Tasty Thai Food at Tom Yum Thai Cooking School in Chiang Mai, Thailand

03/23/201503/23/2015globegazers 7 Comments

Food in Thailand – yum! This has been one of our absolute favorite places in the world when it comes to eating.

Della is in heaven eating her fried noodles – whether it be pad thai or pad see ewe – every day! Eric has loved all the different kinds of curries! Everything is delicious and we could probably eat here forever.

For that reason, we were super excited to do a cooking class. We had some time in Chiang Mai and we knew that there were several classes offered. Della picked one where one of the main offerings was Pad See Ewe.

The one we chose was called Tom Yum Thai Cooking School and we loved it.

Our first step was to get picked up by our teacher Oun from our hotel in a minivan. He brought us quickly to one of the markets in the city. Here he showed us many of the different vegetables and herbs we needed to know for cooking Thai food. Some of the more interesting things we learned were:

Ginger and Galangal are almost the same, but different.
Ginger and Galangal
Raw turmeric looks a lot like ginger.
There are 3 different kinds of basil used in Thai cooking: holy, lemon, and sweet. (We mostly used sweet)
There are a ton of different kinds of eggplants – the Thai ones we used were tiny.
two different kinds of tiny Thai eggplants
Long beans in Thailand are truly long!
Loooong beans
Palm sugar is a thing and can be sold in different ways.
this is palm sugar

We also just enjoyed wandering the market with someone who knew what everything was.

Dried prawns for Pad Thai

These are Jack Fruit!

After shopping for our food, we hopped back in the van and headed to Oun’s house. Here we quickly got dressed up in our aprons, ate a quick snack of prawn crackers, and then began to cook.

Eric and Peggy getting ready to cook!

Throughout the cooking class, we had the chance to cook and eat 5 different courses. For each course, we had a choice of three different things to learn to make. For the most part, because it was Eric, Della, and Peggy taking part, we each did something different.

Course 1: Stir Fry

Della learned Pad See Ewe, but both Eric and Peggy learned Pad Thai. For each course, we learned our ingredients, the best way to prepare them (chopping, smashing, etc), and then the order in which to cook. We won’t tell you too much more: you’ll have to go take the class yourself! Cooking these dishes did make us want to buy a fancy wok when we get home.

Ingredients for Pad Thai

Sauce for Pad See Ewe

Cooking Pad Thai

finished pad see ewe

Course 2: Soup

Della learned Tom Kha (chicken in coconut milk soup), Eric learned Hot and Spicy Pork Soup, and Peggy learned Hot and Sour Prawn Soup. The base of the different soups was actually quite similar, and there were only a few ingredients that distinguished them. For example, Eric’s soup did not use coconut milk but the others did.

Ingredients for soup

Getting ready to cook

One year ago this month, we were creating tasty Thai dishes in Chiang Mai.

Course 3: Salad

Della learned Cucumber Salad, Eric learned Mixed Fruit Salad, and Peggy learned Papaya Salad. All of the salads used the same homemade dressing, which was a flavorful mix of sweet, sour, salty and spicy ingredients.

Getting ready for the salad

pouring out the sauce

salad yum!

Course 4: Curry

Della made Green Curry paste, Eric made Khao Soi Curry Paste, and Peggy made Panang Curry Paste. After all the pounding and grinding to get the paste, we each made the corresponding curry. Eric’s was slightly different as his was more of a curry noodle soup (a Chiang Mai specialty) and his was quite a bit more complicated. He was also the only one in the class who chose this dish so had to do the grinding of the curry paste all on his own! He didn’t report being too sore though!

ingredients for curry pastes

grind grind grind

finished green curry paste

ingredients for curry

cooking the curry

Course 5: Dessert

We all learned how to make Mango Sticky Rice. Yum! We learned a lot about making sticky rice that we didn’t know: for example, it is steamed, not boiled!

Sticky rice vs. regular rice

steaming the rice

mango sticky rice!

One of the best parts of the class was that we got to eat everything we cooked. It was all delicious and we were quite stuffed by the end!

Enjoying our meals

We can’t wait to get home and try out our new, mad Thai cooking skills. We are hoping that we are able to find all of the proper ingredients at home in Denver. We know we might be making quite a lot of trips to HMart in our future!

Excellent Experience at Elephant Jungle Sanctuary

03/21/201503/20/2015globegazers 6 Comments

We knew we wanted to experience some time with elephants while we were in Chaing Mai, Thailand. It was something that had been on our (especially Della’s) list for a long time. However, we had read a lot about elephant tourism and the pro and cons.

Choosing an Elephant Park

One of the biggest negatives we had heard about was some of poor practices that have traditionally been used in elephant tourism. Often elephants are ridden or trained to do shows for tourists. In recent years, there has been a lot of effort in educating tourists on the dangers some of these things cause for elephants. We had read several articles like this one by the blogger Nomadic Matt with the same theme: elephants have been treated poorly during training, so we were thinking hard about the place we would like to visit. Almost all of the articles mention the Elephant Nature Park as a place using proper practices.

