November 15-20: Ko Tao, Thailand (By Liz)

After an all-day bus ride from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, a night train from Bangkok to Chumpon (which arrived at 4am), a bus from Chumpon train station to the pier, and a nearly barf-inducing ferry (many other people were sick) from the pier out to the island, we were finally in Ko Tao, in the Gulf of Thailand. We had previously made a reservation with Ban’s Dive Resort, so we immediately set out for the hotel. Because we were going to do the open water scuba diving course with them, they gave us a free basic room. The one we got was pretty crummy and smelled like paint fumes, so they switched us to another, better room but asked us not to use the air conditioning…um, yeah right! So that was an awesome deal.

We started our scuba course that evening by meeting our instructors, watching an instructional video, and completing some reading and homework. We were in a class with four Canadians and two Irish girls. Everyone was super nice, which made the experience so much more fun. The next day we did a contained water dive (swimming pool) to get used to breathing and to practice various skills, like taking off your mask and removing the regulator from your mouth. The day after, the real fun began! We had two dives in the morning in the ocean, going down to 10 meters/34 feet! Apparently November is the worst (and the only bad) month to dive in Ko Tao, so the visibility was pretty bad, but the dive was still amazing! It’s such a cool feeling to be suspended in water, and to have fish swimming all around you rather than only below you. We had to do some more skills again, which sucked because the salt water burns your eyes and nose so much more than pool water, and makes your mouth feel awful for the whole rest of the dive. But it was a small price to pay to get used to the feeling of diving! The following day, we did two more dives, this time descending to 18 meters/60 feet.


On the dive boat!

Because we enjoyed it so much, Jeff and I decided to continue on and get our advanced open water certification, which means the diver can dive to 100 feet and can dive without a dive master. We got 5 more dives over two days. The first one we dove to 100 feet to check and see if either of us gets nitrogen narcosis at that depth. It is a condition where the diver acts very silly and feels like they are on drugs, so it is necessary to make sure the diver won’t do anything too stupid. Our instructor told us a story of a previous student who ended up chasing a fish with his extra air because he thought the fish couldn’t breathe. Luckily (or disappointingly? Haha) this didn’t happen to either Jeff or myself. The next dive we had to learn how to use a compass and a dive computer to navigate around the dive site. A bit less fun than the others, but it definitely built up our confidence. Our third dive was the night dive! We went out with flashlights and observed the different kinds of fish that come out at night. We saw lots of barracudas, who use the light from our flashlights to hunt. We also saw an enormous trigger fish sleeping on its side just like a human under some rocks. At one point, we all turned off our flashlights and moved our arms and legs around to irritate the plankton and make them glow. So freaking cool! The colors of the coral were even more vivid without the blue-hue that sunlight through water gives it.

The following day Jeff and I did the two dives all by ourselves! It gave us so much confidence in our skills and really brought the adventurous aspect. One dive was for fish identification, and it was amazing. Our instructor told us to choose one place that seemed to have a good amount of activity, and simply kneel on the ground for 5 minutes and watch what took place. We ended up choosing a great place, as it was a fish “car wash”: about 5 feeder/cleaner fish would clean all the crud off whatever one fish was in a particular spot. Once that fish was clean, it would swim away, and another fish would come in and take its place. We watched this happen with about 15 fish, and we even saw it happening in groups by species. One of the cleaner fish even swam over to Jeff and tried to figure out how to clean him! It was a super cool dive and we both loved it. The next dive was more practice with navigating a dive site, and although we didn’t know exactly where we were, we still remained within the site (our instructor said that many people end up waaayy outside the boundaries) and had a great time.


Back from an amazing dive :)

After finishing up all the paperwork for our certification, we hurriedly packed up our things to catch the early afternoon ferry over to Koh Phangan.



Beautiful sunset from our hotel's beach


A sweet kitty at the hotel waited for us every night at the top of our stairs and always wanted to hang out with us...we eventually gave in and let her cuddle on our bed!

November 3-14: Chiang Mai, Thailand (By Liz)

We originally planned to use Chiang Mai as a base for everything we wanted to do in northern Thailand, but soon after arriving to the city, we found out that Chiang Mai had much more to offer than some of those other surrounding areas. We decided to play it by ear rather than book trekking trips and buses to the mountain towns all at once. This obviously irritated our guesthouse, SK House 2, because every time we passed through reception, some was eagerly waiting to push all sorts of tours on us. They were even angry at us for buying Muy Thai boxing tickets from someone else! We went to the boxing match our first night and had a great time. It was way more affordable than in Bangkok, and they even had “lady fights” with two women boxers! We sat next to a British couple, John and Christiana, and they invited us to go motor biking with them on a two day trip out in the surrounding countryside. It sounded like a great time, so the next morning, Jeff and I checked out of our pressure-selling guesthouse and into John and Christiana’s (the White House—amazing place), rented scooters, and set off with a vague map not drawn to scale.


Muay Thai boxers

The whole trip was somewhat of a bust, in that everything we had planned to do (visiting waterfalls, hot springs, elephant camps) we never ending up doing. But it was super fun nonetheless! John and Christiana popped a tire, so that was interesting getting it fixed, and we got super lost using the crummy map. We drove around all afternoon, desperately looking for somewhere to sleep, and FINALLY found someplace just after it got dark! Some Australian guys were staying there for the night during their 2-week dirt biking trip. They (and their lady “guests” from the village) hogged up all the rooms, so the four of us shared a room with three single beds. And one of the beds felt like it was stuffed tightly with sawdust. So, not the most comfortable room ever, but very welcome nonetheless. We made it back safely the following day, and explored Chiang Mai’s Sunday night market that evening.


