Jungle Trekking in Chiang Mai (Thailand)

After crossing the upper Mekong into Thailand we found out that if you cross via land your visa is only good for 14 days, and you could only get a 7 day extra stay. Basically, we @#$@%^ up. This meant we had to leave the country again, and the cheapest flight was to Kuala Lumpur in Malayasia. I guess it wasn't the worse thing to happen, but it did cost enough to rearrange all of our flights and meant we couldn't spend anytime in Chiang Mai. But before we left on our visa run we went on a jungle trek.

We opted for the one night two day adventure. We started out on an elephant trek. This consisted of hopping on an elephant and having it go down a trail to the river to cool off. Then up through a little valley and through a briefly wooded area and then back to the camp.


It might sounds a little lame and touristy, but it was still amazing. Much different than the time in Laos. At least we went into the jungle and went around. After grabbing a bite to eat we then took off on a long, long hike. It was advertised for all ages, but it must have been a 5-7 mile mountain hike. It was well worth it though. We had some very scenic views, saw a bunch of wild elephants right by the path (they are then roped in to ride people around, but when they get old they retire back to the jungle), and experienced something completely different.We got to our huts pretty close to sunset and they group leader says that they have two showers. After some investigation, they weren't really showers, but big buckets and a large ladle. Quite luxury. One even had a fist sized spider in it. That night they made one of the best curries I've ever had and served it on the straw hut. The food on the trip was really good, and the tour guides turned into a funny cover band later that night. It's funny how throughout the trip we ran into people who could barely speak any English, but could sing every Bob Marley or Beatles son.The next day we hiked down the mountain and stopped at a waterfall to cool off. Even though it was March it was still 90 degrees. At the end of the hike we we tubing, which was the worst part of the trip b/c there wasn't any water. It took us about an hour, and during high season the guide said it takes 10 minutes. Its probably really exciting. But it was nice and lazy and we did see some elephants on the river bank. The trek was awesome and anyone going to northern Thailand should look into it. After getting back we immediately caught our flight to Kuala Lumpur and felt really sorry for the people sitting near us.

Laos

First, it is worth to note that we took a 25 hour bus ride that would have been impossible to get through without the help of sleeping pills. I either slept or was completely spaced out for 20 of those 25 hours on the bus. It was nice that it was a sleeping bus, but it was a bus made for tiny Asians. Luckily, I got put in the back right which was elevated up a little higher. This way I could stretch my legs all the way out and dangle my feet over the unlucky person in front of me. Let me make it clear that this was a horrible experience, but well worth it to visit Laos.

The first place we visited was the capitol Vientiene. This city was laid back and we just relaxed a few days to recover from the bus ride. There isn't too much to say about the city, we didn't really do anything touristy and there's not much to do there anyway. We caught the three hour bus to Vang Vieng, which is spring break on crack. The city is small and the only thing to do there is drink beer, which you do in an inter tube floating down the river or one of the bartenders will throw a bottle attached to a rope and pull you in. The best part of this place is all the rope swings, zip lines, and water slides. These are not the kind you see in America as they are pretty dangerous. The swings go up 35-45 feet, the zip lines give people horrible whiplash, and three weeks before we were there a person died on one of the slides (it is now known as the slide of death). Floating down the river. The
Most likely Australians or Europeans on their gap years being ridiculous.
Some guy going off the slide of death. It looks like fun, but it isn't. You go flying off too fast and land too hard.
The biggest swing on the river. Probably 40-50 feet up. This guy could possibly be about to do huge back flip. Me going off that same swing.Next we took a 6 hour bus ride to Luang Prubang (told you they would be a common theme), but this was by far the most scenic bus ride I've ever been. The bus zig-zagged up and down limestone mountains. Thankfully, it was dry season and there wasn't any road side vegetation to block our view (these are two pictures of the drive).
Luang Prubang is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. It has 1700 European architecture and is on the upper Mekong river as it runs through the mountains. We spent 3 or 4 days there and wished we hadn't spent that extra day in Vientien. In the city, we rode bikes around and visited the temples there. The most unique thing to do is give alms to the Buddhist monks in the morning. At 6 am, all the monks go around the city streets and collect their food for the day from locals. This isn't supposed to be a tourist attraction, but it is turning into one. The Laotians (what are they called?) believe that everybody should be a monk for at least a week, although some are monks their entire lives. We also got to ride an elephant in the Mekong river, which was pretty cool. We saw how they made their local whiskey, which is bottled with some sort of animal (scorpion, cobra, bear, snake, anything disgusting you can think of). Overall, it was a very laid back and beautiful riverside city.The main street in Luang PrubangOn the way to the Mekong river. Our elephant must have not been fed breakfast b/c he stopped every few steps to grap some branches.The best part of our time in Luang Prubang (it is tied with the sights in Vang Vieng) was the waterfall outside the city. It was a multi-tiered waterfall that had rope swings and water falls that you could jump off of. The water was also an impressive blue (how does water get that color???). But after this it was another long bus ride to Thailand and Chang Mai to go jungle trekking before taking off for the Islands, yet we made one big flaw in this itinerary.

