sightseeing – Slow boat to Laos

August 25, 2018January 16, 2021

Meandering down the Mekong River

We arrived in Luang Prabang yesterday afternoon after our 2-day Slow Boat trip.

We started in Huay Xai on the Mekong River, where we spent a night at the Saibaydee Guesthouse after getting a bus across the border from Chiang Rai. The very helpful host at the guesthouse organised our boat tickets for us and got us seats near the front of the boat. The very noisy 6-cylinder truck engine which powers the boat is towards the back, so we were keen to be as far away from that as possible! There’s also a snack bar towards the back, and smokers head to the captain’s living quarters behind the engine.

It absolutely poured with rain while we were in Huay Xai. I changed some Thai baht into Laos kip at one of the local banks and we ended up waiting on their front verandah for about 30 minutes until the torrential rain eased up. And then it rained all night. We were pretty lucky that it didn’t rain very much while we were on the boat, especially as there was a leak in the boat’s roof that dripped onto my shoulder when it did rain. Not to worry, the weather was warm and my shirt dried quickly. I had taken the precaution of wearing my lightest clothes in case they got wet, but I did stay mostly dry. I also bought a raincoat from a local seller in Huay Xai – it’s absolutely huge on me and I won’t be sad if I never get to wear it, but it would keep me dry if I need it to.

On our first day of ‘slow boating’, we spent about 5 hours on the boat, which left Huay Xai at 11.30 am and docked at Pakbeng at around 4.30 pm. Most of our fellow passengers were backpackers much younger than us, with about 20 locals and their assorted bags, bundles and boxes of stuff. We made a couple of stops along the way, but most of the passengers got off at Pakbeng. There was a bit of a scrum at the boat dock amongst locals offering various levels of accommodation. We had booked a room at the BKC Villas through Agoda and the owner met us and other guests and took us the 500m up the hill in his tuk-tuk. We were given a welcome drink (butterfly pea, lime juice, sugar & water – delicious!) in the reception area and allocated to our rooms. Ours was on the top floor and had a lovely view over the river. We would have been happy to spend an extra night there if we’d been able to work out how to break up the journey. We also ate dinner and breakfast there and enjoyed both very much. Watching a couple of elephants having their morning bath on the other side of the river while we had breakfast on the deck was a bonus!

On the second day we were on a different boat and there were heaps more locals with heaps more stuff – 2 motorbikes on the front of the boat, loads of 20 litre drums on the roof, bags and bags of rambutan, longan and other fruit, assorted other bags and people everywhere! The boat ended up very full and to be honest, if there had been any problems, it would have been an absolute disaster. But as I kept reminding myself and Greg, those boats are also the captains’ and their families’ homes, so it’s in their interest to keep them running well and not sink them.

The scenery along the Mekong was spectacular. Greg’s photos and videos will tell the story better than I ever could. We loved doing the trip as we got to see part of Laos that is only visible from the river – small villages with no road access, forests of majestic teak trees and of course the mighty Mekong River itself.

The seats on both boats were originally from passenger minivans. They were not very comfortable and both of us had sore backs after sitting in them for a couple of days, but I would much rather sit in one on a boat where I can get up and move around, than be squashed in a minivan travelling the 474kms by road from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang. I haven’t been able to find out how far the boat trip is, I think it’s about 300-350kms.

Buying the tickets in Chiang Rai for Huay Xai

Crossing the Mekong from Thailand to Laos

Finally we are millionaires. 1 million Laos Kip (about $160 AUD)

Our ride to Huay Xai after arriving at the bus depot

Awaiting for the 5 other people (with their bags) to get in

Working our way down the steep muddy bank to our slow boat

The seats are ex van seats bolted to pieces of wood just sitting on the deck

Lots of debris in the Mekong, that had to be dodged by the boat captain

Bamboo fences at PakBeng, we saw many of these along the Mekong

the view from our room at the BKC at PakBeng, at the end of the first day of the slow boat

During the journey to Luang Prabang we pickup about 50 more passengers (and drop some off)

August 23, 2018January 16, 2021

Chiang Rai

I didn’t post for a couple of days because we didn’t really do much of interest, and then when we did do some stuff – Hedgehog Cafe! Kayaking! Walking tour through a local market! – there was no time to post! We’ll try and do a couple of posts when we’re stationary in a couple of days. I really loved the market tour and want to get it ‘on paper’ before I forget what I did and ate.

