I'm off to Yangon (Rangoon) early tomorrow morning. I'm not sure about the internet situation in Myanmar these days. When my guidebook was published there was no public web access available and email was only possible with an account through the government ISP. I'm fairly certain that this has changed by now but it's possible this will be my last post until I get to India which will be around February 22'nd (assuming I manage to stick to my plans for a change).

Most likely my info is out of date but I won't know for sure until I get to Yangon tomorrow.

I'm back in Bangkok after a couple nights in Kanchanaburi. Didn't do much since I saw most of the town last October while I was waiting for my Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos visas. No new pictures - if you're joining late and missed the pictures I posted last fall you can see them here.

My Myanmar visa was waiting for me when I got back to Bangkok this afternoon. Tomorrow night I'm taking an overnight bus back up to Chiang Mai to pick up my India visa and then catch a flight from there to Rangoon on Sunday.

Khao San road never changes, except that there are more people every time I come here. I actually had to walk around for almost an hour this morning before I found a guesthouse with any room available and in the end I had to pay for a double.

It looks like arranging my Myanmar visa shouldn't be a problem. Apparently they sometimes interview American's in person before granting the visa though so I won't know for sure until Wednesday morning. In the meantime I think I'm going to head back to Kanchanaburi rather than waiting around in Bangkok. It's pretty close to Bangkok and I enjoyed it a lot when I was there in the fall. It's a much better and cheaper place to kill a couple days. Also, there is this restaurant there that has by far the best Thai food I've ever had in my life.

Sorry I never got around to posting part 2 of the final Laos writeup yesterday. Anyway, here goes...

From Hat Sa I took a truck up to Phongsali. The truck ride was only one hour, but it left two hours later than scheduled because the driver had to wait around for some inconsiderate local big-shot to finish fishing before we could leave. This was a long enough delay that even the Laos people in the bus were getting visibly annoyed. By the time I got to Phongsali there wasn't much time to see any of the town before dark so I don't have any good pictures and in any case there wasn't much to see. Phongsali was hands-down my least favorite place in Laos. I am very glad I didn't go all the way up there just to see it - this was definitely a case where the journey was the point rather than the destination.

The morning after I arrived in Phongsali I caught a bus to Udomxai. This was a long long bus ride (9 hours) and I was dreading it. However, for some reason it turned out to be a great ride. The scenery was beautiful and the bus driver really new how to keep the bus moving on the windy mountain roads. It barely seemed like a long ride. There wasn't much to see in Udomxai either - for me it was just a stop on the way to Pakbeng to catch a boat to the border at Huay Xai.



The truck ride to Pakbeng wasn't bad, although not as nice as the previous day's ride from Phongsali. Pakbeng is a small town on the Mekong about half way between Luang Prabang and Huay Xai. The two day boat ride between the border and Huay Xai and Luang Prabang is one of the biggest things to do on the Laos tourist route so Pakbeng has loads of guesthouses and restaurants and fills up with tourists every night. It was a pleasant place to spend a couple nights.



On my last full day in Laos I caught the boat up the Mekong to Huay Xai. This was a completely different experience from the trip up the Nam Ou. The boat was much larger and was full of tourists rather than being one of the local river taxis I took up the Nam Ou. It was still OK but a bit of a disappointment after the long river trip the week before. Still a nice way to leave the country though.



After one night in Huay Xai I left Laos and crossed the Mekong to Chiang Khong in Thailand. From there I caught a bus to Chiang Mai where I am now. Chiang Mai has been a major culture shock after Laos.

Yesterday I went to the Indian consulate to arrange my visa for India. This is going to take a full week so I won't have it back until next Friday. I've decided to try to visit Myanmar (Burma) for a couple weeks before heading to India so tonight I am taking a bus to Bangkok to arrange that visa. I could do it here but it takes too long and I've been told I can get it done in 1 to 2 days if I show up in person at the embassy in Bangkok. Luckily the India consulate doesn't need to hold onto my passport for the full week otherwise I would have to wait here for a week before I could get the Myanmar visa.

Anyway, that's about it for now.

Up The River

I finally dragged myself out of Laos this morning and now I'm in Chiang Mai (Thailand) while I arrange my visa for India. In the meantime, here's the first part of the writeup of my final weeks in Laos. This covers my trip up the Nam Ou river from Luang Prabang to Hat Sa.

The boat trips up the Nam Ou were simply amazing. The river runs through the mountains and there were many places with significant rapid to climb. I couldn't believe that the boats I was riding were capable of making it up some of them - you could really feel the steep angle as they struggled up some of them. I remember riding a jet boat in New Zealand as a kid but I don't think they did anything like this.

My first day out of Luang Prabang I had planned to go all the way up to Muang Ngoi, however when I got to Nong Khiaw it looked nice so I decided to stay a night. I ended up really liking it so one night turned into two. I spent the day in Nong Khiaw wandering around the area near town taking in the scenery.