But, as we arrived in Chiang Mai and saw the plethora of options available to us, we decided to do a little more research. The most highly rated elephant park offers elephant riding (without a seat), feeding, and bathing the elephants. After reading several lovely reviews of that park though, we came across this blog. It describes a counterpoint experience between two places and mentions that the most highly rated camp both chains its elephants and uses bull hooks on them. This turned us off. However, the description of Elephant Nature Park, while lovely, seemed a whole lot like an experience we had in Africa with actual wild elephants. We weren’t sure we needed to pay for that.

But finally, we found a brochure for the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary and further research led us to this blog. We scoured the pictures and saw no chains or bull hooks. It also showed that the elephants were rescued by and living in a Karen village. Many of the students Della teaches are Karen refugees so we were excited to visit an active village in Thailand. That sealed the deal.

Visiting the Park

We were more than excited on our day to visit the elephants! We were picked up by Ken (maybe Chem) in the morning in a songthaew and drove the almost two hours up to the village. The majority of the road is highway, but the last hour or so were on curvy mountain roads. We were very happy when we arrived as we were on the verge of car sickness. We walked a short way through the currently dry rice fields to arrive in the village. We were given our uniform for the day: beautiful Karen shirts!

Our fearless leader

The long drive

hiking to the village

lovely rice fields

Our Karen shirts!

Our group consisted of 9 people plus our leader Ken. There were about 2 other groups of about the same number. Each group headed off to a different group of elephants. The first group we met was a male and female elephant, both retirees of logging. Ken explained that they were “boyfriend and girlfriend” and enjoyed spending time together. The female elephant was indeed pregnant and we were told she had one year left to come to term. We enjoyed feeding the elephants bananas and stroking their trunks. They were calm and friendly and we saw no chains or hooks. The mahouts used verbal commands when needed. Each elephant wore a bell, which we were told was how the mahouts locate them at night as they are never chained. Ken also pointed out many times that both the elephants seemed fat and happy. He showed us some remnants of their time as logging elephants though, as shown by their ragged ears.

Ripped ears from past experience

Our next stop was to visit what we’ll call the Old Lady Elephant. She was very calm, but loved her bananas!

Our final feeding stop was really the most exciting. We met two momma elephants and their two babies. We can’t quite remember the ages, but we think the larger baby was more than a year and the smaller one was less. The larger baby was quite rambunctious and enjoyed shoving some of the mahouts around. We truly enjoyed interacting with these super cute creatures!

Two babies

Momma and two babies

nursing baby

so cute

The baby wanted to try the bananas but couldn’t figure out how to eat them

One year ago this month, we were playing with elephants in a Karen village in Northern Thailand.

Yum bananas

Baby getting pushy

After feeding the elephants, we headed back to the main area of the village for lunch. It was delicious Karen food which we enjoyed while overlooking the river. With a little time to relax, Wayne headed down to take a swim (of course)!

Lunch

Heading down the river

a swim

The next part of the day consisted of the “mud spa.” The mahouts brought down Old Lady elephant and Momma elephant with the Big Baby. They were SO excited to enjoy the mud. It was a lot of fun to go into the mud and experience their glee! They would pick the mud up in their trunks and fling it all over themselves, catching us in the process sometimes. They rolled around and rubbed their faces on the mud wall. We were invited to help them by throwing mud on them and rubbing it on their bodies. We really enjoyed this, as did all of the other tourists. The only thing we worried about was that the elephants (particularly Momma and Big Baby) were so excited that they were practically running around. Without keeping watch and being ready, we could see an accident happening. The mahouts believed that the elephants would never have trampled the humans, but we were content to keep our space while they were moving and hope that future visitors will also be thoughtful about not getting themselves in dangerous situations. The elephants are clearly happy and well treated here, but we are concerned that this might change if there was an accident with one of them hurting a tourist.

So excited to get in the mud

Loving it

This baby couldn’t look any happier

posing for the pic

And getting flung with more mud by the elephants

Della enjoyed posing with Old Lady elephant because she was much calmer

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After the elephants (and us) were thoroughly muddy, we headed down to the river. The elephants loved splashing and rolling in the water. We were given buckets and scrub brushes to help clean and cool them off. We never got on top of the elephants, and we kept our distance when they were so excited that they were rolling their big bodies around and climbing on top of one another.

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At the end of the day, we cleaned the rest of the mud off in the river and headed back to camp. We were given the opportunity to buy Karen souvenirs before we headed out. Della bought a Karen bag and Wayne wanted a different kind of souvenir. He asked for and was sold an elephant bell!

A new elephant bell for Wayne

Overall, we absolutely loved our experience here and everything we saw indicated that their elephants are happy and treated well. We hope that future visitors will show proper respect to the animals and make sure not to get in their way so that no accidents will happen!

Logistics

The cost of the day was 2400 baht (about $73) per person (so quite a splurge!!), but when we booked through our guesthouse, they gave us a small discount.

