the less. We had a steady flat finish over the bridge again to cross the river and back into town. The rain was coming.. but not monsoon hard.. but enough to get wet. Good thing it is warm rain. We then took our bikes back and got a snack of champions some chips. Went back to the bungalow to shower up and read. Tyson finished his book, i as usual tried to read.. about 20 pages and fell asleep.
We then ate dinner, and booked a half day rock climbing adventure. Even though we are both physically exhausted... but i think the limstone krats will have some good holds. It should be fun. Might have to bust out the cliff energy bar.
PS: Ummm we go on a kayaking adventure and no one emails us? What gives?
Sara and Tyson
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Following the ancient road
Hello,
Last night after we left you we went and booked a kayaking and caving trip for today and then retired to under our misquito net (brought from home) in our bungalow. At around 2am the most wicked storm rolled in with super loud thunder and tropical monsoon rains, go figure eh?
I (Tyson) woke up a bit after 6 am to see the limestone karts across the river half shrouded in mist. I decided to get up and take a couple of pics from the veranda by the water. After that I decided I'd get some better pics from the other side of the river and set off on a little walk that ended up being 1.5 hours long. I would have been longer but I didn't have a watch and we had a trip booked for the day, and Sara was only half awake when I left and I didn't want her to worry. My walk was nice with a light rain falling, that took me through the village on the other side of the river, up a lane and through some rice paddies. I enjoyed the stroll and I'm looking forward to renting bikes tomorrow to further explore the valley.
After showering and eating breakfast (the pineapple here is to die for) we made our way to the pickup stop, and jumped into the back of a half truck half tuk tuk with 8 others, 4 USA, 2 Germany, 1 Tiawain, and 1 Ireland. We drove approx. 30 minutes north and ended up at a gravel pit beside the river.
The kayaks were two seaters, with open tops. We were given a dry bag for our stuff, life jackets, and a brief introduction to the rules of the river and how to paddle. Sara and myself ended up in a kayak together, go figure. The river was milk chocolate brown in color, very comfortably warm and swift moving. Tyson was in the back, Sara in the front. WE DIDN'T EVEN FIGHT!??? We were a good team, not even falling out, unlike one boat that seemed to tip every hour, sometimes in dangerous locations, but they ended up okay. The river was high, but last week had been 5-10 feet higher yet (telling via the bushes lack of leaves along the shore. However even today many bushes were underwater and there were very few eddies along the shore. The river was moving fast enough to make it difficult to paddle against the current and make any headway. There were some rapids along the way, in which Sara got soaked, but it was really really fun (her words not mine). We just lined her up down the middle and paddled hard. Most were just breaking rollers, but there was 2 actual drops. Inbetween the rapids the river was moving quick enough that we didn't have to paddle, so we usually laid back enjoying the lush green scenery with the massive limestone krats.
We stopped for 2 caves, the first was the elephant cave because a limestone stalictite (bottom) had been made to look like a elephant, go figure. The cave was large and not deep. The second cave was after lunch (grilled beef and veggies with rice and a baguette served on a banana leaf) and Sara can explain it.
The second cave was pretty cool. We got out of our kayaks and headed into the jungle for a quick jot to the cave. A misquito bit me on the way and it didn't make it alive to tell the tale. Anyways we had to keep our life jackets on because we had to swim into the cave because there was a spring in the cave. It was dark and cold (well colder than the river water) but it was really cool. We couldn't go all the way through (the cave goes 2km) because of how high the water was. It was said that this is the cave were they Lao refugees came to hide during the second indochina war. It was a little creepy not seeing much and hoping for no leeches to snag on to you (not sure if they were even in there). The staclites (sp?) were huge we wish we would have brought our head lamp.. dang. Next time.
After the second cave, wait sorry.. before the second cave we were peacefully floating down the river when we started to hear really bad techno music... and thus the peace ended. We came to a rope swing bar... basically a party central spot (with about 8 other party central spots along the way.. we only stopped at this one) where we got out of our kayaks and could rope swing into the water. Tyson and I really didn't enjoy the atmosphere of a lot of drunk people and loud music (we are old now) and really that isn't our travelling style.. but some of the others wanted to rope swing so we stopped. The reason why all these stops are along the river is because you can get a tube and ride down the river to stops and they will pull you in. One of the guys who had been here 5 times already and owns some shares in tourist stuff here said that these all sprang up within 2 years and he perdicts in another 5 years the whole river will be like this :(... It really ruins the scenary and peace.. we think. Also someone died like 2 weeks ago tubing down the river when it was really high... water and alcohol really shouldn't mix. Anyways we were safe and our guide was good. No need to worry mom.
After the second cave we just floated down the river swiftly and relaxed. Then we came to the end. We were both tired and it was 4:00pm so it was hot and we are a tad burnt even though we put sunscreen on 2 times and it is spf 30 that indicated how how hot the sun is. We retired back to our bungalow and Tyson had a beer and read his book and I attempted to read and fell asleep for a nap. Then we went for dinner.
Tomorrow we will either rent bikes or walk around the country side.
Sara and Tyson
Last night after we left you we went and booked a kayaking and caving trip for today and then retired to under our misquito net (brought from home) in our bungalow. At around 2am the most wicked storm rolled in with super loud thunder and tropical monsoon rains, go figure eh?
I (Tyson) woke up a bit after 6 am to see the limestone karts across the river half shrouded in mist. I decided to get up and take a couple of pics from the veranda by the water. After that I decided I'd get some better pics from the other side of the river and set off on a little walk that ended up being 1.5 hours long. I would have been longer but I didn't have a watch and we had a trip booked for the day, and Sara was only half awake when I left and I didn't want her to worry. My walk was nice with a light rain falling, that took me through the village on the other side of the river, up a lane and through some rice paddies. I enjoyed the stroll and I'm looking forward to renting bikes tomorrow to further explore the valley.
After showering and eating breakfast (the pineapple here is to die for) we made our way to the pickup stop, and jumped into the back of a half truck half tuk tuk with 8 others, 4 USA, 2 Germany, 1 Tiawain, and 1 Ireland. We drove approx. 30 minutes north and ended up at a gravel pit beside the river.
