Friday, July 27, 2007
So at the end of my last entry, we were about to embark on a special trek to the hill tribe villages with Lue, our cool Lao guide. Most of the treks on offer in Luang Prabang include some sort of elephant riding and tubing/rafting. Since we’d done all that, we just wanted basic trekking. 6-8 hours a day through a few tribe villages would suit us fine. Lue said he knew just the route to take and with everything organized we set off last Saturday morning. We hiked for about 3 or 4 hours through little streams, under forest canopies and up mountain sides. Then we stopped for a Lue style lunch which, as before, consisted of spicy chicken fried rice. After this, we hiked a further 30 minutes to the first village of our trek. The place was deserted and Lue explained that all the people were off working in the nearby rice paddies and would return around 5pm. He began showing us some of the farmyard contraptions when we heard a 4x4 jeep zooming towards us on the narrow dirt road. A guy in a uniform vaguely resembling that of the military hopped out and Lue went to chat with him. He came back to us a few moments later and told us that the government had decided that we weren’t allowed to be trekking in this area and we were to return to Luang Prabang at once. We tried to find out why but Lue said he didn’t know and frankly, due the communist nature of Laos, when a government official asks you to do something, you don’t ask questions.
In the jeep on the way back to Luang Prabang we tried to figure out why we weren’t allowed trek there. The most popular theories were that there was some upcoming insurgency within the tribes or that the government just likes exercising its power. So anyway we made it a short way back towards Luang Prabang when the engine began emitting large volumes of steam. Here we go again, we thought. We had to stop but this happened to be in the middle of a patch of the road that the locals were working on. They were widening the road under orders of the government – another example of Laos’ communist nature. We waited patiently while a few of the lads headed off to the river to get some water to cool the engine down. Once they returned it seemed this wasn’t enough to get the jeep going again. We asked Lue what our options were and he said “Maybe we can wait here and maybe a motorbike will pass and maybe he can go to a nearby village and maybe the village will have a car and maybe they can drive the car to us and maybe we can use their car to get ours started”. That seemed like a lot of maybes to me and I hoped some other alternative would present itself soon as we were in the middle of nowhere with no mobile coverage and a government official who didn’t want us there. Just then the driver had a brainwave. He decided the best thing would be to push the car along to get some momentum going so he could try starting the vehicle. The only thing is we were at the bottom of a kind of trough in the road which made it quite difficult. We ended up pushing the car a short way forward before it rolled back down the way we had pushed it. But while it was rolling down backwards we had to run to the front of it and try and push it back up the hill on the other side. When it began to roll forward again we ran to the back and pushed it up the first hill again. This continued on for some time until we had enough momentum going for the driver to try starting the engine. Thankfully it worked and we all piled back into the jeep again, considerably more tired than when we got out of it.
Unfortunately this wasn’t the end of our troubles. The journey back to Luang Prabang was three hours and it was only a matter of time before the engine overheated again. Once more we sat on the side of the road while Lue and the driver hiked down to the river to get more water. We were on our way again and after a few hours started to see the signs for Luang Prabang. It was just after the 5km sign that we broke down for the third time. Thankfully only being 5km from the city meant we could just call for a backup jeep. We indulged in a Beerlao while waiting to be picked up, something we certainly felt we deserved. The new jeep turned up and brought us back to Luang Prabang without further incident. Being back was all very good and well but it meant we had cut our trek short. We got most of the money back that we had paid for it but it meant we were out of time to start another 2 day trek the next day (Sunday). We had already bought our boat ticket to Thailand for the Monday but we couldn’t even change this to leave a day earlier because the place we bought it in was closed for the rest of the day. So this basically meant we were forced to spend one more day in Luang Prabang with not much to do. We spent a great deal of it sleeping and took a walk around some part of the city we had not yet visited. Other than that, we loitered around like a pair of gurriers.
We took the famous 2 day slow boat trip to the Lao/Thai border. It wasn’t too bad – comfortable enough but by the end a little boring. The boat stopped in Pak Beng after the first day which was a one function town. It exists solely to cater for all the tourists taking the 2 day boat. As such it was tacky and touristy and not much fun at all. Add to that a room that while only costing 1 dollar, we had to share it with a few cockroaches, mice and bats. We arrived at the border at the end of the second day, conveniently just after it had closed for the day forcing us to stay in the nothing town of Huay Xai. First thing the next morning we were over the border, back into Thailand and on a bus bound for Chiang Mai. We arrived late afternoon and immediately booked ourselves some tickets to see a Thai boxing match for that evening – something we’d planned to do for a while. The boxing was fun and interesting but apparently it’s put on for tourists which is kind of annoying to know. Unfortunately a sore throat had been brewing up for a while now and that evening it crossed from being sore to downright painful. I stopped off in a pharmacy on the way home to pick up some antibiotics (4 dollars for 20 and you don’t even need a prescription!) which meant that I was resigning myself to no booze for the next 5days. I was actually glad of an excuse to give my body a rest from alcohol but Fi was less impressed with having no one to go to the pub with.