The trip up and down took about 2 hours each way, so be prepared to spend a lot of time on the road.

Wear swim suits that you don’t mind getting muddy. The mud stained some of the white portions of Della’s suit.

Be careful and enjoy these amazing creatures!

Flashback Friday: Winter Rendezvous!

03/20/201503/19/2015globegazers Leave a comment

Flashback Friday is a picture series where we “flashback” to some of our memories – from either from our prior travel or from home. We hope you’ll enjoy some of our remembrances!

If we were at home, we would have been planning and enjoying the 4th Annual Winter Rendezvous at our cabin during March. So, we thought we’d flashback to the very first Winter Rendezvous! This occurred in 2011. It is nice for us to see some pictures of snow while we are sweltering in 100 degree heat here in Bangkok and off the chart humidity. Oh snow, how we miss thee!

Snowy fence

hanging out

playing scattegories with our friend Andrew – who we just saw in Cambodia coincidentally! =)

hiking down

Black and White in Chiang Rai, Thailand

03/19/201503/08/2022globegazers 2 Comments

To our email subscribers, we are sorry for the email you received of this post before. It came in error. This post, however, should have all functional links!

After Laos, our next plan was to travel through the northern part of Thailand back down to Bangkok. We debated which towns to include in that journey. We considered heading straight to the large city of Chiang Mai, but pictures and stories of quirky white and black temples convinced us to head to the far northern city of Chiang Rai for a couple of days.

Where We Stayed

We found a nice place online called the Jansupar Court Hotel with two large AC rooms with their own private bathroom. We were happy to take advantage of the cheap washing machine and also enjoyed some late afternoon drinks in the small bistro onsite. The family that runs the place was also fun to interact with. The main downside of Jansupar was that it was located somewhat far outside of town – about a 20 minute walk – so sightseeing wasn’t as convenient as it could have been.

Jansupar Court

Our room

Mango daquiri tasters on the house!

What We Did

The two main attractions in Chiang Rai provide a nice counterpoint to each other – one white and one black. We took a local bus from the main bus station to both which was really quite easy to figure out!

Riding the local bus

Monks ride too!

We first visited Baan Dum, the Black House. This attraction houses many different somewhat traditional structures, most painted black. It was built by the Thai National Artist Thawan Duchanee using his own money. The interior decorating for the buildings was mostly done with furniture made of animal bones and plenty of animal hides. We could only go inside the largest temple-shaped structure, but could see into many of the smaller buildings.

The main “temple”

Hanging with the artist

The interior of the temple

Interesting choice of placesettings

Inside one of the other structures

Black House Jelfie

The next day we took a visit to Wat Rong Khun, the White Temple. As the name suggests, this is a large, elaborate temple painted in all white (plus some shiny mirrors). This is definitely a modern take on a temple, with some very strange designs on the outside. It was constructed by a different Thai artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, also using his own money. The main temple is reached by crossing a bridge over a sea of outstretched hands said to represent desire. Inside the temple itself, we spent a long time trying to decipher the murals. At first glance it seemed like typical Buddhist scenes, but the lower level included many images from popular culture, including Neo from the Matrix, Darth Vader, Michael Jackson and Elvis. We never could quite figure out what it was supposed to mean. In this room and on many of the other buildings we could see visible damage from the strong earthquake that hit the region in 2014. We were a bit bummed that we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside.

The White Temple

This statue felt Balinese

The pond of outstetched hands

Disturbing images in the pond

Visible earthquake damage

Note the toppled spire on the smaller temple

Looking back at the temple

The group in front of the White Temple

Outside the main temple, there are a few other small attractions in the complex that were worth a visit. We paid the equivalent of a dollar to buy a charm to we wrote a small message on and hung up with others. Even the bathroom building was quite fancy.

Pretty yellow flowers

Our charm

Hanging our charm

The bathrooms

Scary lawn ornamentation

I think they are trying to say smoking is bad for you

We had a fun experience on the way back from the White Temple. We had visited with another couple that we had met on the slow boat and we ended up having to wait for the bus back for a long time. It just wasn’t coming, so we tried to hail a songthaew , but the only one that came by was too full for 6 to fit in. Finally, a man in a truck drive by and asked if we wanted a ride. We thought he might be a songthaew but we were confused when we asked how much and he sort of shrugged. We clambered in the back and rode off towards town. Wayne had gotten in the front and chatted with guy who was enjoying the company and trying to teach him Thai. Wayne told him the way and he took us all the way back to our hotel (even stopping once to ask directions). We tried to give him money at the end, the equivalent of what we would have given the bus, and he even tried to give some back. It is times like this when our hearts are warmed that there are people who just want to meet others and help!

Our ride back from the White Temple

We only saw a few of the sights in town itself since it was somewhat of a walk to get there. We did walk by a pretty clock tower in town – it looks quite a bit different from the ones we saw in Europe! We visited the Hilltribe Museum, which felt a little similar to the museum in Luang Prabang but focused on the Thailand hill tribes. There was also a large display here on the opium trade, since the “Golden Triangle” area nearby was once an epicenter of production by the hill tribes. Della was quite excited because she found a new wallet in the gift shop after many years of searching! On the way to the Hilltribe Museum we came across an interesting city park filled with mannequins dressed up in fairy tale costumes made from fake flowers. There was also a night market where both Della and Peggy both bought scarves (yes… more scarves!)