Beginning our moto adventure!

The next day, John and Christiana joined us in a cooking class we had signed up for. We had a recommendation for Thai Farms, which is an organic cooking school out in a country setting. They took us around to a local market first, showing us the different types of rice, curries, and condiments used in Thai cooking. Then they drove us out to their farm and showed us, in their garden, the unique fruits, vegetables, and chilies that Thai people use everyday. After a lovely day of cooking six dishes, we chowed down on all the delicious food. Jeff made an awesome coconut curry soup and super delicious chicken with cashews! At the end of the day, they gave us a cookbook with all of the recipes we made, plus a section that listed alternate ingredients in case we couldn’t find certain ones at home. We had such a good time and recommend it to anyone!


Insects and other grubs, ready to eat, at the local market


One of the meat aisles at the local market


At our cooking class out in the garden


All of our lovely creations!

Jeff and I were feeling guilty for not booking treks like we had planned, so we created our own and felt very optimistic about it. Doi Inthanon National Park has the highest peak in all of Thailand, along with many waterfalls, hiking trails, and hill tribes. Going off their limited website, we found out that they had cabin accommodation there, and that we could drive up the peak ourselves. It sounded lovely, so we drove the one hour there on our scooter. We arrived with some sore bums, saw two waterfalls near the entrance of the park, and headed out to park headquarters to book a place to sleep. There were two incompetent people running the desk, but we were able to figure out that all of their cabins were insanely expensive. There was one that was a bit cheaper though, so we decided to look at it first. It was awful. The walls did not extend all the way to the ceiling, it was grubby, and had no fan. That would have been fine with us if it were cheap, but it was more than twice as much as we were paying in the city. We decided to camp instead, and rented (from the two morons running the desk) a tent, sleeping bags, and pillows (although it was still outrageously expensive). We of course somehow got very lost on the way to the campsite, but managed to come across a good restaurant for dinner later. When we did find the campsite, it was very pretty and peaceful. The ground was very hard though, so we rented a blanket from the campsite to use as a mattress. We should have rented about 7 more! The one blanket made hardly any difference, and it was soooo freezing we barely slept. We were miserable the next morning. To top it all off, our scooter was too weak to make it up the steep incline to the summit of the mountain, so we just had to turn around and go back to Chiang Mai. It was all very sad, considering how excited we were for the trip!


One of the waterfalls at Doi Inthanon National Park

One of the most awesome things we did in Chiang Mai was visit the Tiger Kingdom. It was a touristic place through and through, complete with a gift shop and restaurant. But guess what we got to do?? Pet tigers!! It was so cool! You could choose between babies, small ones up to 2 years, medium ones up to 5 years, and big ones. We chose medium because they were less expensive than the babies and big ones, and they had no line (the babies had a huge line—understandably!). While we were waiting, the big ones ended up having a small line so we were upgraded to them! They were so massive. Their paws could like, knock you unconscious! None of them were tranquilized or anything…apparently they are just so used to humans they don’t care. Although you do have to avoid their heads and paws, and we were fine with that, haha. The large ones had a pool they could jump around in, and the keepers had a palm frond on the end of a long stick, just like a cat toy! Too funny. After our 15 minutes in the tiger cage, we walked around the rest of the grounds looking at all the other cats. The babies were so cute!!! So fuzzy and sweet. We snuck a picture of one!


Baby tiger!! :)


Massive tiger paw compared to Jeff's hand!!



Chiang Mai was a great city to kick back in and enjoy the local culture. It’s very modern, yet still very Thai, but not like a standard big city like Bangkok. Although we didn’t do too much, we loved our time there.

October 29-November 3: Luang Prabang, Laos (By Jeff)

It was a brutal 6 hour ride sitting crammed in the back row of a minivan for the duration of the trip, but we eventually made it to Luang Prabang. Since we did not yet have a guesthouse booked, we talked to one of the many guys who harass you upon stepping out of the van to stay at their guesthouses. We stopped at his place to find it suited to our needs based on the fact that he was telling the truth about where his guesthouse was on the map…this unfortunately was not the case. The next morning we learned this when we tried to go for breakfast and got horribly lost because the street we thought we were on was not the one we were actually on. About an hour of stumbling around in the heat later we settled for some German place that turned out to be delicious, but immediately headed back and checked out. We were not too happy about the owner lying about his location just to get us to stay there so we decided to head into the heart of the city where we had originally hoped to be.

Being that it was the time of the World Series and the Giants were finally in it, we had to find a place with Wifi so I could stream the game on the computer at an upsettingly early hour of the day. It took some time but we found a place right near the river and a couple blocks from the main street in the city. We set out to explore the city and check out our options of things to do for the next several days following. The main tourist street has been completely Westernized with restaurants serving pizza and burgers, wine bars scattered around, and seemingly every other store was a tourist travel company. We had talked to a couple British people in Vang Vieng who recommended a specific tour guide from a company called Phone Travel saying he was a great guy and a ton of a fun so we did our best to seek him out. We stopped at Phone Travel and asked about this Lao man named “Tom Perry” and he did in fact exist and so we booked a tour to go with him in a couple days. The rest of the day we hung out exploring the neighborhood until it came time to see the huge night market. This market was unlike any that we had seen before because it sprung up from nothing and covered the main road with canopies for blocks as vendors lined all their similar crap out for sale next to each other. After having to walk with my back hunched so I didn’t smack my head into every canopy along the way, we made it to the end where they had the food market portion which we were eager to find. Many of these places have a huge spread of various noodles, tofu, and rice laid out so you can help yourself to as much as you please for 20,000 KIP per plate (about $2.50). This was a mistake on the lady’s part to allow us to fit as much as possible because I can be quite gluttonous in these situations which she quickly learned. Liz was much more civilized about her serving, but it was all pretty decent food for the price so we were happy.

