Vang Vieng

June 26-27, 2009

From Luang Prabang we took a minivan south to Vang Vieng.

Gorgeous mountains everywhere as we approach Vang Vieng:

Vang Vieng is situated along the Nam Song river.  Nearly all the accommodations are on the east side of the river, but there are a few on the flip side, and a few on a  small island in between.  Pnina and I ended up staying on the island because it was the only place where we could still find an available bungalow.  The price was 50,000 kip / night ($25), which was a little more than we paid elsewhere in Laos, but it was a unique experience.

We stayed in the bungalow to the right of the bridge:

By this point we’d been in Laos for only a few days, but we were already getting the impression that Laos is kind of like Thailand but sleepier and more laid-back.  It has all the backpacker-friendly conveniences (English-speaking locals, internet, cheap hotels, etc.) but without the thick backpacker crowds and without the over-the-top party scene you find in, say, Khaosan Road, Bangkok.

But then we arrived in Vang Vieng and our impression was totally shattered.  Holy crap, this place is southeast Asia’s party central.  It’s certainly not as big as Bangkok, but in Bangkok at least some people spend some time visiting temples or whatnot, whereas people only come to Vang Vieng for one reason: to party.

During the morning, people hang out in restaurants around town, eating and recovering from the prior night, watching TV sitcoms that play in an endless loop (Friends, Family Guy, Simpsons…).  In the afternoon everyone goes tubing.  This tubing-vang-vieng thing has become a “right of passage” for backpackers doing the southeast Asia circuit.  For 55,000 kip ($27) they drive you upriver and set you off in a big tube.  Floating downriver is just part of the shtick – the real fun is that you can pull over in the various bars along both shores.  The bars are set up like MTV spring-break: sand volleyball, mud-wrestling pits, huge swings over the water, and of course lots of drinks.   Most people get stuck at the first bar and forget to tube the rest of the way downstream to Vang Vieng (which means that they have to pay extra to catch another tuk-tuk ride back).  People who actually tube their way back generally go straight to one of the in-town bars to keep drinking.

You probably gathered by now that Pnina and I are not really into this party scene.  Also, the 55,000 kip price sounded like highway robbery (for what? a tuk-tuk ride and a tube??).  There really was some kind of cartel set up in town because no other shop had inner tubes, not even for sale.  We met a couple of girls that got around this barrier by purchasing toy-like inflatable fish and using them as floaters   And actually, we later heard a rumor that this so-called cartel was actually set up to distribute the backpacker-tubing money among the town’s locals.  If that’s true then I guess it’s cool, but the big winners are definitely the people who own the bars along the river!

Aaanyways, instead of doing the standard tubing trip, Pnina and I signed up for a kayaking trip.  Our trip was much cheaper, it included lunch, and it included stops at a couple of caves.  On top of that, the last part of our kayaking trip was down the same stretch of river where the tubing people go, so we had a chance to stop at one of those bars after all.  All in all, it was a pretty good choice for us.

Pnina getting set to kayak downriver:

First stop was at the Elephant Cave, which gets its name from a supposedly-natural elephant-looking formation up above.  This is a view of a different end of the cave, showing some of the Buddha statues inside:

The second cave was much more fun.  We hopped onto inner tubes and pulled ourselves using ropes upstream into the cave.  After a while the water became too shallow, so we beached our tubes and continued walking another 50 meters or so.  There were a few stalactite formations here and there, but mostly it was just cool to be floating on a tube inside a cave:

Shahaf at the cave’s entrance:

Back to the kayak:

The first of the river-side bars; as you can see, most of the tubing people got stuck here:

We started cheering for the people in the bar, they started cheering back

We stopped at a place called Smile Bar 2, which was kind of empty because everybody was stuck at the first bar (above).  Our bar had a muddy tug-of-war pit, and after eyeing it for a while we just had to try.  It was awesome:

Me celebrating a muddy victory (though two minutes later my team got sunk pretty bad).

Right around this time it started raining and the wind picked up, so all of us were shivering pretty bad (Pnina’s lips were blue).  This was the first and only time we were actually cold in Laos.  But even though we were cold, we had to try the big swing…

You climb onto this platform (which is probably 2-3 stories above the water), grab on, and swing away.  After a couple back-and-forth, you let go and fall down to the water.  Then the bar people (who are all sober) throw you a life-saver and pull you ashore (the current can sweep you away if you don’t pay attention).  This is Pnina just getting started:

A final group shot as we all reach Vang Vieng again:

Bonus Shot

This was one of my first attempts to shoot a macro video using my little Canon Elf camera:

In the News

On June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson passed away.  This was just weeks before he was set to start his first concert tour in more than a decade.  The coroner decided to treat Jackson’s death as a homicide, blaming Jackson’s personal physician for the toxic cocktail of medication found in his body after death, but no official verdict has come so far.

Luang Prabang

June 23-25, 2009

 

From Luang Nam Tha we caught a bus heading south to Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is an ancient royal city and is the #1 tourist destination in Laos.  But it doesn’t feel overly crowded.  The town center is definitely designed for two audiences: monks and tourists.  For the monks there are lots of monasteries.  For the tourists there are plenty of hotels (in French-colonial style buildings), restaurants, cafes, artists shops, and a bustling night market.  Just outside of this tiny center you find locals just doing their thing – going to school, going to work, playing soccer, etc.  The city has a very pleasant chilled-out feel.  It’s definitely one of the nicest cities we visited on our trip.

Pnina enjoying some pineapple as we walk down the street in “downtown” Luang Prabang:

Guys playing soccer in a field just outside Luang Prabang’s center:

This game is similar to volleyball, except that you only use your legs and your head, and you use a whicker-style ball.  By the way, this shot makes it look like that one guy totally round-housed the other guy over the net, but it’s just an optical illusion

 

 

Royal Palace Museum

In the center of Luang Prabang sits the Royal Palace Museum.  To give some context about this palace, here’s a quick recap of Lao history (with help from Wikipedia):

• The first Laos kingdom was founded in 1353 and was called Lan Xang: the land of 1000 elephants
• In the 1700’s, Laos was taken over by Siamese (Thai) rulers
• In the 1800’s, Laos was incorporated into the French Indonesia ‘protectorate’
• Following a brief Japanese occupation in WWII, Laos declared independence in 1945.  The French were slow to actually give up control.
• Laos was dragged into the Vietnam War (1959-1975) when the North Vietnamese Army invaded eastern Laos and the US responded with a large bombing campaign (in fact, Laos has the dubious distinction of being the most bombed country in the world).  This fight evolved into a civil war for control Laos, with the communist Pathet Lao on one side (backed by north Vietnamese and the USSR) and the Royal Lao Army on the other side (backed by the US and Thailand).
• Pathet Lao was the victor.  In 1975 he overthrew the royal Lao government and forced King Savang Vatthana to abdicate.
• The socialist regime was relaxed over time.  Laos was admitted into ASEAN in 1997.  The US established normal trade relations with Laos in 2005.