Chiang Rai clock tower… looks a bit different than the ones in Europe

Tunnel of Love of Chiang Rai park

Fairy princess jelfie

Evil Queen in Chiang Rai park

Where We Ate

Everyone talks about the cheap and good street food in Thailand, so we were excited to again have to the opportunity to try it out. Our favorite meal was probably some fried noodles we ate from a stall in front of one of the ubiquitous 7-11s (where we got a cheap beer to wash it down with).

Street noodles!

We also ate a dinner in the night market food court, which was filled with stalls offering many different items. The most popular seemed to be a hot pot that allowed you to cook at your table, but we stuck with fried noodles here as well.

The night market food court

Eating at the night market

One day for lunch we found a simple place near us (that we later think we learned was recommended in Lonely Planet) and got a nice noodle soup. Each one of these meals cost us about a dollar each!

Enjoying our khao soi

Final Thoughts

Compared to larger cities, Chiang Rai may not have had as much to offer, but in terms of unique attractions it seems to have a plethora! We are glad that we spent a couple of days here to experience the white and black sides of Thai art.

Laos Photos

03/19/201503/19/2015globegazers Leave a comment

Enjoy our photos from Laos. You can also access our photos on the top right “places we’ve visited” menu.

Luang Prabang Album

Vang Vieng Album

Vientiane Album

Budget: Laos

03/18/2015globegazers 3 Comments

This is one of our Budget series of posts to give you an idea of how much we spent traveling around the world. Here we will look at Laos. Check our posts to see what kind of activities we did and where we stayed!

In Laos we used the Laotian Kip. We converted to US dollars using the current conversion rates at the time of our visit. It was approximately 8,000 Kip to $1.00.

Total Spent (12 days): $890.56

Accommodation: $311.48

We stayed in several places in Laos – 3 hotels, 2 guesthouses, and 1 hostel. The guesthouse we stayed at in Luang Prabang was beautiful and probably a little bit pricier than we would have stayed if we had not been with family.

Activities: $116.33

This included entrance fees for museums and wats, as well as a fee to cross a bamboo bridge in Luang Prabang. The majority comes from a day tour we did in Vang Vieng.

Alcohol: $11.78

We only count alcohol costs when it is not purchased with other food. This included several afternoon beers.

Food: $199.14

We ate out one to two times per day. A few of our guesthouses included breakfast, but not all.

Miscellaneous: $42.38

This included several souvenirs… More than we’ve bought almost anywhere in Asia. (A secret: It included some gifts for some special people in our lives!) Eric also got his hair cut!

Transportation: $137.44

We took buses between major cities, including one of the worst bus rides we’ve had in a long time, as well as two days on a slow boat to get to Thailand.

Visas: $72

It should have only been $70, but we stupidly forgot our passport pictures in our checked luggage and had to purchase them for $2.

This divides out to $74.21/day which is under $100/day budget! Still a little bit higher than we were hoping for countries in Asia. However, we stayed in mostly the biggest tourist cities and bought more souvenirs than is our norm.

Meandering up the Mekong on the Slow Boat to Thailand

03/16/201503/08/2022globegazers 5 Comments

After Luang Prabang, our next major stop was to be Chiang Rai in Thailand. One can get there a variety of ways, including a long bus ride or a plane trip, but instead we decided to take the “slow boat” up the Mekong River. It is so named because the journey takes two fairly long days of travel just to get up to the Thai border. But, we figured that it might be more scenic and more of a unique adventure.

Day One: Luang Prabang to Pak Beng (Laos)

The Lonely Planet says that the boat dock is in town, but luckily we had done some extra research and discovered that the boats now leave from a dock 11 km north of town. We made sure to get a sŏrngtăaou (pickup taxi) to get us there in plenty of time so we could make sure to get good seats. We were the first people to get our tickets at the ticket office, but then panicked because a large group beat us down the hill to the dock. Luckily, they ended up heading to a different boat and we were able to choose good seats.

Waiting for the ticket office to open

The boat looked as expected, a long narrow configuration with a roof. The seats seem like they should be in passenger vans and are mounted on bases which are moveable. When it became apparent that the boat was not going to be full, we spread out so each of us had a set of two chairs. A good number of locals got on board but all sat in the forward cabin. We also had to wait while some motorbikes and roofing tiles were loaded up front. They asked us to take off our shoes as well, like we were in their house.

Settling in

The roofing tiles up front

As we cruised along the river, life moved pretty slowly. At first it was a little chilly with a cool breeze coming off the water. We managed to stay in the shade as well. We all read our various books – Eric even finished one! The only food on sale on the boat was chips and instant noodles, but we had planned ahead and had some snack foods to eat for lunch.

