Good Morning Vietnam!!!

So we haven't blogged in agess!! Due to the fact of limited wifi and lack of time! To pick up from where we were last, we ended up doing a few more little things in Laos but nothing of major importance, so this post is going to be about our trip around Vietnam!!! 

We had 15 days in Vietnam thanks to the Vietnamese government bringing in the 15 day free visa!

The trip started with Hanoi and Halong Bay. We spent two days and one night in each place. Hanoi was a good place to try and get accustomed to the money (we became instant millionaires) and some of the quirkiness of Vietnam. The roads all over South East Asia are fairly crazy but not until I arrived in Hanoi did I have the feeling of "im not making it to the other side of the road" coupled with the joy of making it too the other end alive! The street food was amazing and beer was super cheap, it was our first try of frog and we liked it a lot!!!

Halong Bay was a different type of trip from what we have done before as it was the most westernised trip we had been on. We hadnt seen so many none locals since we were in England, but the views were amazing and I really enjoyed the relaxing time on the mini cruise! For our little cruise we had a few activities a few just felt like walking in a que through pretty places but some were really fun like Kayaking and watching wild monkeys (none of them jumped on Sarahs head this time) and the view point at the top of 'tippy point' (I think I have spelt this wrong). It was a lovely way to spend the first few days!

From then we started our trip down to Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) but we were stopping off a few places on the way, Hue, Hoi An, and Nha Trang. Hue was very interesting as it had the old palace of the Nguyen Dynasty, but we didnt go too far out too the other temples as were a bit short on time as I got us lost in peak heat!!! (I wasnt the most favorited person that day) but we still had fun!

Hoi An was the place we enjoyed most in Vietnam because of its beautiful old town and it was only a short cycle to the beach! We spent a bit longer here than we had planned but we loved every second! We wished we were coming home straight after here as the suits and clothes were cheap and really good quality also made too fit hahaha but unfortunately they wouldn't fit in our backpacks!

Nha Trang was the most westernised town we visited as it seemed very much built up for Russian tourists. There was a beach about 2 mins walk from our guesthouse which work well as we had rain the day we arrived but sun for the main day we were there so beach fun we had! We didnt even get burnt. Our final treat in Nha Trang was a trip to the cinema which doesnt sound to exotic but I got all giddy because it only cost about £4 for tickets and popcorn, and we saw the new Jame Bond film!

The final destination in Vietnam was Saigon. We had a couple of days here before we leave to Cambodia tomorrow so we are making the most of our time. We went too see the Co Chi Tunnels to see how the Vietnamese fought during the war. I didnt fit into the tunnels very well or the hiding places but I made it! We also spent some time talking to a local guy we met in the park who was learning English. He was very nice and put up with our bad accent quite well, he knew a lot more English than our tour guide to the Tunnels did and we ended up chatting for a good hour or so! All in all Vietnam has been awesome and I think we will be seeing more of it in the future.

It feels like a lifetime away since we were that but we couldn't miss it out of blogging so better late than never i suppose! 

The Pirates of Kong Lo Caves

Sorry this post is a bit long overdue but we havent had good enough wifi to upload! Oh well better late than never! 

Attempting to get from Vientiane down to the 4000 Islands sounded like a dounting task that we did not fancy doing in one journey so we decided to take a detour! Kong Lo is located south of Vientiane and north of Pakse. The main attraction to the Kong Lo is the 7km river that runs through the humungois cave making it an enjoyable boat ride.

Although its not directly on route, it is worth the visit and breaks up the journey. We left Vientiane around 10am arriving at the local village of Kong Lo at 5pm (hefty bus ride) costing around 110,000 kip per person (just shy of 10 pounds).

If you are the kind of person who likes to be where the crowds are, this may not be for you as there are very few tourists who stay in the town but its worth it as the cave in incredible. To be fair, it isn't a ghost town and there ended up being about 8 westerners in what seemed to be a very small village but compared to 50 people that tube in vang vieng together, it is extremely quiet.