So, the palace in the center of Luang Prabang was the king’s home until 1975, when the king was forced to abdicate and the palace was turned into a museum.

At the entrance to the palace complex there’s a very ornate temple, multi-roofed and heavily gilded.  This temple is free to enter and it’s quite nice.

The temple at the entrance to the Royal Palace Museum:

 

But to enter the actual palace museum you need to pay a fee and leave all your stuff at the entrance – no shoes, no bags, no food, no water, and most importantly, no cameras.  So we can only show a photo of the outside…

The Royal Palace Museum:

The big showpiece inside the museum is a small statue of the Buddha that was made in Sri Lanka and was given by the Khmer king (of Cambodia) to the king of Xan Lang (Laos) in 1356.  This statue is called the Prabang Buddha, like the city.  We saw several local tourists come by to pray to this statue – it’s obviously highly regarded.  To us it looked nice enough, but not really all that different from the thousand other Buddhas we’d seen everywhere.

Buddha aside, there was one room that was pretty interesting.  It had glass cases displaying gifts given to the Laos king by various other countries.  The most impressive gifts were these intricate ivory carvings from China.  The most oddball: a model of the moon lander from the US.  There were also some other rooms showing various royal possessions – the bedroom, the dining room, the throne, various swords, etc.

It was all OK, but we’re not sure it’s worth the entrance fee.  We would recommend visiting the free temple at the entrance and skipping the museum itself.

 

Up the Hill

Across the street from the royal palace there’s a staircase that leads up a hill called Phu Si.  Along the way there are various temples, most of them new.  The main attraction is the view at the top of the hill.

We started climbing the hill but we got sidetracked after only a few steps.  Three girls were sitting on the side of the hill, playing games, and they called us to join them.  Kids are awesome – they don’t see a need for formal introductions or ice breakers.  Before we knew it, one girl started arranging Pnina’s hair into pig tails, while the other girl borrowed my camera to record herself singing songs.  It was all good fun until Pnina and I decided it was time to move on.  Immediately the girls rushed off to bring their trays of hand-made trinkets and asked us if we would buy something.  Ahhhh!!  Pnina and I hate being put in that position – we rarely buy anything during the trip because we don’t want to weigh down our backpacks any more, but how do you explain that to a 5-year-old local girl?  It made us wonder if they enjoyed our play time at all, or if this was all just a sales tactic.

Pnina getting her hair styled:

Shahaf and the three girls having fun playing dice on the hillside:

 

Anyhow, eventually we did reach the hilltop and the view was certainly worth the climb and the small fee.

The view from the top of Phu Si:

We also found some incredible green insects that hovered around one of the trees at the top of the hill.  They were so beautiful – their exoskeleton was bright metallic green.  One insect would land on a choice leaf, and then others would collect on top of him (landing with a loud click), forming chains.  Then they all dispersed and collected elsewhere.  Pnina’s 200mm lens was very handy here, though I still wish we could have gotten closer.

One of the green insects about to land on another:

At first we assumed it was some kind of mating ritual, but 4 at a time??

 

When we had our fill of green bugs, we descended down the other side of the hill.  Along the way we saw more Buddha statues scattered about.

A lizard hanging out on a Buddha statue:

Reclining Buddha:

 

Monks and Temples

Each morning in Luang Prabang, hundreds of monks walk through the streets collecting donations from locals.  It’s an old tradition and now it’s also a tourist attraction.  To see it you need to wake up pretty early.  The first monks start marching around 6 AM, and the whole thing is over before 7.  I managed to wake up one morning early enough to glimpse the action but Pnina didn’t bother (she opted to sleep in).  Each monk carried a spherical bowl into which he collected the donations.  The donations were mostly simple foods (generally sticky rice), though some people brought flowers.  The whole process was unusually quiet.  No monk said “thank you”.  No donor said “you’re welcome”.  The donations were just kind of expected.  It was very strange.

Monks walking down the streets of Luang Prabang early in the morning to collect donations:

 

If you don’t wake up early enough to see the donation ritual, it’s OK, you can still catch monks around town.  Actually, you’d have to try hard to miss them.

A few monk boys hanging out at the steps of a temple:

Monks praying inside one of many monasteries (Pnina was not allowed in here):

 

Most homes and shops had a kind of “mini-temple” sitting outside.  It looked like an ornate mailbox.  Some of them had fresh flowers or candles.

A mini-temple outside a shop:

A “blessed parking spot” inside one of the monastery complexes:

 

 

Arts and Crafts

Just outside Luang Prabang there are several villages that specialize in different arts and crafts.  Pnina and I rented bicycles and rode across the river to a village called Ban Sang Khong, where the shops specialize in silk-weaving and paper-making (the other villages focused on steel-work and jar-making, which were less interesting to us).

Riding across the river to the village of Ban Sang Khong:

 

All the workshops had an area where you could watch artisans working.  We found one silk shop where we could see both the weaving machines and the actual silk worms.  The shops here don’t actually cultivate silk worms – they purchase the silk thread from distributors abroad (e.g. from China).  So the worms we saw were just there for the tourists, but we’re glad they were there – it’s interesting to see where silk actually originates.

Women using traditional machines to make silk fabrics (mostly scarves):

A basket of silk worms:

A close up of some silk worms:

Silk thread:

Simple hand-made scarves (these cost around $8):

Very intricate silk scarves (these cost around $40):

 

There were a few shops that focused on paper-making.  They used all kinds of material to make the paper (including elephant dung – no joke!).  They sold greeting cards, journals, umbrellas, and plain paper stock.