Meanwhile … we caught a luxury bus to Chiang Rai on Tuesday, spent a night there and then caught another bus to Huay Xai in Laos yesterday. That can be a very confusing experience, so I’ll fill in more detail about how we did that later too.

And now we’re in Laos! We stayed at the Sabaydee Guest House last night – comfortable room and a very helpful owner who is organising our boat tickets for us. This morning we’re doing Day 1 of the 2-day ‘Slow Boat’ trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. It’s been pouring with rain here all night, so this might be interesting. And wet. Very wet!

Waiting for the bus to Chiang Rai at Chiang Mai

August 17, 2018January 16, 2021

Chiang Mai

We had some time before our afternoon flight to Chiang Mai on Tuesday, so we had another crack at visiting Wat Saket, theTemple of the Golden Mount. We checked out of our hotel and took our bags with us – one of the nice things about travelling light is that we can just take everything with us not leave it in hotels and have to collect it later. We hopped on another canal boat down to the Wat, but I wasn’t feeling very energetic so stayed with the bags while Greg walked to the top. He said it was ‘good’, but wasn’t enthusiastic enough to make me feel like I should do it. Back on another canal boat to the Skytrain line that connects with the Airport rail line. There’s a quirky restaurant called Hungry Nerds near Ratchathewi station. They serve salads, grilled meats, chips and all the wait-staff wear over-sized glasses. That confused me for a while because I kept thinking every waitress was ‘ours’ until I realised they were all bespectacled!

The airport train was very easy and it took far less time and cost a fraction of the taxi we caught when we arrived in Bkk. Lesson learnt – next time catch the train! We had allowed ourselves several hours, which meant a long wait at the airport, but rather that than miss a plane! The VietJet flight was fine and we used Grab again to get us to our apartment.

We’re staying in a 1-bedroom apartment in the Astra Condo complex, a very modern 2-building, 16-floor, 589 unit project that only opened last year. There are at least 3 floors of car parking and 2 of them are still being completed. We’re on the 6th floor and there’s a pool, gym, sauna and steam room on the 16th floor. The Shangri-La Hotel is next door. We found this place on Airbnb and you can see photos and more about it here

The apartment has a kitchen and washing machine, but while I may have had intentions of cooking here, the most I’ve done is pour yoghurt over my morning muesli! There are so many great food choices here that struggling with a small saucepan, tiny frypan and very few utensils seems pointless. The washing machine is handy though.

We haven’t done anything super-exciting in the 3 days we’ve been here. Walked a lot, eaten a lot, swum in the pool. There’s a (push)bike sharing scheme here and Greg took one for a spin a couple of days ago. Sam & Brianna gave us some recommendations – we couldn’t find the original Roti stall on Wednesday evening, but found one in the night bazaar. Yesterday we walked a 7km round trip to SP Chicken in Old Chiang Mai for rotisserie chicken, green papaya salad, stir fried vegies & rice and it was delicious. Last night we went back to the Night Bazaar to an outdoor food court full of stands offering what I think of as ‘the next generation of street food’ – Greg had a burger and ‘handcut fries’ which were slices rather than chips … so they could be shallow-fried in a wok rather than deep-fried. I had steamed prawn dumplings and a steamed bun filled with marinated chicken, with a coconut drink made of young coconut flesh, coconut water, coconut milk and ice. It was all delicious and I’m sure we’ll go back there again and try something different next time.

I like to follow fashion – not clothes, makeup, jewellery or interior design – and probably maybe more accurately termed ‘food fads’. In the Western world, it’s all about fermenting at the moment … sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables, sourdough breads, yoghurt and other fermented dairy products and fermented drinks including kefir and kombucha. It’s not a ‘thing’ in Thailand at all – here they are putting ‘fibre’ and ‘collagen’ in everything from drinks to foods to skincare products. But wait! Yesterday on our walk back from SP Chicken, we detoured to have a look at the An Teak Hotel, where Sam and Brianna like to stay when they’re in Chiang Mai. And what did we see advertised at the hotel’s cafe but Kombucha! Unfortunately the cafe was closed so we couldn’t try some, but the truly delicious irony here is that Sam works for Mojo, a Willunga-based company that makes Kombucha!

Shared Mobike for riding around Chiang Mai

Getting Roti from a street seller in the Chiang Mai night markets

August 15, 2018January 16, 2021

Chinatown, Ikea and street food

Let’s catch up on our last few days in Bkk. We flew to Chiang Mai yesterday afternoon, so I’d better write down the Bkk stuff before I forget what we did.

