Sabaidee!

The bus journey to Luang Namtha in Laos was everything but boring. Crossing the borders of China and Laos, frequent stops for local tourists and crowds of money changers made the trip interesting. As soon as we arrived in Luang Namtha we quickly saw that from now on we won't be the only white faces for a long time. So many tourists everywhere! For the first time in 6 months we joined the stream of thousands of tourists travelling north or south in Laos. And after a comment of a tourist who came to this place to "escape the crowds" we knew it won't get better further south.

Soon we started to enjoy the upsides of tourism, restaurants with English menus, English speaking locals, masses of guesthouses and hostels. "Sabaidee!", the greeting in Lao language together with a huge smile quickly made us feel very welcome in the new country. We were also happy to finally be able to exchange tips and stories with other travellers, too rare were those occasions so far.

One day we rented a motorbike and explored the area around the town, it was a beautiful day! The main reason that brought us to Luang Namtha though was the rainforest, the "Nam Tha national protected area" in particular which is supposed to be home to clouded leopards, tigers, elephants and birds. The main attraction for other travellers were the minority villages though. We checked out some travel agencies and searched for a tour WITHOUT visits or overnight stays in those villages. Harder than expected. We finally signed up for a 2 day, 1 night trekking tour. First we had to sign a form that released the agency, the town and the state of any responsibility. After arguing for about an hour we were allowed to exclude certain parts of the form. Not a good start.

We left the next day in the morning with a tuk-tuk. We drove for about an hour and stopped finally in a village next to a school. Our arrival made the round and soon we were surrounded by kids, curious but still a bit shy. They watched us fixing the backpacks for a last time, then we set off through the village and off into the surrounding rice fields. We walked quite a long time along a hill, rice fields beneath us and thick forest above. After a steep climb up a mountain we finally reached the rainforest or what they call rainforest. On this walk Anni asked the guide, an unexperienced, young receptionist (yes, that was his real job) what kind of animals we'll see over the next two days. "Animals? No animals. There are no animals." After that comment we were absolutely disappointed. There was no rainforest as we knew it from the Amazon (incomparable as we know by now) and no animals. The guide barely spoke english even if they said he will speak, there was barely enough vegetarian food for Anni even if they said there will be and his explanations were limited to comments like "there's a mushroom" or "look, bamboo". The overnight stop was in a house at a river, very nice setup but the house was in bad condition, no place to sit down, not enough material to fix the mosquito nets and no foam mattresses even if they said there will be. So we didn't see animals (except a green pit viper), we didn't eat good and we slept really bad. After all it was a big disappointment for us, we wouldn't do it again but everyone else seemed to enjoy it so we guess we were just spoiled by the amazing Amazon.

We then left for Luang Prabang in a minivan. 8 hours through the mountains with a driver that seemed to be in his own imaginary race, it wasn't fun. In Luang Prabang we found a hostel along the main road but a bit outside the main centre. We didn't do much mostly due to the incredible high temperatures and to stomach problems we were both suffering from after a day in town. Also is Luang Prabang quite expensive so we strolled around the town, visited a temple and read a lot. It is a very nice place with temples on every corner but also very touristy and therefore higher prices for everything. The main attraction for all the tourists is probably the night market. A whole street is closed from the evening on and hosts hundreds of tents with women selling everything a package tourist might want as a souvenir. Apart from useless dust collecting items they also sell all sorts of clothes, tea, coffee, bags and paintings.

Despite our original plan to skip it we then went to Vang Vieng. THE place in South East Asia they say. We heard more people telling us to stay away than encouraging us to go there. It's the place that was famous for the "tubing", to get drunk, high, and then float down the river in a black rubber tube. WAS famous. Now all the bars that were supplying the "tubers" with extra alcohol spiced up with opium and magic mushrooms on their journey had to close, their bars ripped down after over 20 tourists died in 2011. Now there's still a lot of party going on in town but now in town and not on the river as before. Also the tubing didn't stop and it's actually a nice idea if you do it with a clear head. There were some people leaving the river with their tube once in a while and not in masses like we saw on pictures, how it used to be. We stayed in a bungalow across the river for 40'000 kip/night (4€) and really enjoyed this place! It is famous for a reason and that reason is the beautiful landscape. The river, karst peaks, thick forest, everything green, it was a place to relax for us.

Next and last stop in Laos (for the moment) was Vientiane, the capital. It's relatively small for a capital and we liked it there. It was just unbelievably hot! Even just sitting in the shade made us sweat like never before. But we had a mission and that was to get 2 months visas for Thailand, our next destination. Together with an English friend we met on the bus we walked to the Thai consulate and applied for the visa. The next day we could already go back to pick the passports up and yes, we had the visa! It didn't say for how many days though and we couldn't get specific information about that. I asked a lady working there and she said that depends on the immigration officer on the border... So we hoped for the best.

We also sent once more clothes and souvenirs home, we decided to travel in "flip-flop countries" from now on so we got rid of some warm clothes we still carried around. Then we booked a bus straight to Chiang Rai in north Thailand but it soon turned out that it wasn't just a direct bus. First it was a huge kind of tuk-tuk that was overloaded with tourists to the bus terminal. There we then sat, waiting for the connecting bus with just a ticket to Udon Thani (we hoped) but nothing more. We didn't know which bus to take, where we were going now and how we could get on the next bus from Udon Thani to Chiang Rai. I've been to Thailand before and had these situations there before and it was never a problem, we still were nervous. Happily we met Peter, an older traveller from the states who had a note from the agency that said "Udon Thani, man with red shirt with number 16". That was already much more than we had! It all went well in the end. Got the bus to Udon Thani, crossed both borders without problems, and did find the guy in a red shirt and the number 16, holding tickets for all of us! The bus left 2.5 hours too late and the "first class" we booked looked like a random bus in Bolivia but all was good now. Soon we all fell silent, the bus noisily rattling us into sleep, everything so familiar to all the bus travels we've done before.