Hand-made paper drying in the sun:

Large sheets of paper made from elephant dung:

Umbrellas made from local paper at one of the fancier hotels in the city:

Paper cut-outs for sale in one of the book stores in the city:

 

On the way back to the city we saw these large “pancakes” drying in the sun.  We’re not sure if this was food or if it was also some kind of craft:

 

Tat Kuang Si Waterfall

There are a few places outside Luang Prabang that are famous day-trip destinations.  The most famous are the Pak Ou Caves, a pair of caves in the lower part of limestone cliffs that are jammed with Buddha images.  Pnina and I decided to skip these caves because we couldn’t imagine being impressed by yet another Buddha statue (and it was probably a good call – we spoke with a few other people who did go to the caves and nobody seemed particularly excited about them).  Instead we went to a waterfall called Tat Kuang Si.  Now, we didn’t have huge expectations for the falls either because we’d also seen a ton of waterfalls by this point in the trip, and the one we recently saw in Luang Nam Tha was kind of disappointing.  But this place by Luang Prabang was truly awesome.  First off, it had the same kind of limestone-ish/clear water that impressed us back in Baishui Tai and Jiuzhaigou.  The water here was not quite as clear, but on the other hand swimming here was allowed and there was a gorgeous pool tucked away at the top of the hill where we had a blast jumping into the water.  Getting to this pool was a little tough – the path was steep and occasionally slippery – but that made being in the pool that much better.

 

At the entrance to the park there’s an enclosure for a few rescued Sun Bears.  They are very different from other bears we’d seen before:

Pnina in front of the first of several cascading pools:

Further along the trail.  Some of these pools had ropes tied to branches, and people took turns “tarzan’ing” into the water:

The beautiful pool at the top – and I’m jumping into it.  My camera ran out of juice when we got here so we asked some of the other people if they wouldn’t mind taking our photo and emailing it to us later – which they did!  Thanks Ingrid!

 

One of the guys at the pool told us about a fun game he and his friends play whenever they find a good place to jump into water.  Each time you jump, you need to act out some famous character while you are in the air, and everybody else needs to guess your character.  It’s kind of like charades.  The standard jump is superman: jump forward and act like you’re flying, with one fist forward (though I guess that can look like Malcolm X, right?)

 

The only thing we regret about this waterfall excursion is that we didn’t plan to stay longer.  To get to the falls we jumped on one of the many oversized tuk-tuks heading to the waterfall from central Luang Prabang, and the agreement was that our driver would wait for us for 3 hours before we all headed back.  Well, three hours was not enough.  Some of the other people from our tuk-tuk had such a great time that they decided to screw the driver and just keep hanging out at the falls.  Not cool!  Pnina and I were straight-laced so we begrudgingly came back to the tuk-tuk and headed back.  If you come here (and we hope you do), we suggest making a full day out of it.  Pack a lunch, bring a towel, bring something to read, and make sure to take a one-way ride to the falls; you can always find another tuk-tuk for the ride back (there are lots of tuk-tuks hanging out in the parking lot by the park entrance).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonus Shot

Where else would you put the clock?

Luang Nam Tha

June 18-22, 2009

Our first stop in Laos was the small northern village called Luang Nam Tha.  It’s a tiny place.  There’s a single main road lined with 1-2 story buildings, and beyond this strip you have rice paddies and bamboo huts in all directions.

It was early evening when we arrived, so we took our time choosing a hotel.  But after looking around for 1-2 hours, we  ended up returning to the first hotel we saw, a place called Pheng Thavy Hotel.  For 40,000 kip ($4.50) per night we had a huge room with private bathroom.  It was very obvious that we were no longer in China – this hotel room didn’t have a thermos with boiling water, nor a TV, and we had to leave our shoes at the hotel’s entrance.

Pnina at the entrance to Pheng Thavy Hotel:

My first Beerlao.  Every other backpacker in Laos wears a t-shirt with this logo:

Bicycle Ride

On our first day in Luang Nam Tha we rented bicycles and took a ride in the nearby fields.  The last time we rode a bicycle was in Dali, where we tried riding a tandem for the first time.  It was funny but it wasn’t very productive, so this time we opted to each get our own bike.

Pnina riding through Luang Nam Tha’s small main strip:

Taking a break on a bridge just north of town:

Pretty quickly we left town and started wandering through tiny villages in the outskirts.  Our goal was to find a waterfall, but we got distracted by a patch of flowers that was just full of butterflies.  We must have spent a couple of hours, easy, watching them and trying to get better photos.

We must have burned at least 40 pictures before we were able to get this close:

This brown butterfly let Shahaf get incredibly close – what a model!

I’ve worked with better, but not many:

I could have stayed there all day, but eventually Pnina reminded me that there’s other stuff to see.  So, begrudgingly, I moved on.

The road to the waterfall was interesting.  Good views of rickety bamboo huts and flooded rice fields.  In some cases the huts were placed in the middle of water, on stilts.  But the actual waterfall was kind of a dud.  By this point in the trip we’d seen so many waterfalls that it took a lot to impress us (and, frankly, a lot of the waterfalls in Washington state are much better).

A bamboo hut on stilts, in the middle of water-filled rice paddies:

Chili peppers drying on a platter outside:

The waterfall just north of Luang Nam Tha, not too exciting:

From the waterfall we continued east of town and completed a loop.  It was all pretty leisurely.  We couldn’t have done more than 25 km all day.  But it felt exactly right.  Laos has a very relaxed feel.  People are friendly and nobody is in any kind of hurry.

Rice that was recently collected into bunches, but not yet removed from the field:

Two guys fixing a kind of motorized mud plow.  In some places we still saw people plowing earth with oxen, but we also saw a lot of these contraptions:

Kayaking Trip

Northern Laos is filled with different tribes.  Luang Nam Tha is one of the better jump-off points for trips to visit these tribes.  One option is to go hiking, but we decided to skip that because we heard that the rainy season brings out lots of leeches.  So instead we signed up for a kayaking trip.  There are a few outfitters in town that organize these trips.  The best way to get a good deal is to find a tour company that already has a few people signed up, because the more people go, the less it costs per person.  We ended up going with Green Discovery, which is the standard company recommended by Lonely Planet and most backpackers we met.  There were 7 of us on the trip, and the price was $53 each for a 2-day trip including the kayaks, lodging, and food.

