Up at 6:45AM. No breakfast. Tuk tuk to bus station, bus to Chiang Khong. No lunch. Crossed border on foot and boat ferried us across the gentle shallow river. Two minutes later, we bought our Laos visas for US$35 each and were zipping out of immigration. Uphill 20 seconds walking and we are officially “in town.” Welcome to Huaxy Xai, Laos side of the border with Chiang Khong (Thailand).

Crossing the Mekong into Laos

Town consists of a handful of buildings: 5-6 guesthouses, 3-4 restaurants and a few fruit vendors and snack stands. Besides that there is nothing much besides a single dusty but paved road running through town and the very few locals who are out and about are so quiet that it sounds as if the entire town is asleep. Maybe it’s the quiet, lazy river that makes everyone so mellow.

Sunset on the Mekong

We chose a dingy but adequate guest house for the night and tried one of the restaurants overlooking the river. Not great food but cheap enough. Coming from Thailand, everything here is cheap enough. Already Laos is shaping up to be a beautiful dusty country of friendly but quiet people.

We have very little to say about Thailand that is negative; if anything, it is subject to its own beauty. Everywhere is flooded with tourists and not just regular tourists but loads of loud, drunken, and culturally rude tourists. We are not just talking about Khao San road either. The economy is now largely funded by the tourist trade but is the slow prostitution of a people and culture destroying the very thing that has drawn people to the beautiful land for thousands of years? We are already looking forward to returning to Thailand and implore others to visit as well; we just ask that you be mindful of yourself and your actions.

(Click here to see the Thailand Photo Gallery)

Favorite moments:

• Fantastic food
• Amazing people
• Most beautiful beaches we have stood on
• Diving with Sharks
• Pink taxis
• Beautiful parks and ruins
• It wasn’t India
• Ease of life
• Street food

Not so great:

• Saben getting bitten by a stupid rabid dog
• Loud, drunken tourists on Khao San and off
• Hyper inflated tourist prices

Total Money Spent Per Person: $1123.78

Average Per Day Costs Per Person:

• Lodging: $5.39
• Food: $6.58
• Transportation: $3.63
• Misc: $8.83 (Beer, going out, guides, park entrance, etc.)

Total Average Per Day, Per Person: $24.43

Number of Days: 46

Spent a couple days getting things together for going to Laos and…amazingly, getting started (but not too much!!) on a few preparations for going home. Yikes! Anyway, we are really ready to move on from Thailand. Laos looks like it will be pretty fantastic and we’re excited to get there! Heading there tomorrow morning. Hurray for another very long travel day across the Lao border.

El Dorado makes the best mexican food in Chang Mai

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Lunar New Year!

As with most holidays on the road, it can be pretty tough to have a proper celebration. For Valentine’s Day, we splurged on chocolate covered almonds from the 711 down the street and a couple cans of Fanta. Romance at it’s finest!

Soap flower in the market

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to celebrate the Chinese New Year at all! We had expected to find plenty of parades and celebrations going on in the city and despite being out literally all night, we did not run across any at all!

Musicians in the market

We spent a long time walking through the enormous Sunday Market that covers almost half of the city inside the old city walls. It seemed to go on forever! We have not seen a market this big since the giant antique market in Beijing. The various goods and handicrafts were all different—a rarity in the usual tourist markets around the whole world.

In the night market

There was some really great stuff, good prices, crazy prices, and tons and tons of delicious smelling food stands. And for when tired shoppers finished buying their various souvenirs, they could take a seat at one of the many recliners at the makeshift foot massage areas. Even if you don’t want to buy any more tourist crap, it’s still a fun place to walk around and grab some dinner.

Mama pajama rolled outta bed and went down to the station…Well, actually we both did and hopped on a bus to Chiang Mai. It was 10 hours and the closer we got to our destination the more the landscape began to resemble the Appalachians in our motherland. Well after dark we got an overpriced tuk tuk to Loi Kohn, the street where loads of guest houses are (and all the foreigners to match) to find a place to lay our weary bums for the night. Convenient as it is, Loi Kohn is Chiang Mai’s version of Khao San Road in Bangkok. Anyway it will do for now and there is certainly no shortage of good places to eat. Glad to be off a bus for a while!!

Eating waffles like a starving Belgian

Spent two glorious days lounging in beautiful Bangkok. We enjoyed some of Cambodia but really were not crazy over it. We wanted a couple of days to rest before taking another very long bus north to Chiang Mai. We restocked some supplies we could not get in Cambodia, ate some great cheap food (hurray for baht! paying with dollars in Cambodia was a real budget killer), and did a lot of walking around to stretch our legs. We never would have imagined how much sitting traveling the world really requires!