Relaxing

There might have been some napping as well

The scenery outside was pretty nice. Lots of wooded hills on either side. Plenty of water buffalo lounging by the water. A few fisherman using large nets in the river. Not too many other people except for at a village where we stopped and unloaded the roofing tiles.

More boats on the river

Passing another boat

Water buffalo

Towns on the waters edge

People removing the roofing tiles and carrying them up to the town

This little girl supervised all the work

fisherman

Buddhist monks enjoying a dip

The river moves quite fast, especially when going through some of the narrow rocky stretches. Since we were moving upstream, it was kind of fun and bumpy in these stretches.

We arrived at Pak Beng, our stop for the night, at around 4:45. There were already a lot of boats tied up at the pier, so getting off was a challenge. We first waited for them to get two motorbikes off the front, then we went off the front and had to scramble up some rocks and sand before finding steps.

Scrambling off the boat onto the rocks

Remains of the day

As we walked through town there were plenty of guesthouses offering rooms for about the same rate. We had expected this and didn’t even book ahead, which is a first for us in a long time! Wayne had read about one called Monsovanh and zeroed in on that. They got a room with AC for 130,000 kip ($16). Eric wanted to negotiate more so we headed on further. We ended up with a room with a fan at a place called Vassana for 80,000 kip ($10). The room was pretty nice and clean actually.

Peggy and Wayne’s hotel view

Della and Eric’s hotel room

As the sun set, we found a nice wat in town which gave a good vantage point over the river. Restaurant options were not very exciting in town, so we just chose one that seemed cheap and had a nice terrace looking out over the river. The food was ok, but took quite a while since there just seemed to be one person working there.

sunset over the wat and the river

dinner

We picked up some snacks at a mini-mart in town in preparation for the next day. It was also pretty interesting to walk down to the docks and see all of the boats tied up for the night.

Even though we didn’t have AC, it got cool in the evening and we didn’t even use the fan. Overnight we had to hush a loud cat outside our window but other than that it was a pleasant sleep.

Day Two: Pak Beng to Houay Xai (Laos)

We got up early to make sure to get to the pier in plenty of time to get a good seat… and to confirm that the seat was on the right boat, since it wouldn’t necessarily be the same one!

Morning Mist over the Mekong

Early morning walk down to the boats

Even with our early arrival, we weren’t the first ones there. Most of the other people from the previous day were already on board, so we only got ok seats. (And it was a different boat with a different crew.) This time we got four seats in a group from the start. There were even less locals on board, and it seemed a few people had stayed longer in Pak Beng, so the boat felt maybe only a third full. The boat was a little less nice as well – it felt a little narrower and the railing was higher so it felt like you saw less.

As we got going, we realized that the motor also seemed louder. We tried to have some conversations but realized that reading would just be easier. As the morning went along we all read and relaxed. The scenery was a little less impressive but the time still went by quickly. We read and relaxed – Eric finished another book – and chatted with some fellow passengers (Wayne especially).

Scenery

Other boats on the river

reading

eating lunch

scenery

At one point in the late afternoon, we noticed two of the passengers helping bandage the hand of a local guy on the boat. Then we realized he was missing a finger! Apparently he had just lost it in an accident – although not on the boat. Wayne dug out some extra painkiller to give to him. What was amazing was that the patient was just smiling the whole time!

We knew we were close when we went under the big cross-border bridge. After that it still took about 30 minutes to get to the jetty in Houay Xai.

The Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge

Entering Houay Xai

A fantastic sunset on our final minutes of our water journey

Sunset over our boat as we leave it

Tuk-tuk drivers were waiting there to take us into town, but it seemed like it was just a kilometer so we decided to get some exercise and walk. A few other passengers from the boat had the same idea so we walked into town together. We formed a group and went door to door to a few guesthouses in the “center.” In the end we went back to the first one we had tried since it was 10,000 kip cheaper and got rooms for 70,000 kip – about 9 dollars.

We found another basic restaurant for dinner along with our new travel friends. We were a little sad that our last meal in Laos wasn’t at a fancier place, but we were still able to get one last laab.

We returned to the room and got ready for bed. While Della was showering the power went out! We looked out in the hallway and all the lights seemed off, so we figured the whole place had lost power. But the Internet was still working, which seemed odd… We opened up the windows to let the cool night air in and headed to bed.

Day Three: Houay Xai to Chiang Rai (Thailand)

When we woke up in the morning to roosters crowing and a loudspeaker blaring, we noticed our power was still out. Preparing to write a scathing TripAdvisor review, we then noticed that the power was back on in the hallway. This seemed odd… we finally went down to the front desk to ask and they saw that the circuit breaker for our room had tripped! So the whole time it was just our power and no one else’s that was out. Della is afraid that it was because her hot shower caused the breaker to flip. Oops!

The shower that might have caused the whole problem…

The previous night we went ahead and booked a combination ticket through an agent in town that would get us to Chiang Rai, our first stop in Thailand. Some of our friends from the boat also booked the same thing, so we were happy to have some nice travel companions along as well.