Our kayaking crew: Pnina, Lyall & Zarah (from South Africa), Scott (California) and Marie (Ireland), and Nicholas (from Melbourne):

Our trip took us downstream along the Nam Tha river (the river from which the village, Luang Nam Tha, gets its name).  We used 2-person kayaks, paddling about 5 hours the first day and 3 hours the second day.  It was a pretty calm river so there was no real danger of drowning or anything like that.  Over the two-day trip we only had one tip-over when Scott & Marie ended up going sideways downstream and got flipped over by a rock.  For Pnina and I the main hazards were the bushes along both banks of the river.  It wasn’t just that they were thorny, they were also full of little spiders; nothing deadly, but not really fun either.  Actually we did see one truly giant, hairy spider at one of our lunch spots.  He was hanging out in one of the kayaks when we were about to get back in to paddle, and he was probably just as scared of us as we were of him.  But the guides were pretty non-challant about the whole thing; they scooped him up with a paddle and tossed him into the forest.

Lyall, Zarah, and Pnina, at one of our stops along the river:

Our meals were always spread out buffet-style on banana leaves.  Each person got a lump of very very sticky rice to eat with the various dishes in the center – fish, plantains, veggies, etc.  Before the meal began, our guides took a small piece of each dish and threw it out into the forest, “for the spirits”.

Sticky rice and various dishes spread out on banana leaves:

We stopped in a couple of villages along the way, Ban Namha and Ban Sop Sim.  These were definitely some of the poorest, most isolated people we’ve ever seen, but they didn’t seem unhappy.  We stopped by in the middle of the day, so most of the men were off working the fields, which means we only saw the women and children.  At first everyone was pretty shy.  But then Pnina started taking photos and showing them to the kids, and they really got into it.  You never know if local people will appreciate or resent being photographed.  This was one of the few situations where it worked out really well.

Pnina at the entrance to one of the villages:

Kids coming close for a photograph.  In some cases they got too close, and Pnina had a hard time explaining that they need to back up a little

The nice thing about these villages is that they are still relatively untouched by tourism, but you can tell that things are already changing.  When we entered the second village, the ladies there immediately scrambled to pull out their crafts for sale.  We have mixed feelings about this.  On one hand these people are really poor and they can use the money.  On the other hand, it totally changes the dynamics from local-and-visitor to salesperson-and-customer.  Pnina and I really don’t like buying things we don’t need; before the trip we had to pack up all our belongings and we still remember how much useless stuff we have.  On top of that, during the trip we tried not to buy much because each additional thing we bought was one additional thing we had to carry for the next few months.  But standing there in the village refusing to buy all the crafts we definitely felt like cheap bastards (note – some of the money we paid for the trip goes to support the local villages).

Our guide displaying a book with local script; it looks nice, but what are we going to do with it?

Our guide really wanted us to experience the rain forest a bit, so although Pnina and I didn’t want to go hiking, we ended up doing a short 1-hour hike from one of the villages into the forest.  It was nice enough, but, as we expected, there were leeches.  The thing about leeches is that they are sneaky and relentless.  Pnina got one bite, and I did too, but neither one of us noticed while it was happening.  In my case I saw the fat bloody leech as he crawled off my sandal, and in Pnina’s case she never saw him at all – she just noticed a small gash on her foot that wouldn’t stop bleeding (leeches secrete an anti-coagulant, so leech bites take much longer to clot).  After these two bites we decided we had enough, so we high-tailed it back to the river and waited for the rest of the group to catch up.  Yeah, we were complete whiny bitches (especially me), but we don’t care.  Leeches suck.

Marie and Pnina heading into the forest:

Back at the riverside we found several butterflies that were attracted to a red blanked left on one of the kayaks.  Can’t get enough butterflies:

Bonus Shot

This is a popular road-side snack in Laos.  A tube of sweet brown-color sticky rice, wrapped in a thin sheet of bamboo and topped with coconut flakes at both ends.  We liked Laos food well enough, but as with other Asian countries, the main courses are often better than the desserts (i.e. this was so-so).

Entering Laos

[…aaaand we’re back.  You may have noticed that Pnina and I, um, fell behind a little bit.  It’s actually late November now.  We returned from the world trip about a month ago.  We’re in Seattle again.  It took a little while to get back into regular-life-mode (back to work, move to new apartment, etc.), but now we’re settled and I finally have some time to devote to the blog.  I still plan to write about the last 3-4 months of the trip.  Here goes…]

June 17-18, 2009

The visa extension that Pnina and I got back in Golmud was about to expire, so it was time for Pnina and I to leave China.  From Yuanyang we headed south to Laos.  This was a 2-day bus journey with a night’s rest in a middle-of-nowhere town called JiangCheng.

This part of China has a tribal group called Hani.  We didn’t stick around long enough to really learn about them, but in passing we noticed that the women wear jester-like hats and the men smoke cigarettes using large bongs.

A Hani woman selling Mangosteen fruit:

A Hani man smoking his cigarette through a 1/2-yard bong:

The road to the Laos border was beautiful – rice paddies, hills, and rivers.  But it was also the first crappy road we’d seen in China.  At one point we reached an impasse – the road was completely washed out and there was no way to get by.  Luckily there was a bus heading in the opposite direction that found itself in the same predicament.  So, our bus conductor spoke to their conductor, and they decided to do a “passenger swap”.  Before the swap, though, our conductor went from person to person and asked for more money.  We’re not sure why (nobody spoke English) so we can only guess that the other bus was more expensive.  Anyhow, this was one of those few situations where it paid to not speak the local language.  Each time the conductor lady came by to ask for money we just flashed our bus tickets and said “we already paid”    After the 6th attempt, she let it go.

The view on the way to the Laos border.  The same kind of terraced hills we saw in Yuanyang:

The road was completely washed out, so we crossed this part by foot and hopped on a different bus to go the rest of the way to the Laos border:

Eventually we emerged from the canyon into flatter land:

When we stopped for lunch I watched this scam-artist at work.  He had one of those simple games where he hides a coin underneath one of three shallow cups, then shuffles them and bets people that they can’t locate the right cup.  His trick (and it’s a really lame trick) is that when people look away for a moment to grab their money, he moves the coin to a different cup.  It was totally stupid, but I watched 4-5 people fall for it, one after another.  I was tempted to tip people off, but I wasn’t sure how the scam artist would react (better to just leave China and not get into trouble).

