Koh Pangan and it's love for the moon

We're back in Bangkok after 9 days on beautiful, quiet, crazy, cooky Koh Pangan - the island with something for everyone. We spent the first rainy days on Haad Gruad beach resort, a negative place where only dogs knew how to behave. We met some cool people there though, and togther we did cross the line to excitement a few times (playing cards and, well, playing cards).

After having had enough of the rude owner of the place, everyone left on the same day. Malin, Josefien (a dutch girl we met there), and I went to Bottle Beach up on the northern tip of the island. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on the island and you can only get there by boat. Unfortunately it continued raining for the whole time we were there, so our days were spent lying around on cushions in the restaurant, reading, and playing cards and 4 in a row (which Malin found so exciting she later bought one to take on the plain home).

We also walked up to the view point one day, and swam in the rain with the flying fish.

On the 15th we travelled down to Haad Rin, the well-known full moon party beach. It's a crazy, crazy place, but so wonderful. The days we spent there were definitely our best days on the island, and we were sad to leave yesterday morning, the day of the full moon party.

We'll come back some time though.

On the bus back up to Bangkok we ended up, by coincidence, in the V.I.P lounge, thanks to two british girls who managed to talk the seating woman in to letting them sit in there (though it was "only for staff"). It made the trip a lot more comfortable than it could have been.

Laos, the Mekong and back to Thailand

I've been too lazy to blog ever since we left Laos, but I'm still alive and well.
We left Luang Prabang on the 30th of May, on a slowboat up the Mekong to Huay Xai; a two day journey. We were told it would be hard on our behinds, so we all bought either pillow covers or big lao bags from the night market that we stuffed with clothes to prepare ourselves. The boatride turned out to be pretty comfortable though, compared to what we had imagined. It wasn't at all crowded as we had been told, in fact, the only foreigners on the boat were Malin and I, Krishna and Yushan, Jenny and Grace who we met climbing in Vang Vieng, and Nanna and Bjarke from Denmark who we had met the day before at Big Brother Mouse (a children book publishing place where Krish, Yushan and I went to help teenagers with their english. http://www.bigbrothermouse.com/ We played scrabble and had fun for half a day).
The two days on the boat were some of the most realaxing days we've had on this trip. There wasn't really much to do but read, listen to music and watch the scenery. We spent the night in Pak Beng, at a hostel run by women who took us to a restaurant where we all got free LaoLao (local rice whiskey) after dinner. It's a disgusting drink, it really tastes aweful, but Grace, Jenny, Malin and Bjarke stood up and finished it, though in the slightly strange combination of LaoLao, sticky rice and mashed potatoes. All at once.

We also had to spend the night in Huay Xai (no LaoLao here), Malin and I had planned to do the Gibbon Experience (http://www.gibbonx.org/gibbon_rehabilitation.php), but after visiting the office we decided it was too expensive for us, so we joined the others back in to Thailand instead. Once there, we made our way to Chiang Rai, where we walked around and found nothing to do but buy t-shirts, and then on to Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai is in my opinion a too big small town, though it's still nice and quiet (and full of temples). We spent three lazy days there, and two sort of productive days. The lazy days were spent mostly in the many bookstores, just walking around, consuming food or hanging out in coffee shops and what came to be our "regular bar", The Wall. There we played pool and drank colorful alcoholic drinks (almost) all named after Pink Floyd songs.
Krish, Malin and I went to the Doi Suithep Temple one day. It lies on top of a mountain right on the outskirts of the city, and it's said that you havn't been to Chiang Mai before you've visited Doi Suithep. Unfortunately we were there on a cloudy day, so we didn't get to see the view that I'm sure is beautiful when the sun is out.
On our two last days in Chiang Mai, Malin and I did a massage course. Mainly thai massage, but also a little oil massage. It was interesting, getting a thai massage is kinda like stretching without having to do anything yourself. They don't actually walk on you, but it's not far from it. It's good in a strange way.

From Chiang Mai we took a bus to Sukhothai. We spent a day there biking around the historical city, which is an old capitol, like Ayuttaya (sp?), and it was nice to see all those temples that were so well preserved.
We got on a night bus to Bangkok the same night, got no sleep at all and were almost falling asleep standing up when we arrived at the northern bus terminal at 5 a.m the next morning. We managed somehow, by using the international sign language/hand gestures and pointing, to order some breakfast; fried noodles and vegetables, from a woman who didn't speak a word english. Then we got a taxi to the southern bus terminal, booked tickets for another night bus further south, left our (by now) big-ass, heavy backbacks there and jumped on a city bus headed for Lumpini park. We were both unable to stay awake, but the nice ticket lady woke us up at the right stop, and we went straight to the nearest tree and fell asleep for two hours among other people taking their Sunday nap on the grass.
After sleeping in the park, and in Starbucks, we went back to the bus station and got on a more comfortable night bus. Woke up in Surat Thani and took the boat to Koh Pangan where we'll be living an extremely laid back life until the 17th.
:)

Four days in Luang Prabang!

Window seat view, Vang Vieng - Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang night market

Luang Prabang

Elephant riding!

Mekong river

5.10!