The next day started with my waking up to watch the Giants game, but not just that. While sitting in the lobby of the hotel trying to get a decent signal, a couple Lao women waved at me from the front trying to get me to buy some rice that they were carrying. After telling them I was not interested they began pointing down the road so I followed them out and saw a huge group of monks walking in a line down the street. These Buddhist monks dress in orange and each morning at sunrise (which was the time it was this morning) they walk the streets accepting food donations from the local people (generally small handfuls of rice from each of the people on the street). It was a great experience to see this unique tradition and for once being an observer where the local people were not concerned about my presence. Later that day, we decided to go on a bit of an adventure. As one will quickly find out in Luang Prabang, there are a couple beautiful waterfalls in the surrounding areas that every Tuk Tuk driver will try to take you to see. We had heard that they are a stunning sight so we ventured out to Kuang Si waterfall in a shared van with a group of other people. Once inside the national park they have an Asian black bear exhibit which was a nice bonus before reaching the waterfalls. We were quite awestruck when we saw the beautiful jungle scenery and turquoise water. When we looked further up the river we could see countless cascading waterfalls that flowed into large pools where people were able to swim in most of them. We made the trek to the top of the waterfall where we got an amazing view from the top side of the highest waterfall looking out into the jungle. We were starving at this point and headed just outside the park entrance to grab some food before going swimming and found a restaurant where our driver was hanging out. After we made some BBQ chicken sandwiches, we had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing our driver sharing beers with his friends. We would not have thought much of it until we saw that several bottles had accumulated between the few of them and that we were going to be driving home in a couple hours…we hoped that we was going to take it easy after we left. Back at the waterfall, we saw there was a big swimming area with a rope swing and an area where you can jump off the top off a waterfall into the pool below. By the time I worked up the courage to jump in it was no longer very hot and the water was very cold, but it had to be done. Liz opted to sit and watch while trying to take a couple pictures of me making a fool of myself. The water was quite refreshing to say the least, but the swing and the jump off the falls made it well worth it. All the scenery around us was something out of a movie with the perfect color water and beautiful natural jungle surrounding us. It was a shame when we finally had to leave. Shortly after we headed back to our driver to see him polishing off his last beer before heading off to take us home…we all made sure to buckle up because we had no idea just how many beers he had, but we were lucky enough to make it home in one piece. That night we went to dinner with a couple people that we met from our waterfall adventure and realized that it was Halloween so went out for a drink afterwards. There was no real celebration going on for the day, but we stopped at a bar advertising a Halloween party only to find that we were the only 4 people in the bar. It was a crazy party with all of us there, but we headed home at 11:30 after last call because there is a curfew in Luang Prabang at midnight every night.


Kuang Si waterfall

The next day we took a bit of a lazy day. I was pretty tired since I woke up very early to watch the Giants win so we got a late start. We went to a bakery called Jo Ma that was said to have delicious bagels and we were not disappointed. The rest of the day we spent casually walking around and tried to get various things done like planning, booking tickets, the blog and other things we had been putting off for some time. We strolled through the market again that night and found a place selling delicious soup and went on to sample a few various desert items on the walk back...most of which didn’t have that big chocolate taste that we so often crave. We headed back early to rest up because the next day we were going on our kayaking and elephant riding tour with the infamous Tom Perry.

The start to the day was perfect because the Giants won the World Series, and Tom Perry was right on time to pick us up. Feeling in good spirits, we were off to begin the day heading an hour North before we would get in the kayaks to head down the river. Liz and I were the only 2 people on the tour which was a shame because we’ve noticed it can have a big impact on quality control. The kayaking offered some beautiful scenery and a nice glance at local people’s lives through seeing traditional fishing villages located along the river. Tom explained to us various things about the fish traps that were set and stopped by a local fisherman to show us his catches from that day. It was not long into the trip when Tom mentioned his financial status and what his monthly salary was along with how he never gets to see his family because he has to work to support them and capped it off with, “Some people take me to dinner after the tour and they pay for me too”. From that point we were a bit confused about what to think of Tom and felt a bit uncomfortable about the whole situation. Regardless, we paddled on and were headed for the elephant camp. We made it there around lunch time and decided to have our elephant ride before sitting down to eat. Tom seemed happy and was offering to take pictures and we forgot all about the awkward comments made earlier. The elephant ride was nothing like we had imagined because it felt like the elephant was struggling the whole time to drag our butts up the steep and narrow jungle path before him. We pressed on feeling bad the entire time that it was struggling to lug us and because our 10 year old guide would whip or hit him on the head to get him moving. The best part of the ride was when he stopped to let the big fella eat. Watching the power in his trunk was just amazing as he tore down trees and branches effortlessly. By the time he was done eating he had torn a massive hole in the jungle trying to seek out the best tasting leaves and the whole time we were having a good laugh. Once at camp we stopped for lunch where I had fried rice and Liz had a chicken sandwich which was premade before the tour began. Halfway through her sandwich Liz noticed that there were ants inside her bread that were dead, but the situation was handled by Tom sticking his dirty hands in the sandwich to yank that section of the bread off the sandwich and explain that the bread must have been old…truly stellar service. The best part of the day was yet to come where we got to bathe the elephants while riding on their bare backs. We were very excited because several people had told us that it was a really amazing experience with the massive creatures. We hopped on and rode the steep incline down to the river where they casually strolled in and began having a blast. We could really sense the joy that our elephant had just being in the water and playing around and with the other elephants. It was all fun until the guide yelled for the elephant to get down and he dunked his entire head in the water, holding it under for people who fell off to get back on. We did our best not to fall in after we saw the giant poop our elephant had let go only a few moments before in the water, but it was no use and we toppled in. Standing there in the river eye to eye with the elephant was great because we felt so comfortable knowing that he did not want to hurt us, but rather he lowered his head again into the water, holding his breath, and waited for us to climb back on. We hung out there for some time as our elephant just filled his trunk and sprayed water in all directions, or threw branches that got in his way. It was a bit sad when our guide called the elephant out of the water because we could tell he did not want to leave and pretended not to listen for a bit before giving in. Overall it was an amazing experience and we were thrilled we made the choice to do it.


