August 19, 2012 Pakbeng, Huay Xai, Chiang Kong, Phaya Meng Rai, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Pai, Mae Hong Son, Mae Chaem, Chiang Mai, Lampang

    Our bike ride to Pak Beng was a wet one. The rain was coming down hard and all we had for protection were some small raincoats to cover our torsos. Towards the end of the ride, Cat received a phone call (which is always an exciting event) so we huddled under an overhanging tree on the side of the highway while she took the call.
    Pak Beng was a quaint border town. It's situated on the eastern shore of the Mekong River which acts as the border between much of Thailand and Laos. But since there isn't a border crossing at Pak Beng we had to spend the night and take a ten hour boat ride up the Mekong to the Laos border town of Huay Xai where we would be able to cross the following day.
    The boat ended up being far more comfortable than prior experiences. There was loads of room aboard and we sat in the kind of removable seats you find in old minivans and suburbans. Pure luxury. Even so, ten ours on a boat is a very long time.
    Huay Xai wasn't anything special but because of the border crossing hours, we had to stay the night and cross the next day.
    Crossing the river to Chiang Kong in Thailand was incredibly quick and painless. We were so excited to be in Thailand and all I could think of was laying my hands on the first plate of Phad Thai I found.
    After a short spell of tinkering with my ever fickle bike, we set off for the relatively short ride to Phaya Meng Rai (only about fifty km). We were immediately aware of the change from Laos roads to Thai roads. After the potholed and muddy roads of Laos, the roads in Thailand seemed immaculate. Not only that, but there were no hills so we could make excellent time (that day we averaged about 23 km/hr compared to Laos where we averaged about 8-12 km/hr).
    The day was a hot one and when we arrived in PMR, we realized we'd forgotten to applysunscreen. This just turned our bike shorts tans and farmer's tans into burns. That night we weren't able to make it into town for dinner because of an intense lightning storm so we ate some mediocre take out brought by the hostel owners.
    The next day on our way to Chiang Rai, we stopped for breakfast to enjoy our first true Thai meal. And so began Cat's love affair with noodle soup (called gooay deeo in Thai). When they first served it, I was thinking it looked awfully similar to the medicre Vietnamese pho and the slightly less mediocre Laos foe. I couldn't have been more wrong. The noodle soups in Thailand are so much more flavourful, with their myriad ingredients and complex broths. You also have a wide variety of toppings you can add at your table, like garlic, peppers and peanuts. Feeling appropriately rejuvenated, we easily covered the distance to Chiang Rai.
    During the ride we couldn't help commenting on how different Thailand felt compared to Laos. There's a lot more money in Thailand which is apparent everywhere you look. There's also a much larger importance placed on education. In Laos, we saw a couple of run down schools along our rides but they were always empty and abandoned. Consequently the towns and villages would be practically overrun with kids (Laos is a very young country). In stark contrast, we were astounded at how many Thai schools we passed in those first two days. The schools were very nicely kept with mowed soccer fields and taut volleyball nets. Each school was in session as well.
    After a month in cycling through rural Laos, Chiang Rai's 60,000 people felt like a metropolis. We got a nice room at a hostel in the backpacker section and headed out for a bite. There are a fair amount of westerners in Chiang Rai because it acts as a gateway to the northernmost provinces.
    After much debate, we decided to sell our bikes in Chiang Rai and continue on motorbike having biked about 400 miles across Laos and northern Thailand. Let me add here that we have not once looked back on that decision.
    We decided to wait until Chiang Mai to rent the bike because we knew we'd have to return it and we didn't want to be forced to commute the full length of Thailand back up to Chiang Rai when we finished. We spent a couple days in CR enjoying the delicious food, catching up on lost sleep and letting our bruised butts heal.
    Chiang Mai is a great city and definitely a must see in northern Thailand. It's fairly large with a population of about 120,000. Due in part to the large university and and pervading backpacker scene, the city has a very young feel and there are lots of different things to do for entertainment. It also has a great selection of restaurants exhibiting foods from Thailand and all over the world.