Part 2: Nam

After taking a 6 hour bus ride with out AC we arrived in downtown Saigon. Now Saigon has three names: Best known as Saigon from the Vietnam war, renamed after we lost the war as Ho chi Minh City (he was head of the VC), or as motor bike city because there are 7 million motorcycles in the city (wish I had a better picture to really show it). Saigon turned out to be a very nice city, and the people there were extremely welcoming and didn't really care if you were an American. We did a couple Vietnam War related excursions there. We went to the War Remnants Museum which was anti-American and really went into the Agent Orange drops. Overall it was a good museum, but didn't show any of the misdeeds the VC perpetrated, which was annoying. It wasn't like the Hiroshima Museum that explains war is bad and no one is in the right. Yet after going to North Vietnam I can see the people there setting up a museum like this. We also went to the tunnels that some of the VC lived in throughout the war and saw some of the traps they used.
The tunnels were made bigger for tourists, but were still very very very small. The tunnel you can go into ran for 100 yards and only 2 people out of our group made it all the way through. I seriously don't understand how they could live in those tunnels for 15 years.
This was one of the traps they used, and it wasn't even the worse kind. They were all meant to maim and slow down a group. One of the biggest reasons these tunnels were so important was that the American brass decided to make the main airfield outside Saigon right over them, which allowed the VC to pop out of the ground and surprise our troops.

The only other thing we did around Saigon was go on a tour of the Mekong Delta. Which was very touristy. We rode in little paddle boats, wore stupid hats, held a boa, went to a coconut candy shop, and went for a donkey ride in the jungle. This was actually pretty cool and fun trip, and the best part was the entire day trip cost 7$. Vietnam was the cheapest country I've ever been to, but you really had to barter over every little thing, and it got really bad in the North as the people just tried to rip off every non-North Vietnamese (we even ran into a SV couple who got ripped real bad on the Ha Long Bay tour just b/c their accent was different). Everyone I spoke to didn't like the NV as a people.

We flew into Hanoi and it was a very pretty city with old French architecture and a pretty lake in the middle of it. The best part of the city was the Pho, which was extremely cheap and delicious. Another cool this was they had homemade beer and they would put out little chairs on the sidewalk for people to come and drink, but other than that there wasn't much to do there.I am told this is the lake the John McCain parachuted into when he was captured. There is also a terrapin that lives in the lake and that island in the middle is a temple dedicated to them.

The best part of Hanoi was going to Ha Long Bay. It was a little scary because we went six days after one of the boats went down and 11 people drowned on it. Alex was nervous, and woke me up in the middle of the night when the engine turned on to reposition the boat. But I felt that was probably the safest time ever to go because Vietnam would lose a lot of money if another boat went down (I also think this would be a good time to fly Southwest). The highlights of the cruise was kayaking around the islands, watching how the people lived on the water and sold food to tourists, and going through the two big caves.After getting back to Hanoi we decided to take the sleeper bus to Laos. WORST BUS EVER. Instead of lying about the AC they lied about having a bathroom. 25 hours without a bathroom! Good thing they stopped a bunch.