A scam artist betting one of the passengers that he can’t identify the cup with the coin:

Mohan is the last town in China before the border, but it already looked pretty Laotian (or Thai).  We saw signs in both Chinese and Laos script, and many buildings had Siamese-style pointed roofs.  From here we hopped on a short-range minivan to the actual border.

We exchanged our few remaining Chinese bills for Laos kip notes.  This was the weakest currency we’d seen since Zimbabwe: $1 US = 9600 Laos kip.

Then we went to the immigration office to get stamped out of China.  The immigration officer was confused when we handed her our visa because it wasn’t a standard in-your-passport visa; instead, it was a separate piece of paper (this was the “group visa” that we got when we entered Tibet).  Her manager took over.  He said he would need to keep our original visa, but he’ll give us a xerox copy that we can show the Laos people.  The end result is that our passports contain no evidence whatsoever that we were in China.  You can find stamps showing that we exited Nepal and other stamps showing that we entered Laos six weeks later.  In between?  Mystery.

With our exit stamp, we walked about 1 km from the Chinese border (which was huge and impressive) to the Laos border (which was a small shack in the middle of nothing).  Right about this time it started to rain pretty hard, and it stayed that way for the next few weeks.  This was the Southeast Asian monsoon welcoming us.

Motorcycles in Mohan (the last Chinese town before the border) have these smart built-in parasols.  Notice that it’s sunny here:

Only two hours later, at the Chinese side of the border, and now it’s raining buckets.  Notice the muddy river flowing along the street:

We had just enough cash left in our pockets to take one final ride to our first destination on the Laos side – the village of Luang Nam Tha.  We reached the village after sunset with 2000 kip in our pocket (about $0.20).

Yuanyang

June 16-17, 2009

We had time for just one more stop before our China visa expired.  From Kunming we headed southwest to the town of Yuanyang, to see the famous rice terraces there.

The bus dropped us off in Yuanyang’s old town (Xinjie).  A few touts were waiting there, hoping to convince us to stay in their hotel.  One of these guys, who goes by the name “A”, succeeded, and took us to the Photographer’s Hotel.  This hotel is pretty isolated, so the plus is that it’s quiet and the minus is that there’s only one restaurant (the hotel’s) and nothing else to do.  Also, on the plus side, the hotel is situated in a really good place, in the middle between all the good terrace viewing sites.  On the other hand it had a bad moldy smell, not surprising considering all the rain that falls there.

Anyhow, people come to Yuanyang to see the green terraced hills.  The place is very popular with photographers who attempt to get interesting shots at sunrise and sunset.  Pnina and I had seen a lot of rice terraces by this point in our trip, but the terraces here around Yuanyang are really special.  There are many viewpoints around Yuanyang, so you can easily spend several days here going from one to another.  But with our short time Pnina and I only got a chance to see one of them, a place called Bada.  Our hotel manager, A, took us there for 20 yuan each, and the plus was that he knew a good spot for photos that didn’t require paying the 30 yuan entrance fee most people pay at a certain white house with a viewing platform.  Bada is supposed to be the best place for sunsets, but when we were there it was too cloudy to get a decent sunset photo.  Still, the hills here were undeniably beautiful.

A map showing the different viewpoints around Yuanyang:

Pnina with our hotel’s manager (“A”), and another tourist, Ben.  Ben is from England, but he’s been traveling and working on the road for the last ten years (!!).  His main skill is as a chef, which he says is good for traveling because it’s easy enough to land a job as a chef in different parts of the world.  But recently he worked doing office work for an energy company, mostly because he can earn so much more in the same amount of time:

The terraced hills, viewed from Bada during sunset:

Workers in the field below:

Another shot with splashes of sunlight pouring between clouds:

The next morning I woke up very early to try to see the sunrise in another spot further away, but the weather was bad, foggy and rainy, so I bailed.  Instead Pnina and I slept in and started making our way to the Laos border.  But I can definitely see us coming back to Yuanyang again.

We didn’t take this photo – it’s a shot we found on the wall a the Photographer’s Hotel.  If you come to Bada in the right season (after harvest), the rice paddies are reflecting pools, clear of greenery.  In some cases a red algae can accumulate in dense quantities under the surface:

Kunming

June 13-15, 2009

After just one night and a morning bike-ride in Dali, we took a bus to Yunnan’s capital, Kunming.

The reason we rushed to reach Kunming was that we’d already made plans to stay with another couchsurfer there.  This was our fourth couchsurfing experience, but our first one in quite a while; the prior three were in South Africa (October 2008), Kenya (December 2008), and Ethiopia (January 2009).  There are a couple of reasons for our long hiatus from couchsurfing.  The first is that we traveled in Egypt/Jordan/UAE just after the war in Gaza, so we figured its best if we played it conservatively in those countries and stayed in backpacker hotels (couchsurfers tend to be an open bunch, but you never know).  The other reason is that it’s much easier to plan a stay with a fellow couchsurfer around flights (just after landing in a city, or just before departure), but for the last several months we hadn’t had any flights.

But here in Yunnan we decided to give it another go, so we contacted this guy Osama (AKA Sam Sam) and he invited us to stay with him.  When we reached Kunming we gave him a call and, funny thing, it turned out he was in Dali for the weekend too!  Too bad we didn’t call him before – we could have started hanging out in Dali and we could have traveled to Kunming together.  No matter.  We made plans to meet in Kunming’s big train station, and a few hours later he was there.

Pnina standing in front of Kunming’s train station:

 

Sam is originally from Pakistan, but he’s one of many expats working as English teachers in China.  We learned a few interesting things about the job.  Chinese schools pay the best wages to people who come from English-speaking countries: US, England, Australia, New Zealand.  Next up are a whole set of other countries, including former British colonies where English is an important second language (such as India and Pakistan).  And absolutely last come Africans (even African Americans!).  It’s totally racist, but that’s how it is – salaries correspond to perception.  Sam said that he can get a salary of just over $20,000 a year with his background (and his pay may be somewhat higher because he’s fairly proficient in Chinese, something that isn’t technically needed but never hurts).

