Good Morning Vietnam

After leaving Laos, Jacob and I took the easy way out and flew from Vientiane, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam in order to avoid the grueling 25-30 hour bus ride.  We flew with Vietnam Airlines because apparently Laos Airlines has a sketchy record and doesn't report the number and cause of crashes, which have been relatively frequent in past years.

I'd heard many bad things about Vietnam from fellow travelers and especially Hanoi so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  Vietnam's capital Hanoi is a living museum.  A fascinating glimpse into an Asian city of old, yet oozing with the energy and pace of a modern metropolis.  The constant buzz of motorbikes, street hawkers, pedaled rickshaws, pedestrians, bicycles, and cars envelopes this fascinating city as tourists apprehensively negotiate the narrow streets and risk life and limb to cross the road.

Everywhere you turn, there is constant activity and noise.  Honking motorbikes, squawking street vendors (and sometimes wildlife), the clanging of beer mugs at a bia hoi (local beer) cafe, everyday there's a sight that makes you ask yourself, "Did I really just see that?"  Life takes place in the outdoors.  People eating, cooking, playing, feeding babies, laughing, or just sitting and talking over a glass of hot chai tea, it's all here. I could spend days (and I have) just people watching in this city.  It's insane, it's beautiful, but at the same time dirty and disgusting.  It's hectic and frustrating at times, but it's steeped in history and it's never dull.  I can't get enough of the madness that is Hanoi.


For example, as I was walking down the street the other day, I watched a lady stab a goose in the neck and drain it's blood into the street while a brand new Range Rover drove by.  I ask myself how can these two things be seen in the same place at the same time.  I watch poor farmer women selling roots, vegetables, and meats from their old-fashioned wooden carrying baskets as they sit outside a modern 40 story building.  The buzz of the city is different than the other big cities I've been in.  It's organized chaos and I like it.  Crossing the street is an adventure in itself as the streets are filled with a sea of motorbikes.  One must venture out into the street one step at a time being ever vigilant, but mostly, you let the motorbikes do all the work and dodge you as you slowly, but directly put one foot in front of the other until you reach relative safety on the other side.  That is until you have to dodge the three people driving motorbikes on the sidewalk.  I also saw a whole dead big cut in half thrown on the back of a motorbike dripping blood being carried down the street.  The ingenuity of what these guys can carry on a motorbike is truly impressive.



On to the rest of my trip...

Every adventure lusting man dreams about venturing off on his own into some exotic and unknown country.  For me, my dream was to buy a motorcycle in Vietnam and ride Che Guevara-style from tip to tail, exploring the rugged mountains in the north along the Chinese border and then follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail all the way down to old Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City (all the while jamming to some classic Vietnam War era hits like CCR's "Fortunate Son" and the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black").  For a foreigner, owning a motorcycle in Vietnam is technically illegal, but authorities turn a blind eye as long as you have the proper ownership document (mine said I was born in 1960....nice!).  This incredible 2000 km motorcycle journey has been featured on the BBC series Top Gear and has gained popularity ever since the program aired.  I estimated it would take me a solid 4-5 weeks to explore the north and finish in the south.

I ended up buying a motorcycle (a "Honda" Bonus) from another Spanish traveler who had the bike for several weeks.  The bad part is that I had never even driven a real motorcycle, the kind with the full clutch.  All the bikes I've driven in Indonesia, Thailand, and Laos have basically been semi-automatic scooters since larger motorcycles aren't widely available.  Hanoi has to be one of the worst possible places in the world to learn to drive a bike, but I was determined to figure it out.  After a quick lesson from Jake, I had it figured out and was driving around Hanoi dodging motorbikes, pedestrians, chickens, and cyclos.

Eileen - the "Honda" Bonus

One type of motorcycle that many foreigners like to drive here is an old 2 stroke Russian legacy called the Minsk.  While they look awesome and the idea of riding an old communist Russian motorcycle across Vietnam sounds romantic, they break down every 100 km's, parts are hard to find, and the Vietnamese hate them;  thus, I ended up buying a "Honda", and when I say "Honda", I mean a cheap copy of one from Taiwan. 