The kayaks were two seaters, with open tops. We were given a dry bag for our stuff, life jackets, and a brief introduction to the rules of the river and how to paddle. Sara and myself ended up in a kayak together, go figure. The river was milk chocolate brown in color, very comfortably warm and swift moving. Tyson was in the back, Sara in the front. WE DIDN'T EVEN FIGHT!??? We were a good team, not even falling out, unlike one boat that seemed to tip every hour, sometimes in dangerous locations, but they ended up okay. The river was high, but last week had been 5-10 feet higher yet (telling via the bushes lack of leaves along the shore. However even today many bushes were underwater and there were very few eddies along the shore. The river was moving fast enough to make it difficult to paddle against the current and make any headway. There were some rapids along the way, in which Sara got soaked, but it was really really fun (her words not mine). We just lined her up down the middle and paddled hard. Most were just breaking rollers, but there was 2 actual drops. Inbetween the rapids the river was moving quick enough that we didn't have to paddle, so we usually laid back enjoying the lush green scenery with the massive limestone krats.
We stopped for 2 caves, the first was the elephant cave because a limestone stalictite (bottom) had been made to look like a elephant, go figure. The cave was large and not deep. The second cave was after lunch (grilled beef and veggies with rice and a baguette served on a banana leaf) and Sara can explain it.
The second cave was pretty cool. We got out of our kayaks and headed into the jungle for a quick jot to the cave. A misquito bit me on the way and it didn't make it alive to tell the tale. Anyways we had to keep our life jackets on because we had to swim into the cave because there was a spring in the cave. It was dark and cold (well colder than the river water) but it was really cool. We couldn't go all the way through (the cave goes 2km) because of how high the water was. It was said that this is the cave were they Lao refugees came to hide during the second indochina war. It was a little creepy not seeing much and hoping for no leeches to snag on to you (not sure if they were even in there). The staclites (sp?) were huge we wish we would have brought our head lamp.. dang. Next time.
After the second cave, wait sorry.. before the second cave we were peacefully floating down the river when we started to hear really bad techno music... and thus the peace ended. We came to a rope swing bar... basically a party central spot (with about 8 other party central spots along the way.. we only stopped at this one) where we got out of our kayaks and could rope swing into the water. Tyson and I really didn't enjoy the atmosphere of a lot of drunk people and loud music (we are old now) and really that isn't our travelling style.. but some of the others wanted to rope swing so we stopped. The reason why all these stops are along the river is because you can get a tube and ride down the river to stops and they will pull you in. One of the guys who had been here 5 times already and owns some shares in tourist stuff here said that these all sprang up within 2 years and he perdicts in another 5 years the whole river will be like this :(... It really ruins the scenary and peace.. we think. Also someone died like 2 weeks ago tubing down the river when it was really high... water and alcohol really shouldn't mix. Anyways we were safe and our guide was good. No need to worry mom.
After the second cave we just floated down the river swiftly and relaxed. Then we came to the end. We were both tired and it was 4:00pm so it was hot and we are a tad burnt even though we put sunscreen on 2 times and it is spf 30 that indicated how how hot the sun is. We retired back to our bungalow and Tyson had a beer and read his book and I attempted to read and fell asleep for a nap. Then we went for dinner.
Tomorrow we will either rent bikes or walk around the country side.
Sara and Tyson
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Sabadee
Hello from Vieng Vang (sp?)
This morning we got up and headed to the best bakery ever (the scandinavian one) for some bagels/croissounts and fruit bowls. After that we headed to the Green Discovery place that booked us our bus to Vieng Vang (sp?) We waited there for an hour, they said to be there by 9:30 am and by the time they actually got us (it wasn't even the bus it was a tuk tuk to take us to the bus, which we already walked by to get to breakfast...) anyways it was 10:15 by the time the tuk tuk got us and then the bus left at around 10:30 to go get gas and then we proceeded our journey, only to stop about an hours way in for a washroom break and some food for people if they wanted. The trip was about 3.5 hours long through flat terrain and then up through the hills where we saw lots of rice paddies and jungle. I was really praying for no puke this time and we did succeed (barely!!! the guy acrross from me had the bag ready to go.. but thank goodness we were about 10 minutes from town).
We got to town at around 2:30 which is right about the hottest time of day around here and within seconds we both looked like we had a shower.. but not.. eww. We were having trouble finding our place. (Tyson: not really trouble, just it was really hot and not knowing exactly to the spot where the place was verse knowing which direction to walk on which road didn't cut it) This is the part where he gets upset about talking about the tuk tuk we decided to take which 5,000 (big bills here... really screws us up... 8527 kip to 1 Canadian dollar) well the tuk tuk literally drove us 100meters or 5 seconds to our bungalow... Tyson was furious.. he tried to get him down to 2000 but the guy wasn't budging and just laughed and Tyson paid him and said I will never ride with you again. Anyways the place we are staying at is pretty relaxing its a thatched hut (literally thatched on stilts with a miquito net for sleeping and a bathroom with a shower curtain... ) I will admit its relaxing but i would like to patch up the little cracks and holes i see to keep the misquitoes out... (Tyson: It is beautiful with teak wood floors, and a deck that is shaded looking out over the river with rice paddies on the other side leading the eye up to massive limestone krasts covered with jungle. There is A/C and a comfortable bed. The place is nice.) Whatever the fact is that i don't like bugs or misquitoes or anything that touches me. Tyson assures me that we won't get malaria because we have a misquito net.. but i was eyeing those buggers and they like to sit on that net and poke there beady little suckers in the hole and wait for you to get close enough to the net and then BAM! they attack. (Tyson: it isn't like the things have five foot or even 5 inch long suckers, the misquoto here is the the same size or smaller than at home, so unless you are right against the net you are more than safe.) Maybe i like to snuggle with the net? (Tyson: I can't win, even if I am right, so whatever, get back to the day, please) Ok...