Buying our tickets

Step one was a 15-minute sŏrngtăaou ride to the Laos immigration office, where we got stamped out of the country. Step two was then to ride a shuttle bus (included in the ticket price) over the Friendship Bridge and onto the Thailand side of the river. Getting stamped into Thailand went quite smoothly. We were especially happy because we got a 30-day visa – everything we had read suggested that land crossings would only give us 15 days, and we weren’t sure that gave us enough time in the country. But 30 days should be plenty!

Unloading from the sŏrngtăaou

The final step was a minivan transfer from the border to Chiang Rai. This seemed the most dubious step because no one accompanied us over the border. Instead, we were just given stickers with the name of some guesthouse and were told that someone in Thailand would come pick us up using the stickers to identify us. No one was waiting when we got over, so we were a little nervous. After about 30 minutes they finally showed up and turned out to be legit, so we got our ride into Chiang Rai.

The ride was pretty nice, although we were annoyed that the driver asked us for an extra payment to take us to our guesthouse in Chiang Rai. He claimed that otherwise he would have to drop us off at a bus station way outside of town! This seemed somewhat silly to us, but he was only asking about $1 a person ultimately so we just decided to pay it anyway.

Final Thoughts

We are happy that we used the slow boat to get to Thailand from Luang Prabang. It helped us see some parts of Laos that we wouldn’t have otherwise, and also to get more of a feel for the rural areas in general. The ride was very comfortable and relaxing, and allowed us plenty of time to catch up on reading and just enjoy the serenity of watching the scenery go by.

Lovely, Laid-back Luang Prabang, Laos

03/15/201503/13/2015globegazers 3 Comments

We had heard wonderful things about the northern Lao town of Luang Prabang. Della’s sister Dana had visited here a few years back and she said it was one of her favorite places! We were quite excited to experience this UNESCO World Heritage-designated town for ourselves.

Getting There

It was pretty straight forward, but definitely not a pleasant bus trip! Once we arrived, we decided to walk the 1 to 2 km into town to our guesthouse.

Where We Stayed

We ended up staying a two different places in Luang Prabang. We were excited because we were planning to meet Della’s parents (again), but we would arrive one day before they did. We booked a place called Liberty Guesthouse online, but when we arrived there, the owner was waiting for us to let us know that there had been a computer error of some sort (we never quite understood) and that there was no room at his place. But, he had booked us a room at his cousin’s hostel called Central Backpackers for the same price. He took us there and we smoothly transitioned to our new guesthouse. Our room was OK, but it felt like a slightly rundown, very backpackery, kind of place. We enjoyed the included breakfast though!

The second day we moved to a much nicer (pricier) place that had been booked by Della’s parents called the Manichan Guesthouse. We stayed there the remaining nights in Luang Prabang. It was a lovely guesthouse with a very good included breakfast. It was also a bit more centrally located in old town Luang Prabang.

Our bedroom

The beautiful common area

What We Did

Walked Around Old Town Luang Prabang and River Fronts – The UNESCO listed old town is the closest thing we’ve experienced in Asia to some of the lovely old towns in Europe. We very much enjoyed strolling the streets of this quaint and laid back town.

Strolling old town Luang Prabang

children on their way to or from school

beautiful flowers

brightly colored tuk tuk in front of a temple

colorful monks stroll the streets

Strolling old town Luang Prabang

We spent many an afternoon and evening just walking. Luang Prabang is situated on a small finger of land sticking out at the confluence of two rivers. Eric and Della spent the day before Della’s parents (Wayne and Peggy) arrived just exploring, enjoying the sights over both the Mekong and Nam Khun waterfronts. The following day, we did a similar walk with Wayne and Peggy and we headed over to the Nam Khun side and saw a cute bamboo bridge and decided to cross it (5,000 kip – $0.60 – toll per person). There wasn’t too much to see on the other side, but it felt like a more “real” part of town, so we walked a little bit but then decided to turn around and cross back over, then walked down the riverfront to the confluence. We sat and enjoyed the view. We then walked back down the Mekong riverfront, pausing to enjoy some young coconuts on the way.

Lovely flowers at the confluence

The bamboo bridge

Crossing the bamboo bridge

feeding chickens on the other side of the bridge

Enjoying our coconut

Colorful monks crossing the bridge

Still another day, we walked down to the confluence again and Peggy decided to soak her feet where the two rivers met before we walked down the beach-side of the Mekong.

Observing the Mekong

Peggy soaking her feet in the Confluence

Monks walk the banks of the Mekong

Another thing we enjoyed while walking was the amazing markets. There is a local morning market full of colorful, unique foods. We saw live fish, bare chickens, fried crickets, roasted rat, and more! In addition, there is a night market more geared to tourists. Both were quite pleasant to meander through.