My 'official' ownership paper

Our plan was to spend the next 10 days in northern Vietnam exploring the mountain towns and colorful ethnic Hmong villages by bike.  After our mountain trip, we planned to explore the Unesco World Heritage site of Halong Bay.  I also forgot to mention that Jacob rented a nice 230 cc dirtbike for the trip which is more than double the size of any of the bikes here and until recently, was also technically illegal to ride because it's bigger than what the police ride.

Tubing in Vang Vieng, Laos

The 5 hour minibus ride to Vang Vieng was well, for lack of a better word, insane.  If we didn't hear the wheels skid around each turn, we were going too slow.  Our driver considered himself the Laotian version of Dale Earnhardt and took us around mind bending 180 hair pin turns as if we were the Starship Enterprise entering warp speed to escape the cling-ons.  Off the ever-crumbling side of the roadway was a deep deep ,but beautiful valley, which I pictured the bus being hurled into since there was no railing.  We couldn't decide whether it was better to close your eyes and not see death coming or to be prepared for a death roll and brace for it.  We ran over multiple live animals and almost took out an entire village as our driver made his best attempt to break the sound barrier.  I jokingly asked if we could go back and pick up the chicken that we'd flattened so as to save a few bucks on dinner, but I all got was a sort of gruff "bwah" sound, which I guess meant the answer was no.

Arriving in Vang Vieng, we were greeted with some rather obnoxious (read blood alcohol content of 2.0) English folks singing and stumbling down the street.  Vang Vieng, a town literally in the middle of nowhere, in a country in the middle of nowhere can be defined as southeast Asia's Cancun.  While the scenery is beautiful, the town is completely centered around a new "sport" called tubing.

Tubing consists of renting a tractor tire inner tube and hiring a tuk-tuk to take you upstream.  From there you deposit yourself into the river and prepare to have fun.  The float down the river would probably take about 1 hour at full speed, but due to the stops and "recreation time" at the numerous bars on the river, it takes about 4-6 hours depending on how much you fancy blaring techno and slurring obnoxious folks all wearing the same souvenir t-shirts proclaiming there descent of the river.  Our tolerance level was set at about 4 hours, but they had some amazing (and very sketchy) bamboo towers with rope swings that kept our attention.



Along the sides of the river, there are about 10 different bars, each advertising their own array of swings, ziplines, waterslides, etc. The local Lao workers have ropes that they throw out to you and pull you in with.  It's a great setup and I'm sure they're making plenty of money off of it.  The river s surrounded by yet again, more beautiful mountain landscape, and it's definitely an ironic mix of natural beauty and spring break debauchery. Lots of music, drinks, and water activities made for a fun day, but a few days were enough for us.


After the tubing, we'd had enough and decided to rent some bikes to explore some of the other surroundings.  We drove into a small Hmong Village where we were stared at by little kids as they peeped their heads from behind doors.  We also ended up talking to a local Hmong kid who spoke really good English and said we were welcome to explore around the village.

Later we checked out some caves and some natural springs.  That's about it for Vang Vieng.  Mostly just a stop for us in between Luang Prabang and Vientiane for a few days, but man, was the scenery beautiful  See for yourself.

Leaving Luang Prabang

I am almost 2 weeks behind on the blog now due to our faster pace of travel and my tiredness from continuously keeping it updated...so I'm borrowing some info. from my travel buddy, Jacob's blog until I can get caught back up.  I'm also glazing over many of the details of what happened and not worrying about how anything sounds so please forgive me... 