    We stayed in a section known as the Old City. It's a perfect square with sides of perhaps one km or so. In the past it was completely walled in and surrounded by a moat. Nowadays, almost all of the wall is gone except for the front gate and a couple sporadic ruins. The moat remains though, making the Old City feel like an island within the larger city.
    There's a large backpacker section in the eastern part of the Old City with many affordable hostels and a plethra of restaurants. After finding a lovely place to stay, our first order of business was to procure a motor bike.
   In SE Asia, the motorbike is supreme. It is absolutely ubiquitous and you come across them more than any other form of vehicular travel (except maybe bicycles). You can get bikes of different makes but by far the most common are Honda bikes. After talking with several different shops Cat and I decided to rent the Honda Dream, a 125 cc semiautomatic scooter "hybrid". Her name is the black mamba (formerly known as the black dream). We were ready to set off on the next stage of our trip.
    We spent a couple of days in Chiang MAi, trying different restaurants, sleeping in and of course visiting the local night market. This was our favorite market up to this point. We filled up on all sorts of local foods and sweets. Since everything is sold in such small quantities it's possible to try many different foods. We each had our first (and so far only) experience eating fried crickets. We decided they weren't that bad, tasting like most anything that's fried and crunchy.
    After a couple wobbly days biking around Chiang Mai, I improbed drastically and we decided to head out on a 600 km loop of the area surrounding Chiang Mai.
    Our first day took us about 70 km west to the "hippie" town of Pai (pronounced bye). The drive was gorgeous and very mountainous. I couldn't have imagined trying to bring an automatic bike on those roads. There were several roads that were probably close to a 15% grade and we had the bike in first gear screaming up the hill.
    Pai was a fun and laid back town. There was a very definitive backpacker and expat vibe but we also came across many dreadlocked locals who were just as into the lifestyle. A Thai Jack Sparrow we saw at the market comes to mind. It was in Pai that we received our first Thai massage and became addicted. We've had about one a day since. The massage costs ony $5 for an hour and is very good. The little Thai ladies are a lot stronger than they look.
    On our way back to Chiang Mai, we stopped for a night in the border town of Mae Hong Son and then on to Mae Chaem where we stayed at a dirt-cheap resort with a top quality swimming pool. The roads on these days got increasingly mountainous and winding and our butts got more and more tender.
    We returned to Chiang Mai for one night to get the bike checked on before heading south towards Lampang. While in town, we decided to get another massage and read in the Lonely Planet book about a center that employed only blind masseuses. We though that their lost sight would have finely tuned their sense of touch so that the massage would be unparalleled. We were quite wrong. It turned out the massueses were not very into their work and definitely had no real training. The man working on me was continuously belching and picking his nose (2 knuckles deep I might add) before wiping it on the bed as if I couldn't see him. When he started his practice, he literally just leaned heavily on me and randomly changed positions along my body. It was all rather ridiculous and I glanced over at Cat to see her masseuse talking on his cell phone with one hand while poking her with his other. Oh well it was definitely worth a good laugh afterwards.
    For the trip to Lampang, we had to drive on a major highway which wasn't pleasant because of the concrete scenery and the innumerable trucks whizzing past us. Luckily there is an especially wide shoulder designed for bikers such as ourselves.
    Along the way we decided to stop at the Lampang Elephant Conservation camp. We were a little put off at first when the entire museum turned out to be in Thai. The tour got much bettter though when we got to meet the elephants. The trainers were taking them all down to the pond for bathing and they stopped to let us interact with them. We took turns posing with a smaller one and playing with her trunk.
    Afterwards, the trainers and elephants put on a show exhibiting the elephants' impressive intelligence. They are incredibly trainable and could do all sorts of tricks most impressive of which was to paint convincing portraits of themselves (I am not kidding)! Afterwards Cat tried to calmly pose while feeding one of the elephants but it kept ripping the food out of her hand before we could get a picture. It was good fun.
