South East Asia Part 2

My last day in Vietnam was spent visiting Ho Chi Minh, the former leader of the country. Uncle Ho as he is affectionately known in Vietnam is revered as a hero and the Vietnamese government went so far as to embalm him against his explicit wishes. So, following in the footsteps of those other communist leaders Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Uncle Ho is stuffed and visible in his giant mausoleum for the interested tourist (except of course for the 3 months of the year when he is shipped off to Russia for maintenance work).

Visiting Uncle Ho requires waking up early (he only sees visitors in the morning) and going to his massive mausoleum where you wait in line while dressed respectfully (clothes covering knees and shoulders, no hats, etc.) After about 45 minutes in line you make it to the mausoleum itself where speaking is not permitted and you are basically rushed past his body in about 20 seconds while surrounded by dozens of armed guards and security cameras. Overall, it was an interesting experience just to see the amount of pomp and circumstance associated with a corpse, although I would suggest his Russian maintainers take some lessons from Madam Tussad cause Uncle Ho isn't looking so good anymore...

After Vietnam my plan was to take a bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. Unfortunately, when I tried to book my ticket I learned that an ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) conference was taking place in Vientiene at the time and for the next 6 days no tourists would be allowed into the city. Since every mode of transport to Laos from Northern Vietnam goes to Vientiene I was required to make some changes to my itinerary. In the end I decided to fly to Bangkok and visit Northern Thailand before crossing the border into Northern Laos and then go south through the country until crossing back into Thailand to visit southern Thailand.

These changes actually worked out really well because in Laos there are no ATM machines and much to my chagrin I realized my ATM card was about to expire at the end of July. So, flying into Bangkok allowed me to take out some much needed cash to help tide me over for the rest of my trip. An additional benefit was at this same time my future roommate Aaron was planning on going to New York City to look for apartments and being in Bangkok made it a lot easier for us to coordinate things. In fact, I spent a total of probably 12 hours over a 3 day period on email, the phone and Messenger trying to figure everything out (which is nothing compared to the amount of time Aaron had to spend actually looking at places). In the end it worked out well cause we found a really nice place in Greenwich Village (at least that's what I've been told). For any of you that are interested my new apartment as of August 15 is 277 W. 10th Street. You can find a map of where the apartment is here: http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?addr=277+West+Tenth+Street&csz=New+york%2C+ny&country=us

Apart from trying to find an apartment in New York, I did manage to do a couple of other things while in Bangkok including getting a couple of custom tailored suits, visiting a few temples, doing a bunch of shopping, and eating some AWESOME food. Although probably the most fun thing that I did was watching an exhibition Soccer match between Real Madrid and the Thai National Team. The game was a blast despite some serious challenges I had getting to and leaving the stadium that was only 25km (15 miles) away (it took over two hours to get there and almost three hours to get back). Once I arrived to the stadium I bought a general seating ticket from some touts in front of the stadium and since I was 30 minutes late for the game the touts sold it to me for less than half of face value. Even better, after entering the stadium we found seats within 5 rows of the field! It would have been nearly impossible to have better seats. Not surprisingly Real Madrid won the game three to nothing.

After almost four days in Bangkok it was time to head north and my next stop was the old capital of Thailand called Sukhotai. Despite its former glory Sukhotai is currently a very small relaxed town that happens to have dozens of old temples and other ruins scattered throughout. I arrived to Sukhotai around 6:00am after taking a night train from Bangkok and once there I rented a bicycle and went all around the city admiring the 800 year old ruins. That same evening I was off again on another night train to Chang Mai. Unfortunately, during this leg of the journey I couldn't get a sleeper car and the train was the local (not express) train which meant that it stopped every 30 minutes or so. Of course since I was sitting in the aisle seat at every stop I was awoken by passengers getting on and off the train. All in all not a very relaxing train ride and when I arrived in Chang Mai at 5:00am the next day I was exhausted. The very first thing I did upon checking in at a guest house was sleep for another 5 hours.

Once I had recovered a bit from the journey I made my way down to the guesthouse common area and started talking to some Brits and Canadians who had signed up for a three day trek of the mountainous area around Chang Mai. I decided to join them and the next morning a group of 12 of us were on our way. The trek was awesome with some spectacular views and some surprisingly difficult terrain. The first day was particularly challenging because it was very uphill and an incessant light rain made the ground really slippery. After about five hours of hiking we made it to the local hill tribe village where we were staying the night. Unfortunately, we didn't get much of an "ethnic hill tribe" experience since it was fairly obvious that the villagers were used to receiving masses of tourists and the village was more of a tourist way station than an authentic tribal village. Despite the lack of the cultural experience the village was very picturesque and that evening from the terrace of the bamboo hut where we stayed the most vivid rainbow I have ever seen appeared in front of the verdant green hills in the background making for a spectacular landscape.

