Vang Vieng and Vientiane

Leaving Luang Prabang was harder than tought. We were picked up by our minivan about in time and left. We drove with about 20km/h for about one hour. Turning here and there, scooters overtaking us, continuing the slow drive. The driver also did not want to drive faster. He was waiting for another bus. Ok. We stopped at a gas station. Then continued. After a while he started to speed up. Yeah! Then I saw a sign on the roadside. I recognized the villages name. We have been here yesterday. With the bikes. 10km outside Luang Prabang. And now we reach this place after almost 2 hours driving? What was going on? Some tour organization stuff apparently. Two people had to change into the other van. Which left 2 hours after ours. Annoying! And then another 4 hours going by bus to the South. But at least we were driving faster now. More or less. The hills, switchbacks and sharp curves were slowing down a lot.

panoramic view during our roadtrip

Arriving in Vang Vieng we looked for a guesthouse and rested afterwards. The town is or better was famous for partying with a lot of alcohol and other drugs. It changed now and it is more calm but you can still tube down the river. We rented some bikes instead to see the surroundings and did a kayaking tour and tubed into one of the caves. Another cave we climbed into without any guide but some guiding arrows and a headlight. Very cool to discover it on your own.

riverview in Vang Vieng





view from a restaurant

tubing in the cave

kayaking instead of tubing

Mandy kayaking

cave at the Blue Lagoon

view during our biking trip

another blue lagoon

Last stop in Laos was Vientiane, the small and laid-back capital. Nothing much to do there except a bustling night market on the Mekong riverbank, a view from the Lao l'Arc de Triumphe and a bar with view over the Mekong to Thailand on the other shore. But we wanted to get our 30 day visum for Vietnam here and take the sleeper bus to Hanoi. Apparently they changed some procedure at the embassy and now you can not get a same day visum anymore but have to wait one day. Too much for us as we booked the bus already. So we try to extend our free15 day visum in Hanoi to stay more time in Vietnam. Plans can change fast here.

Lao l'Arc de Triumphe

rooftop bar on the Mekong river with night market

fair on the riverbank

presidential palace

Lovely Luang Prabang

From Thailand setting over the boarder to Laos was easy. Bus connections all the way, visa on arrival at the boarder crossing and finally a tuktuk ride to Huay Xai. We stayed over night in this sleepy place to take the slow boat the next morning to arrive to Luang Prabang. As Huay Xai is a small nest in the North of Laos it has some small night amusement along the main street. Gambling is quite common for youngsters it seems. Home-made roulette wheels are put along the roadside and one throws dart arrows on it for a number to guess in advance. Looked like a fair first. And people really bet small notes on the numbers. Open-air casino the Lao way.
Our ticket for the slow boat was a hand filled in copy of a bad cut Microsoft Word document print. We were very suspicious if this was a valid ticket. And, it was! More or less. Before boarding we had to hand over the ticket to a woman with our passports along. Waiting. Finally tickets and passports back. We could board the boat! Leaving the pier took quite a while though. Running late is common use. But when we were about to leave more people were coming and wanted to board. And the same again and again. People started complaining and finally we left. The people at the pier started to load a second boat. Why not from the start?

the pier in Huay Xai

on the Mekong

The slow boat is slow! Very slow. Sometimes it seemed we were just floating on the Mekong river. Therefore the view was stunning! Green hills all the way, farms on the shore, fishermen in longtail boats throwing their nets. After sunset we arrived to Pakbeng where we had to stay a night and then continue the next day to Luang Prabang. Another 7 hours on the boat!

view from the boat - two days like this

Finally in the city I fell in love at first sight. It is a cozy little town with French colonial past which you still can see in the architecture. This is the reason why Luang Prabang is also UNESCO world heritage. From here we took it slow and were checking out town. Temples were shared over the centre and the main road turned into a lovely night market. We found a small road serving Lao style buffet and barbeque. Streetfood paradise! One day we rent bicycles and rode to a waterfall close by Luang Prabang. The waterfalls had several terraces and icy water. As it was a rainy day only few people were around and we could enjoy peacefully.

Luang Prabang from a mountain view

colonial style house

 

Lao buffet

streetfood paradise

 

on the way to the Tad Sae Waterfall

river crossing in a longtail boat

at the waterfalls

The last day I took a tour with some people from our hostel to see the Kuangsi Waterfall. Amazing! Already at first view I liked it but by climbing up higher it got even more incredible. See yourself:

main falls of Kuangsi

swimming in the middle pool

climbing to the top

pool on top of the waterfall

view from top

Northern Thailand

From Bangkok we took the night sleeper train North to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai was a kind of disappointment on our route. It has a cosy but very touristic centre. One travel agents hits the next, cafes and restaurants are squeezing in between. Hardly any streetfood to find. Once in a while there is a temple around. But most of the time you need to book a tour outside town to see something different. I did so and went rafting for a day. It was a great trip into the woods to reach the river and load the rafts to have a 10km trip with a spectacular view. In one of the last rapids it hit the raft and I fell over board. It was quite a shock first but I managed to climb into the raft again and continued paddling. We even saw some elephants on our trip but they were all part of elephant camps which offer bathing, riding and feeding trips to them.

