Mae Sai, Tachileik, slow boat through Laos, and Luang Prabang

So I've got good news and bad news. Good news is I've been having a blast in Laos for the past week. Bad news is I lost my money belt yesterday with my passport, credit cards, and most of my money... Which kinda sucks. But all is not lost, as a few friends I met along the way were nice enough to loan me some money to get by for a few days, and I am currently in the process of getting a new passport in Vientiane, which is the capitol of Laos. So it should be just a temporary setback, then I will be able to get on with my adventure. 

It's been a while since my last blog, so I have a lot to cover in this one, so it may be a bit long... In the last week I spent 2 days in Mae Sai, Thailand, then an afternoon in Tachileik, Myanmar, then traveled to the border of Laos and spent a night in Chiang Khong, Thailand, before taking the 2-day slow boat down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang, Laos, where I stayed for 3 days, until I lost my passport and took the bus down to Vientiane, Laos last night. I feel like all of this may be a bit confusing, so I made a map of everywhere I've been so far on my trip. The routes I've taken aren't quite what is on the map, just cause google uses the quickest road, which isn't always what the buses take, and I did a boat in Laos.

The places on the map are:

A. Bangkok, Thailand

B. Ayutthaya, Thailand

C. Chiang Mai, Thailand

D. Pai, Thailand

E. Mae Sai, Thailand

F. Tachileik, Myanmar

G. Chiang Khong, Thailand

H. Luang Prabang, Laos

I. Vientiane, Laos 

View Larger Map

After leaving Pai, I went to Mae Sai, a small border town at the very northern-most point of Thailand, on the border of Myanmar (Burma). I couch surfed with Hana, an American working at DEPDC, an NGO in northern Thailand working to prevent human trafficking and child labor. Working with a network of volunteers in villages in northern Thailand, DEPDC intervenes with girls and their families before they are sold to brothel owners, providing them free vocational education so they can be self-reliant and economically independent. DEPDC also offers shelter to many at-risk children from hill tribes in northern Thailand, as well as from across the border in Burma. Additionally DEPDC offers classes to anyone that is interested, teaching English and Thai. Many people who live in the hill tribes don't even speak Thai, as they only speak the language native to their tribe. And many of these tribes are stateless, so even though they live in Thailand, they are not Thai citizens, so have a lot of trouble assimilating into Thai society, and their children can't go to Thai schools. These children have no access to education, and so are especially high-risk for child labor and human trafficking. Many families in these poor villages actually voluntarily sell their children into these industries. DEPDC provides an alternative.

DEPDC is doing great work addressing many of these almost impossibly difficult problems, and has proven that it is an effective organization to make a difference. And even though it has shown its effectiveness over more than 2 decades, it still has trouble receiving funding. Many donors like to see new organizations with new ideas, even though they haven't been shown to work yet, and many large scale donor trends, such as natural disasters and the recent opening of Burma, although surely deserving, do take money away from organizations like DEPDC. 

If you would like to read more about DEPDC, check out their blog:

http://depdcblog.wordpress.com

And if you would like to donate to DEPDC:

http://www.depdc.org/eng/help/how_to_donate.html

OK, I know that was a bit wordy, but I really wanted to put in a good word for DEPDC, because Hana and everyone else that worked there were so welcoming and they really are doing great work and helping people who really need it. Now more pictures.

This is some Shan food that Hana took me to for lunch. It was just a lady in her driveway making this and a noodle dish. This was some kind of rice pancake/crepe/dumpling thing with who-knows-what inside, but it was absolutely amazing. And it cost 20 baht (about 70 cents).

About a million steps up to a temple overlooking the city. Which is something they seem to have everywhere in southeast Asia.

Fat buddha.

Big scorpion statue facing straight at Burma. Maybe there's a message there...

View from the top. Straight ahead is Burma, to the right is Thailand, and the barely visible hills to the right are Laos. So you can see 3 countries at once, pretty cool. This is called the Golden Triangle, and is where most of the worlds opium/heroin used to be produced, before Thailand made a large effort to squash the drug trade in the 90s and 2000s.

I spent my last afternoon in Mae Sai with a quick trip across the border into Tachileik, Myanmar. Myanmar has been closed to foreigners and under major trade sanctions for decades, up until 2011, when the government released a longtime political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, and started to move towards democracy. The reforms were met with praise by many western nations, and it appears that the country is transitioning to a democracy, although many alleged human rights violations remain. Anyway done with the history lesson. 

This is the view of Tachileik from on top of their hill temple. The town was not that different from Mae Sai, although was noticeably poorer. But I think you really have to go deeper into Burma to get more of an authentic experience.

After leaving Mae Sai, I went to Chiang Khong on the border of Laos, and took the slow boat, one of these shown here, down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang.