After Nong Khiaw I took a short one hour boat trip up to Muang Ngoi. With the delay getting out of Luang Prabang, and the unplanned stop in Nong Khiaw I was already 3 days behind schedule. I decided to spend the full three nights I'd planned on in Muang Ngoi anyway. It was a pleasant town although it's been taken over by guesthouses and traveler-oriented restaurants. There weren't too many other travelers there though so it had some of the village feel. Anyway, it was a nice place to chill for a couple days as I'd expected. I spent the entire first day reading in the hammock in the porch of my bungalow and then spent the second day wandering the paths around town seeing the scenery.



I hadn't really had enough of Muang Ngoi after 3 nights but decided to try to get up to my next stop on the river anyway. Boats don't necessarily run every day up to Muang Khua so I figured I should try in case I had to wait a day to get a boat. I got lucky though and found someone who was making the run. For the first third of the trip I was the only person on the boat other than the couple who owned it. This was another nice full day trip up the river with the usual rapids. The scenery changed drastically though - instead of the sharp peaks of the lower Nam Ou the terrain was more rolling.



I had originally planned to head inland from Muang Khua to Udomxai and from there west to see the north-west part of the country. However, I was enjoying the Nam Ou trip so much I decided to spend one more day and head all the way up to Hat Sa near Phongsali.

This turned out to be the most eventfully day of the trip. About one hour after we left the drivers got all excited and turned the boat around. Turns out they were chasing a big dead fish they spotted floating by. I don't know how long it had been dead but it was already starting to rot and it stank like crazy. They put it in the back of the boat and every time we stopped to pick up or drop off passengers the whole boat was overwhelmed with the stench of rotting fish. Yum!

Then, about 2 hours from Hat Sa the driver managed to hit an underwater rock outcropping. Although the boat didn't quite flip (it was close though) the bottom plank was cracked and it started to sink. They managed to get to shore to unload us before it sank all the way, but the bottom of my pack was soaked. We helped them bail the water out of the boat and haul it up onto the river bank so they could start fixing it. About 30 minutes later another boat came by and picked us up for the rest of the trip up to Hat Sa, which was nice because we would not have made it by dark otherwise.

By the time we got to Hat Sa it was too late to catch a ride to Phongsali so I had to stay in Hat Sa. There were three other backpackers on the boat with me and we all got to share a little cubicle in the back of the only restaurant in town. I was just a single room with a couple of blankets and mattresses on an elevated bamboo platform. Just enough room for the four of us. I had a great time in Hat Sa though. The four of us ordered up a full spread (a fish dish, a vegetable dish, and lots of sticky rice) from the restaurant and split a bottle of Lao Lao (rice whiskey) and a bunch of beers.



That's about it for now. Tomorrow I'll post pictures from my final week in Laos. Don't expect as many as today though.

Udomxai has internet access so I'm on a couple days ahead of schedule. The last week or so has been amazing - right up there with my time down in southern Laos. I spent the week traveling up the Nam Ou river from Laung Prabang to Hat Sa with stops in Nong Khiaw, Muang Ngoi and Muang Khua on the way. I ended up spending longer (and traveling further) than I'd planned so I'm not going to have a chance to see everything I'd wanted in the northwest. It was worth it though.

I'm not going to do a full write up yet because the internet connection here is too expensive.

Here are a few pictures in the meantime. They don't show much of the trip itself - that will come with the full writeup. Instead I'm fulfilling an old request from my mother to post some pictures of the places I've been staying. These are, respectively, my guesthouses in Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang, Nong Khiaw, and Muang Ngoi.



Tomorrow morning I head to Pakbeng to catch a boat up the Mekong to Hue Xai where I will cross into Thailand.

Tomorrow I head to Muang Ngoi to start my loop through north and north-western Laos. There is a very good chance that I will not have any internet access for the remaining two weeks of my time in Laos. There is always a chance that something has sprung up in the 2 years since my guidebook was written but so far it's been extremely accurate on which town have internet access available.

I was hoping to post some pictures but things are too slow now. Probably has something to do with the fact that the internet connection in Luang Prabang has been down for 2 days so every traveller in town is currently checking email now that it's back. I'm hoping to try again later tonight though.

Sorry I never posted the promised pictures on New Year's Day, but I've been too busy having fun during the day and way too tired in the evenings. Derek and Elisa left for home a couple hours ago so I have some free time again. Hopefully (once again) the quantity will make up for the delay.

Anyway, we went tubing on New Year's Day and again on the second. These first three pictures were taken on the two tubing trips.



Yesterday we returned to Vientiane (where I am now), however instead of just taking a bus we took a Kayaking trip on the way. The trip was billed as "Kayaking to Vientiane", but in truth it we only Kayaked about 10 or so of the 150 km distance. The rest of the time was spent on Tuk Tuks but it didn't matter as the trip was a blast. It was a far better way of getting to Vientiane than just taking the bus.



Derek and Elisa didn't have to leave for the airport until 5 PM so we had plenty of time to wander around Vientiane today. We saw a couple sites I hadn't seen before and a couple I had. The weather was much nicer today than my last time in Vientiane so I was happy to see the sites I'd already seen in a new light so to speak. Pha That Luang in particular looked much better today than it did on the overcast day when I visited before.



Tomorrow morning I start back north for the last time. As usual I plan to break the trip in Vang Vieng tomorrow for at least one more day of tubing (this will make my 7'th trip down the river). After that I head back through Luang Prabang for one night before starting a loop through north and north-western Laos.