After taking the slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang we spent a few days relaxing and exploring this Unesco protected World Heritage city.  The town is completely the opposite of anything you'd expect to find in Laos, at least in my mind.  French influenced architecture, food, and some awesome bakeries fill the town.  A lot of the town actually reminded us of our home town in Charleston. Originally we were going to rent dirt bikes so we could explore the country side, but this proved to be difficult and expensive. After one afternoon of speaking to local tourist companies and dealerships, I started getting the impression that bike rental was discouraged due to the local tourism office wanting us to pay for the local taxi services. Anyhow, we changed our plans and decided to relax in Luang Prabang for a couple days, then head to Vang Viene for some tubing down a river and cave exploration, then to Vientiane (Laos' french capital) to fly out to Hanoi, Vietnam so we could get dirt bikes there. This cuts our trip a little short in Laos but allows us to extend the time in Vietnam. To try to relax from the frustration, we rented some beach cruiser style bicycles and grabbed some cold beers for a leisurely pedal around the town. 

While exploring the town we ran into an UXO (unexploded ordinance) museum that was really interesting.  We learned about the 'Secret War' going on in Laos that wasn't made public until sometime later in the 70's.  Apparently, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world and it continues to affect the Laotians even to this day.  Below is an excerpt I pulled from Lonely Planet to briefly explain the history during the Vietnam war.

In 1964 the US began its air war over Laos, with strafing and bombing of communist positions on the Plain of Jars. As North Vietnamese infiltration picked up along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, bombing was extended the length of Laos. According to official figures, the US dropped 2,093,100 tons of bombs on 580,944 sorties. The total cost was US$7.2 billion, or US$2 million a day for nine years. No one knows how many people died, but one-third of the population of 2.1 million became internal refugees.

A large portion (they estimate some 30%) of the bombs dropped on Laos did not explode leaving millions of unexploded bombs (technically called bombies) all over Laos.  This has made the land very difficult and expensive to farm, develop, and improve.  It's really a sad thing to hear about and they say that every day someone is injured by an unexploded ordinance.  Many of the small bombs are round and look like toys children.  Many, many children and adults have died or are missing limbs.  Many of the farmers are so poor that they try and salvage the bombs for there scrap metal, which often results in dire consequences.  The museum was really interesting and gave us some good insight on the damage that was inflicted on the people, and it was saddening to see how they're still being effected.

Collection of UXO's

One night we met a Malaysian guy (Andrew) who was in the room next to us. He spoke great English (in addition to 5 other languages), and he joined us at the local pub for some (Tower Beers).

They were the cheapest drink out, and pretty cool looking. We rode our bikes to the pub, in the rain and when the pub closed Jake offered to give Andrew a ride (the bikes had a seat that you could sit on above the rear wheel), which obviously sounds like a bad idea from the start. Things were going pretty well (although I'm sure Jake had things completely under control in his mind), until he missed a turn. Andrew shouted "There it is", and about 3/4 the way past it he tried to make a quick turn. The bike slipped out like they'd run hit a banana peel, and they both spilled...laughing. Luckily no one was hurt. Jake offered Andrew another ride and he said "I would rather walk"...which no one could blame him for. Jake then preceded to get back on the bike and continued riding down the right road. Before we got back to the Guesthouse, he tried to bunny hop off of a curb...and the bike did the same thing...slipped out....adding a nice ding to his upper thigh.  "All part of the experience," he said. Andrew then suggested that "maybe Jake should walk too"...He agreed and made it home fairly unscathed.

The next day we ended up renting two scooters from a local restaurant for $15 (3x more than in Thailand) and going to some really interesting waterfalls. They had a cool rope swing and also a small waterfall that we could jump off of. We were soon joined by a busload of Buddhist monk children, that were soon jumping off the waterfall and rope swing with us. It was great seeing them in a relaxed state since we always see them marching around town with such serious faces. 



We are now leaving on a small bus for the 6hr trip to Vang Viene...

Laos - Land of One Million Elephants

Communist Laos flung open its doors to tourism in the early 1990s and the last decade has witnessed an explosion in development. To be honest though, I had never even heard of Laos until I started planning the trip and looking at maps of Southeast Asia.  With it's mountainous terrain and more laid back pace, it sounded like it would be a good place for our next stop.