It was a leisurely ride for 2 days, at about 7 hours a day. And it was mostly travelers, so there was not much to do but make friends...

... and sip on a beerlao, the national beer of Laos, and widely considered the best beer in Southeast Asia.

The Mekong. Imagine looking at this for 2 days straight. Not too bad on the eyes.

A pretty common on the ride, naked Lao kids playing in the river.

Double Rainbow! JK just a normal rainbow, but still pretty awesome.

Quick connecting flight.

Sunset on the Mekong.

A Lao village.

The night market in Luang Prabang, the jewel of Southeast Asia.

Luang Prabang is a wonderful, clean, quiet little city on the Mekong, with an obvious French influence. There are a lot of nice little villas along its small, walkable streets, many of them selling crepes, baguettes, and croissants alongside noodle soups, curries, and Khaosoy. Laos was a part of French Indochina, along with Vietnam, until 1953, when it was granted independence. After that, the Pathet Lao started to come to power, which was the communist party of Lao, which worked with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war. During this time, a massive secret war was carried out by the US against the Pathet Lao and Vietcong traveling down the Ho Chi Minh trail, which cut through Laos. US bombers dropped more ordinance on Laos between 1964 and 1973 than was dropped by all sides during the whole of World War II, with an average of one B-52 bombload being dropped on Laos every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, during this 9 year period, leading to over 700,000 civilian casualties (Laos's current population is around 6 million). Of the 260 million million bombs dropped on Laos by US forces, over 80 million failed to explode, and are still littered through the Laotian countryside. Since the end of the war, at least 13,000 Laotians have been either killed or maimed, most of them children, from UXO (unexploded ordinance). It is very tough to hear these statistics and travel through Laos as an American, knowing that my country absolutely destroyed this beautiful country and massacred its friendly, easygoing population, yet most Americans don't even know that Laos exists, much less about the secret war. Anyways, on to less depressing stuff...

... like food! Coconut custard filled pancakes. Mmm...

Oh ya it's my birthday! I went out for dinner on my birthday with a group of about 15 friends, and it just happened that it was also the birthday of a woman who worked at the restaurant. And a bunch of people had brought her cakes, and she was nice enough to give me one. So I got a cake and everybody sang happy birthday, in the middle of Laos. It was pretty amazing.

Happy birthday in Laos.

In Luang Prabang, and Laos in general (which is a communist country), there is a curfew at 11:30 pm, so bars all close before that. So the only thing to do after that is go to this one random little bowling alley that is about 20 minutes out of town, and that everybody goes to after the bars close, so it is always packed. It was actually a really fun end to my birthday. My first round I bowled a 154, which I'm pretty sure is the best score I've gotten in my entire life. But after that I definitely went downhill... A little lao lao (sticky rice whiskey, tastes kinda like paint thinner) didn't help.

We went to a bear conservation camp, where they have saved a bunch of Asiatic Black Bears from poaching or illegal trade, and gave them a home until they can reintroduce them into the wild where they can be sure they will be safe.

Kuang Si waterfalls. This place was absolutely amazing, with water that was almost unnaturally clear and blue. And there was a rope swing that you could jump into the water with, that was pretty fun. And swimming in the water, little fish would come up and nibble on your feet the whole time. Which was slightly unnerving, but you got used to it.

More beautiful pools.

I'm pretty excited about this big one.

Meat market for dinner. You just select a piece of meat or fish and they throw it on this grill for you. Delicious.

All you can eat buffet for 10,000 kip a plate (a little over a dollar).

The owners of our guesthouse. They're even more excited about the waterfall than I was earlier.

Ever morning at dawn in Luang Prabang, the monks walk through the city and collect alms from locals. 

Luang Prabangians (don't think that's right...) come out with a big bowl of rice and give each monk a bit, and over the course of the walk the monks fill up their bowls, and that is what the monk eats for the day. They do this every morning on the way to their temples. Almost all Lao boys become a monk for a short amount of time, from a month to a year.

The view from the top of Luang Prabang's temple on a hill. On the right is the Mekong river, and on the left is the Nam Khan river. The hill, and most of the old town where I spent most of my time in LP, is on a peninsula between the two rivers.

The most backpackery bar in Luang Prabang, Utopia. They have a full beach volleyball court, which was pretty cool.

And now for the story of how i lost my passport. On the last night in LP, after Utopia and another fun night at the bowling alley, we decided to go hang out on the beach of the Mekong river at around 2 am. We were all hanging out, having a good time, when one guy decided he was gonna go skinny-dipping in the river. One thing led to another and soon after of course I joined him. And it was awesome (although not awesomely clean...). Long story short, When I got out and put my clothes back on, my money belt didn't make it back onto my body, and when I realized it was gone and went back to the beach to look for it, it was nowhere to be found. I feel pretty dumb, and I had a nice 10 hour bus ride down to Vientiane to kick myself in the head over it, but now I'm starting to look at it just as part of the adventure, and hopefully in the next couple days I'll have a new one and I'll be ready to get on with the trip. Until then, I'm passportless and broke in Laos! But I'll survive. Until then,

Sohk dee der (goodbye in Lao)

Pai, hammocks, and motorbikes

I've been in a few places since the last blog, so I'm gonna try to cram them all into blog. A lot of the last few days was spent chilling on a hammock, so there aren't as many pictures. Not to say that I haven't had an eventful time since the last blog. I went to Pai, a little hippy town in the Northwest of Thailand, planning on staying there 2 days, but I ended up staying 4, and easily could've stayed 4 more but I forced myself to leave. It was just such a relaxing place to be, and time just moved slower there. 

This is Indira cottages, the place I spent my first night in Pai. It's just a bunch of bungalows right on the river, and was really nice. I couchsurfed again for the first night in Pai, and I stayed with Sarah, a ladyboy who runs the cottages. Staying with a ladyboy was a really interesting experience, and I learned a lot about ladyboys, what their life is like, and how tough it is for them, even in such an open culture. Sarah was born a man, but from a very young age knew that she was a female inside. But she lived a lot of her life without doing anything about it. She is now in her early 40s, but only got the sex change operation in the last few years. 

There are many ladyboys in Thailand, for a few reasons that I can see. Thai culture is strongly influenced by the Buddhist religion, which is mostly focused on reducing suffering, attaining nirvana, and showing lovingkindness to all creatures. This makes Thai culture very openminded, and also very friendly. So there is not as much hatred and prejudice as in most western cultures, which lack this Buddhist perspective. Secondly, and Sarah told me this, Thai people are slightly androgynous, and Thai boys look a lot more like Thai girls than most ethnicities, and so it is easier for them to make the switch. Third, the sexual tourism industry is a major factor in the Thai economy, and the amount of money for a ladyboy to make is enough to at least be a factor in many of their decisions, and the prevalence of ladyboys presents the option to many who in western cultures would never consider making the switch, even if they should.

Given all of this though, Sarah still has a tough time fitting in to Thai society. She works as a co-owner of a guesthouse, which has nothing to do with her being a ladyboy, but still sees some prejudice from Thai people and even more from foreigners. Sarah doesn't have much trouble, however, finding drunk and curious foreigners to hook up with, but this isn't what she wants. Sarah just wants to feel like a woman, and would rather hold a guys hand or cuddle than have sex with a drunk guy. Sarah cherishes every moment like this, and it is tough because her appearance causes them to be scarce. 

I could talk all day about all that I learned from Sarah, but I'm tired and you all are probably bored. Suffice to see that I am very glad I met her, and it was very illuminating to see life from such a different perspective. 

This is Shisha, the dog that lives at the cottages, and follows you around whenever you go into town.

This is Sarah's cottage. Just you and nature.

I spent the first night staying on Sarah's couch, then the next 3 nights at an awesom hostel called Spicypai. This is the view of the common room from one of the hammocks, the place I spent the majority of my time in Pai.

This is the field beside the hostel, which was about a 10 min walk out of town. There were usually a few cows grazing.

My spot.

So when you want to get anywhere around Pai, or you don't want to walk 15 minutes just to grab some food, you motorbike. They rented them out from my hostel, and pretty much everybody in the hostel had one rented. Now as many of you may know, I don't even know how to ride a bicycle, so I was pretty skeptical about renting a motorbike. I was pretty sure if I got on that thing I would crash and die. But everyone was doing it, many for the first time, so I decided to give it a try.

Me riding my motorbike. I drove it around the hostel for about half an hour, swerving all over the place and nearly crashing about every 10 seconds. But it started to get a little easier, and after a while a ig crew from the hostel was going to the Pai hot springs, and they convinced me it would be fine to drive there, about 10 min away on the motorbike. The roads were long and straight, and there was very little traffic besides other motorbikes and the occasional elephant (we passed 2 on the way there). So I went for it and I made it there in one piece, and only swerved off the road twice. But going on the long straight roads actually was pretty easy, and was fun too, as long as I was sure I wasn't going to crash in the next few seconds.

My motorcycle gang, the Spicy Pandas.

The next day, we went to this awesome waterfall, with a big natural slide built into the rocks that you could go down. This was about a 30 minute motorbike ride, and a lot harder than the one before, but I actually felt reasonably comfortable on this trip. The only time I still feel pretty bad is sharp turns and when people or cars are around. There was a crazy little Thai kid at the waterfall, maybe 8 years old, who would provide the foreigners entertainment. He would surf down the rock slide on his feet, or moon the crowd then go down bare ass, and get a good laugh. And he would find the se leech-like tadpoles and go around throwing them on the guys, who would be acting all cool with the girls they were with but then would freak out when they found a tadpole on their shoulder. And one time the kid swam up to me in the water and jumped on my back, so I grabbed him and launched him into the air a few feet and into the pool. At first he tried to say no, but then after I did it he kept coming back for me to do it again.

Not too many pictures with this one, I kinda got lazy with the camera for a few days. But Pai was awesome, I stayed for double what I planned to, just cause it was such a chill place. I met a ton of cool people, and went out and had a blast in town every night.

But alas, all good things come to an end. But at least in my case they are replaced with other good things, as I went to Mae Sai for a couple days then am going on to Laos. I don't have time now to talk about Mae Sai, which was also really fun, but I will try to do another blog in the next couple days about it. Until then,

Sewadee krap

Chiang Mai, couchsurfing, and my quest to reach the highest point in Thailand

I just spent 3 days in Chiang Mai, which is in northern Thailand. it took about 12 hours on an overnight train to get there, but the last couple hours, when I was awake, were through amazing countryside. Northern Thailand is on the edge of the Himalayan mountain range, and the mountain Doi Inthanon, which I scaled on my third day here, is considered the first mountain in the Himalayans. I had my first couchsurfing experience here, staying with a cool Thai guy named Nink. For those of you who don't know, couchsurfing is a website that connects travelers, or surfers, with hosts, who are locals that are willing to give up their couch for free to travelers. Hosts are really friendly people who just like meeting travelers, practicing their English, or want to give back to the community for their surfing experiences. I will be mixing it up this summer between couchsurfing and hostels, so I can meet a wide range of locals and travelers.

This is Nink. He is a professor of Chemistry at Chiang Mai University, and he's a really nice, funny guy who likes gardening, animals, and karaoke. I stayed with him at his house for 3 nights, and had a great time and learned a ton about Thai life and culture.

This is Nink's dog Big. Big was super friendly, and would jump on me every time I got out of the car when we got back to Nink's house.

These are Nink's Koi fish in his pond in his yard.

My couch. Nink's house was really nice...

A waterfall near Chiang Mai University where Nink works.

A buddhist temple/school near CMU. Almost all of Thailand is Buddhist, and so even the public schools are Buddhist.

Went to Nink's garden, and picked a bunch of crazy stuff, including jackfruit, which are huge spiky things. We also picked mangoes, rambutan, starfruit, Asian apples. And we moved some Koi from his garden to the pond by his Chemistry building.

Met this little guy at an ice cream shop in town.

Went to the Sunday night market in town, it was pretty crazy. The whole town turns into this huge walking market just packed with people. These are sweet dumplings filled with pork and covered in coconut milk. Pretty good surprisingly.

This is at Doi Suthep, a big buddhist temple on a mountain overlooking the city.

Big gold spire at Doi Suthep.

More wat.

Emerald Buddha.

View overlooking Chiang Mai. This was the one day it wasn't so foggy, so I could actually see the city.

Another wat.

Spicy Thai dinner with Nink.

On the last day I went on a quest. I asked Nink what a good trek was from Chiang Mai, and he suggested I go to the top of Doi Inthanon, which is the highest point in Thailand. He said it was a 60 km minibus ride to the base of the mountain, then another 40 km minibus to the top. I thought this sounded cool, so I set off to do it. I got to the base easily in a minibus for 40 baht, a little over a dollar. Then when I tried to get another minibus to take me to the top, they said it would be 1000 baht, which sounded absurd. Apparently normally there are a lot of tourists so you can split this cost, but that day there were none, either because it was the low season, or it was rainy, or I was a little later than most tourists go, I don't know. Anyway, I decided that this was not going to work, so I did my only other option. I hitchhiked to the top.

This is from the back of a motorbike that I rode for about 10 km. The driver was a nice park ranger named Wan Phan. Or at least that's what it sounded like when he said it over his shoulder, muffled by the wind and rain and sound of the road whizzing by at 40 km/h.

After 2 cars and 2 motorbikes, and walking probably 5 km, I finally completed my quest to reach the highest point in Thailand. And I'm glad I hitchhiked, it was really fun and reinforced how friendly Thai people really are. Everyone I met along the way was really nice and friendly and cared about helping me. The family I rode back down the mountain with even bought me food.

The actual highest point.

There are two royal stuppas near the top of Doi Inthanon, one built for the queen...

...and the other built for the king.

The fog was so thick at some points that you couldn't see more than a hundred feet in front of you.

Yummy Thai snack.

Chiang Mai was great, and very relaxing as I spent most of my time just hanging out with Nink rather than touristy stuff. Now I'm off to Pai, a small hippie town a few hours northwest of Chiang Mai. Should be another relaxing couple days.

Sawatdee krap (goodbye, and hello, in Thai)