Once checked in we went for some lunch of fried rice and french fries.. and then took a stroll around town. I bought some shower sandles/thongs... and then we decided we probably shoudl go back and put sunscreen on but we ended up going back and just chilling on our balcony reading andthen a huge bug landed on my foot and i screamed a little and then Tyson said "Don't move i want a picture of it"... to which i replied shut up i am moving... (Tyson: it's not that I'm unsensitive but the bug had already left her foot and was on the railing.) Anyways after that episode we went for dinner and some laobeer.
Tonight we are going to try to book a kayaking and caving tour if we still can, they guy wasn't there when we last checked. So yeah, thats all we got.
See ya tomrrow
Sara and Tyson
Friday, July 25, 2008
A morning market that doesn't open till 9am, what kinda country is this???
So this morning we were awoken around 6:15 am in our room with no windows to someone (sara swears) was puking next door. The one thing Sara hates most to see or hear, we can't seem to avoid. It was a great way to wake up in a place that I (Tyson) was desperately trying to sell Sara on to begin with.
After slowly waking up and dozing off over the next hour, (it's hard to get up in the pitch black) we were up and ready to go by 7:30 am. We decided to get to the market before the tons of tourists who we know to also love markets. So off we go, past a giant stupa (turned into the middle of a traffic circle) past the US embassy, complete with cement posts that could pop out of the road to stop traffic, armed guards, barbed wire, security cameras, and 20 plus foot high walls, to the market. We got there a bit after 8am to realize that we were basically the first people of any nationality there. So we walked around a more than half closed up market for a while. We did end up buying a very nice silver bracklet for Sara with elephants on it. We decided to leave around 9am for breakfast, and the place still wasn't functioning, some morning market.
We had breakfast at the Scandianvian bakery which included some amazingly delicous crossiants. After we completed our breakfast we went to the National Museum which is housed in an old French Colonial building. By what they say about the French inside you think they would have taken a note from the past of this country and burned every one of those buildings down. There was one room for dinasour bones, one room for the 50 plus ethnic tribes of Laos, 3 rooms for some dutch explorer, and then the remaining 7 rooms were one the struggle to defeat the Imperialist Americans and their colonial pig followers. Lots of Communist propoganda and pictures of war, and the struggle. After that we went back to the hotel to move rooms. We waited over an hour to move from a place with no windows to a place with windows, unfortunety the place with windows also had a door, which I was informed misquitoes could get in, by Sara.
**
Then we went back to the market in the afternoon and found it humming along, but couldn't find anything worth buying. We were going to go for a walk through the suburbs hoping to find the rice paddies, but the heat was way too much to handle, so we went to Joma's bakery, a Canadian run place with Canadian prices, for a drink and cookies. After we waited out a short rain storm we went back to the hotel and read our books until dinner. At dinner we listened to expats complain and talk about life here, which was interesting but not noteworthly.
Tomorrow we are off in the morning for a 3 hour bus ride to Vien Viang, see you there. Don't have the camera here, so you'll have to wait again, sorry.
After slowly waking up and dozing off over the next hour, (it's hard to get up in the pitch black) we were up and ready to go by 7:30 am. We decided to get to the market before the tons of tourists who we know to also love markets. So off we go, past a giant stupa (turned into the middle of a traffic circle) past the US embassy, complete with cement posts that could pop out of the road to stop traffic, armed guards, barbed wire, security cameras, and 20 plus foot high walls, to the market. We got there a bit after 8am to realize that we were basically the first people of any nationality there. So we walked around a more than half closed up market for a while. We did end up buying a very nice silver bracklet for Sara with elephants on it. We decided to leave around 9am for breakfast, and the place still wasn't functioning, some morning market.
We had breakfast at the Scandianvian bakery which included some amazingly delicous crossiants. After we completed our breakfast we went to the National Museum which is housed in an old French Colonial building. By what they say about the French inside you think they would have taken a note from the past of this country and burned every one of those buildings down. There was one room for dinasour bones, one room for the 50 plus ethnic tribes of Laos, 3 rooms for some dutch explorer, and then the remaining 7 rooms were one the struggle to defeat the Imperialist Americans and their colonial pig followers. Lots of Communist propoganda and pictures of war, and the struggle. After that we went back to the hotel to move rooms. We waited over an hour to move from a place with no windows to a place with windows, unfortunety the place with windows also had a door, which I was informed misquitoes could get in, by Sara.
**
Then we went back to the market in the afternoon and found it humming along, but couldn't find anything worth buying. We were going to go for a walk through the suburbs hoping to find the rice paddies, but the heat was way too much to handle, so we went to Joma's bakery, a Canadian run place with Canadian prices, for a drink and cookies. After we waited out a short rain storm we went back to the hotel and read our books until dinner. At dinner we listened to expats complain and talk about life here, which was interesting but not noteworthly.
Tomorrow we are off in the morning for a 3 hour bus ride to Vien Viang, see you there. Don't have the camera here, so you'll have to wait again, sorry.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Richard Simons is that you??
Hello and greetings from the Captial of Laos, again.
Last night after finishing writting the blog we went back to our hotel room, and lay down on the bed for a minute or two before getting ready for bed. However those couple of minutes turned into hours. At 2 am I (tyson) finally got up and turned off the light before once again collapsing into the bed. I don't know if it was the jet lag catching up to us, or us just trying to get use to travelling again or what, but we got knocked out for the count last night hard. This morning when we got up, somewhat more refreshed we enjoyed our breakfast in the hotel, checked our email for emails that were not there, hint hint (except for Phyllis). Then we proceeded to look for a more affordable place to stay. Sara says she wants to write now....
Ahem yes now I will tell the truth! The place we were staying at was beautifully nice and clean with a shower curtain wierd i know! Anyways I only agreed to look for another place because i knew i really did not have an option. So we checked out several about 5 before we agreed and i should have just not agreed but again i knew we weren't going back to the nice hotel. Anyways the place we have is small with no window and no shower curtain and the room that the guy was going to give us had mould on the ceiling... lovely. Not impressed at this point. Tyson likes to call the room 'functional' "it has a bed and a toliet and A/C what more do you want?" to which i replied "you're cheap!" But whatever I lost the battle and were stuck in that place now. I am not saying its the worse place I am just saying the other place was nicer and maybe a little more pricey but it had free breakfast and free internet as opposed to no breakfast and no internet. (we can buy a lot of breakfast and internet for $30 a day) Let us just remind ourselves again that this is a 3 week vacation not a 4 month tight budget travel... i think it is fair to say we both make money and we are both paying for this sooooo...... (well how about more massages then?) Yes we will get to the massage part!