The start of the trip: Cambodia

So, I thought it would make sense to explain what I've been doing the past few months mainly b/c I don't see everyone as much anymore, and if you wanted to hear the stories I'll eventually put them on the blog.

On February 9th, Alex and I took off from JFK and flew about 20hours to Bangkok. We basically just used the time in Thailand's Capitol to recoup from the flight, but we both did end up getting pretty sick (advice: don't eat Egg's Benedict in Tropical Countries). After recoverying we took a short flight to Phnom Phen in Cambodia to stay with Alex's High School Friend and his GF.

Cambodia:

This was our second time in Cambodia, and I had forgotten just how relaxed and reckless the country is. By that I mean the people there are very friendly and laid back, but the stuff they think is normal or safe definatly isn't and wouldvery illegal in any western country.

Just loading as much as possible is very common.

When we arrived they had lost my luggage, quite an ominous start, but we headed to Alex's friend Dave new apartment, 2 bedroom 2 bath 15 ft ceilings a view of a school playground, which waking up to playing students is a lot better than thousands of horns honking in Korea. It was a good start to the trip hanging out wtih people who know the area. It was great if we wanted to go visit places b/c they had tuk-tuk (mini taxi) drivers who just serviced there block (it was almost like gangs) that were very nice to us and didn't rip us off.

This is Alex's friend and girlfriend (Ill get a better picture of her later), and he is actually doing the tuk-tuk call. If he had his hands close together that would be the motor bike call, which is cheaper and a lot more fun! They also took us to the sunday night fights. There was 5 fights and 3 ended in KO's. I've been to Muy Thai in Thailand. I've been to a title fight in Atlantic City. I have to say this was the most entertaining fight I've ever been too. The beers were 50 cents, you could get right up to the ring. The only thing you had to worry about was thieves (a pretty big downside), butDavid knew how to spot them. If they weren't watching the fights you knew they were there for no good. We did have one sketchy person come sort of close to us, but Dave called him right out and he didn't stay around for long.

When were in Cambodia last summer we were on serious vacation mode and the only touristy thing we did was go to Angkor Wat, which is where a lot of Tomb Raider was shot and where trees have grown over doorways (one of the coolest places I've ever been, and if you want to go should hurry up because you can still walk all over it). So this time we made a desicsion to do all that we missed. The biggest ones were going to the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng prison. For those who don't know basically a third or a quarter of the population was murdered by Pol Pot's regime, and nearly everyone with a college or high school education was killed. Their dogma was to return to an agriculture economy. Yet they were so corrupt that they took all the rice and sold them to the Thai or Chinese for money to buy weapons that a lot of people died of starvation (the movie "The Killing Fields" with John Malcovich is a good and entertaining acount). This is a picture of the monument at the Killing fields.

I didn't take many pictures there because it was kind of erie, but that building is full of skeletons and there lots of open graves dug up. They estimated that 1.2 million people were killed at this site. I touched on the corruption from the 70's there and our friends told us that it is still prevelent. It's so bad that you pretty much just pay for your job. I think they said that if you want to be a cop it cost 2000$, an engineer 5000$, or a doctor like 8000$ (they use the US Dollar there). And the cops just pull people over at random and give them tickets (I think I saw this in every country we visited, so its not just the Cambodians, but most of Asia is very corrupt).

This is another picture I have gotten a lot of questions about:

YES, take the sign literally. You can purchase an old Rocket Launcher and shoot a cow, or you can get an AK-47 and shoot up a chicken. I've even heard rumors that if you paid enough you could shoot a person. I don't know what kind of person would want to do that, but I hope its not true.

Those are some of the more interesting antedotes and adventures we had there. It's a beautiful country and nice city with some amazing shopping in the Russian Market. After getting our tourist visas for Vietnam we took an 6 hour bus sans AC, which would be reoccuring nightmare throughout our trip.