Hiked Up Phu Si – Our first morning with Wayne and Peggy, we headed out for a hike up Phu Si, the hill in the center of town. The walk up was 358 stairs according to the guidebook. At the top is a bright gold stupa and a small wat. We enjoyed the 360-degree views even though the day was a little hazy. We took the eastern route down and ended up in a monastery where we saw a small cave with some statues and a large natural Buddha footprint.

View of Luang Prabang

About to climb the stairs

On top of the world!

The stupa on top

Eric oversees his kingdom

Three gold buddhas

a monk heading down

Reclining Buddha

Visit the Royal Palace – We took a visit to the Royal Palace, the former residence of the king and now a national museum. This building was actually built fairly recently – in the early 20^th century – and is not very ostentatious on the outside. The entrance is framed by trees and gives a pleasant impression, blending Lao and French beaux-arts styles (according to Lonely Planet!)

The Royal Palace (and Della’s new Lao skirt!)

Leading into the Palace

Royal Palace jelfie

The first building we encountered was a fancy white temple housing the famous Pha Bang Buddha image which gives the town of Luang Prabang its name. We were able to get a glimpse of the image which is reportedly from the 1^st century.

We then took a tour of the palace itself (after removing shoes and checking bags). This including reception rooms, the throne room, and then bedrooms. The reception rooms and especially the throne room were decorated in the lavish style you would expect, but the bedrooms were surprisingly sparse.

The only other main exhibit was behind the palace – the royal car exhibit. This contained some of their old Lincoln Continentals for ferrying the royalty and their guests around.

Visit the TAEC Ethnographic Museum – We enjoyed our short visit to TAEC, a tiny ethnographic museum focusing on the smaller ethnic groups in Laos. It had small but interesting exhibits on four different groups: Akha, (H)mong, Khmu and Tai, describing their traditional dress and crafts such as weaving. There was a separate room with exhibits on all of the hard work that women in these cultures have to do: child rearing plus healing and crafts, etc.

Hill tribe clothing

An awesome baby carrier

locations of hill tribes in Laos

Visit Kuang Si Waterfalls!

Click the link for more

Observed the Alms Giving to the Monks – We woke up before dawn one morning so that we could catch the “tak bat,” the daily ceremony where monks go through the streets of town and receive food as an offering. We weren’t sure what to expect because we had heard that the scene could get quite touristy. Lonely Planet warns that sometimes the tourists actually outnumber the participants and despite signs and warnings everywhere, the tourists can’t seem to be completely respectful of the ceremony. Generally, tourists are asked to stay across the road from the procession and not to thrust cameras in the faces of the monks. We had experienced this a bit in Myanmar, and were not anxious to be part of the tourist throng.

The owner of our guesthouse gave Wayne and Peggy some general tips of where we could go to observe without being in main tourist area, so we first headed down by the river. Only a couple of people were there so we walked on to see if we could see anything else.

Outside one monastery we saw a group of about 15 monks emerge. A few townspeople and also a few tourists knelt and gave them sticky rice to put in their baskets. Some people took inappropriate pictures but it wasn’t too bad. It was over so fast that we felt a little underwhelmed. Because we hadn’t seen much of anything, we headed back toward the main street of town where we expected both the main groups of monks (and tourists) to be, but we never really found it. We saw just a few more groups of monks, but never found the large collection that we had been envisioning.

Visiting Wats – We spent one day exploring the multitude of beautiful wats (Buddhist temples) in town. Our main target was the big one, Wat Xieng Thong. We walked down the main street and stopped at a few others on the way first. Wat Sensoukaram had a nice red temple that made for good pictures. Wat Souvannakhilli had a small free exhibit about meditation in its main building.

Wat Xieng Thong was the only one that required admission, but it was pretty impressive. It is most known for being one of only two temples that was spared when the city was invaded by a Chinese tribe. The main building, built in 1560, was beautiful, with expansive gold murals inside. There were also a few buildings covered in glass mosaic similar to the throne room at the Royal palace. Another large building housed a big carriage used in processions and some other artifacts.

Luang Prubang, Laos

What We Ate

We had quite a few memorable meals in Luang Prabang.

Our first evening, we had arrived pretty late and were quite hungry. We just wanted something quick so we headed to the main part of town where Eric had read that there was a market. There was a huge market, but we didn’t see a lot of food until we got to the food street! This was a narrow alley-like road that was packed with food stalls. There was meats of all kinds being barbecued, spring rolls, crepes, and lots of soups. But we ended up eating from a buffet like table. For about $2 (15,000 kip) you could fill a bowl with as much as you wanted. Then you gave it to the stall owner and she fried it for you in a big wok, making sure it was nice and warm (and hopefully all the germs killed). It was delicious!

We ate two nice meals on the banks of the Mekong River. For one lunch, we were looking for something quick, easy, and cheap. We saw a food stall with some nice tables overlooking the river with good prices. We were a little disappointed in the quickness aspect, but the taste was nice! The second meal was with Peggy and Wayne. We headed to the riverfront at sunset and enjoyed a lovely view while we ate!

Khao Soi lunch on the Mekong

dinner sunset on the Mekong

Our guesthouse had some good eats as well. One afternoon we all got a special Lao soup called Khao Soi from the guesthouse.