Anyways after we quarreled for about 10 minutes not even really that bad we decided to check out another Wat, but before twe checked into our hotel we went to the only Wat (temple) that survived the Siam army. (More random point: it is pouring out monsoon style but it wasn't all day.. this morning earlier it must have but we were sleeping.) The Wat was cool with a million and one buddhas that were there in full and then many that were some what destroyed but still in the temple.
After that we walked around and found some shops that are a little more pricey than lets say a market, but we looked anyways just to get a feel for the prices. I found a beautiful scarf that if i can't find in the morning market I will just go and buy it. After browsing we went to some more Wats.
We went for lunch at this place that had a menu of like 30 million cultures I wanted Garlic Naan bread and veggie spring rolls but the Indian portion wasn't open till dinner time. So i just got some veggie pad thai and veggie spring rolls and Tyson had some bbq chicken skewers and sticky rice that was super sticky.
After lunch we went to the Scandanavian bakery for dessert of doughnut and some chocolate cakey thingy. We then headed to see another Wat or 2.
The last Wat we saw had no tourists because it was maybe 5 minutes away from the tourist centers and it had a monk in there who was blessing people. I decided that I wanted to get blessed so i gave some donation money and got water sprayed on me and a blessed bracelet on my wrist. It was surreal I really enjoyed it and should think about converting to Buddhism. If the religion was not so complicated. After watching me get blessed Tyson decided that he should as well and did the same.
From there we made our way back to the guesthouse to cool off (soooo hot and sticky that i have drank about 4 liters of water and my pee is still the colour of dark beer!!!). I decided after cooling off to go get massages. We found this nice little place after walking by 4 others and decided to try the Traditional Lao massage which is what i like to call a mixture of physiotherapy and massaging. It was great! This little Lao girl (Tyson had a guy) was moving me around and pushing on things i didn't even know were tight and ticklish. But it was good and relaxing and an hour long for 5 dollars.
From there on walking back to find some shower sandles (never did find any yet that I liked) we ran into an outdoor richard simmons aerobic dance class by the river. It was filled with what we think were a little bit on the overweight side (if possible) for Lao people. We thought maybe it was mandatory that if your BMI was a certain measure you were forced into exercising.. communist you know or they just care about there body image, either way it totally was Richard Simmons investing in Laos.
On the way to dinner we ran into two little girls who i wanted to take home, as well as the two massage people ... anyways these little girls were really cute.. they were kind of scared of us and the bigger one took the little one by the arm and was sort of protecting her.. so to break the ice I gave them two canadian coins (a penny and a dime) at first they just studied the coins.. looking at eachothers and then theirs. (There are no coins in Lao money) but then when we walked away they gave us a wave bye and ran to what we think was thier dad and showed him the coins they were so excited jumping up and down, it was really cute.
We ate at the Blue Banana Restaurant which is owned by a British guy who moved here 18 months ago to make Laos his home. He loves it here. I had pizza again .... (but in my defense i had asian food for lunch) and tyson had more rice this time fried rice.
Tomorow we will see the last there is here to see, maybe do some shopping at the morning market and Tyson says "get out of town" I am not too sure what that means yet. (get outta town means to either explore the countryside around the area by bike or foot, or go to the plain of jars) Get out of town means for Sara taking a taxi or tuk tuk and not sweating my face off on a bike or by foot. Lets try to keep the pee a clear colour thanks. We'll see tomorrow how that turns out....maybe pictures tomorrow. To keep you coming back.
Sara and Tyson
Last night after finishing writting the blog we went back to our hotel room, and lay down on the bed for a minute or two before getting ready for bed. However those couple of minutes turned into hours. At 2 am I (tyson) finally got up and turned off the light before once again collapsing into the bed. I don't know if it was the jet lag catching up to us, or us just trying to get use to travelling again or what, but we got knocked out for the count last night hard. This morning when we got up, somewhat more refreshed we enjoyed our breakfast in the hotel, checked our email for emails that were not there, hint hint (except for Phyllis). Then we proceeded to look for a more affordable place to stay. Sara says she wants to write now....
Ahem yes now I will tell the truth! The place we were staying at was beautifully nice and clean with a shower curtain wierd i know! Anyways I only agreed to look for another place because i knew i really did not have an option. So we checked out several about 5 before we agreed and i should have just not agreed but again i knew we weren't going back to the nice hotel. Anyways the place we have is small with no window and no shower curtain and the room that the guy was going to give us had mould on the ceiling... lovely. Not impressed at this point. Tyson likes to call the room 'functional' "it has a bed and a toliet and A/C what more do you want?" to which i replied "you're cheap!" But whatever I lost the battle and were stuck in that place now. I am not saying its the worse place I am just saying the other place was nicer and maybe a little more pricey but it had free breakfast and free internet as opposed to no breakfast and no internet. (we can buy a lot of breakfast and internet for $30 a day) Let us just remind ourselves again that this is a 3 week vacation not a 4 month tight budget travel... i think it is fair to say we both make money and we are both paying for this sooooo...... (well how about more massages then?) Yes we will get to the massage part!
Anyways after we quarreled for about 10 minutes not even really that bad we decided to check out another Wat, but before twe checked into our hotel we went to the only Wat (temple) that survived the Siam army. (More random point: it is pouring out monsoon style but it wasn't all day.. this morning earlier it must have but we were sleeping.) The Wat was cool with a million and one buddhas that were there in full and then many that were some what destroyed but still in the temple.
After that we walked around and found some shops that are a little more pricey than lets say a market, but we looked anyways just to get a feel for the prices. I found a beautiful scarf that if i can't find in the morning market I will just go and buy it. After browsing we went to some more Wats.