On our first full day in Chiang Mai we went on a one day cookery course, another thing we’d been planning for a while. Before we cooked anything, we were taken to the nearby market to buy all the raw ingredients. It was great to have a guided tour of the market and our guide explained to us what all the weird and wonderful fruit, veg and meats were. Back at the kitchens laden with ingredients we started into eating the traditional Thai welcoming snack. This was a curious delicacy which consisted of a large leaf (not sure what type) folded into a cone shape with a chunk of lime (skin still on), some dried coconut flakes, some chilies, a slab of ginger and a dollop of special sauce all chucked into it. Then you pop the whole lot in your mouth in one go and despite being skeptical towards the rawness of the lime and ginger I actually really enjoyed it. Following this, our teacher brought us to the preparation room to begin chopping all the ingredients. The first dish of the day was Pad Thai. We prepared everything before hand and then cooked it all up in a wok in the kitchen. The best part was being able to eat it afterwards and it was truly delicious. It was great to make something that I’d been ordering in restaurants for the last few months and see just how easy it is to recreate. For the rest of the day we cooked up a spicy prawn soup, Thai chicken salad, Thai green curry and for desert, water chestnuts soaked in grenadine and flour. By the end we were absolutely stuffed and couldn’t eat another thing. We were also given a cute little recipe book complete with suggestions for alternative ingredients to ones you can’t buy in Ireland so that we can make the same meals when we get home. Thanks to the antibiotics I wasn’t up for anything that night and I relaxed at the hotel while Fi went out with some mates.
The next day we did our tourist day of Chiang Mai. We headed up to a famous temple with a good view of the city but it was very rainy when we went and we couldn’t see anything. After the temple we continued up the road to a Hmong village however it had been completely destroyed by tourists over the years and is no longer a traditional village. It is completely overdone and put on for tourists which is kind of annoying because our attempts to see real Hmong villages in Laos had failed. We checked out a few other nearby waterfalls and sights and headed for home. Looking for something to do other than go to the pub we went to see Die Hard 4 that evening. After that, things started to go downhill. I had some kind of reaction to the antibiotics that turned my stomach into a churning mess and I couldn’t eat for days. I even found it hard to get out of bed at the best of times so the rest of my time in Chiang Mai was spent curled up in a ball in the hotel room. Aware of Ali’s arrival to Thailand in a couple of days I set myself the task of getting better by the time he arrived. I ate nothing and drank only water and flat sprite. The morning we arrived in Bangkok I was feeling quite better and I was off the antibiotics at that stage too. We met Ali at the prearranged location of Silk Bar on Koh Sanh road and celebrated seeing our mate for the first time in 7 months in the appropriate fashion. Unfortunately it turned out that my return to food and drink was premature and as we made our way from Bangkok to the island of Ko Phan Ngan the next day with no sleep, I decided it was time to get back to a diet of water and flat spri’.
In the jeep on the way back to Luang Prabang we tried to figure out why we weren’t allowed trek there. The most popular theories were that there was some upcoming insurgency within the tribes or that the government just likes exercising its power. So anyway we made it a short way back towards Luang Prabang when the engine began emitting large volumes of steam. Here we go again, we thought. We had to stop but this happened to be in the middle of a patch of the road that the locals were working on. They were widening the road under orders of the government – another example of Laos’ communist nature. We waited patiently while a few of the lads headed off to the river to get some water to cool the engine down. Once they returned it seemed this wasn’t enough to get the jeep going again. We asked Lue what our options were and he said “Maybe we can wait here and maybe a motorbike will pass and maybe he can go to a nearby village and maybe the village will have a car and maybe they can drive the car to us and maybe we can use their car to get ours started”. That seemed like a lot of maybes to me and I hoped some other alternative would present itself soon as we were in the middle of nowhere with no mobile coverage and a government official who didn’t want us there. Just then the driver had a brainwave. He decided the best thing would be to push the car along to get some momentum going so he could try starting the vehicle. The only thing is we were at the bottom of a kind of trough in the road which made it quite difficult. We ended up pushing the car a short way forward before it rolled back down the way we had pushed it. But while it was rolling down backwards we had to run to the front of it and try and push it back up the hill on the other side. When it began to roll forward again we ran to the back and pushed it up the first hill again. This continued on for some time until we had enough momentum going for the driver to try starting the engine. Thankfully it worked and we all piled back into the jeep again, considerably more tired than when we got out of it.