Extreme kayaking!


Beautiful scenery while kayaking




Liz had a little trouble getting on the elephant...

On the way home we stopped at the traditional Whisky Village where many of the local people distill their own rice whisky. Within seconds of arriving Tom was already filling up shots of whisky for us to sample and continued to do so until we pleaded with him to stop. We strolled through the village while stopping at a few various stores to see how the distilling process worked and noticed that some places had stuffed a bear (yes, a small black bear) or snakes into a jar with the whisky to serve as a form of medicine for local people. While it looked very interesting we decided not to sample those select few whiskies. During our walk back to the car Tom began telling us about the restaurant that he wanted to take us to where they serve goat meat and cheap beer and we figured it might be a real local experience. Things began to get weird when we got back to Luang Prabang and he then told us that he was not coming with us and gotten very shy and quiet. We were very unsure what was going on and why he changed his mind so abruptly, but we did not want to pry at him so we just took off. Aside from the several awkward moments the tour was pretty good, especially getting to bathe the elephants.


Bear in a bottle of whisky in the "Whisky Village"

Our final night in Laos we climbed to a hilltop temple just before sunset to see the amazing spectacle. At the bottom of the hill, people were selling various flowers, incense, and other things for offerings, among them tiny little birds! The bird lady told us to release it at the top of the hill and make a wish. We felt bad for the birds so we bought one, and let it out at the top, hoping it wouldn't be dumb and get caught again. After the beautiful sunset, we had some classy street food once again and wrapped it up with some wine at a local wine bar. Everything in the day turned out very well and we were disappointed to be leaving Laos, but excited for the upcoming chapter of the trip.


About to release our little wishbird from the hilltop temple!


Sunset from the hilltop temple

October 24-29: Vang Vieng, Laos

We arrived in Vang Vieng late at night, a couple hours behind schedule. True to scam form, our bus let us off in a guesthouse parking lot (probably the driver’s brother’s). Because it was late and we didn’t have a map of the town, we decided to ask how much this guesthouse was. It was a reasonable price, and Jeff evaluated the room while I waited downstairs with the baggage. He had some football and baseball games to watch at odd hours of the night, so it was important to him that wherever we stayed had wifi. This place said they did, and that it worked in all of the guestrooms, so Jeff tested out the signal. No signal in the room. The owner said, “Oh, ok well try it downstairs in the lobby.” Jeff tried that, and again, no signal. Looked like someone was fibbing about the amenities! We found a nearby place for me to sit with all of stuff while Jeff went off to find a suitable guesthouse. The one he found, Souk Jai Guesthouse, was a lovely, with big rooms and a good location, and was cheaper than the first one we had looked at.

Vang Vieng is a funny place for two reasons. One, because every guesthouse has an open-air restaurant downstairs which plays reruns of either Family Guy or Friends (and seriously, EVERY place…ONLY these shows…). Two, it has become so tourist friendly because of the tubing that the streets are lined with sandwich-making carts and every restaurant serves pizza and American style breakfasts. Now, what is tubing, you may ask? Tubing is the main attraction of Vang Vieng. The town has a small river running through it, the Nam Song. Tourists rent giant inner tubes and catch a tuk tuk (auto rickshaw) upriver to a certain starting point, where there are two loud, spring break-style bars, competing for customers. The bars hand out bandanas and free shots of Lao whisky (ugh), and have water slides and rope swings into the river. Once you are done at these bars, you hop into your tube and float down the river a couple minutes until you arrive at the next bar, where employees throw you a plastic bottle attached to a rope, and they reel you in. The process repeats itself until it gets too dark and everyone has floated down the river back to the center of Vang Vieng. There are about 15 or so bars, but it’s impossible to go to every one.

Our first day tubing, Jeff and I shared the tuk tuk upriver with a group of mainly British people who had traveled together through Southern China on a tour. They were super friendly and we tagged along with them, having a great time. Jeff went off a few of the slides and rope swings (which look totally safe, by the way….not), but I was too much of a wiener to do it too. One of the bars had mud volleyball and boy, was it disgusting! Everyone was throwing handfuls of mud at each other, slipping, and tackling other people, but it was all in good fun. These people we were hanging out with were keeping a bit ahead of the rest of the group of tubers, so we missed out a little on some of the action and cut our tubing time short because we were unsure of where the end was. All in all, it was a crazy fun day, but we wanted to give it another shot since we knew what we would be doing the second time around.