We went for lunch at this place that had a menu of like 30 million cultures I wanted Garlic Naan bread and veggie spring rolls but the Indian portion wasn't open till dinner time. So i just got some veggie pad thai and veggie spring rolls and Tyson had some bbq chicken skewers and sticky rice that was super sticky.
After lunch we went to the Scandanavian bakery for dessert of doughnut and some chocolate cakey thingy. We then headed to see another Wat or 2.
The last Wat we saw had no tourists because it was maybe 5 minutes away from the tourist centers and it had a monk in there who was blessing people. I decided that I wanted to get blessed so i gave some donation money and got water sprayed on me and a blessed bracelet on my wrist. It was surreal I really enjoyed it and should think about converting to Buddhism. If the religion was not so complicated. After watching me get blessed Tyson decided that he should as well and did the same.
From there we made our way back to the guesthouse to cool off (soooo hot and sticky that i have drank about 4 liters of water and my pee is still the colour of dark beer!!!). I decided after cooling off to go get massages. We found this nice little place after walking by 4 others and decided to try the Traditional Lao massage which is what i like to call a mixture of physiotherapy and massaging. It was great! This little Lao girl (Tyson had a guy) was moving me around and pushing on things i didn't even know were tight and ticklish. But it was good and relaxing and an hour long for 5 dollars.
From there on walking back to find some shower sandles (never did find any yet that I liked) we ran into an outdoor richard simmons aerobic dance class by the river. It was filled with what we think were a little bit on the overweight side (if possible) for Lao people. We thought maybe it was mandatory that if your BMI was a certain measure you were forced into exercising.. communist you know or they just care about there body image, either way it totally was Richard Simmons investing in Laos.
On the way to dinner we ran into two little girls who i wanted to take home, as well as the two massage people ... anyways these little girls were really cute.. they were kind of scared of us and the bigger one took the little one by the arm and was sort of protecting her.. so to break the ice I gave them two canadian coins (a penny and a dime) at first they just studied the coins.. looking at eachothers and then theirs. (There are no coins in Lao money) but then when we walked away they gave us a wave bye and ran to what we think was thier dad and showed him the coins they were so excited jumping up and down, it was really cute.
We ate at the Blue Banana Restaurant which is owned by a British guy who moved here 18 months ago to make Laos his home. He loves it here. I had pizza again .... (but in my defense i had asian food for lunch) and tyson had more rice this time fried rice.
Tomorow we will see the last there is here to see, maybe do some shopping at the morning market and Tyson says "get out of town" I am not too sure what that means yet. (get outta town means to either explore the countryside around the area by bike or foot, or go to the plain of jars) Get out of town means for Sara taking a taxi or tuk tuk and not sweating my face off on a bike or by foot. Lets try to keep the pee a clear colour thanks. We'll see tomorrow how that turns out....maybe pictures tomorrow. To keep you coming back.
Sara and Tyson
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Greetings from Laos
Hello,
We are now in Vientiane the captial of Laos. Very very different place when compared to Bangkok. Much smaller, with old french colonial buildings, and a backwards sorta atmosphere. Much more my kinda town, when compared to the gong show that is Bangkok. (Sara: i don't think it is really a gong show compared to a place like Beijing, its got a little more flare to it.)
Today we got up and wandered the streets around our hotel for an hour or so, and then went to the airport. From there we flew to Udon Thanni in the north of Thailand. From the airport we rode in a van up to the Laos border. As we crossed the Mekong river everything changed, for starters we started driving on the right hand side of the road again. (sara says she didn't even notice the change) Also it seemed a lot poorer, with smaller houses more dirt roads, but on the flip side much more lush (rice paddies, banana and coconut trees.) Sara: I enjoyed seeing the little boy monks who looked not much older than 12 in thier bright orange robes walking along the streets.
When we arrived in Ventaine the hotel we had wanted to stay at was full, (we hadn't booked ahead). So we walked to the second choice spot. They only had one room with two beds left, and the price was as high as the super fancy place we checked out inbetween. Since we hadn't eaten since breakfast, Sara was not too interested in walking (Sara: Tyson seems like I was not interested, but the truth is he was just as edgy as me and admitted that when we finally did pick a hotel, he said he was hungry!!! Also in my defence I thought i was being very supportive and offering suggestions Tyson is just still upset by the fact that he thinks he is being ripped off everywhere we go, he somehow needs to get over that) Anyways, back to the truth. Sara wasn't interested in walking back across town again to keep looking at places, so we are in the expensive place. Sara: I love how he says "expensive" 45 US is maybe a little pricey but its by far not expensive to as 200 US dollars over at the bouquite hotel! Tyson: well it is when compared to the $23 dollars a night next door.
After we dropped off our bags we went for dinner, ate some food (pizza and garlic bread) and strolled around for a little bit. There are ATMs here, contrary to what the guide book says. But we didn't stay out too late because being by the equator things tend to get dark here quickly, and Sara seems to be deathly (not that bad) afraid of being outside at night. Malaria fears. Sara says that I am making her look bad, which si somewhat true, however it is the truth.
Tomorrow we'll probably change hotels and take in the famous wats and get a good feel for the town. See you then.
Tyson and Sara
We are now in Vientiane the captial of Laos. Very very different place when compared to Bangkok. Much smaller, with old french colonial buildings, and a backwards sorta atmosphere. Much more my kinda town, when compared to the gong show that is Bangkok. (Sara: i don't think it is really a gong show compared to a place like Beijing, its got a little more flare to it.)
Today we got up and wandered the streets around our hotel for an hour or so, and then went to the airport. From there we flew to Udon Thanni in the north of Thailand. From the airport we rode in a van up to the Laos border. As we crossed the Mekong river everything changed, for starters we started driving on the right hand side of the road again. (sara says she didn't even notice the change) Also it seemed a lot poorer, with smaller houses more dirt roads, but on the flip side much more lush (rice paddies, banana and coconut trees.) Sara: I enjoyed seeing the little boy monks who looked not much older than 12 in thier bright orange robes walking along the streets.