Skipping to next morning as there is literally nothing to do in the village, we entered the cave around 9am. For a small entrance fee, the hire of 1 boat and the entrance of the cave, it came to 140,000 kip (£11) for 3 people!

I have to say the cave was just breath taking! Mainly because of the humidity but I suppose it could have been the experience too!!!! In all seriousness, the first thing that hits you is the noise of what seems to be 1000 high pitched bats that echos through the cave! The next is the sheer size of the cave. The little glimpses of the cave you get to see with the torches that are provided are nothing compared to the size of it. Even though I had 1 torch provided and two of my own, the cave was so big that it barely lit a section! However, what little you could see was beautiful!

In the centre of the cave there is a dimly lit section, allowing you to get out and walk for a bit to see just how amazing the cave actually is.

Once you have sailed through the cave on a motor boat, you stop off for refreshments at the rear exterior of the cave. It was here we met an adorable child who was very shy one minute, then dancing around the forest the next! After this amusement, it was time to hop back in the boat and come back the way we came.

On the first boat ride we had to get out a couple of times to help the boat move due to shallow waters and rapids. But on the second ride, the boatman decided to just go for it which meant a rocky and wet experience for us and giggles for him! It was very fun although Gareth mildly regretted taking off his life jackets!

My favourite part of the caves was that for long stretches of the boat ride, bats would follow us along due to the light we provided! Even though part of me was terrified that I was going to get rabies, it was truly magical to see wild bats in their natural habitat!

If you ever find yourself travelling the south of Laos make sure to put this on your list and I promise you won't be disappointed! 

Elephant Retirement Park

A couple of weeks ago we did some elephant riding as a day of multiple activities! As nice as it was it didn't seem to promote the well being of the elephant because although they appeared to be treated well, we weren't sure how long they had to work for each day in the scorching heat.

So we decided to do more with elephants and found the Elephant Retirement Park that had a no riding policy! The Elephant Riding Park is based in the moutains of Chiang Mai and their purpose is to take in elephants that are sick or injured due to the effects of riding. Once the elephants arrive at the park, the company make it very clear that once the elephant has recovered they aren't to return to work and instead remain at the park wheere they can live relaxed lifes.

We weren't too sure what to expect when we booked the trip as it wasn't one of the normal places people talk about and was quite expensive compared to elephant riding. The day started off with a nice little talk about a few of the elephants there and their back stories. After this we got our first meet and greet with two ex show elephants called nagm and hep (I am running on memory to get there names right theres a good chance I've made a mistake)! Because they were made to preform tricks for tourists before coming to the park, they were keen to show off few small tricks, but only if you gave them bananas of course!

The day then moved on to a morning of feeding elephants and meeting the star of my two days Lanna, the 6 month old elephant who was born at the park! She was so AWESOME! We got to see her play with her mother and then later we got to play with her ourselves, it was such an amazing experience that I will remember for a very long time! 

After a local Thai buffet (it suited normal western taste but was still lovely), we had an afternoon of playing with the elephants and mahouts. Mahouts are tribal men who are the elephants personal carers, there is one for every elephant. We played with the elephants in the water baths and a BIG mud bath!!! The mahouts decided they wanted to put more mud on me than the elephants, so we wrestled and of course I won! No tiny mahout will be beating me!!

The evening was just as fun where we had a Thai bbq with salt baked fish which we got fresh from the local market. We also chatted a fair bit to our guide and a couple of the locals who spoke basic english. All in all it was a really nice evening!

The next day we learned some of the commands for the elephants which they only listened to if you hand bananas on hand! We also made some natural medicine out of tamerind, salt, sticky rice and bannana. The elephants went wild for this and even the elephants that weren't sick tried nabbing it from us! They loved it so much that even when the mixture had gone, they could smell it on our hands, to which they wrapped their trunks around our arms and guided our hands directly into their mouths and sucked away the remainder of the medicine! It felt just as gross as it sounds!!

We got up to more activities throughout the two days including hiking, playing with lanna (a lot), and we even got bathed in the river by the locals where they gave a pretty good head massage whilst shampooing our hair!

The whole two days was amazing! The company have only been around for one year but have big plans of expanding to help more elephants that have been injured or miss treated. Although pricey, we would highly recommend this to anyone who are interested in getting up close and personal with the elephants. It is a great way to get to know elephants without causing them pain and in all honesty, it was a thousand times better than a 5 minute ride. If you happen to be near Chiang Mai definitely consider looking into it, they offer half day, full day and two day tours so it fits whatever time scale/ budget you have!

But anyways more elephant photos!!!!!

City hopping!

Well after a big relaxing trip to Pai we felt it was time to do some exploring! We didnt have much of a plan other than the names of the towns we wanted to visit, Sukhothai and Lampang.

The journey from Pai was interesting, we set off from our guesthouse thinking breakfast and a go get a bus... well it turned out this was the only bus station we went to on this outing that made us wait, a full 5 hours! But I guess thats our own fault for not booking our tickets the day before when we were going too!

Before our trip to Sukhothai, we had a three hour journey from Pai to Chiang Mai. Getting to Chaing Mai late meant we didn't have much energy for another journey so we had a sleeping stop over. The next day we woke up a bit later than expected and went to the bus station fairly fast as we heard we might be able catch the next bus, it turns out we got there with like 20 mins to spare and thankfully had time to grab some snacks, though not very healthy, but they hit the spot. The bus took about 5-6 hours to reach its destination.

Sukhothai was a lovely place. We went to the evening market and it was by far my most favorite evening market.  It had just the right amount of people, not to many westerners and all the food was amazing!!! After reading up on travel guides and TripAdvisor, we thought we might be cutting time short to get round old Sukhothai and make it too Lampang in the same day. So we decided to get up early enough to see as much as possible.

We got too old Sukhothai for about 9ish and were on a rented bicycle by half past and too our suprise it wasnt that big. We took our time going around the park and it took us about an hour to see everything! It may have taken all day on foot but on our bicycles we had time to stop often and there was enough time to have an occasional race (Winner-The Big G).

                       

After a nice wet lunch and a continuous 4 hours of rain we made it too Lampang. We weren't sure where to put ourselves here. We had looked into lampang even less than Sukhothai so from the station, we found a place to stay not to far out of the centre. It was the most expensive night we'd had at a hefty price of £10!!!! It felt like luxury and even had a fridge/ freeze as well as mini balcony (we didnt use either but it felt good to know we had them).

Once we decided to wonder for more excitement, we found we were around the corner from one of the best restaurants in lampang and the evening market, it was time to EAT!!! We had a few bits in the market and answered some questions for some high school children, but when we went too 'restaurent name' after it was soo nice we had a veg soup, deep fried prawns and the star of the show, fresh steamed fish, it was amazing!

We loved our time in the smaller cities we seemed to just eat our way through them! We are ok with that though as it was some of the best food we have eaten. My new star dish goes too my attempt at ordering fried rice and veg... We ended up with duck and noodle soup, it did taste wonderful though. 

The next stop? Ummm Chiang Mai again we guess but lets seen what we doing!

The wonders of Pai

So... what was meant to be a 2 night stay in Pai ended up being a 5 night stay and we still didn't want to leave! Pai is a tiny town in the north west of Thailand which is a 3 hour bus ride away from Chiang Mai, it isn't that far in distance, but due to extremely windy roads and very steep moutains, it can't be done at a quick pace. The bumpy ride is worth it though because Pai has a charm that is undiscribable. We were told by everyone we met that we needed to go but were never really given an explanation as to why it was so good but we figured we'd see what all the fuss was about!

The first day we decided to rent a scooter which cost £2 for 24 hours, yes that was meant to say £2!! The thing had a few scratches but all in all it seemed to work and nothing was falling off! Our first experience of riding it wasn't exactly skillful, by which i mean gareth almost drove into another scooter and a van. The owner of the scooters was aware of this and decided training was needed so off gareth went to a dirt track where he had to do 2 left turns and 2 right turns before being told he was now experience enough to drive a scooter on the roads! Nothing went badly thank god and after a couple of trips around the town gareth was confident enough to have me on the back in which I held on for dear life!

We decided to take a half hour ride to the waterfall which was beautiful and so refreshing on the hot day that it was. We noticed a lot of people sitting on the top of the waterfall so we climbs a few rocks to see what was up there. The view was beautiful and there was a little pool that sat between 2 waterfalls!

The next day we woke up at 5am to watch the sun rise however, as we got higher into the moutains to get a good view it was incredibly misty and we couldn't see a thing!! It was also freezing and we were just in shorts and t shirts!! It was all made better that because we arrived at the hot springs for it opening and we were the only ones there for quite a while so we had the place to ourselves! The hot springs temperature started at 36 degrees and in temperature as it went down the river. I settled in the 35 degree pool because 36 was too much! It's amazing what 1 degree can do! We ended up staying there for about an hour and a half because it was so relaxing and tranquil.

 Other than the two trips we had we spent the rest of the time doing very little and didn't move from the hammock outside our room! I read my book in 2 days which is something I have never done and Gareth read his in 3 which is impressive baring in mind it was about 900 pages!

Pai's town centre was very westernised but it didn't bother us that much and it was nice to have a cheeky burger and chips. But Pai was the only place we've been so far where people were trying to sell you stuff left right and centre and there wasn't a tuk tuk in sight! There is such a laid back feeling about Pai and it has been our favourite place so far because once you got out of the town centre, it felt like our own little sanctuary where the only thing that mattered was whether we were hungry or not!

All in all Pai is described best by a t-shirt quote "Pai is the best place in the world to do nothing!" Hah

Adventures in Chiang Mai

Well after the a lot of monkeys and temples it was time to move on North! We have been doing little train journey after little Train but we decided it was time for a bigger move away from the Bangkok area. So the overnight train it was!  We spent about 8-9 hours on there coming from Lopburi but it was a pleasant trip (for me anyway I got the bigger bed and could stretch out!).

Late night bored photo on the train!

We loved Chiang Mai so much more than Bangkok a knew it would be a lot less faffy! We started our time there with a walk around the old city to see a few of the temples and get an idea of the area!

One of our favorite moments in Chiang Mai was our Thai cooking class!

SAMMY!

It was done by Sammys Organic Farm. If anyone is near Chiang Mai and wants to do a good cooking course, I would highly recommend it!  He was really fun and passionate about food,  he took us to a local Thai market and showed us how they make coconut milk and also explained the differences in local rice with there being 200 varieties in Thailand alone. The best kind of rice in our eyes is glutenus rice which is used to make sticky rice!!

The whole day was fun as we cooked 5 different dishes each ranging from spring rolls to Thai red curry. There was an hour or so rest in the afternoon in the hammocks (it was pouring down but still really warm) before we did round two of cooking where we made mango and coconut sticky rice. One of the crown and glorys of the day has to go too Sammys Toilet! No joke it was one of the best toilets I have ever seen! It felt like your own private jungle whilst doing your business!

The MIGHTY Pooper!

As well as going to some amazing looking markets and the night bazaar, we went for a day trip to the local national park and mountainous area too do a variety of activities. The first being a butterfly and orchid farm, I wasnt impressed and the future seemed bleak. Thankfully I was wrong as we went for a mini walk through the forest to a lush waterfall! It was really busy but totally worth it as it was very refreshing after the mini hike. The next part was white water rafting which was so much fun even though it was more like brown water rafting! It didn't seem very safe baring in mind the guys were using their lungs to blow up the raft, we were given helmets and life jackets which added a little comfort..ish. After rafting for a good half hour we were transferred to a bamboo raft which strolled us down the river until we reached the end point. The final activity of the day envolved Elephants! They seemed really well cared for and you could see a connection between elephant and owner which was really nice. They let us take an elephant ride without a saddle meaning sarah was screaming as we held on for dear life as the elephant chose to go down the steepest of hills! The best part was that the whole day including lunch came to the grand total of £40!

Now it's time to chill for a bit in a small town called Pai!