The following day we hired a guide to take us on a trek of the surrounding mountains out to a secluded waterfall. The trek was gorgeous. The scenery is just amazing, with limestone cliffs coming out of nowhere. The hike itself was a bit arduous, very sweaty, and rather slippery. Jeff and I both slipped a couple times during a small river crossing (those rocks are slippery!), but luckily we didn’t get hurt at all. The waterfall was beautiful, and definitely secluded. We didn’t see any other westerners our whole trek out there! Jeff and I swam in the chilly water while our guide totally roughed it and barbecued us some chicken skewers for lunch over a wood fire! It was delicious and very impressive. The walk back was a little less fun, due to tons of prickly bushes whose thorns constantly got caught in our skin, and insanely thick, slippery, unavoidable mud. Oh, the guide has also forgotten a set of keys he needed to open a gate on a bridge, and suggested we hang onto the side of the bridge while we swung our legs around the gate. Um, SO dangerous! The river was beyond shallow if we were to fall. Jeff and I decided not to risk it, and to make an extreme river crossing instead. We were definitely tuckered out at the end of the day, but the trek was a lot of fun. There is so much beautiful scenery in that part of Laos.


Terrifying bridge



We pushed our schedule back by a day so we could give tubing another shot. This time we shared the tuk tuk with two English girls and an Australian girl. They were all super sweet and were nice enough to take our pictures (we didn’t bring our camera because we didn’t want it getting lost or ruined, haha), even though we forgot to exchange information! Grr! Oh well, those pictures of us are lost forever. We took our time more slowly than the previous day of tubing, and a lot of fun chatting with other travelers who had come from places that we were going to visit in the near future. Towards sunset, though, things got a little weird. People began the quickly leave the bars, heading for home. I heard someone mention keeping your tube with you (normally you just leave it before you go into a bar, and just take any one when you leave) so no one could take it. It made sense to be cautious, so I grabbed up the first one I saw. Jeff tried to do the same, but someone got all cranky and said that they were holding on it (along with like, seven others) for their friends. We looked and looked, but couldn’t find an extra one for Jeff! Turns out, lots of people just hire a tuk tuk to take them to starting point, and use other people tubes the whole day, so they don’t have to pay anything to the tube rental companies! So terrible! So Jeff and I saddled up on the one tube I found and, in the dark, slugged back down the river on an overweight tube. Then things REALLY went downhill! We encountered some small rapids, were headed for a sharp branch, and lost our balance. The waterproof pouch I had around my neck, which held the rest of our money, somehow got pulled off my neck and was completely lost. Jeff and I each lost a flip flop trying to regain our balance on the rocky bottom in the strong current. We almost even let loose of our tube! We somehow managed to climb back on, but the situation repeated itself again further down, and we each lost our remaining shoe. The river was dark, quiet, and empty, and we were starting to get pretty worried that we had completely missed our ending point on the river. Thankfully, because we were floating so slowly, a big group of conjoined tubes floated past us, and we latched on. We talked to them the whole way down, and they were from all over the world. We finally made it to the end, jumped off our tubes, trudged through some deep mud barefoot (no leeches, I hope?) and made it back to a familiar road in town! And even better, Jeff found an abandoned tube at the side of the road, no doubt from one of those losers who just hijacked his. This way, we could get our deposits back! Yay! We returned the tubes, got some awesomely delicious sandwiches from one of the street carts (complete with French’s yellow mustard), and hit the hay before leaving the next day on a treacherous mini bus ride to Luang Prabang.


Rice paddy

October 22-24: Vientiane, Lao (By Jeff)

It was a mere 1 hour flight from Hanoi and we arrived in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. Unfortunately we had heard from several people that there was not much to do in the city other than fly in and out of it. However, this was not the case for the 1 weekend of the year that we happened to be visiting. Each year there is a festival to celebrate the end of Buddhist lent that lasts a few days where they expect over 500,000 people to show up from all over the country. Being completely oblivious to the fact this was going on, we were caught off guard when we first approached the main street where everything was happening our first night. We walked around for some time on the street market and were overwhelmed by the sea of people going in every direction. I tried one of the sucker carnival games where I had to throw a dart at a balloon and pop it to win a prize. Sounds easy enough right? After making an ass of myself and missing everything my first 2 throws I went for a power third throw where I extended my arm too far and caught my hand on a bowl of candies in my follow through and raked them all on to the ground at my feet. It was really embarrassing, but Liz at least got a good laugh out of it as well as other locals. To top it off, I still missed the balloons after my big windup throw. We continued walking until we decided we wanted to stop and sample a bit of local cuisine from a makeshift restaurant made of plastic tables and chairs on the street. No one at the restaurant spoke a word of English and our Lao was rusty so we pointed to a bucket of what we thought were hard boiled eggs and 2 beers to make it simple enough. Once the eggs were brought over we cracked them and instantly realized we made a mistake. Liz had read that they serve embryo eggs out here as a delicacy rather than just a regular hard-boiled egg, and that was the case here. It was a disgusting site seeing a chicken embryo in the food we were expected to eat so we quickly lost our appetite. We did our best to conceal the fact that we did not eat a single nibble out of it, but I’m sure it looked pretty obvious. The table beside us ordered a bucket of the eggs and were chowing down on them like there was no tomorrow to add insult to injury. We found dinner some time after at a French restaurant to revert back to something we were sure we would like, and avoid any further adventurous behavior for the night.