When we arrived in Ventaine the hotel we had wanted to stay at was full, (we hadn't booked ahead). So we walked to the second choice spot. They only had one room with two beds left, and the price was as high as the super fancy place we checked out inbetween. Since we hadn't eaten since breakfast, Sara was not too interested in walking (Sara: Tyson seems like I was not interested, but the truth is he was just as edgy as me and admitted that when we finally did pick a hotel, he said he was hungry!!! Also in my defence I thought i was being very supportive and offering suggestions Tyson is just still upset by the fact that he thinks he is being ripped off everywhere we go, he somehow needs to get over that) Anyways, back to the truth. Sara wasn't interested in walking back across town again to keep looking at places, so we are in the expensive place. Sara: I love how he says "expensive" 45 US is maybe a little pricey but its by far not expensive to as 200 US dollars over at the bouquite hotel! Tyson: well it is when compared to the $23 dollars a night next door.
After we dropped off our bags we went for dinner, ate some food (pizza and garlic bread) and strolled around for a little bit. There are ATMs here, contrary to what the guide book says. But we didn't stay out too late because being by the equator things tend to get dark here quickly, and Sara seems to be deathly (not that bad) afraid of being outside at night. Malaria fears. Sara says that I am making her look bad, which si somewhat true, however it is the truth.
Tomorrow we'll probably change hotels and take in the famous wats and get a good feel for the town. See you then.
Tyson and Sara
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Holy Shit an Elephant Just walked By...
Good Evening!
If this makes any sense at all we will both be suprized. It is 9:00pm and we were up at 6:30 and haven't stopped since then.
Ok I was just reminded to tell about the great adventure we had on the way to the Airport in Edmonton. It went something like this. Hey my parents are here LETS GO!!!! So out we went , Dad "do we have time for a starbucks", us "sure" ... doo doo doo alright off we get at the airport say our good byes and then as we were about to check our bags when I realized that i did not have my purse... oh shit! So out i bolt to catch my parents because i obviously need something that is in my purse sitting at home on my couch! So I leave Tyson there with our bags and head back to the house, it wasn't time to freak out too badly because it was only 9:00am and our flight left at 11:00. Needless to say we made it back at 10:05 with plenty of time to catch the flight... but it was a little scary! Now i constantly check to make sure i have everything and I am sure i will be reminded several times to check if i have everything!
Since Sara slept through most fo teh flights I (Tyson) thought I would write this section. Flight to Vancouver, easy typical. Started watching Aladdin but obviously didn't finish it. Now some of you know that I was slightly concerned by the length of time we had in Vancouver before our transfer to JAL for a flight to Japan. However, there was no need to worry as a nice lady from JAL was waiting at the gate with a sign for us and a cart. We had to wait for some big wig flying from Calgary, but no matter we needed not to worry as we were in the control of JAL. The flight across the Pacific was good. A hot meal and a sandwich for means, plus snacks and drinks regularly. Now the smart thing would have been to try and sleep as soon as I got on the plane like Sara did, but I didn't I watched movies.. We arrived in Toyko Japan some 9 hours later and Sara was very very impressed by the singing toliets. We strolled through the gift shops for a bit and then boarded what seemed like a really long flight for what in our heads seems like not all that far (Toyko to Bangkok). On the map our flight deviated from a straigh or curved line by avoiding Tawain airspace. Not sure if that is true, but that is what it looked like. We finally arrived in Bangkok some 24 hours after we started travelling. Sara having slept on and off for the whole trip, Tyson not so much. The taxi from the airport had some difficultly finding the place and charged an arm and a leg. It is so hard when you are tired and just arrived to get the bargining mindset.
We are staying at the Reflections Room which is not in the tourist area which is nice and quiet! Our rooms (we are staying in different ones for different nights) are nice and relaxing. I enjoy! Tyson really likes the breakfast because it serves his type of breakfast food, rice, noodles, bacon, fresh fruit which i might add the pineapple is something to die for! There is a spa :) It gives full body massages, foot massages, etc. It smells like massage oils in the hotel lobby which is nice i think, Tyson thinks it is too overpowering! Anyways we will get a massage one day. For one hour full body it is 10 dollars canadian! Unbelievable!
Today we got up around 7:00am , showered, ate breakfast and then found the skytrain to take us to koah san road. The funny thing is, you can't go anywhere in this place without people stopping you every 5 blocks going "where are you going" then you tell them and then they ask you were you are from, and all this stuff and then they give you suggestions. I mean lovely people, really nice, but sometimes you just want to find it yourself! Short story is we never did make it to Koah San Road, we somehow made it to a tailor shop.
I accidently bumped into a lady who immedietly started to talk to us. She worked for the Government at the University and she spoke good english. She asked us what our plans were, and told us that it was WAY to early to be out it was 9:00am.. she said Koah San Road everyone would be sleeping and we said we needed to find a travel agent, well she pointed us to one. We eventually settled the deal with the travel agent for flights to Udon Thanni for tomorrow afternoon so then we can take a bus to Loas which is suppose to be 1-3 hours. After the travel agent we decided to take a slow boat to go see all the temples and the Grand Palace (we never made it there either). We did take the slow boat, but then got sidetracked when we walked out of the reclining buddah temple which was pretty amazing, the guy who stamps your ticket on the way out told us that every other temple was free today because it was a Buddhist Holiday, and then he circle a bunch on our map and got a tuk tuk driver to drive us around the city for 30 baht (1 dollar can) for all the temples. How could you refuse.
So we get to the first place, a temple devoited to luck. So we are tentive to walk in, not knowing the religion, one would have to affend anyone. At the same time a local is entering the temple. So we go in with him and get to talking. He says "this is a very small temple not many tourists know about it or come here, how do you know about it?" "Well some guy told us about a number of temples and places to go." Local guy "which other ones?" So we show him the map, which also has circled on it the Tailor shop. Local guy "how do you know about this shop? I was just there yesterday." The guy goes on to give a raving review of this shop. Now if this was a con it got us good. Because next stop was the tailor shop and usually I get into those places (any shop trying to sell that looks fancy, turn around and walk out) but not this time. I had a raving review from a complete stranger within the confines of a temple. Needless to say I decide to buy a tailored suit with shirt and tie. I won't quote the price just to cut down on the laugher if I was taken.