For the first few years in China Sam worked in Shenzhen, and he obviously misses that place.  Shenzhen is more of a party town, and Sam is a party kind of guy.  He’s a bachelor, and he loves drinking, smoking, and going out to bars and clubs.  For Pnina and I it was difficult to keep up with him.  For one thing, by now you probably know that Pnina is not the biggest fan of cigarette smoke.  But besides that we just weren’t in the habit of staying up so late.  But it was still a good time.  I think Sam appreciated having companions for a couple of visits away from his quiet New Asia suburb and into the city.

Pnina and Sam in a fancy grocery store.  Sam gets three bottles of bottom-shelf whiskey.  Pnina gets one tiny bottle of Baileys.  I think that about sums it up

 

One of the nights we met up with two of Sam’s friends, Ruben and Shan Shan.  Ruben is from Belgium.  He dabbled in teaching English in China but now he’s setting up a fulltime photography business (http://studio.lemiengre.info/en/).  Shan Shan is originally from Kunming, and she still teaches English today.  Ruben and Shan Shan bought their apartment not that long ago, and we found it interesting how the apartment looked great inside while the building looked really run-down on the outside.  I guess that’s a common thing in many parts of China – people care more about making the inside of a home look good.

Pnina, Shan Shan, Ruben, and Sam:

 

Our Rough Guide described Kunming as the most laid-back city in the country, calling it “the Seattle of China”.  So of course we were looking forward to checking it out.  And was it that good?  Um, no, not really.  It was an OK town, don’t get us wrong, but it lacked the mountains and the lakes, the cozy neighborhoods, and the clean air.  It’s entirely possible that we’re biased   But anyhow, as far as cities are concerned, we would pick Chengdu over Kunming, and we would pick cities in other countries over these two.  Still, it had some good restaurants and a few interesting sights…

Probably our favorite restaurants in Kunming: Ajisen Ramen.

Cool statue of a guy trimming a bush.  Must be tricky for the actual gardener to get around the statue to trim the bush.

Don’t know why, I love this shirt:

 

We heard that there’s a certain “bird and flower” market in the city, where one can see not just standard flowers and birds, but also endangered species illegally “liberated” from forests in southern Yunnan.  We found the market, but it didn’t have any exotic animals, which is both a let-down and a very good thing.  Mostly we found cute puppies and colorful fish, which was good enough for us.

Even Pnina had to admit these dogs were very cute:

There were a ton of parrots of all kinds:

And so many aquariums:

 

We did just one major site-seeing trip while in Kunming: the Shilin Stone Forest.  This was actually 60 km away from Kunming so we went there as a day trip.  China has a few of these stone forest parks in different locations, and this one was not particularly cheap: 140 yuan.  But for us it was the easiest to reach, and it was definitely worth the money.  Like in Jiuzhaigou, this park gets a lot of visitors, but they mostly stick to a few high-profile spots.  So its easy enough to get away from the crush of tour groups by taking one of the quieter paths, especially in the eastern part of the park.

Pnina standing by some of the first stone pinnacles we saw as we entered the park:

Here, too, a lot of the Chinese tourists paid money to don silly costumes and have their photo taken:

We cross a zig-zag bridge and enter the main “grove” of stone pinnacles:

In some cases the trail between the stone giants was pretty narrow:

And in many places we climbed up and down stairs:

The most touristy place in the park is this little terrace, which is perched on top of one of the stones.  It really has a fantastic view so it’s no wonder it gets such a crowd:

This is the crowd looking to get off the stone with the terrace:

We managed to get a decent photo of Pnina up there:

But I had no such luck.  There were just too many people around.  Eventually I said “screw it” and asked Pnina to photograph me with the three women who stepped in our way last:

The view from above – this place is really awesome:

 

Back down from the terrace, we stop in a couple more sites highlighted on our map:

There were a few stones that were supposed to look like certain animals.  For some you really had to use your imagination.  Others were pretty obvious:

And eventually we reached the eastern part of the park, where we hardly saw a soul:

Dali

June 12-13, 2009

After the relaxing time we had in Shaxi, we took a bus further south to Dali.

On the bus ride to Shaxi, someone loaded two plastic barrels full of these slithering eels right next to me.

Dali was the third city we found in Yunnan that had a cute old-town neighborhood (the others were Lijiang and Shangri-La).  Of the three, Lijiang is still our favorite.  Dali has the benefit that the more modern part of the city is not as big and boring as the other two.  But the big downside with Dali is that it’s really really touristy.  As soon as the bus dropped us off, a few local touts ran up to us to offer us a hotel.  OK, no big deal, we’ve seen this sort of thing before.  Except that these touts just wouldn’t leave us alone.  Several of them followed us by foot into the city.  One of them even sat on the side while we ate lunch, waiting for us to finish, just so he can collect a commission if we happen to go to the hotel he represents.  The annoying thing is that we already know about all these hotels – they’re listed in our Rough Guide – so these touts are getting a commission for no useful work, which is very aggravating just on principle.  Anyhow, this was the first time we’d experienced this level of in-your-face hassle in China, and it immediately turned us off.  But we know our opinion is not typical; we spoke we lots of other tourists who fell in love with Dali and spent several days here.

Pnina in the main backpacker drag in Dali’s old town:

One of the big gates surrounding old town:

Garbage collection time.  This van come through playing music (like the ice cream man) and store owners come out to dump their trash.  Pretty good system:

A woman selling handicrafts next to a temple in the city:

Anyhow, we checked into the Tibetan Lodge, which was a decent place.  We had just a half day to spend here before rushing off to Kunming.  Our original plan was to hike up to the top of the nearby hill, but we canceled this plan when we noticed that the hill was completely consumed by clouds.  Instead we decided to rent bicycles and ride around.  And just for kicks we decided to rent a tandem bike.  This was our first time on a tandem and it was clumsy and hilarious.  As you can imagine, the bike didn’t really fit either one of us very well, especially me.  When I sat in the back, for each time the wheel turned I put my right knee into Pnina’s right butt-cheek, and then my left knee into her left butt-cheek.  It worked a little better when I was up front. 

