Beavis & Butthead do South East Asia

Leaving the truck for some more independent travel

After Yangon the group left Myanmar together and crossed the border into Thailand. A few of us had wanted to leave a bit earlier and do some travel on our own but the group visa we had for Myanmar stipulated that we had to leave as we entered, as one. We crossed and I was immediately blown away as to how modern Thailand was. I have never travelled to South East Asia and although I had been told Thailand was modern with good roads it never really hit home until I was looking at it. Shopping Centres, dual lane highways and plenty of brand names I'm familiar with. We spent 1 night in Tak before driving 300 or so km in just 4 hours to Chiang Mai. I'm fairly sure this would be the best mileage the truck would have got since it left Europe. Chiang Mai is a vibrant city and I had a good time exploring and an even better time in the pool at our hotel. It was quite weird to be amongst so many other tourists with our hotel being a stopover for G Adventure groups, quite a large company and there were always people coming and going.

Last shot of Myanmar before entering Thailand

One of the many temples I saw exploring Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai I decided to fly to Luang Prabang, leaving the group to meet up with a friend, Nick. I have been having an amazing time with the truck but after almost 1 year continuous travel on an overland truck I was starting to get a bit of cabin fever and with SE Asia being so easy to travel and my friend just a 1 hour flight away it was an easy decision. Nick travelled with me on the entire Trans Africa trip and it was great to catch him in Luang Prabang. A few beers later and a trip to Utopia bar and it was like we had never missed a beat. We ended up staying in Luang Prabang as this was where we applied for our Vietnamese visas (over a weekend - not very good planning on my behalf). It was really nice to have 4 nights in one spot though and Luang Prabang is definitely a good place to chill out.

 

Nicks on the left

Overlooking Luang Prabang towards the Mekong River

Luang Prabang

Wat Mai

Wat Xieng Thong

 

Alms giving ceremony

 

The moment we had our passports back we hopped into a mini van driven by Michael Schumacher himself after what must have been a miraculous recovery and left Luang Prabang. We arrived in Vang Vieng that evening and had an early night in preparation for a huge day. Vang Vieng is famous for its tubing down the river Mekong, spotted with bars along the way and infamous for a few backpackers that have died in the last few years doing said tubing. Health and safety does not exist in Laos at all and our induction to the day was to be driven by a non English speaking local in a tuk tuk down to the river and left to our own devices to float downstream. Luckily the first bar was only 200m away so by lunchtime the festivities had begun. With every beer was a free shot of whiskey, there was volleyball, ping pong, boule, a basketball ring that spurted out water and of course girls in bikinis everywhere. The beers flowed all day and we floated back to town sometime in the evening in a misty purple haze. Somehow we made it home, most likely on the beer scooter, but the day was not without its drawbacks. I had a ton of great pictures from throughout the day but have no idea where my camera ended up so I'm just left with my SLR from now on. To add insult to injury I accidently left our bus ticket to Vientiane in my wallet which somehow got wet........

The pictures below I've pulled from Google to give you an idea of how the day went

 

Tubing on the Mekong, fairly sensible start to the day

 

 

One of the usual bar stops, warming up

Getting interesting

Just a bunch of girls me and Nick partied with

 

And their other friends, this is where things go hazy

 

I woke up the next day in a fairly decent state, mostly due to the fact that we had got home at about 8. Nick was not so fortunate but once he had emptied his stomach of its contents he was good to go and we made our way to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. There is actually not too much to do here, a few temples and a good café/bar/restaurant scene. The only thing I found half interesting to take a photo of was the Presidential Palace although their is some nice French colonial architecture if that's your thing. We are about to hop on a 15 hour sleeper bus down to the 4000 islands in Southern Laos and then into Cambodia.

The Presidential Palace

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