After that we tour a couple more temples and get the tuk tuk driver who is still with us (he asked and we accepted to also go and visit a jeweler making factory (he gets a coupon for free petrolum for taking us there)) and get him to drop us off at a restruant written up by the LP. We find the place, which turns out just to be a hole in the wall joint. Sara isn't too impressed, so we end up a couple of blocks up at a hostel restruant. The food isn't great and the veggy spring rolls we order are filled with pork. Sara is not pleased mainly at the misquitos and turned down the spring rolls, but all the same more for me. After that we kill a bit of time by visiting another temple, before turning down 5 tuk tuks who wouldn't drop there price to take us back to the tailors for my first fitting. (we didn't get a lower price, we came up). So back at the Tailors we try on the stuff, and while the price still stings and we are not sure if we were set up or not, the stuff looks good. After that we get stuck in rush hour traffic trying to get to the cloest skytrain stop to get us back to the hotel.
After wasting 15 minutes waiting in traffic we decide to walk the remaining blocks to the station. We ended up along the way in a massive mall around Siem. So we shopped, as things even in a mall like this are quite cheap. We bought some (what appear very much to be) Diesel jeans and Sara also got a Mr. Happy tee-shirt. The jeans were a difficult purchase, not because of price or trying to determine if they are real or not, but for Sara why are all the jeans in Asian shape.
When we came out it was pouring rain (which it hadn't done all day) and pitch black. It was 7 pm. We made our way back to the hotel, and went for dinner at the attached restruant. I had a large beer which was 10 Baht (30 cents) more than Sara's small beer and 300 milileters larger. As we tried not to fall asleep while eating dinner, Sara turns to me and says, "Holy shit there just went an elephant. I didn't believe her, till I turned around and saw a baby elephant being led down the street. Sara didn't think it was a baby, but because I have seen both before, I get the say in writting this, but it is disputed.
Other than that, the transition to traveling is ongoing. Trying to remember to bargin for everything. Look left right, up, down, and around again all the time (especially when stepping into the street), looking at where you are walking (for holes), the smells, having to do math whenever you are looking to buy, and going non stop for 9 plus hours a day in a climate that is abnormal to say the least.
Tomorrow we may walk around this area or go to Siem as we don't have enough time to go downtown before our 13:30 flight on Thai airways to Udan Thanni, from where we will take a bus to Vientianne in Loas.
Later,
Tyson and Sara
If this makes any sense at all we will both be suprized. It is 9:00pm and we were up at 6:30 and haven't stopped since then.
Ok I was just reminded to tell about the great adventure we had on the way to the Airport in Edmonton. It went something like this. Hey my parents are here LETS GO!!!! So out we went , Dad "do we have time for a starbucks", us "sure" ... doo doo doo alright off we get at the airport say our good byes and then as we were about to check our bags when I realized that i did not have my purse... oh shit! So out i bolt to catch my parents because i obviously need something that is in my purse sitting at home on my couch! So I leave Tyson there with our bags and head back to the house, it wasn't time to freak out too badly because it was only 9:00am and our flight left at 11:00. Needless to say we made it back at 10:05 with plenty of time to catch the flight... but it was a little scary! Now i constantly check to make sure i have everything and I am sure i will be reminded several times to check if i have everything!
Since Sara slept through most fo teh flights I (Tyson) thought I would write this section. Flight to Vancouver, easy typical. Started watching Aladdin but obviously didn't finish it. Now some of you know that I was slightly concerned by the length of time we had in Vancouver before our transfer to JAL for a flight to Japan. However, there was no need to worry as a nice lady from JAL was waiting at the gate with a sign for us and a cart. We had to wait for some big wig flying from Calgary, but no matter we needed not to worry as we were in the control of JAL. The flight across the Pacific was good. A hot meal and a sandwich for means, plus snacks and drinks regularly. Now the smart thing would have been to try and sleep as soon as I got on the plane like Sara did, but I didn't I watched movies.. We arrived in Toyko Japan some 9 hours later and Sara was very very impressed by the singing toliets. We strolled through the gift shops for a bit and then boarded what seemed like a really long flight for what in our heads seems like not all that far (Toyko to Bangkok). On the map our flight deviated from a straigh or curved line by avoiding Tawain airspace. Not sure if that is true, but that is what it looked like. We finally arrived in Bangkok some 24 hours after we started travelling. Sara having slept on and off for the whole trip, Tyson not so much. The taxi from the airport had some difficultly finding the place and charged an arm and a leg. It is so hard when you are tired and just arrived to get the bargining mindset.
We are staying at the Reflections Room which is not in the tourist area which is nice and quiet! Our rooms (we are staying in different ones for different nights) are nice and relaxing. I enjoy! Tyson really likes the breakfast because it serves his type of breakfast food, rice, noodles, bacon, fresh fruit which i might add the pineapple is something to die for! There is a spa :) It gives full body massages, foot massages, etc. It smells like massage oils in the hotel lobby which is nice i think, Tyson thinks it is too overpowering! Anyways we will get a massage one day. For one hour full body it is 10 dollars canadian! Unbelievable!
Today we got up around 7:00am , showered, ate breakfast and then found the skytrain to take us to koah san road. The funny thing is, you can't go anywhere in this place without people stopping you every 5 blocks going "where are you going" then you tell them and then they ask you were you are from, and all this stuff and then they give you suggestions. I mean lovely people, really nice, but sometimes you just want to find it yourself! Short story is we never did make it to Koah San Road, we somehow made it to a tailor shop.
I accidently bumped into a lady who immedietly started to talk to us. She worked for the Government at the University and she spoke good english. She asked us what our plans were, and told us that it was WAY to early to be out it was 9:00am.. she said Koah San Road everyone would be sleeping and we said we needed to find a travel agent, well she pointed us to one. We eventually settled the deal with the travel agent for flights to Udon Thanni for tomorrow afternoon so then we can take a bus to Loas which is suppose to be 1-3 hours. After the travel agent we decided to take a slow boat to go see all the temples and the Grand Palace (we never made it there either). We did take the slow boat, but then got sidetracked when we walked out of the reclining buddah temple which was pretty amazing, the guy who stamps your ticket on the way out told us that every other temple was free today because it was a Buddhist Holiday, and then he circle a bunch on our map and got a tuk tuk driver to drive us around the city for 30 baht (1 dollar can) for all the temples. How could you refuse.