Pnina with our tandem bicycle, outside Dali’s old town, riding towards one of the small villages by the lake:

I had no idea sunflowers could be this tall.  Later on the trip we saw others that were maybe twice this height:

San Ta Si, three ancient pagodas that are probably the top attraction near Dali.  The entry fee was over 100 yuan, so we decided to skip it.  This is a view from the outside:

As a cheaper alternative, we rode to Yita Si.  Here there was just one pagoda and it was perhaps less well preserved.  There was a sign outside saying that this park is closed for renovation, but there was no work being done at the time and nobody to keep us from going in.  The pagoda has a room at the bottom, and it’s possible to climb to some height inside (I couldn’t tell exactly how high because it was dark and I didn’t have my flashlight, and the climb looked a little sketchy):

Well, after this short bike ride, we hurried back to collect our stuff and catch the evening bus to Kunming.  We had already made plans to meet a couchsurfer there.

In the News

The US finally converted its over-the-air TV broadcasts from analog to digital.

Elections took place in Iran.  Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, was proclaimed winner with roughly 2/3 of the votes.  Second place Mousavi contested the authenticity of these results and encouraged his followers to protest.  Mousavi’s supporters gathered in big numbers in Tehran.  These images were broadcast around the world, and the US and several European countries voiced doubts about the legitimacy of the election.  Iran’s electoral board recounted the votes and announced on June 29 that Ahmadinejad did indeed win.  Mousavi said that 14 million ballots were missing, so there was plenty of room to manipulate the vote.

Shaxi

June 10-11, 2009

After finishing our hike at Tiger Leaping Gorge we continued south.  We stopped for one night (again) at Lijiang, and then took another bus to Shaxi.

The thing that drew us to Shaxi is that, from what we read, it was supposed to be far less touristy than our next destination (Dali), and therefore a better place to get a little closer to local village life.  Looking back now we can confirm that this is absolutely true – Dali is a total backpacker Mecca by comparison.

Shaxi used to be a major stop on the southern silk road.  Tibetans sold their horses and in exchange bought tea.  For this reason you see a lot of restaurants and hotels here called “Tea and Horse”.  There’s still a major market in this town every Friday.  People come from villages all around to buy and sell.  Tourists have to pay a fee to enter this market area, even on non-market days when there’s really nothing to see.  Pnina and I were thinking about staying in some hotel that turned out to be inside the market area.  When we realized we’d have to pay a fee just to reach our hotel (ridiculous), we opted for another hotel just outside the market, a place called Ou Yang Guesthouse.  This turned out to be a good choice.  For 20 yuan/night we had a huge room (bathroom outside).  Internet was free (with wi-fi too) and each night the hotel owners cooked a beautiful spread of local dishes for 15 yuan per person.

One of the dinners we had at the hotel.  The biggest surprise was that one of the dishes was exactly like potato latkes (not shown in this picture – it was a different meal):

A flower in the hotel’s courtyard:

On our first day at the hotel we found three Chinese tourists sitting down to make pot-stickers.  They invited us to join them and we accepted.  We had no clue what we were doing and even after making a couple dozen pot stickers we were still pretty clumsy compared to them.  It took us five times as long to put one together, and ours were lumpy and sad-looking by comparison.  Still, it was a lot of fun.

Making  pot-stickers – CC on the left, Kou (siitting down), Yau (in the back), and Pnina:

Pnina working the dough:

Hoping that this time I got the right amount of stuffing for my pot-sticker:

And, finally, stuffing ourselves silly:

After this huge lunch we had to walk off the pounds, so we set out to see the village.  It’s not a big place.  If you walk in almost any direction you reach rice terraces soon enough.  We’d seen a lot of terraces by this point, but we’d never actually walked among them, along the muddy ridges that separate one pool from the next.

In a different edge of the town we found these interesting tombs:

The next day we took a bigger hike outside the village.  We were joined by one of our pot-sticker friends, Kou (nickname Kou Kou), plus a couple other Chinese girls who were also staying at the hotel, Mia and Shabai.  We started by heading into a valley that had different statues and carvings on the sides of the cliff, some of them sheltered by impressive “houses”.

Mia, Kou Kou, Shabai and Pnina, standing with a friendly donkey we met along the way:

And a little further down the road we found an equally friendly goat.  Shabai made herself a tiara using branches she picked along the way, and the goat was very keen on eating it:

Heading into the valley with the rock carvings:

One of the edifices sheltering rock carvings.  The rock carvings were so-so, but it was interesting to see this structure in the middle of a cliff:

At the top of the hill we had a nice view over the surrounding hills and villages:

A little further down the road was the entrance to Shibao Shan, which is the major attraction by Shaxi.  It’s a nature reserve that has even more temples and carvings.  At this point we split up – Mia and Shabai decided to go into this sanctuary, but the rest of us had enough of these cliff carvings and decided to head further down the road in search of  a monastery where we heard we could get a great vegetarian lunch.  This monastery turned out to be much much further down the road, maybe 6 miles.  But eventually we found it and it really did have a tiny kitchen where they made a good vegetarian lunch.  Like in some of the monasteries in Emei Shan, the food was technically free, but we left a donation to cover the cost.  And the monastery itself was also interesting – it was a sprawly place with various imaginative statues and shrines scattered near the top of a hill.

Reaching the monastery after a long climb:

Notice this guy’s unusually long arm.  There was another statue with similarly long legs:

The meal we had at the monastery:

The next day when we left Shaxi, it happened to be market day (Friday).  We only caught a quick glimpse of the hub-bub before taking off:

False Advertising

This was obnoxious.  I bought an ice cream bar in a small store in Shaxi.  Obviously I couldn’t read the text on the wrapper, but the picture made it look something like a Snickers bar.  But when I opened the wrapper, what I found inside was vanilla ice cream coated in banana-flavored tapioca.  What the hell??  And this wasn’t the only time this happened.  Back in Juizhaigou I bought a pack of what looked like chocolate-covered coffee beans.  No wait, it actually said “coffee beans” in English on the cover.  But the stuff inside had no actual coffee beans, just a faint almost-coffee flavor.  That’s BS, man.

