Sojourn a journey through life

Laos – Luang Prabang

After our few days of relaxing in Vang Vieng, we jumped on a mini-bus and headed North for the 6 hour drive to Luang Prabang. If I ever go back to Laos, I would hope to be able to rent or buy a motorcycle in Vang Vieng and ride up to Luang Prabang over a period of 2-3 days. The scenery on this route is absolutely stunning, with village after village built and perched on the edges of precipitous cliffs for pretty much the entire duration of the drive. Going up through the mountains is absolutely stunning, and it would be awesome to have the time and ability to stop for the countless photo opportunities along the way.

Also along the drive, we stopped at a small village where we could grab some lunch. I found myself a little Laotian lady making sandwiches out of baguette’s, and I never turn down a good sandwich. I also have this irresistible urge to take photos any time I see gasoline and diesel dispensed from barrels.

After we arrived in Luang Prabang, and some might smooth negotiating with a dozen Tuk Tuk drivers, we were off to our accommodation which for the first couple nights was a place that Carly’s sister had stayed when she was in Laos a couple years ago. Known as Thong Bay Guest House, this was a superb little place along the river, with wonderful little cabins/huts and a ton of character.

Our bedroom at Thong Bay

Our balcony at Thong Bay

Washroom at Thong Bay

Another great thing about Thong Bay was you could order breakfast the previous night by writing up on a white-board what you’d like for breakfast and at what time, then the next morning they would bring it to you and serve you on the balcony of your hut at the requested time. Not a bad thing, sitting by the river having breakfast brought to you right outside your room.

A highly zoomed view from our balcony at Thong Bay

Daniel looking a little dumb and sleepy, eating breakfast.

We found Luang Prabang to be a spectacularly relaxed place (much like the rest of Laos, from what we’ve read). Situated right where the Nam Khan river meets the Mekong, there are plenty of neat places to walk, eat or drink by the water, enjoying the boats going by, or simply looking at the rice paddies and bamboo foot bridges – a surreal experience. Luang Prabang is packed with restaurants, old temples and quaint alleyways that you never tire of wandering.

Small side-street in Luang Prabang town

Small bridge in Luang Prabang, near some art galleries

Foot bridge over the Nam Khan river, just before it joins the Mekong.

Beautiful Carly with funny looking man, standing by the Mekong immediately prior to ordering some BeerLao. Yum.

A schoolyard in Luang Prabang

At some point on one day (wow, if that’s not ambiguous…), Carly and I decided to head for a massage. US$5/each got us an hour long Lao massage which goes down in the record books as the best massage I’ve ever had. All that despite it was given to me by a Laotian she-man, and there were a few close calls with my ‘parts’ (we’re talking millimeters here – I was thinking I might get grabbed). Good times were had by all, I’m sure.

On one of our more adventurous days, we headed out on a trip to Kuang Si falls which was fantastic. There are a number of swim pools designated along the path as you walk up-river to the main falls. After that there are some paths and stairs you can climb in order to swim in some of the basins waaaaayyy up high on some of the larger parts of the falls. The views are stunning, and there is something exciting about swimming in waterfalls. Behind some of the falls are small caves carved out by the water, and being back there is absolutely fantastic.

A ’sandwish’ stand by the river.

Selling fabric, blankets, etc. by the river.

Another interesting thing about Laos is rice. Sticky rice. Quite unlike any other rice you’ve ever experienced. It’s served up in wicker baskets, and you grab a pile of it with your hand, and it’s sticky. Really sticky. Excellent with gravies and curries. Carly and I hit up a little rice exhibit at one of the more upscale little shops around town. Neat stuff.

Luang Prabang was also home to the coolest night market we’ve ever seen. About an hour or two before dusk, local families and sellers begin to line the streets on the south west side of town with displays and tents and bare light bulbs that will later be used to shine light on the countless ware’s and goods for sale. The people do not harass you in the slightest compared to some of the other markets in Vietnam, Cambodia or Thailand. Wandering this night market is truly an experience unto itself. Fantastic gifts, blankets and all sorts of other goods.

As an aside, if you’re ever interested in some ’strange cuisine’…

Mekong weed with bong sauce, anyone?

One of the other ‘major attractions’ that Luang Prabang offers is the early-morning rising of the monks who walk the streets in small groups collecting alms for their daily food. We were up at around 6:00am to take these photos at various places through the town. Each monk carries a container around his neck, and each of the people place a small handful of sticky rice into each of the monks container. Other food is also given at times, sometimes meat and sometimes candies, etc. It’s been noted that this has been turned into a bit of a business, where people on the streets will sometimes try to sell tourists old food to give to the monks, and it has been reported that this has caused illness on more than one occasion. If you’re in Luang Prabang and plan on giving alms to the monks, ask the proprietor at your guest house to prepare something for you.

The last super-cool thing worth talking about here is Lao New Year, also known as the water festival, or Bun Pi Mai Lao. This three-day water festival kicks off the Lao New Year – and also takes place in Thailand (not sure if any other countries as well). This is a culturally interesting experience, unless you happen to be carrying with you things like passports and digital cameras that prefer not to have water thrown on them. At this time of the year. people stand on the side of the streets with buckets, pails, hoses, cups, mugs, water pistols, or any other thing that would act as an exceptional water-projectile. You need to prepare to get wet. Carly and I would be walking down the street, unsuspectingly, and as we would pass a group of high-school aged boys, KERSPLASH!!! – all of a sudden we’d have a bucket of water tossed on us from behind, completely soaked.

Now, in Laos this wasn’t so bad, but we had booked our flights through Udon Thani in Thailand, because it’s much cheaper for us to fly to/from Thailand – and then simply drive over the Laos border into Vientiane. After flying from Luang Prabang down to Vientiane, we crossed over the Laos border into Thailand and (…oh… shoot… time for a side story… we’ll come back to the water thing in a minute…).

So – side story. Carly and I arrived in Thailand and began negotiating for a ride into Udon Thani. The prices being given to us were completely unreasonable (1000 Baht for the two of us), so we began looking around for some other folks to ask for prices, or share a ride. We see an Indian man all decked out in a suit, running around a little frantic talking on his cell phone. Him and his buddy apparently were also trying to get a ride into Udon Thani, so we managed to get a price of 800 Baht for the four of us (200 each). After a few minutes however, the gentleman seemed a bit less frantic, and let us know that they had a van that they were trying to get from Laos back into Thailand, but that someone had screwed up their paperwork when they had originally gone the other direction. They had the paperwork sorted out, and offered us a ride into town with them. Score. The reason for the franticness is that they had planes to catch to Bangkok / India in about an hours time, and it takes 35-40 minutes to get from the Thai border to Udon Thani. Needless to say, the ride from the border to the airport was an outstandingly good time, from the egging on of their Laotian driver to go faster, to conversing with these two amazing Indian businessmen who work for a huge Indian conglomerate of companies responsible for, among other things, 25% of the worlds rayon production. After we managed to get them to the airport, and they ran off frantically with their bags trying to catch their flights, they left us with their van and Laotian driver to go wherever we wanted. So we got dropped off at a huge grocery store and picked up some food for lunch. After that, it was time for us to find a ride to our hotel….(ok! carrying on with the water story…)

Carly and I managed to find a Tuk Tuk in the parking lot of the grocery store, and after the obligatory price haggling, we were off in his little Tuk Tuk for a ride to our hotel. Boy, were we stupid. We had no idea what we’d just gotten into.

If we thought that Laotian folks were water-happy, in Udon Thani, it was an order of magnitude (or 9) more insane. And unfortunately for us, we had all of our luggage with us, packs and all. The streets were insane. Traffic jams, pumping music, everyone was soaked, and dancing in the streets. Groups of 4 people would stop our driver in his tracks, and make him wait while they opened up our shirts pouring buckets of water all over us and painting our faces with white cream or baby powder. Five people would drive by in the back of a pickup truck with a huge barrel of water tied to the cab and be flinging buckets of water all over us. It was madness. Laughable and enjoyable madness, and an amazing experience to be sure, just too bad that we had all our stuff with us.

After about 40 minutes of this, we arrived at our hotel (a rather fancy place) sopping wet. I’m certain I squeezed a liter of water from my boxer shorts. My passport was soaked – I had to try it with a hair dryer. Fortunately – our camera was just about the only thing that wasn’t soaked, and a few of our clothes that were deep in our packs.

For anyone wanting to get involved in a party like this, I can’t recommend Thailand at mid-April enough. This was an absolute riot of a good time.

Poor sucker getting water tossed on him in Luang Prabang

Sopping wet pile of clothes after arriving at our hotel in Udon Thani

Laos – Vang Vieng

For Carly’s April break last week we flew into Udon Thani (Thailand) which is a short jaunt from Vientiane and the Laos border. It was a relatively painless (but a bit time-consuming) process to grab a Visa on Arrival into Laos, although we were quite surprised that Visa’s for Canadians were the most expensive of the bunch – at USD$43 a pop. We’re used to seeing the Yanks get screwed for Visa prices – but apparently not in Laos (USD$30 for the ‘murricans).

Mike McCarney (hope I spelled that right) one of Carly’s co-workers was traveling solo that week – so he, Carly and I all grabbed a taxi up to Vang Vieng straight away. We didn’t want the hussle bussle of Vientiane – we wanted to chill out. Our cab driver was kind enough to stop in Vientiane for us to grab a bite of lunch (some awesome noodle soup with mystery meat from the morning market), and from there we were off to Vang Vieng – about a 3-4 hour drive. Our driver was kind enough to tell us he had “bad eyes” as he was taking us on our journey, and the cab was questionable at best. Regardless, we arrived in Vang Vieng without incident, and found some awesome accommodation at some place I can’t even pronounce.

The business card says “Suantham Machat Legardin Organique”. But for US$10 a night we scored our own bungalow with a queen-sized bed, hot showers, and a view overlooking the river and the sunset. Not a bad score at all.

View from our room at sunset.

Our room with the handy mosquito net that Carly hung up. Not too many mosquitoes around though.

Standing outside our bungalow.

From our room – during the day.

On day two in Vang Vieng, we rented some motorcycles and hit the streets (and the caves). The Shell Station with the blown out windows was too good a photo opp to miss.

Me and Mike at the gas station.

Gas anyone?

Just a bit down-river from our guest house was this toll bridge that didn’t look like it held much. Any trucks that needed to cross the river just…well… drove through the river. I very amusing site, in perpetuity while we were there.

Shot of some of the mountains from the other side of the bridge, on our way to the caves.

Boys on bikes.

Carly wasn’t comfortable on the semi-automatic bike, so she rode on the back of mine. That was a good time.

Carly taking photos while we were riding.

Bananas!

One of the coolest things about Vang Vieng were the countless modes of transportation. Everyone seemed to have one of these, what I would describe as a highly-modified rotor-tiller with huge long handles. They hooked these bad boys up to a cart, and you essntially had a gas powered horse. They drove ‘em on the roads, on the trails and yes, even through the river.

This is a shot of one of the school’s in Vang Vieng

Nice shot of the mountains in the area.

Pouring concrete frames for a 3-story building. Love to see if this was WCB approved back home .

This shot is money.

One of the streets in Vang Vieng.

We rode our bikes about 15Km north of town and came across this great shot. We had been looking for the organic farm that is famous for their mulberry shakes, which we eventually found, and drank a number of. Yum.

Later that night – we came back here. These bamboo footbridges cross this part of the river to a couple of outdoor bars. The bars have these cabana-like tent things set up with hammocks overlooking the river. When we got back to the bikes – Mike’s gas had been siphoned from his. A good time to be certain. He grabbed onto the back of our bike and we towed him home. Had a pretty good laugh while we were at it.

A few more sunset photos from our accommodation.

Vang Vieng was a great start to our trip. It’s definitely a relaxed place, quiet. Good food, and surprisingly excellent pizza (at pretty much every restaurant). The menu’s are definitely near perfect photocopies of each other, with a few words changed here or there. The best pizza we had was fresh pineapple and basil – might sound weird – but it was outstanding.

True to its reputation, Friends was playing at a number of restaurants, and Carly and I sat down to watch a couple episodes with a drink at some point. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Bags are(n’t) packed (yet. But soon.)

The countdown is on. I don’t think either Carly or I believe that it’s only 53 days until we begin the infamous ‘journey home’. Personally, I’m starting to feel more and more how badly I will miss Singapore as we head back to Canada, but at the same time there is plenty to look forward to once we’re there. Singapore’s been home for two years, and at this point, it feels like home. But enough sentimental rambling for now.

We’ve booked our first few flights on our journey westward. Our first stop will be in Amman, Jordan on the 12-June – followed by Israel. From Tel Aviv we’ll fly to Athens and lounge around on the island of Corfu for a few days. From there we’ll be off to Italy on 3-July. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get Carly to leave Italy – she’s mentioned renting a villa in Tuscany and camping out there forever. We’ll see what happens.

In the mean time, we just got back from Laos and Thailand last week, so we have a ton of photos that need posting, we just haven’t got around to it yet.

My business partner (Hi Nick!) and friend is here visiting (from Texas Y’all) – so we’re working and enjoying each others company. Good times.

The Good Life

Ah, the good life. What is it? Is it in Singapore? Is it in Canada? Is it anywhere, everywhere, nowhere?

During one of our Saturday morning breakfasts at the pool, we began talking about the things we’d miss most about Singapore and the things we would not miss about Singapore. This interesting discussion turned into the table you’ll find below. Some these things are hard to explain and many of them depend on which way you look at it. For example, is being without family in Singapore a pro or a con? Ha! Joking of course Is the great Health Care in Singapore really a full pro because it is private after all? The things that make Singapore great to us, as expatriates, would often not be a positive aspect for local Singaporeans. In no particular order, and without further ado or disclaimer, here are some of our fluid thoughts:

Phantom of The Oprah

On Saturday, Carly and I went with a few of her colleagues to see Phantom of the Oprah, which is showing at the Esplanade Theater. They’re doing something like 80 bajillion shows over the next 2 months (give or take). We bought the tickets ages ago (last year some time) so it was fantastic when show time rolled around. Carly and I hadn’t seen Phantom before, and all we can both say is that it was absolutely fantastic. The sets were unbelievable, we had great seats, and I don’t know if I could pick a better place to go see it than the Esplanade.

The show followed with drinks at Iguana and dinner at The Tent – a great Mongolian Grill style restaurant down on Clarke Quay.

This coming Saturday we’re off to Laos for a week, so hopefully there’ll be more posts and photos to come.

CIS Colleagues

I thought it was about time I posted a photo of my JK Teaching Team. This year there are 8 JK classes at CIS (one teacher missing from the photo). We work together every day!

(Top Row Left to Right) Stacey, Lee-Anne, Astrid, Gayatri
(Bottom Row Left to Right) Julie, Myself, Louise
Absent – Bahar

Ms. Vani (Educational Assistant in the classroom and good friend) and I