Meanwhile on the otherside of the Mekong………

So I have switched countries again and am now lounging around in Laos.  Last couple of days in Chiang Mai were ok, fair few people to hang around with so all was good.  The final day of the cookery course was again a success, though slightly less so seeing as I managed to slice the tip of my finger off (well a good portion of my fingerprint anyway).  Not much else to report on Chiang Mai, took a trip out to the zoo which although relatively modern did little to float my boat, the lion enclosure was a disgrace.  The main reason for taking the trip out there though was to see the pair of pandas that Thailand has on loan from China.  All pandas in captivity are technically loaned out by the Chinese for silly amounts of money, but process had led to a much better understanding of how to look after pandas in zoos.  They were certainly the best looked after animals in the zoo anyway.  I’d never seen a panda before and after seeing the quality ‘Kung Fu Panda’ at the cinema in Bangkok I thought now would be as good a time as any!  Very cute looking, except for the photo on the wall that showed the pair doing it ‘panda style’ if you get my drift……nudge nudge wink wink and all that.

Left Chiang Mai yesterday afternoon and took a public bus to Chiang Khong, the nearest border point with Laos on the western edge of the Mekong River.  Quite a strange experience sorting it out yourself as pretty much everybody just books a package with a guesthouse that includes the bus, food, night in Chiang Khong and the slow boat down to Luang Prabang (main Laos city nearest to the border).  Got some strange looks from people along the lines of ‘independent travel, huh? How did you sort that out?’…..enough said really.  Anyway woke up and went to the border this morning, got across without a hitch apart from the $12 fine I had for overstaying my visa by one day.  The boats used to cross the river are completely flat bottomed so you are no more than about 8 inches from the water, you should be able to see that in the pictures.  It is only a 2 minute trip over the river but definitely the best way to cross a border, quite exciting!

Have manged (through a bit of luck) to get myself on the Gibbon Experience for the next 3 days .  This is basically a series of treehouses built in the rainforest that according to the disclaimer I signed earlier can be anything up to 100-150m up in the canopy!  That’s a hell of a big tree but will see when I get there tomorrow.  You do a bit of hiking through the forest, possibly 7 hours on the first day if you cannot cross the road using a truck but your mode of transport mostly consists of a series of zip lines that have been erected throughout the National Park!  Again the disclaimer I signed my life away to earlier says that you have to be prepared for lines that are up to (but not excluding anything else) 150m high and 1000m long!  That is a heck of a zip line!  It was pretty pricey at nearly 100 quid but for 3 days and the overall experience it should be worth it hopefully!

After that I’m not sure what I’ll be doing.  Definitely be taking the slow overnight boat from Huay Xai at the border to Luang Prabang and will probably stay there for a week or so, maybe do a trek.  I should be meeting up with someone from Chiang Mai for a week or two to go down through Laos so a bit depends on that.

Other than this there is not much else left to say!  So I will see you when I get back in a couple of days!  Oh and obviously my phone will not work out there so I’ll be out of contact from tomorrow morning (saturday) until Monday afternoon.  Need to sort out a Laos SIM as well, but my Thai one still works here at the moment as the border is only 100m away.

xx