So we get to the first place, a temple devoited to luck. So we are tentive to walk in, not knowing the religion, one would have to affend anyone. At the same time a local is entering the temple. So we go in with him and get to talking. He says "this is a very small temple not many tourists know about it or come here, how do you know about it?" "Well some guy told us about a number of temples and places to go." Local guy "which other ones?" So we show him the map, which also has circled on it the Tailor shop. Local guy "how do you know about this shop? I was just there yesterday." The guy goes on to give a raving review of this shop. Now if this was a con it got us good. Because next stop was the tailor shop and usually I get into those places (any shop trying to sell that looks fancy, turn around and walk out) but not this time. I had a raving review from a complete stranger within the confines of a temple. Needless to say I decide to buy a tailored suit with shirt and tie. I won't quote the price just to cut down on the laugher if I was taken.
After that we tour a couple more temples and get the tuk tuk driver who is still with us (he asked and we accepted to also go and visit a jeweler making factory (he gets a coupon for free petrolum for taking us there)) and get him to drop us off at a restruant written up by the LP. We find the place, which turns out just to be a hole in the wall joint. Sara isn't too impressed, so we end up a couple of blocks up at a hostel restruant. The food isn't great and the veggy spring rolls we order are filled with pork. Sara is not pleased mainly at the misquitos and turned down the spring rolls, but all the same more for me. After that we kill a bit of time by visiting another temple, before turning down 5 tuk tuks who wouldn't drop there price to take us back to the tailors for my first fitting. (we didn't get a lower price, we came up). So back at the Tailors we try on the stuff, and while the price still stings and we are not sure if we were set up or not, the stuff looks good. After that we get stuck in rush hour traffic trying to get to the cloest skytrain stop to get us back to the hotel.
After wasting 15 minutes waiting in traffic we decide to walk the remaining blocks to the station. We ended up along the way in a massive mall around Siem. So we shopped, as things even in a mall like this are quite cheap. We bought some (what appear very much to be) Diesel jeans and Sara also got a Mr. Happy tee-shirt. The jeans were a difficult purchase, not because of price or trying to determine if they are real or not, but for Sara why are all the jeans in Asian shape.
When we came out it was pouring rain (which it hadn't done all day) and pitch black. It was 7 pm. We made our way back to the hotel, and went for dinner at the attached restruant. I had a large beer which was 10 Baht (30 cents) more than Sara's small beer and 300 milileters larger. As we tried not to fall asleep while eating dinner, Sara turns to me and says, "Holy shit there just went an elephant. I didn't believe her, till I turned around and saw a baby elephant being led down the street. Sara didn't think it was a baby, but because I have seen both before, I get the say in writting this, but it is disputed.
Other than that, the transition to traveling is ongoing. Trying to remember to bargin for everything. Look left right, up, down, and around again all the time (especially when stepping into the street), looking at where you are walking (for holes), the smells, having to do math whenever you are looking to buy, and going non stop for 9 plus hours a day in a climate that is abnormal to say the least.
Tomorrow we may walk around this area or go to Siem as we don't have enough time to go downtown before our 13:30 flight on Thai airways to Udan Thanni, from where we will take a bus to Vientianne in Loas.
Later,
Tyson and Sara
Saturday, July 19, 2008
T minus 23 hours
Hello everyone.
Just under one day before we fly outta here for a vacation. Sara is off getting ready with Chandra for Chandra's wedding this evening. I'm at home checking prices on internal Thialand flights, and finishing off the last minute stuff. As usual I will be relieved once we are on the plane and we can't remember or forget anything else. So I guess I should get back at it, but before I go, I'll post up our plan.
Fly out tomorrow.
Arrive in Bangkok July 21
Get to Vientiane on July 23
Go to Vang Vieng on July 28
Go to Luang Prabang on Aug 2
Return to Bangkok Aug 5
Home on Aug 8
See you all in Bangkok
Just under one day before we fly outta here for a vacation. Sara is off getting ready with Chandra for Chandra's wedding this evening. I'm at home checking prices on internal Thialand flights, and finishing off the last minute stuff. As usual I will be relieved once we are on the plane and we can't remember or forget anything else. So I guess I should get back at it, but before I go, I'll post up our plan.
Fly out tomorrow.
Arrive in Bangkok July 21
Get to Vientiane on July 23
Go to Vang Vieng on July 28
Go to Luang Prabang on Aug 2
Return to Bangkok Aug 5
Home on Aug 8
See you all in Bangkok
Sunday, July 13, 2008
1 week and were off to stroll the world some more!
Hello again!!!!!!!
Wow it feels like not to long ago I was entering an entertaining blog from somewheres in the world!!! Well ladies and gentlemen I know some of you have been missing these and I have heard how maybe one day I should write a book (well save that for retirement) but for now there are too many places to go visit and see.
Tyson and I will be yet again strolling the world in one weeks time. Our stroll this time takes us to Thialand (Just Bangkok and maybe a beach) and Laos for 3 weeks.
We will try to update as much as we can, but with only 3 weeks we have a lot to see.
Keep checking for updates and enjoy your summer. We depart Edmonton on July 20th.
See you in Bangkok!!
S & T
Wow it feels like not to long ago I was entering an entertaining blog from somewheres in the world!!! Well ladies and gentlemen I know some of you have been missing these and I have heard how maybe one day I should write a book (well save that for retirement) but for now there are too many places to go visit and see.
Tyson and I will be yet again strolling the world in one weeks time. Our stroll this time takes us to Thialand (Just Bangkok and maybe a beach) and Laos for 3 weeks.
We will try to update as much as we can, but with only 3 weeks we have a lot to see.
Keep checking for updates and enjoy your summer. We depart Edmonton on July 20th.
See you in Bangkok!!
S & T
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