When we were staying at the Sawasdee on Soi 8, we walked a minimum of 3kms a day – the hotel is 700 metres from Sukhumvit Rd and we walked up and down that stretch at least twice a day. I’m probably just trying to rationalise our decision to have 2 desserts each instead of dinner on Monday night … more on that later.

We took the MRT (different train system to the Skytrain) to Chinatown on Sunday, but a lot of it was closed because it was a national holiday to mark the 86th birthday of Queen Sirikit. Mother’s Day is also celebrated on August 12. We visited Wat Traimit Wittayaram Voraviharn Traimit Royal Temple to see the Golden Buddha, which sits 3 metres tall and weighs 5.5 tonnes. Wikipedia estimates it to be worth USD$250 million! Very interesting history including being covered in stucco for a couple of centuries and stored in a shed with a tin roof for a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Buddha_(statue)

I’d brought a pashmina with me to Thailand, but of course forgot to take it to the Wat that day. Women aren’t allowed to wear shorts in temples, but it’s okay for men. When we were at the entrance to the temple taking our shoes off, a flower seller told me I’d be okay in my almost knee-length shorts, but came over and tugged them down a bit, just to make sure! The Golden Buddha was very impressive, and the temple he’s in is gorgeous – hand-painted walls, beautiful floral arrangements.

We had lunch at Texas Suki in Chinatown – very large restaurant that specialises in steamboat cooking. Full of local families and a few farang white people. We didn’t do the steamboat thing, but just picked out a few things from the menu – dumplings, wonton soup, fried rice and black sesame dumplings in ginger soup for dessert. I’d seen them in a video and was keen to try them. They tasted a bit like a sesame seed version of peanut butter in a soft dumpling pastry and the ginger soup was very tasty.

We keep going back to Terminal 21 because there are so many food choices. Dinner on Sunday night was at a Thai place on the 4th floor, can’t remember what it was called, can’t remember what we ate. I probably had noodles, Greg probably had rice.

On Monday we went to Ikea! Caught the Skytrain to Samrong which is at the end of the Sukhumvit line, then got a Grab car to Ikea in the Mega Bangna Shopping Mall. The Ikea is incorporated into the shopping mall, and it was possible to just walk in and out of different areas without having to walk through the entire store … unlike every other Ikea we’ve ever visited. We had lunch there – Swedish meatballs, steamed salmon, Swedish apple cake. The shopping mall is huge and it was full of people shopping and eating.

I still wanted to try street food from either the omelet stall or the mushroom stall on Soi 8, but they were both closed when I went looking at around 4.30, so I got myself some Pad Thai (Thai noodles) and corn on the cob for Greg. Total cost 40 + 20 baht = AUD$ 1.70. Then later in the evening we went back to Terminal 21 to After You, a busy dessert restaurant. We had to wait for a table, and they only had 2 menus for the whole place, but we enjoyed what we had – I had affogato (ice cream with a shot of espresso to pour over it) and a Lavender-Lychee soda to drink, Greg had a warm just-baked choc-chip cookie thing topped with ice cream, chocolate sauce and more choc chips. On our way back to the hotel we found a food stall selling Thai roti – a thin layer of dough stretched out and cooked on a hotplate, then folded over either a banana (him) or an egg (me) and cut into bite-sized squares. The seller offered a variety of sweet toppings including chocolate sauce, condensed milk, something pink and some other kind of chocolate but we just had ours plain and they were delicious & cost less than $1 each.

On the canal boat again. a very efficient way to get across town, although we were not quite as nimble getting on or off as the locals.

August 11, 2018January 16, 2021

What Greg and Judy ate next

Before I launch into a food-filled monologue, I want to do a bit of cross-promotion for an Australian travel blog that we’re really enjoying.

My cousin Brodie and her family – husband Grant, 10 yr old son Sidney and 7 yr old daughter Meg – are doing a camping trip through outback Australia. They left Sydney a few weeks ago, drove across to Adelaide and caught up with us and my family, then headed north. While they’re away Sid is writing a blog and adding some really lovely photos of the places they visit. They were at Uluru a bit over a week ago when it rained , and saw The Rock with water flowing down it, something that very few people ever get to see.

http://www.australianvoyager.com/

On Thursday we visited Pantip Plaza, which used to be The Place for geeks to go and look at all the latest computer whizzery, buy software and computer games and generally just soak up the atmosphere in the multi-level Temple of Geekdom. Now, it’s all very quiet with many stalls and shops closed and not many people around. There was a very ‘girly’ shop on the first floor selling makeup and cosmetics and I figured that the girlfriends went there while their boyfriends shopped at the computer places.