Thank You For Smoking

Here’s Pnina standing with a farmer and his baby boy:

What I like/hate about this picture is that the baby is holding a pack of cigarettes.  This is such a Chinese thing – it seems like every single man in China is a heavy smoker.  It’s a cultural thing.  People offer each other cigarettes all the time, it’s a way of showing respect or bonding or something like that.  We were offered cigarettes too on a few occasions.  But Pnina hates cigarette smoke more than anyone I know, so for her China was hell.  In particular there were a few situations where she just couldn’t avoid the smoke, e.g. bus rides where people smoked and there was no window to open.  A few times she broke social norms and (gasp) asked the locals not to smoke.  It was kind of awkward.  Smoking is such a natural thing in China that it’s like someone walking up to Pnina in America and saying “please stop drinking that water, you’re offending me.”  Anyhow, we loved the sights in China and we met some of the friendliest people of our whole trip, but when we eventually left China Pnina was definitely glad to leave all that smoke behind.

Bonus Picture

Farmers drying hay on the road:

Tiger Leaping Gorge

June 8-9, 2009

After our brief 1-night stop in Baishui Tai, we continued to Tiger Leaping Gorge.  The bus dropped us off at the eastern end of the trail, not far from the small tourist village called Walnut Garden.

Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the star attractions in Yunnan and a big magnet for western (and local) backpackers.  It claims to be the deepest gorge in the world, but we’re not so sure.  Only a couple of months ago we were hiking in the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, and there was a similar claim that the Jomsom side of the trek was the deepest in the world.  In terms of numbers, Jomsom is surely deeper because it has 7+ km tall mountains on both sides.  But the Tiger Leaping Gorge definitely feels more gorge-like: there are sections with near-vertical stone cliffs, and the water below is incredibly violent (we haven’t seen water this powerful since Murchison Falls in Uganda).

What’s with the name?  The legend goes that a tiger once escaped pursuit by leaping across a narrow section in the gorge.  There are three sections along the gorge where this may have happened – upper, middle, and lower.   In each one the canyon is very narrow, the water very gushy, and there’s a large boulder in the middle of the current that a tiger could have used to get across.

It took us two days / one night to do the hike.  We went east-to-west, which is the less common way to go because there’s more uphill (you’re going upstream).  The trek started on the road until we reached the small touristy village called Walnut Garden.  From there we took a detour and climbed down to the bottom of the gorge to see “lower tiger leaping rock”.  The path downhill included a few long ladders on the side of a cliff – very fun.  And when you reach the bottom you really notice the force of the current.  Then we headed back up and took a trail the rest of the way towards Qiaotou.  Overall it was a very good trek, though it rained pretty frequently and it was too hot to wear a rain coat comfortably.

OK, on with the photos…

As our bus approaches the trailhead, we start to see the gorge:

Pnina with Pan Yujie, a Chinese backpacker we met on the bus.  She was our hiking partner for the next couple of days:

Don’t know why, but I found it interesting that so many of the trucks in Yunnan had exposed engines up front:

Rice terraces:

At the end of the bridge is Tina’s Guest House (Walnut Garden), where we stopped for lunch before descending to the bottom of the gorge:

Going down long ladders:

One thing that was kind of annoying about Tiger Leaping Gorge, is that people nickel-and-dime you along the way.  It’s not enough to pay the entry ticket for the park (30 yuan).  If you want to take one of the ladder-rich trails down to the bottom, you need to pay another fee (usually 10 yuan).  And once at the bottom, if you want to walk over a small wooden bridge to the tiger-leaping rock, you need to pay another 5 yuan.  The actual fees aren’t big, but it’s annoying to keep paying them, especially considering that the people collecting fees are now basically getting money for nothing (there’ no real work to do to keep a little wooden bridge up).  When we reached the bottom, I forked over the 5 yuan to climb the rock with the good view, but Pnina said “screw that” and marched off to find her own rock to climb.  But all the other rocks here were very steep and slippery, and if you make a wrong move you can easily end up in the gushing water below, certainly dead.  It scared me to watch her prance around like that, but luckily it all worked out.

Pnina prancing around on huge boulders, looking down at the gushing water below:

The aforementioned gushing water:

Pnina and I on her rock (OK, yeah, I joined her):

Walking back up, this time a different route:

More ladders, yay!

Back at the top, we get off the road and start hiking along the trail.  Some parts of the trail were blasted through rock:

Jagged peaks poking through the clouds:

Hanging out with some other backpackers at the Halfway House hotel – Evan (Chinese), Pan, Pnina, Max (from Oregon), and Eli (French):

There must have been something very interesting on this branch because all these bugs were duking it out to claim this territory.  We saw the larger beetle (the black one) pick up the other one and toss it off the tree.  It was real National Geographic action:

Corn husks hung out to dry – a very common sight in northwestern Yunnan:

While we hiked, we had some interesting discussions with Pan; interesting both for what Pan knew and for what she didn’t know.  For example, that week, high-school students around China were freaking out because they were about to take the huge college entrance exam (things get pretty competitive when you’re in a country with well over a billion people).  Pan, who is already a college sophomore studying Sociology, told us about her experience taking the test and getting into university.  She knew a lot about that and her English was very good.  On the other hand, she didn’t know that China blocks certain websites, she was surprised to learn that Pnina and I ran into complications when we wanted to keep traveling in China after leaving Tibet, and she knew surprisingly little about the Chinese election process.  That in itself tells us a lot about what schools in China teach and don’t teach, and I guess we’re not surprised.

Baishui Tai

June 7, 2009

From Shangri-La we headed back south to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge.  The quickest path would have been to head back down along the main road to Qiaotou and do the hike west-to-east.  But we decided instead to take a smaller road and do the hike east-to-west.  The benefit is that on the way to the trailhead we stopped at this beautiful spot called Baishui Tai.

Baishui Tai is similar to Huanglong in that it also has limestone-rich water flowing downhill and creating these crater-like terraces full of bright-blue water.  But Baishui Tai is much smaller, far less touristy, and far far cheaper (30 yuan instead of 200).  If you’re in the area, we would definitely recommend stopping here.

From far away, the Baishui Tai pools just look like a barren, eroded stretch at the bottom of the hill:

But up-close they are much prettier, just like the pools in Huanglong:

Horses wading through some of the shallow pools:

In some places we could move close and see the water trickling slowly over the edge of the pools:

Technically you’re not supposed to go to the actual pools (some areas are roped off), but this local family did.  The Baishui Tai water is considered holy to the local Naxi people: