The "tubing" (and more) in Vang Vieng

According to "the bible" Vang Vieng is a small town to love and to hate. This party place is filled with guesthouses, restaurants, bars and internet cafes and doesn't have a lot of character. It could be the setting of a modern day Odyssee, where the travelers get trapped by the Friends bars, like the Sirens. In more than 10 bars you can lounge while watching the never ending DVD of Friends... Luckily I could resist.

But the one thing which the town is most famous for is the tubing. With a big stack of rubber tubes on top of the tuktuk, we were driven upriver from the towns center. On the banks of the river there is a number of bars. Each bar has their own contraption setup to increase the fun. It can be a swing, a zipline or a big slide from which all of them you will end up in the water. Once you're done at the one bar, you can take your tube and float to the next bar.

Because I was traveling with a couple of Irish, we had to do the tubing during St. Patricks day. Everyone and everything green.

On the other days we went to the blue lagoon cave by motorcycle. Here the monks were also enjoying the water.

Rock climbing on the limestone rocks.

To the water cave by motorcycle. On the way we came across a village where they were having a local celebration. Karaoke, food and drinks and dancing. And we could not say no to the people who invite you. They actually would grab you by the arm to make you sit down.

Luang Prabang

The Unesco world heritage town Luang Prabang is the second biggest city in Laos with just 150.000 inhabitants. Of these 150.000 there are at least 500 monks, who wake up at 5.30 every morning to receive gifts from the locals and the tourists. With cameras and baskets of rice the tourists line up on the side of the street to give a hand full of rice to the passing monks.
The whole ritual is more like a daily routine for the monks and they all looked kind of borred while receiving their food for the day.

We, the gang from the Gibbon Experience, got to Luang Prabang with the slowboat on the Mekong river. This 2 day trip on a packed boat stops over at a small village and once in Luang Prabang it is interesting to see all these familiar faces. "Hey, you also was on our boat, right?"

We did a daytrip to a very nice waterfall and went bowling, because this is the only venue open after 23.30 at night.

Gibbon Experience Laos

It actually was Daniel from the glaciercourse last summer who pointed me to the Gibbon Experience in northern Laos. Setup by a french guy with help from a local village a number of ziplines are setup in the middle of the forest.
There have been reports of people seeing gibbons...But we haven't. We were the gibbons. Armoured with a harness and 2 ropes with carabiners to click on to the cables you can be a gibbon yourself flying over the canopy. Amazing! And lots of fun.

The treehouses are built in the highest trees in the reserve and can only be reached by zipline. During the walk to treehouse 5, where we would spend the night, we passed treehouse 1 and a couple of very long ziplines. The longest was 500 meter. Teng, our 19 year old guide, wasn't too keen on the safety, so it was good that the rest of the people in our group did pay attention to safety.

The treehouses where we stayed the night, number 5 and 6, were equiped with toilet and shower and running water and a small kitchen. The rumours about rats coming into the treehouse at night were hudgely exaggerated. We have only seen 1 rat. And it could hardly be called a rat, more a field mouse.

Oh, I nearly forgot.... A big thank you to Shane, who found my glasses in the waterfall!

Climbing in Mae Sai

Mae, myself and Sak, just before dropping me off at the bus.

Another activity without any photographs was the rock climbing in Mae Sai. When I was in Bangkok I was spectator at a Thai climbing tournament. One of the organisers gave me a flyer and this is what brought me to a climbing wall next to the 'fish cave'. Again this was an initiative where the local villagers had learnt to climb and belay. After a couple of difficult phone calls, because my host-to-be Mae didn't speak a lot of english, I got picket up from the main road. Everything was pretty well organised. There were a lot of routes set up in the rock and all the materials - shoes, harness, ropes - was available. After starting with a top rope climb I did a couple of lead climbs. The guys, Mae and Sak, tried to give me more difficult routes every time.

At the end of the afternoon I could stay to spend the night at Mae his house. He took me to the local karaoke bar where his girlfriend worked as a waitress. A lot of fun. Sak didn't know any english, but managed to teach me 'mang ma'. 'Mang ma' means 'very much'. So every time he asked me something, eg. 'muan mai?' - 'did you enjoy?' - I needed to answer 'muan mang ma' - I enjoyed very much'.

The next day I could borrow Mae his scooter and spent a day on the road visiting tea plantations and mainly enjoying the scenery.

Akha hill tribe village

I spent 2 nights in the Akha hill tribe village. A guesthouse set in the mountains in the middle of a local hill tribe village. A very interesting experience, when the rest of the group that were on the truck was having dinner in the restaurant, I was walking through the village and got talking to one of the locals. Of course I don't have any pictures of this, better luck next time.

The man that I got talking to was building a house for the family and his sister in law invited me into the kitchen. "Please come in and take a look". Her mother and her baby were in the kitchen, which was nothing more that a bamboo hut. Half of the floor in the hut was elevated with bamboo mats to sit on. The other half of the floor was used for cooking. A small fire was lit for the kettle with the jungle tea. I never turn down a nice cup of tea.
After a while the brother/father/husband came home and I got invited to stay for dinner. Dinner being rice with omelet and a mixture of small bird crushed with ginger, garlic and some other herbs. I left the hut at 23.00, when it was time to go to bed.
The next day we had a walk around the village, which included the tea plantation, a river, another, different type of hill tribe village, hotsprings and waterfall.

Pai on foot

My passport at the Chines embassy was ready on Monday, so I spent Sunday as my last day in Pai. Again Peter, Shane and Gary were too ... to join me to the waterfall. This waterfall was a short trip on the motorbike and then a long walk along a very nice path through the jungle. Sometimes I needed to wade through the stream to find the rest of the path. All the way at the end of the waterfall, after 2 hours walking, I wasn't expecting to find anybody, but it turned out that a young couple from the Ukraine had put up their tent at the base of the fall and were camping there for 2 days. They had hitchhiked from home, through Russia, Afganistan, Pakistan to India and were now on their way back through Thailand, Laos and China.

The butterfly enjoyed the salty sweat on hand and leg.