The next day we continued the trek with another 5 hours of hiking eventually stopping to stay the night in another bamboo hut next to some very impressive waterfalls. It was really nice being able to jump in the river and feel the waterfall pounding against you after a hard day of hiking. The third and final day of the trek involved a short hike (about 2 hours) until we met up with some elephants. We finished the trail section of the trek with an hour long elephant ride where I got to sit directly on the elephants neck which was a lot of fun (despite being hosed off with mud by the elephant next to me). After the elephant ride we went white water rafting for an hour and a half through some fun (and really long) class 3+ rapids. The most remarkable part of the white water rafting was the incompetence of our guides who were telling us to do the exact opposite of what you actually should be doing. Fortunately, everyone survived without incident and surprisingly enough nobody even fell out of the boats. The final stop on our journey was bamboo rafting where I got to steer a 8 meter (25ft) raft with 8 people on it down a river with a bamboo pole. Not as easy as it sounds. When we finished the bamboo rafting we ate lunch and then got back into the truck to return to Chang Mai.

After another day and a half in Chang Mai wandering around the night market and enjoying the Thai food it was time to continue on to Laos. I booked a trip that included a bus ride to the Thai border town of Chang Khong and then a two day slow boat journey from the Laos side of the border to Luang Prabang. The six hour bus ride to Chang Khong was uneventful but I met a bunch of really cool people including some Italians, Brits, and Israelis during the ride. After arriving in Chang Khong (a little one street border town) we had dinner and went to the only bar in town which happened to have a live band playing. The band was decent and it was particularly entertaining that the lead singer must have had at least 10 costume changes while we were there. The next morning we crossed the the river into Laos and found our way to the boat that was supposed to take us to Luang Prabang.

We arrived to the boat in the morning to find that it was already almost full, although much to our surprise more and more people kept getting on. In fact, we sat around for over an hour and a half as as additional passengers kept coming onboard. People were forced to sit on the roof in the rain and huddle up in the cabin next to the captain. Eventually we departed on what we thought was a cramped boat, but little did we know that the worst was yet to come as the boat proceeded to make another half dozen stops picking up even more people and goods at each one!

About two hours into the trip I noticed several of the crew members running back and forth with a panicked look in their eyes and at the same time the captain started making a beeline to the shore. Fortunately, we made it back to shallow water fairly quickly because as soon as we were next to the bank water started filling up the bottom of the boat. At this point half the people on the boat had to get out so the crew could start ripping out the floorboards with crowbars in order to access the leak to try and repair it. Watching the repair process was actually quite entertaining since fixing the hole involved a pair of pants, a t-shirt and a lot of rice (no joke). Needless to say the more than a hundred people on board weren't too trusting of the hasty repair work but eventually everyone was coaxed back on and we continued the journey. Surprisingly enough, the rice and pants did the trick six hours later we arrived safely in the tiny Laotian town of Pakbeng to stay the night.

Pakbeng is out in the middle of nowhere and therefore is rather underdeveloped. It actually reminded me of a town from a western movie both architecturally with its one dirt road, and in personality since it is in a somewhat lawless opium growing part of Laos known as the golden triangle. Electricity in Pakbeng is very sparse and where it exists it is on for only a few hours a day so the candlelit atmosphere added to to the city's charms. Definately an interesting place. The next morning I left to meet the boat for the second half of the journey and discovered that rather than using the hastily patched up boat from the day before we had been split up on two smaller boats to finish the journey. The rest of the trip passed uneventfully although the scenery was incredible and I arrived to Luang Prabang by mid afternoon.

That pretty much concludes this installment of my travelogue and as you've probably noticed I've decided to fill up your mailboxes even more this time by including a couple of visual aids to better demonstrate what I'm writing about. Hopefully it doesn't fill up your mailboxes too badly and if you're interested in seeing a few more pictures I posted some up on my Imagestation account at http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2122504814&code=17638029&mode=invite&DCMP=isc-email-AlbumInvite.

Anyways, stay tuned for the next installment which will include Laos and maybe even Southern Thailand.