We left Chiang Mai, Thailand for Laos on a 2nd class bus which took 5 hours to get to Chiang Rai. We then had to catch the last bus in Chiang Rai leaving for the border town of Chiang Khong at 5 pm. The bus arrived at the station at 4:45pm, and when we went to buy a ticket to Chiang Khong, they told us that we had to go to another bus station across town. If we missed this bus it was going to put us back another day, so we hustled, caught a tuk-tuk, and made it to the other bus station at 5:10...luckily the buses never leave on time and we got on just before it left. The 3rd class bus ride was slow, but went through beautiful countryside. When we got to Chiang Khong, we caught another tuk-tuk and had him take us to Bamboo Guesthouse, which was recommended in the Lonely Planet book. When we got there, the place seemed semi-shady, but the room looked clean (although it was made of thatch and looked like it would fall down if I sneezed too hard), so we trusted Lonely Planet and took it. This is where our interesting night started...


In preparation for our trip to Laos, we read in our guidebook about the 2 day journey down the Mekong on a long and extremely slow boat, which required an overnight stay in a village along the river.  The accommodation in the village was supposed to be very basic with limited power, but worst of all, reports of "rats the size of beagles" inside some of the guesthouses.  As we prepared ourselves mentally for what might lie ahead in the coming days, we thought of the likelihood that these same mega-rats could potentially be in the same area where we were staying that night.  "No worries," we told ourselves.  "We are men and can handle it."  The more we looked at the holes in the ceiling and walls of our basic thatched hut, the more our confidence in ourselves dwindled. 

Our vision of a Beagle Sized Rat

That night in Chang Kong will be a night neither Jake nor I will ever forget.  About an hour before we cut the lights out for the night, we heard something scurrying up a tree outside the room.  Then a large thump as something heavy sounding landed on top of the ceiling.  "Holy explicative," we said, "What was that?"  It sounded large enough to be a dog, but we couldn't tell exactly what it was.  I assured Jake (and myself) that surely it wasn't the dreaded beagle rat and more than likely it was probably just a cat...since rats don't climb trees, right?  I'd been through rats in the ceiling before in Borneo so I was sure we could handle it without any worries this time.

We listened for a while as we heard something scurrying around above the ceiling.  We banged on the ceiling a few times and the noises subsided for a while.  Not wanting to seem like sissies, we both laughed it off and said that we would sleep with one eye open. I then turned the lights (the room was pitch black...couldn't see a thing), and we proceeded to drift off to sleep with visions of mega-rats in our heads.

And then it began again, but worse this time.  Heavy scratching sounds followed by eerie hissing/squeaking noises began on the ceiling above.  We both woke with tense nerves and the hair on our necks stood like two feral cats in a street fight (well, not mine, but Jake was terrified).  Then we heard the creature running back and forth thumping around heavily up above.  We turned on the lights and banged on the ceiling a few more times while yelling a few Thai explicatives at whatever it was since it probably didn't speak much English.  The noises stopped and somehow we managed to drift off to sleep again.

As we slept, the unimaginable finally happened.  A noise more violent and louder than all the others pounded down hard on the ceiling and a few seconds later as I lay there asleep something large and warm and furry fell from above onto my back.  Even though I was still deep in an almost delusional sleep, my senses were in commando mode.  While my mind was still in a state of innocuous sleep, my body reacted like a trained military forces agent.  I sprang to my feet on top of the bed like Rambo except the only difference between a commando and me was that I was screaming louder than Little Richard at his farewell performance and high stepping faster than any NFL prospect at the combine.

Feeling the warm fur running around in the bed, I jumped down to the floor where I continued yelling and cursing and furiously practicing my high steps.  Meanwhile, Jake hadn't had a chance to make contact with the beast, but was obviously panic stricken by the fact that the room was pitch black dark and I was screaming, "AHHHHH it's on meeeee.  It's on meeee, dude." 