Some of the most exciting meals were actually when we got to renew a connection from the past! Remember the Belgian bikers we originally met in Albania, and then met again in Greece?? Well, lucky for us, our paths crossed once more in Luang Prabang. We met them for two evening meals. The first was at Café Toui which is known for its Lao set menu. Unfortunately, when we arrived they said we couldn’t have that. =/ However, we had some other Luang Prabang specialties including a Luang Prabang special sausage and pumpkin curry. The food was good and company was great! We met them for a second evening where we again visited the food street at the market, and it was delicious a second time around!

Another Lao favorite is a sandwich! This comes as a legacy of the French and there are many stalls that will serve you up a nice baguette with a variety of fillings. We enjoyed one such lunch.

On our first evening with Peggy and Wayne, we headed to Khaiphaen Restaurant, which Eric had seen as highly recommended on TripAdvisor, both for the local style food and for its mission, which is to be a training restaurant for disadvantaged youth. The servers, students supervised by a teacher, were definitely very eager to help. We got an appetizer of khaiphaen (fried river weed) to share, then for dinner Eric got Mekong fish and prawn laksa, Wayne got orlap (a local soup with pork, eggplant and mushrooms) and Peggy and Della both got larb. The flavors on the soups were good but more subtle than we were expecting.

Riverweed appetizer

Eric’s soup had woodchips in it!

Final Thoughts

We enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere and the chance to experience a nice old town. For some reason, we didn’t completely fall in love though. We think this might have to do with expectations as so many people had sung praises of this place. It was really nice, but when you expect to love something, somehow it sets a really high bar that is hard to meet. In any case, Luang Prabang is a lovely place and we did enjoy our time there. It was also nice to see Della’s parents again and to meet up with new friends halfway across the globe!

Cute Bears and Crystal Clear Waters at Kuang Si, Laos

03/14/201503/13/2015globegazers 2 Comments

We were quite excited for our final city, Luang Prabang, in part because of the Kuang Si Waterfalls, a site outside of town. We had been looking forward to seeing them for a long time, expecting them to remind us of our visit to Rio Celeste in Costa Rica and our cloudy-turned-lovely day at Plitvice Lakes last fall.

Almost every travel agent in town will sell you a ride to the waterfalls. We decided to have our guesthouse, Manichan, organize the trip for us. They have a normal driver that they use for trips like this. Our ride to the waterfall was via “songteauw,” which is kind of like a tuk-tuk but instead you are riding in the bed of a pickup truck on a bench (with a covering).

Riding in the songtheaw

The road out to the waterfall was about 30 km, and a little steep and windy. It definitely took longer than we thought to make it out to the falls. We were driving for about 45 min and kept thinking about Della’s sister Dana and her friend Emma who somehow did this trip on bikes when they were here! Phew! Impressive!

Our first stop in the park was at a rescue center for the moon bears, named after the white crest on their chest. There were quite a few of them scattered through the various enclosures, and many were up and being playful.

We then headed up and found the first of the lower pools of the waterfall. The water was crystal clear and going down some traventines- like Plitvice Lakes in many ways. Except this time we had great weather all the way through! Wayne did a few swims as we went up but the rest of us decided to wait.

Amazing pools

Wayne checks it out

Wayne swims through the pools

Lovely

At the base of the large falls we decided to follow advice from our guesthouse and take the stairs to the left side to reach the top – which seemed very far away! The more used path goes to the right of the falls. We were worried that we had heard wrong. Even this trail, which was supposedly better than other other according our guesthouse host, was pretty steep in places. But, when we reached the top and talked to other travelers who had come up the other way, it sounded like ours was better! At the top there wasn’t too much to do except wade out to somewhat close to the edge and admire the view.

climbing up to the top

on the edge

Back at the bottom, we went to one of the pools and then all got in the water. It was pretty cold but ok once you got moving. Other people jumped off this tree into a deep spot, so we were inspired to do the same. Eric went first, then Wayne, and finally Della.

Eric’s jump

Wayne’s jump

Della preparing for her jump… the jump itself wasn’t captured…

Swimming

We were only supposed to stay for five hours (based on the price we paid for transport), so then we headed back out to find our ride home. The ride back seemed to go faster!

Kuang Si is beautiful and we think it is a must on your trip to Luang Prabang. We’re not sure we recommend taking a bike though!

Flashback Friday: Tubing the Guadalupe River

03/13/201503/08/2015globegazers Leave a comment

Flashback Friday is a picture series where we “flashback” to some of our memories – from either from our prior travel or from home. We hope you’ll enjoy some of our remembrances!

Recently, we spent some time in Vang Vieng, Laos which is a world famous tubing locale. While we didn’t exactly get in on the tubing rowdiness, it did bring back some memories of when, senior year, we tubed down the Guadalupe River in TX with our friend Charles. It was a quiet and calm trip, but we enjoyed every minute!

After tubing, we enjoyed a catfish dinner in Clear Springs!