Nearly involved in a crash going from Thailand to Laos.

Written 18th November 2012

We were picked up outside our pink guest house in Chang Mai and after an hour of driving around collecting other people to fill the van we were on our way.

The driver was a real mad man and after a lot of driving, a stop for lunch, and our driver hitting a dog, (shocking) we arrived at The White Temple.

It was a very interesting place. It is designed to be a message to young Thais to lead them back to Buddah. It shows the wickedness of the modern world. 

We couldn't take photos inside but the inside had a big Buddah, a smaller one and a wax Monk. (Though there was some dispute as to weather it was intact a very still real monk, I think it was a wax Monk.) All the walls were very beautifully painted in an illustrative way including all sorts of popular images such as Angry Birds, Super Man etc, as well as world images such as the plane crashing into The Twin Towers etc.

After we left we witnessed a crash of our own. We were just about to cross the road and were waiting for a truck and 4 Wheel Drive to go by. Then the 4 Wheel Drive just changed lanes into the truck and the 4 Wheel Drive got smashed up big time. Bits or car and bumper came flying towards us, Steve turned to push me out of the way but I had already leapt behind a parked car!

Neadless to say we were both okay, nothing hit us in the end, and the people in both vehicles were all okay as well. The 4 Wheel drive was lucky it wasn't going faster or it could have been a lot less happy ending.

As it was we got back in with our crazy driver and made it safely to the Laos boarder where we had to get some American dollars. Neither of us had ever seen real Americal dollars before and we surprised. It looks like fake money! I can see where the got the designs for Monopoly...

Anyway, we got our passports stamped, got on a river boat and crossed the boarder into Laos 

where we bought our Visas and were taken to this shuttle. At which time we realised that in Laos they drive on the right hand side of the road!

We were taken to the bus station where the driver of the shuttle exchanged some money for us (we were a bit weary as we were not quite sure of the exchange) and put us on our V.I.P. bus. The bus ride was quite long and we were hungry by the time we stopped for dinner. We hopped back on the bus and as we were driving down the dark road I realised two tourists had hopped off. Steve went to ask the driver again how long it was to our stop and it turns out that that was our stop, they just hadn't told us! So were were deposited by the side of the road with our packs and walked back to the bus station which was 12km from town. So we were stranded there and had to sleep in this awful hotel that was flu of bugs and smelt overwhelmingly of plaster or something like that. 

We didn't sleep well!

The next day though we were able to catch a Tuk Tuk to Namtha.

A bit of a tiki tour.

Written 9th November 2012

On our last night in Bangkok we went out for dinner to have noodles and dumplings with Joy, Jonny, Vinnie and Anna. It was really tasty. 

Joy had said she would store our surfboards in her storage room for us until we flew back to New Zealand which was really nice. She really was the most super helpful host! She booked a bus for us and we set out for a 10 hour bus journey with Jonny up to Chang Mai. We were stoked when we hopped on the bus and it had reclining seats with personal T.V.'s and the seats even massaged you!

We arrived at Chang Main in the morning and spent the day recovering from the trip. In the evening we met up with Jonny for dinner and went to the weekend markets which were really cool! We also booked a 2 day 1 night track for the following day.

We got yum as srawberry shakes after our pork from the markets.

Then looked around the stalls.

The next day we were picked up in one of the typical taxi's of the area which are like a ute with bench seats in the back covered by a canopy.

We met Hannah and Kayleigh (from England) and Eric and Pascal (from Canada) and John (from Australia). We were taken to a butterfly farm with didn't really have that many butterflies in it. The ones that were there were nice though.

There were some interesting flowers there (orchards I think...)

It was there we met up with Jonny (who had been picked up by another tuk tuk thing). We got back on the road and headed for the local markets.

Next stop was lunch (fried rice). And we were ready to start our trek.

We walked some way and then stopped at a cave with bats in it. One of the guides (John) showed us how a yellowy-green leaf mashed up made red dye.

And painted it on Jonny's face.

Then we looked at the bats.

Next we kept walking. There was a very slippery hill to go down and there was a Spanish lady in our group who kept falling over and shrieking! Steve gave her his stick. Then I fell over too. We just had street shoes which the tread of fills with mud quickly.

After a bit more walking we stopped at a village for a rest. This is our guide Somm Chai playing with a cat.

I liked this chicken in a basket.

After that there was another slippery slope to scale. The quote of the day was when Hannah was talking about the options for tomorrow and said "It's either the slippery slope or the death trap car" as when we were driving there Somm Chai was driving like a race car driver and John was nearly sick out the back.

We walked for over 4 hours through all different types of terrain.

Somm Chai found wild bananas and papaya along the way for us to eat.

Finally we reached the village.

Everyone had a wash in the river as we were all sweaty as and got changed.

This was their 7 Eleven.

After dinner we played a game around the fire when you had to clap and pass on the chant.

If you mucked up you got soot on your face.

It was rather difficult for the people who spoke English as their second language.

And for the people who spoke it as their first as the others were difficult to understand!

We were tired after walking all day in the hot so didn't stay up too late. We went to sleep in a bamboo hut sleeping next to everyone by candle light. we had mozzie nets too which was good.

The next morning we had breakfast and set off again.

I got a fright and leapt over this guy!

It was a little disappointing though because we walked over the bridge and over a rise and we were at a track a 4-wheel drive could have used and after about 15-20 minutes we got to a main road. It felt like we were way in the jungle but we weren't really which was  a bit disappointing as we had walked so far to get there.

Soon we came to the elephant park.

We got to ride the elephants. I couldn't decided if I liked it or not. On the one hand it was cool going along so high up and they can navigate very steep and narrow places. On the other hand I felt sorry for the elephants and didn't like the idea of how they must have been trained to do what they did.

Their skin was so thick and wrinkly and had course hairs on it.

After that we went to a "Long-Neck Village" which we didn't like. The village was set up and all the women and children sat in front of their hut trying to sell you stuff and it was just really weird. Like looking at people in a zoo. I didn't really want to take photos as I felt odd about it but in the end I took a few as I felt rude not to. I felt like they were expecting me to as I had the camera around my neck. Sigh. They put the rings on their necks between the ages of 5-9!

After that we got to wash the elephants which I enjoyed more as the elephants seemed to like it.

This elephant gave me a bath too!

Next we did bamboo rafting which was relaxing but hot.

Then we all bundled into one tuk tuk thing and went back to do a zip-line.

We went across the river which was quite fun.

We had a yummy buffet lunch there then next stop was a waterfall for a swim.

And then white water rafting which was the best part of the whole trip.

Iesha and I were at the back and Jonny and Steve in the front with John and a Korean couple in the middle originally until we got stuck on a rock. The Korean guy and Iesha got hiffed out of the raft and went down the rapids and Steve and Jonny unstuck the raft. The we rescued the others. The guide we had was very timid and didn't call out his commands loud enough for everyone to hear so I had to keep calling them out for him. 

We were somewhat rearranged when we had got the others back in the boat. There were lots of fun rapids to negotiate.

Near the end we were paddling along towards a boat with 3 very overweight men in it. We bumped into it gently and then like in slow motion one of the guys topples over backwards like Humpty Dumpty and went splash! in the water. Haha was so funny!

After that we were in for a soggy 1.5 hour drive back to Chang Mai. Pretty good value for NZ$40 for the 2 days. Only NZ$20 a day!