Feeling what I thought was the massive rodent on the floor now, I hurled myself back up onto the bed and Jake and I both continued yelling and dancing like school girls.  Not wanting to touch the floor, we scrambled for a flash light and shown it around the room.  Unfortunately, I drew the short straw and had to be the one to look under the bed.  Jake envisioned that the beagle rat would come out and naw my face off, but luckily that wasn't the case. 

We knew he was in the room somewhere, but didn't know where. I got off the bed and turned on the light...nothing was there... but the noises above started again and even louder than before. We were both white with fear, and didnt know what to do at that point. I didn't have any scratches or bites, and we didnt know what just happened. After pondering leaving, we decided it was best to try to tough it out and go back to sleep. The noises continued until morning, and we both jumped every time something made a noise in the room. Neither of us slept a wink, and decided to leave at 6 am to get out of there. We later discussed the incident over food and beers and to this day are not sure what truly happened. Our best guess was that when Jake tried to wake me up, he hit me which made me think a rat had fallen, then he must have hit my leg... who knows... funny story though.


Slow Boat to Luang Prabang

The slow boat

The slow boat to Luang Prabang Laos down the Mekong River was pretty cool. The oriental style polished teak boat was great to see, and even better to be going down the river on. Although the boat was slow and moderately uncomfortable, the scenery was beautiful.  But back to the uncomfortable... the boat had two options for seating... the floor which was preferred or VIP seating or wooden bench seats. (Mind you that the boat ride consisted of (2) 8hr days). As we started down the river, Jake and I started scoping out where we could hang our hammocks from. We found some good ceiling joists and got them situated so we were partially hanging out over the side of the boat above the water... this was not only a great view but also had a nice breeze.

Despite the "I hate you and hope your hammock breaks and you fall in the water and drown" looks from the other uncomfortable passengers, we managed to rub it in a little more by breaking out a couple Big Beer Lao's to sip on.  It was an incredibly relaxing first day.  Day # 2, the rug was pulled out from beneath both of us... for some reason we changed boats. The new boats didn't have joists that we could hang the hammocks from and we were forced out of the super VIP hammock section into the wooden seats with the masses. Day 2 was a backbreaker, however we met two cool Canadians (Dave and Jan) that helped pass the time.

The Mekong River had little signs of civilization, other than a few small river villages. The boat must have doubled as a supply boat, because it carried bags of rice, chicken cages, and other supplies on the roof which we dropped off at the small river towns. Most didn't have power lines or any signs of roads leading to them, so I assumed they were pretty isolated. We we arrived at our destination Luang Prabang, which was more of a town than a large city.  So far it is a really cool town that seems to have a lot of French influence (used to be a French colony).  Dave, Jan, Jake, and I walked into town and found a nice guest house with a large balcony and a river view. The guesthouse was a whopping $3 for each of us and had to be one of the most ornately decorated guesthouse of our trip.  The house was completely trimmed out in varnished teak with large planks of wood that would have to cost loads of money at home. So far, Luang Prabang seems like a cool place to spend a couple days.

View from the balcony of our room

Thailand - Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Mae Hong Son Loop by Motorcycle

Bangkok was as one would expect -- a major urban city buzzing with activity, with lots of characters, scams, temples, with same amount of energy as a locomotive trapped inside a glass bottle.  The political situation was calm and there were no signs of protesters or army officials, which is basically what we were told to expect before we arrived.

We took every method imaginable to get around the city from river rides, to the urban overhead sky-train, down below on the underground MRT (subway), on three-wheeled gas powered scam loving Tuk Tuks, and on foot.  Jake and I quickly decided Bangkok wasn't our scene, but we did check out a few of the major attractions while we were there. 

We checked out a few of the famous Wats, or temples as we would call them, a few savory markets, and went to one of the world's largest snake farms. The snake farm is a research facility where anti-venom is studied and created. We also got to see a couple of insaneThai guys play with cobras.

Since Bangkok is the sex change capital of the world, there was no way we could miss the sex change factory.  Jake even opted to turn into a girl for a day since it was so cheap...while in Rome they say. Only kidding. 

