Jostled
I liked Chiang Mai. What day is it today....Thursday, then itwas Tuesday we left for Chiang Khong, to stay there for our boat and truck the next day.
I loved Chiang Khong, a quaint little village strewn out along one main street. Absolutely no one took notice of us, or tried to sell us anything, which was a welcome change from our previous experiences of Thailand.
We took a mini-bus there with a very cool bunch of people, and one grumpy driver! After all of us getting settled in and after meeting our first Irish couple, we walked down to a cool reggae hand out joint/pub. Twas filled with cool little things hanging everywhere, including the staple diet for such joints as: Bob Marley pictures, Jamaican flags, the words freedom and peace and of course that old Marijuana leaf sign. After The Doors and Pink Floyd finished on the stereo, guitars were whipped out and Smeels and Raychel were drunk, can't say I wasn't either! Smeels performed a number of songs, which were great, and Raychel almost fell asleep on the pillows on the ground we were sitting on.
So next day we set out for our boat across the Mekong river to County Laois, Mountmellick was the intended destination. The visas were got and at the bus station we got some Kip, not sleep but currency, I think its 13,000 Kip to the Euro, and the most common denomination of note is 1,000 so you're walking around with bags full of it, 4oeuro is....3and a half inches high!
OK for the last paragraph I'm going to bitch and moan about the truck to Luang Namtha, so skip it if you don't wanna hear it! here goes:
On our trip to the bus station, we realised Laos doesn't have roads, just red dirt tracks, and being the rainy season, these are flooded in alot of places. Laos' national symbol should be the pothole. They have the kings of all the pothole clans: wide ones, long ones, bottomless ones, you name it. You're sitting on a bench in the back of a pick-up truck, metal protrudes from everywhere; the base of your back, your ass, your head all get knocked about in each pothole. We were informed it was to be a seven hour journey. SEVEN HOURS in the truck of terror s Raychel so aptly named it. At times you drive over logs across strems and rivers, you just drive through, the dirt tracks are caved into the side of moutains, so steep embankments are usually havering over you on at least one side. Landsildes/mudslides are common, as we found out when one was cleared from on front of us, and our truck slid sideways down a hill, which was fun in life-threatening sort of way. Ten hours it took. One of the most intense experiences of my life. For the few moments I could release one hand I took some beautiful photos of the landscape. I wouldn't do it again, but I'm sooooooooo happy I did, it was so worth it. I saw the real Laos, the billages, the kids so excited to see us they drop umbrellas or whatever they are doing just to wave at us, the huts just big enough to sleep in, the rice fields, the mountains with clouds laying in the valley, animals strolling the street. We laughed the entire ten hours at how outrageous it was, havn't laughed so much in a long time, madness i tells ya! Chronic jostlitis, so jostled we were delirius and halucinating, we started seeing things in the dark!
Jostled.
Super Jostled.
I loved Chiang Khong, a quaint little village strewn out along one main street. Absolutely no one took notice of us, or tried to sell us anything, which was a welcome change from our previous experiences of Thailand.
We took a mini-bus there with a very cool bunch of people, and one grumpy driver! After all of us getting settled in and after meeting our first Irish couple, we walked down to a cool reggae hand out joint/pub. Twas filled with cool little things hanging everywhere, including the staple diet for such joints as: Bob Marley pictures, Jamaican flags, the words freedom and peace and of course that old Marijuana leaf sign. After The Doors and Pink Floyd finished on the stereo, guitars were whipped out and Smeels and Raychel were drunk, can't say I wasn't either! Smeels performed a number of songs, which were great, and Raychel almost fell asleep on the pillows on the ground we were sitting on.
So next day we set out for our boat across the Mekong river to County Laois, Mountmellick was the intended destination. The visas were got and at the bus station we got some Kip, not sleep but currency, I think its 13,000 Kip to the Euro, and the most common denomination of note is 1,000 so you're walking around with bags full of it, 4oeuro is....3and a half inches high!
OK for the last paragraph I'm going to bitch and moan about the truck to Luang Namtha, so skip it if you don't wanna hear it! here goes:
On our trip to the bus station, we realised Laos doesn't have roads, just red dirt tracks, and being the rainy season, these are flooded in alot of places. Laos' national symbol should be the pothole. They have the kings of all the pothole clans: wide ones, long ones, bottomless ones, you name it. You're sitting on a bench in the back of a pick-up truck, metal protrudes from everywhere; the base of your back, your ass, your head all get knocked about in each pothole. We were informed it was to be a seven hour journey. SEVEN HOURS in the truck of terror s Raychel so aptly named it. At times you drive over logs across strems and rivers, you just drive through, the dirt tracks are caved into the side of moutains, so steep embankments are usually havering over you on at least one side. Landsildes/mudslides are common, as we found out when one was cleared from on front of us, and our truck slid sideways down a hill, which was fun in life-threatening sort of way. Ten hours it took. One of the most intense experiences of my life. For the few moments I could release one hand I took some beautiful photos of the landscape. I wouldn't do it again, but I'm sooooooooo happy I did, it was so worth it. I saw the real Laos, the billages, the kids so excited to see us they drop umbrellas or whatever they are doing just to wave at us, the huts just big enough to sleep in, the rice fields, the mountains with clouds laying in the valley, animals strolling the street. We laughed the entire ten hours at how outrageous it was, havn't laughed so much in a long time, madness i tells ya! Chronic jostlitis, so jostled we were delirius and halucinating, we started seeing things in the dark!
Jostled.
Super Jostled.
posted by Bean | 4:10 p.m.
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