We decided given that we have this terrific guesthouse we found (I'll post pics later people..sorry!), that we'd stay here another night. But after last night, now we wish we hadn't. Thai people (and I know I'm generalizing), at least up North, do not eat late. We finished things at the internet cafe around 8 p.m. and was lucky to find any place to eat. We finally strolled down to the Bamboo Guesthouse which is owned by this eccentric (and ecclectic) Thai guy. It was so cool. He serves Mexican food and wow...it really was great! Highly recommended in the Lonely Planet and when I commented to him we wanted Mexican given the LP recommendation, his response was...don't believe it...Mexican food no good here, but we tried it anyway. Homemade salsa with chips and washed down with a cold Singha (national beer of Thailand). What was really interesting, was that Colin, my Brit biking buddy had never had Mexican food...yep..that's true! And he has traveled all over also! So, I played like a Thai person or Chinese person ordering all this Mexican food for us! Started off with chicken fajitas, then moved onto chicken burritos and polished it off with chocolate brownie with chocolate dripping all over it..ah..it was great! But the place was just incredibly cool...he had music playing in the background and it was all the old 60's stuff, of Grand Funk Railroad, Beatles, Cream, and all the halucingenic good stuff!!! We loved it so much, we're hitting the place tonight. I'll take pics tonight to post.
But after dinner, we wandered around the streets and it was TOTALLY DEAD!!! We had seen this (and I kid you not) bar that had advertised Country Thai music and we thought hm..this might be interesting. Well, at 10 pm there were only 2 people in there other than the live band playing!! Needless to say...we didn't stick around. So we were pretty good boys last night, and in our rooms by 10:30.
Today we got the guesthouse people to handle getting us our Laos visas as we didn't want to go through the hassle in the morning when we leave. Initially, our plan had been to take a high speedboat down the Mekong from Huay Xia in Laos, to Luang Phang which is the ancient capital of Laos and on the World Heritage site. Supposed to be small scale Angor Wat in Cambodia which I've seen several times. But the Lonely Planet guidebook strongly advised against the highspeed boat due to many accidents (some fatal) and after talking with a Brit who lives at the guesthouse, he strongly advised us not to do it and take the "slow boat". So that's what we're going to do tomorrow. We hadn't wanted to do this as the slow boat is a 2 day journey and stops overnight at Pak Bang about 1/2 way. But it will be much safer. We wandered around town, got our daily massages (I'm addicted to Thai and oil massage...at only $10 or 300 baht for 2 hrs, wouldn't you??), and chilled. Found a great roadside bbq that had grilled chicken which had obviously been through a rub as it was just wonderful. Colin had to stop me from buying another (1/2 chicken). Here's a pic of us getting our massages today:
Happy Massage Lady!
That is actually Colin's leg...
The busy street of Chiang Khong!
I've gotten many emails from everyone saying they really love the blog and like reading about our adventure...yeh well we are having an outstanding time...wish many of you could experience this type of adventure. Life is all about creating memories...and this trip will fullfill that goal.
1 comment:
Len / Colin.
Keep the blog and the pictures coming. Its bloody cold here in England and this warms us up. Safe journey on the boat and enjoy the ride. Remember a crap day's vacation beats a good day in the office.
Ross.
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