After a couple of nights in the Khao San flea pit (the main backpacker area) we decided to head north to Chiang Mai on an overnight sleeper train.  It was a great and new experience as well as being an efficient way to travel and save a day by traveling at night. 

Chiang Mai is revered by the Thai for its cultural heritage and its salute to the old way of living. For us, it was just a break from dirty Bangkok.  One night we decided to go to a Mui Thai kickboxing match to watch a headline fight between a Myanmar and Thai guy.  Most of these guys were tiny, but had huge legs and threw some impressive blows.

Jake and I were joking as to whether we would get into the ring with these guys (the weight classes started at around 120lb and ended at 160lb), and after watching a few high kicks we were both like "no way" (little did I know that before the end of the night, Jake would enter the ring for two rounds). Later we spoke to one of the 130 lb kick boxers, and joked about getting into the ring... he said "no problem...I go see," and asked the ring announcer.  For 400 baht ($12) he lined Jake up for the next fight. After having several beers and some Thai rum, I knew better and was not about to let the liquid courage convince me that I could take a trained Thai kickboxer (even if he was 5ft 7in.), especially in my current state. 

Jake had some training and boxing experience and was eager to test his skills against one of the Thais so I made him sign his will over to me before entering the ring. Jake and the fighter agreed on the conditions: No Kicks, No elbows, No knees, and big gloves. I think he assumed Jake was going to be an in-experienced tourist, but figured out pretty quickly that he knew how to box. I have a good feeling that if there were kicks, elbows, and knees, Jake might have two black eyes and a concussion right now...but amazingly, he was able to go both rounds, dropping him on two separate occasions, and finish him off with an impressive flurry of jabs, crosses, and uppercuts. Pretty neat experience, crowd was into it, and not many can say that they got into a ring with a Muay Thai kickboxer for 2 rounds...especially to put the hammer down like Jake did.  Truely impressive.  Here's a video of the finish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUVCvUQ3dhQ

After doing some research on things to do in northern Thailand, Jake and I came across the Mae Hong Son loop, which is said to be one of South East Asia's motorcylce riding meccas.  The loop is probably the most popular riding route in Thailand.  Almost 600 km in total, the Mae Hong Son loop is also known as the road of 1000 hairpin bends. Besides exhilarating turns on well-paved roads, the loop passes through scenic mountain regions blessed with points of interest such as caves, waterfalls, national parks, hot springs, temples and hill tribe villages. 

Mae Hong Son Loop

This sounded like exactly the type of trip we needed to help us escape the heat and hustle of over-hyped Bangkok.  Anyhow, Jake and I found some "motorcyles", well in the US they are actually mopeds...but here 125cc is as large as you need and there are a lot smaller bikes all over the road.

Traffic here is interesting... driving on the left takes some getting used to mentally, and just the chaos of the road is daunting. Motorcycles can go between cars while stopped, and when you are driving it seems like there are always 10 thai motorcyclers zooming past you on all sides. Interesting to say the least. But they are definitely the way to get around.

 Our route took us counterclockwise from Chiang Mai to the laid back hippy enclave of Pai, then onto Mae Hong Son, and later skirting the Myanmar (formerly Burma) border to Mai Sariang, and finally back to Chiang Mai.  Northern Thailand was at one time well known for its large role in the world's opium trade, but has since substituted other cash crops in place of the poppy flower.  I bet the local farmers were excited when they found out they had to trade in their poppy plants for legit crops. 

The route from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son was built during WWII by the Japanese, who forced villagers to complete the road to allow better access to neighboring Burma. Burma was occupied by the British at the time and was later attackd by the Japanese.  Interesting stuff.

The Mae Hong Son loop provides a good opportunity to visit North Thailand’s rugged north-west frontier. This region of Thailand is also home to the famous Karen hill tribe. If the name does not ring a bell, the images of women with long necks adorned with brass rings would probably be more familiar.

Pai - Our first stop

During our first day in Pai, we went riding through the countryside to a local canyon which had some neatly carved out mountain tops used as trails.We then went to an elephant camp (elephants were a large part of the Thai culture and workforce before machines were popular) and were able to take the elephants down to the local stream and play. They were huge and the one they let us ride was even more massive than the others.



To get up on the elephant they lifted us up with their trunk onto their head and then we climbed the rest of the way up. The ride was basically bareback (on a small blanket), and quite scary as we had to be 8-10 ft up since there's nothing to hold onto.


Our elephant was constantly eating any plants it could find on the way to the stream and was playful when we got there.  We took turns sitting near his head and the trainer would yell a command for him to either spray us with water from his trunk or throw us off.  We got to feed the elephants as well, which basically felt like being groped by a wet vacuum cleaner. Pretty wild...

Getting tossed by an elephant is as fun as it looks

The food in Thailand is some of the best I've ever tasted without even exaggerating.  And this is coming from a guy who ate only PB&J's until I was 20 and started eating salad just a few years ago.  Jake and I decided to try a cooking class to learn how to prepare some of our favorite local meals in hopes of impressing our lady friends back home.  

First, we took a trip to a local market to gather the many ingredients.  The market had all kinds of food from fried chickens (including the heads, feet, you name it), to whole pig ears, wasp larvae, quail eggs, and lots of other vegetables, herbs, and spices.  We made 5 different dishes which included: Green Chicken Curry (the best), Tom Yam Soup (spicy prawn soup), Pad Thai, Stir-Fried veggies, and Sweet Sticky Rice with Coconut Milk and Mango for dessert.  It was ridiculously good and all made from scratch.  We discovered that we're such good cooks that we may even open our own Thai restaurant back home -- watch out Basil.     

Tomorrow we leave Pai to continue the rest of the loop which will take us only a few miles from the border with Burma.

Mae Hong Son to Mae Sariang and back to Chiang Mai


After two days in Pai,  we got back on the Mae Hong Son loop with the motorcycles and it was incredible. I had no idea that Northern Thailand would be such a motorcyclist's paradise. The roads were great by US standards, 1864 curves (perfect for the bikes... I have tons of video and pictures, but something is wrong with my camera at the moment and I'm unable to upload so here's a video from youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwkcuGjz0rc ).

The scenery was incredible.  Flooded rice fields with the most vibrant greens I've ever seen, surrounded in tall mist covered mountains...amazing.  It was a bit rainy, and would rain hard at least once per day, but we had rain gear (thankfully I am the son of an ever-prepared father who has never ventured outside without rain gear) and were often dried out quickly. It was a bit cold when we got to the tops of the mountains (50's F), but other than that it was spectacular. We went from Pai to Mae Hong Son, then to Mae Sariang... the further we went the less tourists we saw. Mae Sariang the level of English speaking locals went way down. The towns were a mix of Thai and a local mountain people "Karen" who were refugees from Burma. 

Next we are on to Laos...we have to catch a couple buses to Chaing Khong, then taking a  2 day slow boat down the mighty mud filled Mekong river (Southeast Asia's largest river) to Laos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD6lqFRIOO4). The scenery is supposed to be great and there's no better way to see the country than a slow boat through the country's heart.  The only problem is that the boats are generally overcrowded and the painfully uncomfortable especially with our abnormally large (at least in Asia) western body frames.  The boat is filled with rows of tiny, straight back, wooden bench seats of which we'll spend a masochistic total of 16 hours sitting on.   However, being the clever lads that we are, we bought cheap hammocks to hang up for the ride.  Will give an update once we get to Luang Prabang in Laos.

Malaysian Borneo - Mt. Kinabalu

Towering 13,435 feet above northern Borneo, Mt Kinabalu is the highest mountain in all of southeast Asia. Known as Gunung Kinabalu in Bahasa Malaysia, the mountain is quite unlike any other on earth, rising almost twice as high as its Crocker Range neighbors and culminating in a crown of wild granite spires. When the summit is visible (usually in the morning, before the clouds close in) the mountain literally demands your attention.