Then we went to Victory Monument to find ‘boat noodles’ which are sold on a nearby canal. Another excellent tip from Sam and Brianna. There’s a little stretch along the canal known as ‘Boat Noodle Alley’ and we found Rua Thong, “Golden Boat” Noodle Shop. It was packed with locals slurping their way through assorted bowls of noodles, so we took a number and waited for a table. We really didn’t know how to order, so just picked out a couple of different bowls from the menu which offered a choice of 12 variation of dry noodles or noodles in soup. And then we had a couple more after that. I asked a waitress how the other tables had so many bowls and she waved her hand over the whole menu, so it seems like the proper way to order is to just get one of everything on the menu. Large groups would order multiples of the set of 12. So now we know for next time. At the end of the meal, they just count up the number of bowls stacked up – 12 baht / 50c each. We were the only Westerners in the place, which always makes me feel like we’re doing it right.

We had dinner at our old favourite Cabbages and Condoms in Soi 12, just a couple of streets from our hotel. We have visited every time we’ve been in Bangkok and went to one in Chiang Rai too. My mum recommended it as she and her friend had visited when they did a trip to Thailand in the late 90s. It was set up by a philanthropist to promote the Safe Sex message, and some of the profits are directed towards development programmes initiated by the Population and Community Development Association. At the end of the meal, they give out condoms instead of after-dinner mints, and there’s a gift shop that sells a range of condom-themed stuff in addition to some lovely things made by local craftsmen. Mum still has a drinking glass decorated with condoms!

Lovely atmosphere and good food – Greg always has the pineapple fried rice, I always have the Mee Krob fried noodles with prawns, and we had a few other things too – Miang Kham betel leaves topped with shallots, ginger, dried shrimp, toasted shredded coconut, lime and chillies, plus a stir-fried pork dish and banana fritters.

Greg has reconnected with a friend from Uni. Thanks to Facebook they are back in touch after 40 years! Liam and his partner spend quite a lot of time in Bkk, and he recommended a restaurant on the other side of the Chao Phraya river. So we decided to go there for lunch yesterday. We took 2 Skytrains, a Grab ride (the local version of Uber) then a bit of a walk down tiny lanes, got lost and misdirected a couple of times and finally found Bahn Phleon Dee restaurant on a canal. If we’d known what we were doing, it might have been easier to get there by canal boat … but maybe not with our non-existent Thai.

Wow, what a gem of a place to eat! Best food we’ve had here. Prawn cakes, fried rice with chicken and stir-fried prawns. But here’s the best bit – Greg put a photo of me sitting at a table near the water on Facebook, Liam saw it and used Facebook messaging to phone Greg from Bulgaria, and they had a long chat for the first time in 40 years! How cool is that?!

Liam gave Greg lots of good advice on places to go and things to do, so after lunch we visited the Royal Barge Museum which has a lovely display of current barges and fragments old barges, many of which were destroyed during WW2. It cost extra to take photos, so we didn’t. Here’s a Wiki article instead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Royal_Barges

Next on the list was a visit to Wat Saket, the Temple of the Golden Mount. Built on a hill, it offers a great view of Bkk. We walked on a bridge back across the Chao Phraya river, then along a couple of canals, but by the time we got to the temple it was after 5pm, so we’ll have to go back another day. We took a canal boat from Phan Fa Lilat pier part of the way back to the hotel and the difference between catching a boat and catching a Skytrain was incredible, especially at peak hour. The canal boat was almost empty, and it was a great trip, where we got to see a part of Bkk that is only visible from the water. We got off at Prutnam Pier and joined the throng of people walking along Ratchadamri Rd to Chit Lom Skytrain station. Caught an absolutely packed skytrain – so full that at the next station the platform conductor wouldn’t allow anyone else onto the train!

We just walked down the road to one of the many restaurants for dinner. Det 5 – busy, noisy, entertaining and good food. I had prawn pad thai noodles, because there is no such thing as ‘too many prawns’. Greg had a burger and chips. It was a good end to a good day.