Malin, Krishna and Yushan (two girls we met in Vientiane who we've been hanging out with) and I went climbing yesterday (23-05) with Green Discovery, and it was one of the best days I've had so far on this trip. We were with a group of 9 people in total, plus 3 guides and a dog, and it was really good to be climbing outdoors again. The cliff we were at is right on the other side of the river from Vang Vieng, and it was nice because there was something for everyone there. We all got to try all the climbs we wanted, and I got my first 5.10! :)


Today (24-05) Malin wanted to go tubing, but Krishna, Yushan and I weren't that excited about it so we decided to have a long breakfast instead (not watching Friends), and then rent bikes and go look for the blue lagoon.
We never found the "blue" lagoon, but we did have a very fun day.
Krishna started it off by crashing in to a brand new, red and shiny moped parked by the bridge (turned out the bike she got didn't have any breaks). We got sort of lost on a field, stuck in mud and bitten by cave mosqitoes, but it was all fun so we kept going. We figured that anyhow it would be good fun exercise, and though we didn't find a real lagoon we did find something cool at the end. We'd passed two signs along the way that said "natural swimming and jumping", wich we found under a scetchy, very high hand-made bamboo bridge. We also adventured inside a cave, and at the end of it (not very far in), we found a little transparent lake wich was extremely cool and definitely made up for not finding the blue lagoon we had such high expectations of :)

Vang Vieng, Laos

We're in beautiful Vang Vieng, and loving it. The days are spent chilling in hammocks down by the river, drinking Lao Beer, going caving, trekking, tubing and kayaking (and maybe some climbing), and of course, watching Friends. Nobody goes to Vang Vieng without spending at least one evening lying on cushions in a restaurant watching Friends. Every single restaurant here are showing reruns of every season all day long (except from two who are showing Family Guy).
It's a beautiful, though a touristy place.

Crazy Beautiful Vietnam

After being on the road in Vietnam for about 10 days now I've come to the conclusion that people here buy their driver lisence on the street. Driving here is litterary "TUT OG KJOR", it's worse than Bangkok insane.
The way to do it in the city, as far as I've understood, is to honk as much as you can and just go. The more and louder you honk, it seems the more rights you have. The roads are packed with mopeds, cyclos and kids riding bikes, and crossing on foot is a really interesting adventure the first time you do it. Saigon is especially busy, and as the bible says; "wherever you go you're gonna have to cross the road eventually, so do as the locals do and just start walking". We did, as slow as possible, and after many small steps we arrived safely and intact on the other side.
The worst, in my opinion, is the motorway. The white line in the middle doesn't seem to excist here, or they use it as a guideline for where you should be when cars are coming the opposite way. Everyone (but an occasional roadtripping foreigner, mopeds and pedestrians) drive in the middle of the road. About 2 seconds before hitting the vehicle coming the opposite way (also in the middle), they both honk and make a sharp turn out to the right, only to make a sharp turn back on to the middle as soon as they can. It makes travelling more fun, in a sick way, but also a little more terrifying.

From Hue we took another night bus directly to Hanoi. It ended up being the worst bus trip any of us had even been on - 12 hours of being thrown back and forth, sliding up and down in the long seat, and no sleep at all.
The plan was originally to go straight to Halong Bay, but when we arrived in Hanoi at 6 in the morning and neither of us could keep our eyes open we went with the first guy offering us a place to stay (wich wasn't too bad, a 10 dollar room including cocrooches(kakerlakker), free internet and breakfast). Despite a tiring start, it ended up being a pretty good day. After 6 hours of sleep on above average comfortable beds we spent the rest of the day realaxing in the sun by one of the lakes.

The next morning we got up (an hour early), and left for Halong Bay. (We have now officially given up on time zones, as they seem to change day by day). Instead of doing the whole thing on our own, which would have been more expensive, we joined a two day-one night trip on one of the big Halon Bay boats you see on all the post cards. All meals included (good ones too), kayaking, disco-caves (lacking the music though), and swimming. One time only, for more we were told to pay 5 USD extra on each spot. Halong Bay is really amazing. It looks a little like Krabi in Thailand, just a lot bigger, and it's so beautiful. There are people living on the sea, in tiny houses floating around, and on our kayak adventure we found an old pirate cave.
All in all it was two GOOD days. Being away from all the noise and pollution in Hanoi was maybe the best thing about it, and also seeing the stars again.
All the star formations, like Little Bear, Big Bear, Orion etc are all upside down here by the way.

I hope all is good back home in Norway and NC. We are leaving to Laos tomorrow and I have no idea about how easy/hard it is to find internet access there, but we'll keep staying alive and having fun :)

Ruins, tombs and mopeds

The feeling in this country is so different from the other places we've been so far. I can't really describe it, it's just special.

We're in Hue right now, only a 12 hour bus ride from Hanoi. We arrived this afternoon, and spent the rest of the day zipping around on mopeds with two aussies, getting lost in the countryside and visiting old (and not so old) tombs. That's about it for what to do in Hue, so after some more tomb-exploring tomorrow we're going north on another night bus.

The tomb of some emperor. Looks like it's the age of Angkor, but it's actually only about 100 years old.