I had heard this mountain was the highlight of many people's trip to southeast Asia so I decided I had to see what climbing Mt. Kinabalu was all about.  The only problem was that it's so popular that people book 6 months to even a year in advance in order to obtain a climbing permit.  I was determined to obtain a permit and I would do almost anything it took to climb the mountain.  Many people laughed when I told them I hadn't booked in advance and said I wouldn't be able to climb the mountain, but this only fueled the fire.

I figured my best option was to go directly to the mountain and camp out at the park headquarters in hopes that someone would cancel their trip or to see if I could sneak in.  Staying inside the park is ridiciulously inflated and they charge around $50 a night (most of my accommodation has been no more than $5-10 per night) to sleep in a dorm.  If I was going to stick around the park for awhile, I'd have to find somewhere more reasonably priced.  I walked just outside the park and found a local home-stay where they only charged $7 per night, but the only problem was that there was no heat and I only had shorts and t-shirts, and the mountain air was freezing at night.  The other problem was that I heard noisy rats running around in the ceiling all night so I put a few more blankets over me and put
 in some ear plugs to drown out the rambling rats.   

The next morning, I walked back to the park headquarters with my "I'm sad and desperate" face and made my best attempt at charming the female park ranger.  Unfortunately, my nose must have not been big enough for her (Many of the Asians here apparently find big noses attractive), because she shot me down in under 2 seconds.  Luckily, I had emailed the park the day before asking them to let me know if their was a cancellation.  I asked if I could check my email and surprisingly, someone had canceled and their was 1 space available.  Awesome!  I had to scramble to get some gear ready to hike the mountain since I had virtually none of the stuff I would need.  I was able to rent some warm clothes, a head lamp, and  a poncho to keep me dry. 

The devils and me

I also found 2 nice couples that let me join them and share a guide.  The two couples were from Tazmania and planned to travel around Borneo together for several weeks.  They were a bit older than me which at first I thought would be awesome.  I thought I'd be able to take it nice and slow going up the mountain and that surely they would wus out before I did.  What I found out later was that one of the couples competed in ultra-marathons and ran 100 km races.  Just great, I thought, now I'll get smoked by the old folks.  (Sorry Dan, Kylie, Tom and Lynn...you're not really old folks, you're just older folks than me.)

The calf busting climb is usually completed in 2 days with an overnight stay at a small lodge near the top called Laban Rata.  You wake up around 2 am to finish the remainder of the climb and reach the summit by sunrise.  Mt. Kinabalu at sunrise is stunning to say the least.  One of the most beautiful sites I think I've ever seen.  You look over all of Borneo and can see out into the South China and Celebes Seas.  Simply humbling.

It was also great being the fifth wheel for 2 days with the Tazmanian couples.  They basically treated me like their son and refused to let me pay for anything.  I legitimately enjoyed hanging out with them and I would definitely hang out with them even more if I were to ever move to Taz.  After the mountain hike, we split ways and they went to the island of Sipidan to dive one of the world's best spots.  I was highly jealous since I didn't have the time (or the reservation) to dive there.

One other interesting person I met on the mountain was an English woman by the name of Roz Savage.  Roz quit her career as a management consultant in order to accomplish one of her dreams which was to be the first woman to row across the Pacific Ocean -- that's right, ROW, not sail, across the Pacific Ocean  Truly insane.  Roz has also rowed across the Atlantic and plans on doing the Indian in the near future.  She now works as an public speaker, a novelist, and an environmental advocate.   

After hiking the mountain, I headed to the capital of Sabah, the lively town of Kota Kinabalu, where I spent the next 5 days licking my wounds and moaning in pain from the soreness of hiking the mountain with ultra-marathon runners.  I didn't do too much here besides eat lots of really good fresh (and cheap!) seafood from the Phillipino fish market along with lots of ice cream.  I also watched movies at the huge air-conditioned shopping mall.  Glorious!

3 huge Tiger Prawns and 1 BBQ'ed tuna steak for a whopping $4