Embryo eggs...

The following day we started the morning off at a Scandinavian bakery which was delicious. They had bagels and cream cheese which Liz had been especially craving for months now amongst other things like sandwiches, muffins, and desserts so we were content. Upon finishing up the breakfast a pair familiar faces passed our table: it was one of the couples from Sacramento that we met on Phu Quoc Island. We were very surprised since it had been a couple weeks when we had seen them in a different country, adding to our list of small world occurrences. We chatted with them for a bit and recalled their saying that the husband, Tui, had family still living in Laos and they were there for a visit. They also mentioned that the next day there was the huge boat races throughout the day which is the main event that everyone from all over comes to see. At that point our bus was leaving in a few hours, but we hurried back to switch it to the next day so we could catch a glimpse of one of the biggest days of the year in Laos. We managed to change the tickets and then went out walking around the city for a while trying to find a travel agent to book our next flight (travel agents get much better deals than buying it yourself online) and stop off at a Wat along the way. That evening we headed out to the festival again where that night was supposed to be a river ceremony. Thousands of people buy handmade banana leaf boats made with various flowers and candles, light them, and place them in the river to float down. They had a very similar ceremony when we were in Udaipur, India but there were thousands more people out to take part in this celebration. We learned that by placing one of these boats in the river that one was washing away their fears and bad karma while giving oneself good luck. In addition, people light candles beneath large white paper bags and after a certain level of heat is contained they will take off floating like a hot air balloon. It was an amazing site to see hundreds of these lantern balloons flying as well as the endless flow of banana leaf boats floating down the river simultaneously. That evening we had some traditional Lao food at a restaurant overlooking the whole street market and river while enjoying some quality Beer Lao (creative name). On our walk home we ran into our friends, Patty and Tui, again and said our goodbyes because we knew that it was going to be our last unplanned encounter.


Our offering that we put into the river



The next morning we were off on our brief 3 hour bus ride in the “VIP” bus to Vang Vieng. Just to be clear, there was absolutely nothing about this bus that was VIP, but rather it was a disgustingly dirty, no AC, shocks and windows broken, and all around disaster of a bus. Nonetheless, it took us to take Vang Vieng.

October 9-22: Saigon, Hoi An, Hanoi, Sapa, and Halong Bay, Vietnam (By Maryann Nichols)

Gary and I arrived in HCMC after about an 18 hour journey that wasn’t too horrible thanks to business class and ambien! We all met up at the Sheraton and it was great to see Jeff and Liz with their giant packs!! They are both healthy and happy after 5 months on the road at $35 a day. The Sheraton was a nice oasis after their budget travel (air conditioning! fitness center! little shampoos!!) in the middle of what can only be described as a teeming soup of motorbikes, crazy taxis and blaring horns. Also it’s hot, humid and pours rain in buckets with little to no warning. Your basic third world, no zoning, overcrowded big city. But we got out and saw the famous market (full of every brand knockoff) , crossed a few very busy streets….step out and keep moving slowly and let the hundreds of motorcycles go around you like a school of fish. Scary but it actually works. We went to the War Remnants Museum which is the Vietnam review of the “American” war. It’s a daunting and depressing few floors and a very different perspective that we have. Just learning about the amount of Agent Orange we dropped on this country is unbelievable. The destruction through this and bombing was staggering, and we still lost. Around the museum there is a Chinook helicopter (huge!!) and a bunch of tanks and planes. Guess we just left them all there and now we pay to see them. We also went to the Rex hotel for a beer, famous for the 5 o’clock follies during the war which was the daily press briefing and body count.


Ho Chi Minh City


Tank at War Remnants Museum

The next day it was off to Hoi An, which was a huge improvement over Saigon. Lots of history, very beautiful and a cool old town lit up by lanterns in the evenings. Hoi An is famous for its affordable and fast tailors. We all trooped around the first night trying to figure out the process. It’s confusing as it’s a constant sales pitch from every doorway. I’m not sure how we ended up where we did but we picked one and started with a pin stripe suit for Jeff and a linen suit for Gary and ended up with 3 suits, a blazer for Liz and assorted other items. This involves a very sweaty measuring session, the humidity was at the apex that night, and then return visits for trying on wool clothes in the sticky heat. There is really no acclimating to this weather. But it was a win-win for all. The suits were amazing for about $100 each and they are literally done in 24 hours, so someone is sewing all night. We had to buy another suitcase just to get it home. I was lured into buying lots of other trinkets at the market of course but it was a fun experience. We stayed in a beautiful resort in town and ended each day with a much needed dip in the pool. One day we rode bikes out to Hoi An beach, which was about 4km away. Traffic comes at you from all directions so you have to stay sharp but we made it in one piece. We hung out at a great resort for the day and really beat the heat. The last night we decided to go to “happy hour” at the hotel. Buy 2 drinks and get 1 free. Their flaw in this program is that they staff it with a bartender and cocktail waitress who have never had a drink in their lives and got confused at Jack and Coke. We all kept switching drinks trying to figure out how to actually get some alcohol (vodka tonic: ½ oz vodka, giant can of tonic….) Liz had the nerve to order pineapple juice which completely threw the waitress who couldn’t figure out what to charge us. Costly experience.


Hoi An


Traditional fishermen

Then it was off to Hanoi for the next phase of the trip, the trekking. We had to taxi into the city to pick up the train tickets for Sapa which is the mountain region where 5 different hill tribes live. Made it on time, then went to our Hanoi hotel to drop off extra bags so at least we weren’t lugging the wool suits. Then finally to the train station for the night train to Sapa. Long day. And may I say that the “soft sleeper” cars were slightly misleading, but we all managed to catch a few hours before arriving at 5 am. The train pulls in and we are in the driving rain but the guides were there and drove us about an hour to the town. After breakfast and poncho buying we decided to do a modified hike to the first village. The hill tribes are around Sapa and we were greeted by the first, the Black Hmong women. They are tiny but determined. The first step is the establishment of rapport. Where you from? How old are you? How many children? Then they go in for the sale. There is always a large basket full of textile products that then appears along with about 5 of their friends with the same crap. Needless to say it’s going to be a very special Christmas at the Nichols. They will hike with you for miles in the hopes of a sale. But as we slogged along, the sky cleared and we had a great day. Trekking here means walking to different ethnic villages, we saw their homes (dark, smoky and sparsely furnished) a native dance show (cool) and jumped over streams and slid down muddy paths past pigs, dogs, water buffalo and chickens. But it’s surprisingly fun and the vistas are amazing of terraced rice paddies and towering mountains. We stayed in an Eco Lodge literally in the middle of nowhere but we had great views and it was a good set up for the next day walk to another village of the Red Zao (big red headresses, shaved heads and very aggressive peddlers) When you leave the hotel area it’s a swarm of women trying to sell, they leave this out of the guidebooks. Jeff and Liz always had the plan on how to move through them quickly, even assigning places for us to stand. This never worked, by the way. In the end, in some unseen agreement, the group of 20 falls back except for 3 who have pulled the next tourists and can’t be deterred. The establishment of rapport begins and pretty soon I’ve got one on each side as personal porters. They actually led me down the incredibly muddy hill and across a pretty raging stream and through their village. It’s all friendly and beautiful until it’s payback time and the baskets of stuff come out, then it’s a steely eyed hard bargain that my group determines afterward that I capitulated too quickly over the $2 but whatever. It’s also interesting to note that the women are all in their traditional dress reflective of their tribe but the men all look like they shop at Ross.

Tribe ladies who followed us our entire trek until my mom bought their crap




Sapa, Vietnam

On day three of our mountain adventure, they picked us up at 7:30 for the 3 hour drive through the mountains to Bac Ha, the scene of the multi tribal market. It was a great market and they sell everything from souvenirs to water buffalo and weird food. Our guide then took us to the worst lunch we ever had (included in the tour) then next we were off to the short “trek” and the river trip. I pointed out that it had started raining pretty steadily but he assured us that it wasn’t raining where we were going 30 minutes down the mountain. This was a lie. In that we didn’t have to be back at the train station until the evening to go back to Hanoi, there was an itinerary and he was sticking to it. So we slopped through the mud for at least a mile on this trail with water buffalo and bored looking villagers staring at us. Our guide was in dress pants and loafers and because he weighed 80 pounds didn’t look half as bad as we all did. He probably does this crummy tour daily. The boat trip was freezing as the rain was coming in at a 45 degree angle by now. The river was low which only highlighted how much Vietnam needs to work on its national litter policy. There are plastic bags and water bottles everywhere, it’s quite scenic. OK, so that was the most lame day of the trip. We were all happy to see our “soft sleeper” cars again. The train left at 8:30 and arrived in Hanoi at 4:30 am where we had absolutely nothing to do. Luckily the hotel picked us up and let us stay in their lounge and Jeff got the Giants game going on his computer.

So we had a day in Hanoi which is actually a much cooler city than Saigon. The old quarter is well preserved, they had just had their 1000 year celebration so lots of decorations were still up. They have a nice lake in the middle of town that has tons of neon at night. We went to the temple of literature which was their 1000 year old college. It was pretty but we were all tired so whatever. The Vietnamese like to eat on the street and there are tons of pho noodle shops where everyone sits at tables and chairs that would be small for preschoolers. Americans are huge for this country and usually sweating, especially me. Jeff and Liz have turned into the adventurous eaters as well, we had water buffalo satay but I drew the line at the cricket spring rolls. Meanwhile the wonderful hotel, who took care of everything was worried about the offshore typhoon that had hit the Philippines coming toward us which could wreck our boat trip the next day so we were sort of in limbo as to Plan B as we didn’t have one.

But luckily the Typhoon veered toward Hong Kong so off we went to Halong Bay for our 2 night cruise on the Chinese junk. This was definitely a highlight of the trip, the weather was great, warm and sunny. The boat was luxurious and comfortable and the food was excellent. We went swimming, kayaking through caves where we saw bats and monkeys and just cruised around and relaxed. They took us to some caves which they lit up with different colored lights, kind of cheesy but pretty. It showed effort. Gary celebrated his birthday on the boat and they carved a watermelon into some elaborate flower and we all had shots of B44’s which are some potent concoction. Great night. On the third day we headed back to Hanoi for our last night and made the most of it. Gary and I ran over to the Hon La prison (Hanoi Hilton) which is where the US pilots, including John McCain were “housed” for up to 7 years. This prison was really old and has been used by the French to lock up communists, communists to lock up protesters, then US soldiers then each other. It’s a museum now but it was easy to see how horrible this must have been. There are a lot of pictures, many propaganda, of the prisoners enjoying Christmas and playing basketball. They also had a lot of pictures of the US war protests in different cities. They had a lot of captured pilots from the December 1972 carpet bombing that we did to Hanoi and the destruction to their city was stunning so they weren’t very nice to their captives. But at least they got out in 73 unlike McCain who was there for 7 years. Overall the war seems long ago but these reminders really illustrate the brutality on both sides and you can’t help but reflect back as you travel through the country which is really quite small. The people are really friendly and gracious for the most part and you can’t fault them for always trying to make a sale.

So the next day, Gary and I were off to San Francisco and Jeff and Liz took off for Laos. We had a great time and only wish our pictures had turned out better! XO to all.


Halong Bay




Dad's birthday


Jumping off the boat




Hanoi


Weird ghost lady in corner of an otherwise cool picture

October 4-9: Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam

We arranged for our hotel, Thanh Kieu Resort, to pick us up at Phu Quoc’s small airport, and they showed up on time, with our name on a sign. The driver dropped us at the hotel reception, but it was deserted; no one was working the desk. We waited a while, and finally asked the driver where everyone was. I suppose he didn’t speak any English because he just motioned us back towards the front desk. We waited a bit more and at last someone arrived to check us in. We had reserved a beach front bungalow (sounds really fancy, but it was like $2 more per night than the other rooms), and we were shown our room. It was hardly beachfront. We were on the frontline of bungalows, but we could not see the ocean because we were far away, there were many palm trees, and there was CONSTRUCTION going on just in front of the bungalow. The receptionist lady asked, “Is no problem for you,” and it sounded more like a command. It was also very warm and buggy, with no air conditioning in the room. We asked if there was anything else, and she said no. Well, it would have been nice to know when we called ahead to book the room that there was construction! I guess she saw our discontentment, and magically another room, slightly farther from the construction, became available. Although it still was not exactly as we had envisioned, we took it.

After travelling all morning, we were a bit hungry, so we went out to find the hotel’s restaurant. Non-operational. We decided to walk down the beach to find another place to eat at, and saw that our hotel had the WORST loungers. They were hard, with no pads, and were sticky from being freshly painted. There were also no umbrellas. Jeff and I don’t have high standards, but when a place markets itself at a beach resort, one expects certain amenities. We continued on down the beach, asking at every hotel how much their rooms were. We found one place, Lien Hiep Thanh, on the same beach with cheaper rooms which were much more beach front. And they had air conditioning! And an awesome-looking restaurant! With loungers with pads and umbrellas! Lovely. We reserved a room for the following night. We trudged back to our place and tried to lay on the uncomfortable loungers for a while, but it began to rain anyway, so we ran back to our bungalow to mope.

It rained the majority of the time for a couple days, which was a huge bummer since we only had four days on the island. But once it lifted, Jeff and I had a fabulous time relaxing on the beach. There is a breed of wild dog on the island who have little Mohawks along their backs. They were very cute and sweet, and a few played on our hotel’s beach every day.

We decided to try night squid fishing because it sounded pretty fun and unique. We went through a tour company who was renowned for their spectacular English. But can you believe it, our guide didn’t get on the boat with us because he said he had a bad hangover, and the two guys on the boat couldn’t speak any English. Everything was fine for a while, as Jeff and I enjoyed the lovely sunset, but once it came time to fish for the squid, we had no idea what to do, and the crew were not able to explain it to us. We tried to imitate them, but we could not catch one single squid between the two of us. The crew caught a few, and one of them even shot its ink all over the deck! It also didn’t help that I was feeling very seasick. They fixed us up a seafood dinner, but I wasn’t able to eat mine until once we were back in the harbor. Overall, we had much higher expectations than what actually happened.

The next day, we joined a snorkeling tour with an Australian couple. The tour stopped by a pearl farm, and then took us out on the boat to a couple of Phu Quoc’s best snorkeling spots. There were definitely lots of fish and coral, but not the brightly colored kind one sees in Hawaii. It was still a very fun time, though; much more of a success than the night squid fishing! That night we headed down the night market for dinner. There were countless restaurant stalls preparing all kinds of fresh seafood: red snapper, clams, so many kinds of sea snails, crabs, sea urchins, scallops… We ate at a place whose owner learned English in Australia, so it was very interesting to listen to his accent. Everything was soooo delicious! We got a sampler of everything he had and it only cost us like six dollars each.

The next night we ate at our hotel (a similar kind of seafood selection) and met two couples from Sacramento. They were super nice and invited us over to their table. They had met a British couple earlier that day, and they met up with us too. We talked and had drinks until pretty late, and made plans to meet up again the following day. The Sacramento couples decided to rent motorbikes/Vespa type scooters to cruise around the island, but I was a little too scared to join them, because of horror stories I had heard of motorbike accidents. Instead, Jeff and I lazed around the beach, relaxing and reading. We ran into them later that afternoon, and one of the women had gotten into an accident on her bike! Although it was nothing too serious, she still messed up her ankle and I was happy I had decided not to go. Jeff and I, the two Sacramento couples, and the British couple, went back to the night market for dinner that night and had a lovely time. We even ran into the Australian couple from our snorkeling trip! Jeff and I had to leave the next morning to go meet his parents in Saigon, so we said our goodbyes to everyone, and headed back to the hotel to pack up our things so we’d be ready to leave bright and early the following day.


Huge catch


Squid fishing...we had no luck but our guide did