Unfortunately this wasn’t the end of our troubles. The journey back to Luang Prabang was three hours and it was only a matter of time before the engine overheated again. Once more we sat on the side of the road while Lue and the driver hiked down to the river to get more water. We were on our way again and after a few hours started to see the signs for Luang Prabang. It was just after the 5km sign that we broke down for the third time. Thankfully only being 5km from the city meant we could just call for a backup jeep. We indulged in a Beerlao while waiting to be picked up, something we certainly felt we deserved. The new jeep turned up and brought us back to Luang Prabang without further incident. Being back was all very good and well but it meant we had cut our trek short. We got most of the money back that we had paid for it but it meant we were out of time to start another 2 day trek the next day (Sunday). We had already bought our boat ticket to Thailand for the Monday but we couldn’t even change this to leave a day earlier because the place we bought it in was closed for the rest of the day. So this basically meant we were forced to spend one more day in Luang Prabang with not much to do. We spent a great deal of it sleeping and took a walk around some part of the city we had not yet visited. Other than that, we loitered around like a pair of gurriers.
We took the famous 2 day slow boat trip to the Lao/Thai border. It wasn’t too bad – comfortable enough but by the end a little boring. The boat stopped in Pak Beng after the first day which was a one function town. It exists solely to cater for all the tourists taking the 2 day boat. As such it was tacky and touristy and not much fun at all. Add to that a room that while only costing 1 dollar, we had to share it with a few cockroaches, mice and bats. We arrived at the border at the end of the second day, conveniently just after it had closed for the day forcing us to stay in the nothing town of Huay Xai. First thing the next morning we were over the border, back into Thailand and on a bus bound for Chiang Mai. We arrived late afternoon and immediately booked ourselves some tickets to see a Thai boxing match for that evening – something we’d planned to do for a while. The boxing was fun and interesting but apparently it’s put on for tourists which is kind of annoying to know. Unfortunately a sore throat had been brewing up for a while now and that evening it crossed from being sore to downright painful. I stopped off in a pharmacy on the way home to pick up some antibiotics (4 dollars for 20 and you don’t even need a prescription!) which meant that I was resigning myself to no booze for the next 5days. I was actually glad of an excuse to give my body a rest from alcohol but Fi was less impressed with having no one to go to the pub with.
On our first full day in Chiang Mai we went on a one day cookery course, another thing we’d been planning for a while. Before we cooked anything, we were taken to the nearby market to buy all the raw ingredients. It was great to have a guided tour of the market and our guide explained to us what all the weird and wonderful fruit, veg and meats were. Back at the kitchens laden with ingredients we started into eating the traditional Thai welcoming snack. This was a curious delicacy which consisted of a large leaf (not sure what type) folded into a cone shape with a chunk of lime (skin still on), some dried coconut flakes, some chilies, a slab of ginger and a dollop of special sauce all chucked into it. Then you pop the whole lot in your mouth in one go and despite being skeptical towards the rawness of the lime and ginger I actually really enjoyed it. Following this, our teacher brought us to the preparation room to begin chopping all the ingredients. The first dish of the day was Pad Thai. We prepared everything before hand and then cooked it all up in a wok in the kitchen. The best part was being able to eat it afterwards and it was truly delicious. It was great to make something that I’d been ordering in restaurants for the last few months and see just how easy it is to recreate. For the rest of the day we cooked up a spicy prawn soup, Thai chicken salad, Thai green curry and for desert, water chestnuts soaked in grenadine and flour. By the end we were absolutely stuffed and couldn’t eat another thing. We were also given a cute little recipe book complete with suggestions for alternative ingredients to ones you can’t buy in Ireland so that we can make the same meals when we get home. Thanks to the antibiotics I wasn’t up for anything that night and I relaxed at the hotel while Fi went out with some mates.
The next day we did our tourist day of Chiang Mai. We headed up to a famous temple with a good view of the city but it was very rainy when we went and we couldn’t see anything. After the temple we continued up the road to a Hmong village however it had been completely destroyed by tourists over the years and is no longer a traditional village. It is completely overdone and put on for tourists which is kind of annoying because our attempts to see real Hmong villages in Laos had failed. We checked out a few other nearby waterfalls and sights and headed for home. Looking for something to do other than go to the pub we went to see Die Hard 4 that evening. After that, things started to go downhill. I had some kind of reaction to the antibiotics that turned my stomach into a churning mess and I couldn’t eat for days. I even found it hard to get out of bed at the best of times so the rest of my time in Chiang Mai was spent curled up in a ball in the hotel room. Aware of Ali’s arrival to Thailand in a couple of days I set myself the task of getting better by the time he arrived. I ate nothing and drank only water and flat sprite. The morning we arrived in Bangkok I was feeling quite better and I was off the antibiotics at that stage too. We met Ali at the prearranged location of Silk Bar on Koh Sanh road and celebrated seeing our mate for the first time in 7 months in the appropriate fashion. Unfortunately it turned out that my return to food and drink was premature and as we made our way from Bangkok to the island of Ko Phan Ngan the next day with no sleep, I decided it was time to get back to a diet of water and flat spri’.
# posted by Grum @ 2:40 AM 
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