Bangkok railway station

As there was nothing special going on in Chiang Mai we left the town quite fast to move on to Chiang Rai, even more North. We took the VIP Bus as the next option to leave town and were quite surprised when we entered it: very spacious, stewardess and even a drink and snack was included in the price. We liked the atmosphere of Chiang Mai right away and stayed spontaneously a night longer. The city is rather small but has great food to offer, some sights in town and even bigger ones right outside which are easy to reach by public transportation.

Clock tower in Chiang Rai

Rice with fried chicken and bouillon

As we saw the centre more or less the first evening we headed outside to see the White Temple. It is THE attraction of Chiang Rai and we were very speechless to see a new built temple with details like this. And then the artist even had a little fun building it and put nice details into it.

White Temple

part of the hell fire scene (you see the VIPs burning in hell?)

We had quite some fun there but had to leave Thailand now. Our next adventure was coming on the horizon.

Bangkok

Well, here I am again. This time it's Bangkok!

Mandy and me arrived safely in Thailand and found our way soon to our pre-booked hostel. We stayed a little outside the main tourist attraction but still most in walking distance available. Otherwise we just took the ferry boat on the nearby river.

Already on our way with the skytrain into town we were amazed by the skyline! One skyscraper follows the other one, one higher than the other. Stunning!

Bangkok skyline from our hostel view

On our strolls around town we tasted a lot of different streetfood from the stalls around. First we had fresh fruits (even a not riped mango has a good taste here) and fried chicken balls. In the evening while wandering around a night market in the neighborhood we had the worst tasting food so far (and even up to today we didn't taste any worse). The chicken and papaya salad were okay but the bamboo stuff was just fermented and we didn't like it at all. But later on our ways through Chinatown we found amazing soups and curries, fried rice and noodles.

fried delicacies

entering Chinatown

The night market on its own was a strange atmosphere. Cheap clothes and souvenirs were changing with creepy guys inviting people for pingpong shows, from time to time prostitutes in school uniform were waiting for customers on the road side. A whole class of them waiting to be picked from a stranger.

Nevertheless it was a good start in Southeast Asia and the next days we were walking more to the touristic sites looking at one Buddha after the other. All golden and shiny and yet different.

Buddhas from different centuries

43m high Buddha

smiling Buddha

40m reclining Buddha

While looking for the tall standing Buddha we took a taxi to bring us there. Unfortunately the driver didn't understand us and so he brought us to a monk monastery about 16km outside town. Our drive looked on the map about 2km, maybe. Definitely the wrong place! So we took another taxi into town and finally reached the right place.

Later on we walked through the Khao San road. A mecca for backpackers on their way through Indochina and to meet for some beers and party. We had a beer there but were tired fast of the too touristic atmosphere around and skipped the parties.

Khao San

Instead we finally took a tuktuk to drive us through town. 

Tuktuk drive

Impressive Istanbul

The start of my trip is hardly to top. Istanbul showed itself from a glorious side and made me fall in love with the town immediately.
Mandy (who joins me for the Asian part) and me arrived in the evening and due long waiting at the immigration arrived late night at Taksim square. We walked down the Istiklar shopping street to reach our hostel and were impressed by all the people passing through it around 11pm. Shops were still open - on Bayram, the most important holiday of the Muslim people.

Finally we found our hostel and checked in. It took while as the receptionist had problems to book the already paid money from the booking page we used to make our reservation. We solved this problem and faced directly another one: the room he wanted to put us in was already occupied. All of the beds were taken by other travellers. So he called the manager and after some discussion and disturbing the sleeping people he found us two beds. In the room with the manager as he is occupying a room with eight beds only by himself. Finally some sleep.

The next day we started checking town and were amazed. Old buildings change with mosques, small cafés and many boutiques. Walking uphill and downhill vendors tried to sell us fresh Şimit, mussels, any kind of souvenirs, Turkish delight and selfie sticks. We made our way through with the aim to see the main attractions in Istanbul: Blue Mosque,  Haggia Sofia and the Topkapı Palace. Thousands of other people had the same idea so we decided to have just a look from outside and not squeezing inside but enjoying the sun with a turkish coffee on the waterfront. We also checked the spice bazaar and got ourselves a good picture from the city centre.

The next day we met Fridde, a friend of mine who is living and working in Istanbul for a year now. It was great to see her again and she showed us around her new home. We met in Beşiktas for a typical turkish breakfast and went to a small market nearby which was even smaller than usual because of the holiday. After we took a ferry to Kadiköy on the Asian side where Fridde lives. We had a walk through the small streets of the market and finally reached the waterfront of Bosphorus. We stopped several times to drink a coffee or çay. Fridde gave us some hints of nice spots we should see before she had to work. Mandy and me stayed a little more in Kadiköy and enjoyed the sunset on the shore.

So the rest of our time in Istanbul we searched for the spots and had some great view over Istanbul from a rooftop bar and a café close to the Süleymanhi Mosque, found a place to smoke shisha like in Ottoman days and had a joyful time.

The last day I got lost on my way to a hamam as I was looking for it in a wrong part of town. Somehow I mixed up Kadiköy and Üsküdar and so I was running in the wrong direction for more than one hour. When I finally found it the hamam was closed for a movie shooting. I was quite frustrated. Fortunately I passef another small hamam on my way and went there. Relaxing was exactly what I needed now.

Then time came to leave Istanbul. Our plane was scheduled for the evening and an overnight flight. We got delayed due a heavy thunderstorm but finally could depart from Istanbul for our next destination: BANGKOK