We took a flight down to Phuket, stayed at a hotel in town for one night, and then took a ferry to the island of Koh Phi Phi where we spent the next four nights.
Everything we read about Koh Phi Phi was correct, it’s totally overrun by tourists and partying college kids, but’s it’s also to find some space away from the craziness and discover some beautiful white sand beaches and turquoise waters.
Heather may have done some Thai kickboxing, and there may or may not be video to prove it.
This was primarily a travel day, moving ourselves by plane from Northern Thailand in Chaing Rai to Soithern Thailand in Phuket, where we will catch a morning ferry to the islands.
In the morning, I discovered exactly how much sweetened condenses milk it takes to made their coffee so incredibly delicious.
Mark and I ales spent an hour or so walking around the hill tribe museum. The many different tribal cultures around Northern Thailand, Laos and Myanmar are not so different in what you would think African tribes are like, in that they are quite isolated from the rest of the developed world and still have all of their own traditions, dress, beliefs and language. Being from Minneapolis, home to the largest Hmong population outside of this part of the world, it was interesting to learn more about their origins.
After moving from a not so satisfactory guesthouse North to the delightful Baan Warabardee guesthouse, we headed out to discover what the White Temple and Black house were all about. First stop, White Temple. This crazy, eccentric, ego maniacal artist has created his version of heaven on earth. It’s a crazy sparkling monstrosity in the middle if nowhere, still being added on to. He envisions it being completed 90 years after his death. Before entering the Temple, you have to cross a bridge across hell, with hands stretching up at you. In the temple, there are huge murals of demons, the biggest of which has George W Bush and Osama Bin Laden painted in his eyes. The mural also has every hero from pop culture imaginable in it, from Michael Jackson to Spiderman. Sorry, no pictures allowed.
After Heather was told to keep walking and never come back, ladeee, for taking a funny photo at the temple, we headed off to the Black House, a student of the White Temple artist who has built the total opposite feeling estate. The Black House is a collection of creepy collections, bones made into dining room chairs, taxidermist animals and bug collections. Heather was in love. Obviously this guy has a wild imagination and his style was way less obtuse than White Temple guy. Evidently he is a social recluse never to be seen. Definitely no life size cut outs of this guy hanging around
After that we had massages and headed out in search of the elusive Phu Jai restaurant for some Khao Soi, curry noodles but to no avail. Street food at the night market for us. We ended the night at the Night Bazaar listening to the Thai version of Sonny and Cher belt out old timey American songs. Thus completed our first day in Chiangrai.
After the coolest border crossing ever in a long tail boat across the Mekong from Laos into Thaliand, we hopped in a van headed for Chiangrai with not so high hopes of what we would find there. We read and heard that Chiangrai was a small town with not a lot to offer, but seeing that we had just hiked for our lives in the jungle of Laos, we just needed a landing pad to regroup before our next venture to the islands. Boy were we wrong. Chiangrai turned out to be a lovely town with genuine people and some great sights around.
Walked the night market and got our first real Thai dinner.
Wow. This is seriously one of the coolest adventures I’ve ever done in my life. We hiked through the jungle and zip lined to our home in a treehouse for two nights! But let me start at the beginning…
At 8 in the morning we went to the Gibbon Experience Office in Huay Xai along with about a dozen other adventuresome travellers, mostly from around Europe orAustrailia on this day. We signed a waiver and warched a 10 minute safety video, little did we know that was the largest chunk of instruction we would get at one time over the next couple of days. When we left, we knew that we would have to take a two hour ride just to get to the wildlife preserve where we would begin our hike. What we didn’t know was that this ride would be in the back of a pickup truck bed with bench seats in back. The first hour was down the highway at 55mph, the second hour was sludging through rivers, mud pits and tretourously slippery hill climbs. Our knuckles
We’re white from holding on but it sure was exciting!
When we stopped we were split into smaller groups depending on how many nights we were staying and began our long hike. The first portion took us through some fields being harvested by hand by some Laos farmers. Then to an extremely muddy path,where much to the amusement of everybody else, I lost my footing, planted my left foot ankle deep into some thick mud, then lost my shoe trying to pull my foot out, which then led to me planting my sock in the mud! I think I may be buying some new shoes and socks at our next destination.
At our halfway point we were fitted with zip lining harnesses and split into two groups of 6 or 8 for who would stay in which treehouse.The four of us were paired up with a great couple from Colorado, Carrie and Keith, who we got to live with and know quite well over the next couple of days.
Then hike to the treehouse was just a small sampling of what type of hiking was to come over he next couple of days. Two things in particular are of note: first of all, the hike was beautiful. We ascended and descended steep ridges of dense jungle and forest, which took us through palms, vine covered trees and groves of bamboo forest. The second important thing to note is that the hike was really really hard. I mean totally grueling. I feel like I’m a pretty decent hiker, but some of these hills were equivalent to climbing 68 flights of stairs. By he time I reached the top of some (and there were multiple) I was drenched in sweat and panting like a dog in July. Anybody thinking of doing this excursion should be well aware that you need to be in pretty good physical shape or you will suffer the consequences.
The zip lines were another matter. These were unbelievable! I’ve zip lined three other places before and this place has the highest and longest zip lines I’ve been on, and it’s not even their main draw to come visit the place. Flying a half mile through the air, through a dense forest and then flying through he trees to be 300 feet over a valley is breathtaking. By U.S. standards this operation would never in a million years pass safety inspection. Not because of the equipment though, I thought that the harnesses and cables were top notch and I felt completely safe at all times. Rather, they take more of a stance of “your safety is our concern, but your responsibility”, meaning that they showed us how to put our harness on and off, how to safely hook onto and off of the line, and how to glide across, and then we were on our own. We “usually” had a guide along with us, but he was mostly there to tell us which path to take, the ziplining was up to us.
Our last stop was a short zip line which took us to our home for the next two nights, a three level tree house built at least 100 feet up into a tree, which had views of the surrounding valley. Our treehouse has running water which came from a tank hidden high up a nearby hill, a toilet which piped itself to somewhere out of site by the base of the tree, a rainwater shower, and even electric lightbulbs powered by a solar battery.
If you come on this trek, I would recommend you pack lots of dry clothes, as I sweated through all of mine, some toilet paper (we hade none), a small travel towel ( we were short two) and maybe a portable pillow (the beds are very hard and a bit dirty). The most important thing is to liken this trek to a backpacking and camping trip, where you sleep in a tent and pee in the woods, and not a catered guided tour where you are cleaned up after and catered to. If you prepare yourself mentally this way you will not be disappointed.
We went to bed shortly after dark, around 7:00, mostly because we ran out of things to do. With no light, and no campfire, the next best thing was to crawl under our mosquito net and listen to the (loud) buzz of the crickets.
The next morning we had high hopes to see some Gibbon monkeys. At dawn our guide zip-lined in and led us on an early morning walk to see what we could. We didn’t end up seeing anything, but we did hear them. In the mornings, Gibbons are known to sing. Their voice is a high pitched, two note call that resonates for miles. Not too different from a coyote howl, yet very different at the same time. We could hear a couple or more Gibbons singing back and forth across the valley.
After breakfast we took a tour with our guide through a pretty large portion of their trails, zip-lines and other tree-houses. We were happy to find out that our tree-house, house #1, is way bigger and better than the others. The Taj Mahal Tree-House if you will. The others were amazing in their own ways, and many had better views, but all were smaller and had a longer hike to them. The hike this day nearly killed us (aside from Mark who bounded like a gazelle ahead or us), but it was amazing, and we finished, drenched in sweat, with that feeling of accomplishment you get when you know you’ve pushed yourself hard and know the payoff was well worth it. There were many more ziplines this day, my favorite being the one you need to stand on a tiny platform outside the wall of a treehouse and jump off to launch yourself over the forest canopy…very scary.
The second night we had another good dinner back in our tree and played some cards before again succumbing to the dark, boredom, fatigue and misquotes before crawling into bet around 7:00
This last video is not mine. I found it on YouTube and this guy has a wide angle helmet cam which does a good job of conveying the feeling of what it was like to zipline through the jungle
Slow Boat ride up the Mekong River
For a person to get upriver from Luang Prabang to Huay Xai, they basically have three choices. They can take a bus, which is a couple of nightmarish days driving through winding mountain roads, they can take the “slow boat”, which is a 100 foot long boat, not unlike a giant bus, that they also pack passengers in and also takes two days to complete the journey, or they can take the “fast boat”. Which is a small speedboat that fits maybe 6 passengers and makes the distance in one day, but it’s extremely loud, passengers wear helmets and it’s been known to have some fatalities (yea, no biggie). No e of these options looked very good to us, but we were ready and willing to take the slow boat as the only viable option.
As it ended up, we found an excellent final option. We found a local boat owner and bargained a private slow boat for the two day trip. Now, instead of 75 people on the boat, it would only be the four of us plus the driver and his wife and son, we would have lunch cooked for us each of the two days, and it would cost us $100 per person instead of $22 (the price started at $150). Given the alternative I think we made out pretty well. If you ever want to do this, and come across a man named Mr. Jai, you can trust him.
We were picked up by the boat on the river right across from our hotel at 8:am. Each day would be an 8 hour ride with an overnight stay in Pak Beng. Despite all the horror stories we’ve read about these boats on the Internet, the boat was actually really nice. The seats were airline seats and there were a half dozen tables, with room to lay down,and there was a bathroom in the rear. In back, beyond the bathroom was a roaring open engine thar pushed us along at about 20mph, and behind thar was the small living quarters for the family that lived on the boat.
The Mekong is exactly the type of river one might think of the they think of Laos. It’s the color of mud and is spotted with water buffalo, cattle and fishermen in long boats checking their nets. We passed the time by play cards, napping and watching the mountains, jungle and sand bars pass us by.
It was a about this time that the inevitable happened and Heather and I both came down with a case of travelers sickness. It really took all of the energy out of me, but I suppose if it were to happen anytime this would be the best time since all I have to do is lay around on a boat for two days.
We stopped at the tiny town of Pak Beng for the night, which we’ve also read horror stories about. It turned out okay though. The town is nothing more than one or two roads loner with guest houses, restaurants (all with mostly the same menu) and the occasional convenience store selling Pringles, crackers and Beer Lao. We just walked the street until we found a suitae room at the Mekong River Lodge. The rooms were new and clean and had a shared deck overlooking the river. Tho others wend across the street for Indian food, and I stayed in, comfortably close to the bathroom and my bottled water.
Day 7
Luang Prabang
Waking up early to be on the street by 6:00 am to see the Tak Bat, where orange robed monks walk in a line down the street to collect alms at dawn. As they passed many locals would place a small amount of sticky rice into a pot that each monk carried.
After that, the girls went out for a massage (which Heather has her own stories about), and Mark and I rented scooters for our afternoon plans. The scooters, unfortunately, came with an empty tank of gas, and we only made it a few blocks before one of them puttered out. The gas station was happy to fill up a plastic water bottle with gasoline to take back to the dead scooter though. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t fly as an approved fuel container in the US.
The four of us scooted the 50 minute ride out to the Kuang Si waterfall. Our scooter ride alone was worth the cost of the rental. We went past small villages with crowing roosters and the smell of barbecue, and winding roads past ivy covered forests and Hmong farmers.
Now, I’ve seen a lot of waterfalls, and I was a little hesitant about spending an entire afternoon to see something that could be more of the same, but this waterfall was one of the best I’ve come across. The photos can’t capture enough, of course.
After our scooter ride home we had some lunch at a riverside restaurant, then went back to our guesthouse for som trip planning and ticket buying. We had plenty of concerns about our options for how to get up river to our next stop at The Gibbon Experience, since no option sounded very pleasant, but we ended up bargaining for our own private boat to take us there.
In the center of town there is a 100 meter high hill, atop of which sits the Phu Si temple. Being almost sunset, Mark and I made a quick, sweaty climb to the top hoping to catch sunset. We were a bit late , but the views were still spectacular.
Our dinner took us down the street to Place where we had hot pot. This was a pretty new experience for all of us. They placed a bucket of red hot coals in the. Enter of our table, then put a pot of boiling broth on top of that. We then chose from the menu an assortment of ingredients for us to toss into the pot at our leisure. Greens, mushrooms, tofu, meats, herbs, egg. The result was a delicious soup. The casualty of this meal happened when Alyssa accidentally grabbed hold of a plate that had been sitting a little too close to the coals, and ended up with a second degree burn on her thumb. It’s blistering up pretty nicely now. Alyssa’s doing fine with it, although we’re stockpiling anything anti-bacterial we can find for when we go into the jungle.
At dinner we met a really nice boy from the UK named Peter who ended up sliding over to our table and having dinner with is. He also joined us afterwords for another trip to the night market and a glass of wine before calling it a night
Day 6
Woke up at about 7-ish and had our usual hotel breakfast. Then we split up, the girls going out for massage and Mark and I taking a walk around town. We’re now out of the the super crazy neighborhood and are in a much more relaxed area. I think we’re starting to get the hang of this town.
Mark and I walked down to the 1000 year old temple of literature, where there were at least a half dozen weddings going on.
We got rained on pretty hard, and ended up getting a little lost walking down some long wet alleys, but it ended up being a pretty good walking adventure. We met back at the tailor where I got my final fitting for my suit coat and picked it up. Then, after packing our bags and checking out of the hotel, we spent our last two hours in town doing our own mini street-food tour. Sitting on tiny plastic stools in the dingy corner of a bustling street-side stall, we sampled beautifully crispy, fried morsels with noodles and salad. Then, we crouched on the sidewalk next to a smiling elderly Vietnamese woman as she cooked us up some fried tofu on her homemade grill.
Then, off to the airport to fly to Laos.
We landed in Luang Prabang and we loved the town the moment our cab left the airport and even more by the time we made it through town to our hotel. This town has a calmness settled over it. It’s not so busy like Hanoi, merchants do not call out to you from their stalls, there’s little traffic and people are friendly. There’s also the occasional monk walking around. We went out to diner the. To the night market, where even some of the sellers were just napping. We’re all wishing we had more time to spend here.