Saben getting a hair cut

“Get ready to feel like an asshole.” We looked at each other and got out of the tuk tuk and onto the idling bus pulled alongside the road. Waiting. For us. Against our usual protocol, we had booked a bus ticket all the way from Phnom Penh back to Bangkok thinking it was a bit cheaper than all the separate tickets.

Traffic in Phnom Pehn

We were up and in the lobby of our guest house at 6:50AM, as instructed, waiting for the bus to come pick us up. It was scheduled to depart for Bangkok at 7:45 and by 7:30, we were pretty concerned. Our guest house staff were kind enough to call and sort out the whole mess for us (although we didn’t buy the ticket through them). They tucked us into a tuk tuk and sent us zipping across town to the ticket agency who checked our tickets and, without explanation, send us in another tuk tuk which we assumed was to take us to the bus. What we didn’t know was that the bus had already left without us and was now waiting by the side of the road til we sheepishly pulled up and jumped on. A few irritated glances and we sank into our seats.

Anyway, it was a long day from 8AM-8:30PM getting all the way back to Bangkok and we are so glad to be back.

Travel Tip:

We don’t recommend booking a long haul ticket between Phnom Penh and Bangkok, either direction. It would be faster and easier to book your own ticket to the border (Poi Pet) and then cross through on foot as usual and grab a bus on the Thai side in the market area. If you are unsure of where to go and can’t spot lots of parked buses, just ask around until you get your bus.

Well, as promised, it was two very long, very tiring travel days right in a row. It was a bummer to leave the lovely Koh Tao but we have an itching to return for sure. The first day we didn’t get to Bangkok til 8:30PM and were pretty well spent. Dinner and bed was the end of that story.

Leaving the islands

Next morning at 8:30AM we were on a bus to the border at Poi pet, Cambodia. We had been told consistently terrible things about how awful this particular border would be and how dirty and chaotic Cambodia would be in general. We were prepared for something along the lines of India. And we were happily surprised. Instead of being the house of horrors everyone swore it would be, Poi pet turned out to be one of the easiest and least crazy borders we have ever crossed. What a happy turn out! And on top of that, Cambodia does not seem to be all that dirty or chaotic. Granted we have only been here a few hours but we drove nearly 3 hours from the border into Siem Reap and were very happy with what we saw. Guess time will tell but so far we are very excited to be here and the people couldn’t be better. If Thailand is the land of a thousand smiles, some of that happy spirit must have rubbed off onto its neighbor Cambodia. Everyone is so sweet and friendly.

Our swanky room in Siem Reap

As you can imagine, after two consecutive travel days we were ready for a quiet night at home to re-energize and get ready to go see some of Angkor Wat tomorrow morning!

Supper

Spent two days diving, swimming, and lying in the sun. Guess it’s not too exciting to tell, but nice to enjoy! Tomorrow we head back to Bangkok to get ready to go to Cambodia the day after. Hurray for travel days…

Us!

You know the saying, You win some, you lose some? Today was one of those days where we lost.

Moments before the blood bath

It began at as a nice morning with snorkeling and sharks in our near future. We started off on our 5km walk to Shark Bay and though it was pretty warm already that early, it was good preparation for the cool ocean. When we arrived to the bay, we discovered we had to do a bit of hiking and wading to get to a spot to stow our stuff and get in. On our trek across large and slippery boulders and through waist deep water, we encountered 2 problems. The first was when Lin’s unsuspecting foot was quite impolitely harpooned by a rather upset sea urchin. The second was about 2 minutes later when Saben’s foot was very unhappily skewered by a shard of glass that caused him to bleed, literally, like a stuck pig and thus, draw dozens of very hungry bull sharks toward us which then led to a rather unpleasant shark attack where Saben lost both legs and one eye despite his best efforts at punching the whole gang of 318 sharks squarely in the face. It was a lucky thought to give a swift roundhouse kick to the whole group of crazed sharks which caused the bottom halves of his legs to go flying through the air, which Lin promptly caught as the sailed by. Lucky enough we had our sewing kit and ziplock sized first aid kit and we were able to successfully reattach both legs.

Saben with both legs!

OK so I said two things. That was three. Just kidding about the sharks. But really we did both manage to jack up a foot each and there was no snorkeling to be had, what with Saben’s foot gushing (actually, that’s a fact) blood all over the place. Unfortunately we had brought only the snorkel gear, sunscreen, and our clothes so we didn’t even have first aid stuff or money. Yup, had to walk to 5km back home on gimpy and/or bleeding feet. Not a good day and it wasn’t even noon yet.

A very grown up supper of Nutela and pretzels

But we made it back home with relatively few shark encounters (they don’t favor walking alongside the road much) and spent the afternoon lying on the beach. If we can’t go snorkeling, the least we can do it get out of the room and look at some nice scenery.