    In Lampang we visited another colorful night market and got pampered at the massage parlor again (I'm getting way too used to this!).
    The next day we headed farther south to the city of Sukhotai. Outside of the town is the national park containing an expansive area of ruined wats from the ancient Sukhotai Kingdom. Lasting for around 200 years, Sukhotai was once the capital of all Siam (present day Thailand). We spent the whole day motoring around the site from wat to wat under the brutal Thai sun. Some of the wats were truly impressive, expecially the Khmer style ruins.
    Our next stop was Mae Sot where we are now. It's right on the border of Burma. Since we arrived in Thailand by land, we only receoved a fifteen day visa so we're going to exit into Burma tomorrow and reenter to get another visa. Mae Sot has a huge population of Burmese people and the blend of culture is very apparent when walking through the main market place. For dinner we ate at a local Burmese restaurant where the owner admitted to fleeing Burma in 1988 and participating in revolutionary groups for the next 23 years. He explained how tense the situation remains.
    After we cross back into Thailand, we plan on biking a little farther south to the rural Karen village of Um Phang. It's supposed to be beautiful with many waterfalls including the biggest in all of Thailand. Stay tuned...

August 6, 2012 phonsavan, phou khoun, kiou kacham, luang prabang, nong kiaw, muang ngoi, pakmong, oudomsay, muong beng, muong houn

    After our quick detour at the Plain of Jars, we headed back to Route 13 (the main road from Vientiane through Luang Prabang) via bus. We were dropped off in the middle of the night at the small junction town of Phou Khoun in the pouring cold rain. We had no idea where to stay and while I stood shivering in a small shack, Brian ran around the town looking for a guest house. We finally found a decent one and settled in for the night. Unfortunately we were stuck eating foe (pronounced fuh) for dinner which had been our meal for breakfast and lunch. Many times restaurants only serve foe, rice noodle soup with some mystery meat and your occasional ant. Brian and I have learned to love it (when we are starving while biking) and hate it so much!
    The next morning we started our two day journey by bike to Luang Prabang. The day started out misty and it was drizzling, but after ten km of downhill we escaped the mountain haze. The downhill is always incredible, but it is usually followed by Uphill and those are the moments when I regret buying the bikes. However, at the end of the day we definitely feel proud of ourselves!
    We had a short day of only 25 km from Phgou Khoun to a small village called Kioukacham. Halfway through, I was ready to give up when two old ladys came up to us and gave us two cucumbers with big smiles on their faces. This definitely brightened my day seeing people who had so little being so generous to complete strangers.
    When we finally made it to our guest house our bikes were coverfed in mud (there are a lot of areas of the road that have been destroyed by landslides).
    The next day we had 80 km until we reached the city of Luang Prabang and the majorit was uphill.
    Luckly we made a stop at a waterfall on the way which was amazing. The water was torquoise blue and there were many tiers of waterfalls and pools where you could swim! We didn't know this before and had left our bathing suits with our bikes at the boat launch (you have to take a boat to get there). We were so hot that we jumped in in our biking clothes. We even got to see elephants forced to swim with the tourists riding them.
    Eventually we made it to the beautiful quiet "city" (only 70,000 people live there) of Luang Prabang. Here we relaxed for a few days while Brian learned how to fix the gears on our bikes (which were an absolute pain in the ass) through the most versatile teacher ever... youtube. Surprisingly he did a great job on my bike, but his is still quite finicky.
    The backpackers section of Luang Prabang has a very Euopean feel to it. It's on the Mekong River and has multiple temples to visit. Our favorite thing was to get up at dawn and watch the procession  of saffron clad monks collect alms (sticky rice) from pious locals. It would have been ever morespecial if there weren't so many tourists snapping photos during it. We felt a little bad adding to the crowd, but it seems the monks have become accustomed to the paparazzi.
    After much debate we decided to take another detour from our cycling and head to the small river villages of Nong Kiaw and Muong Ngoi. At first we were planning on taking a seven hour boat ride up the Nam Ou River to get to the first town of Nong Kiaw, but the n we realized that a bus would be half the price and half the time.
    Nong Kiaw was beautiful. It is situated on the Nam Ou River and we thought it was what Vang Vieng would have been like before the partiers took it over. From Nong Kiaw we took a two hour boat ride to Muong Ngoi. The only way to access this roadless village is by boat so we expected it to not be very touristy. Unfortunately, every other tourist thought the same and the small village was full of westerners.
    However, we ended up having a great time and met a really cool couple from French Canada! The only downside to our visit was our decisionto hike to a nearby waterfall. Everyone had warned us about the mud and the leeches, but we were strong willed. We ended up hiking in ankle deep mud for 45 minutes and reaching a small pool of water with a very underwhelming stream of water coming off some rocks. I decided to take a dip since we hiked all the way and destroyed our shoes. When removing our sneakers we realized that leeches were a lot smaller than we thought and had made their way onto our feet. At this point we decided to turn around.
    We were very disappointed that we had paid for a boat to drive us up river for the hike and angry that our guesthouse had advertised it. Although the owner did advise us to take a guide. When we returned he looked quite shocked that we were back so quickly and asked if we had made it to the waterfall. We told him yes and explained our experience. He then said, "So you didn't make it to the limestone cliff with the 20 meter waterfall and the large body of water?" At this we looked at each other and were even more disappointed. We definitely should have takedn a guide. We probably had made it almost the whole way to the falls and turned around right before we got to it!
    The next day we headed back to Nong Kiaw on the boat and started the next leg of our journey towards Oudomsay. Another junction town near the border of China where there is a lot of Chinese influence.
    It took us two days to cycle the 110 km. I had read mixed reviews on the town, but we heard that the best restaurant in all of Laos resided there. The town ended up being our least favorite place in all of Laos. People were very rude and unfriendly (very different from everywhere else in Laos). The hotel we stayed at made us pay when we checked in and we then discovered hundreds of little fleas covering the bed spread. When I told the guy at the front desk he just shrugged refused to change the sheets. Lets just say I had a moment and threw a little temper tantrum. Brian was slightly embarassed by my actions to say the least. But somehow it worked as the terrified Laos man brought in a new sheet. The restaurant we were told was amazing was mediocre and all in all it was a bad experience.
    At the present moment we are on our way to Pak Beng where we will take a day boat to the border of Northern Tailand.
    It will take us three days in total and we are currently on our second leg after biking 100 km from Oudomsay. I was very happy to leave the town and even just outside of the city limits, the people were so much more friendly.
    Everywhere we go children in the small villages always yell falang falang (which means white person) and start running when they see us coming on our bikes. They always are smiling and waving and they love it when we slap them five while biking by. It is very cute and always puts a smile on our faces, even when we're exhausted from biking.
    Our first stop was in a small village with only one guesthouse called Muong Beng. We were famished when we arrived and began hunting for food (not literally). We finally found the only place in town serving foe, of course, with the added protein of ants and flys. I tried to eat as much as I could, but mainly just pushed everything around in my bowl and dropped things into Brian's when he wasn't looking.
    Lucky for us this restaurant was also a Karaoke bar. Karaoke is HUGE in SE Asia. The owner was very friendly and forcibly coerced us to partake by shoving the mic in Brian's hand (his first karaoke experience) and randomly putting on an english song, which happened to be, John Denver's Country Road, Take Me Home. This would have been somewhat normal if it weren't for the video that went along with the song, which was a bunch of white female strippers in American flag shirts. I kept wondering what they must think of our culture. The women in the bar looked horrified and I couldn't help but laugh hysterically.
    Anyways we ended up staying at the bar into the night. The owner who spoke no English treated us to many a  beerlaos and we continued to sing every English song they had on  the machine. It was one of our favorite nights thus far.