PATravel: Laos (Land of a Million Elephants) to Chiang Mai, Bangkok and HOME!!!!

Here at last! Back in Bangkok and eagerly awaiting our flight. Like horses champing at the bit, WE CAN’T WAIT!!!! Apologies for the lateness of this, our last blog in Asia. It’s been a crazy 2 weeks since landing in

Laos

, with not much internet connection and even less time. Also, we keep thinking we get to share all of these stories with you in person soon so feel like we can hang on to them a bit longer!

But for completeness sake I’ll quickly recap…

Forgoing the 3 day bus journey for a 1 hour flight into

Laos

allowed us just enough time to see the gorgeous little town of Luang Prabang. Beautiful wide streets, crumbling French villas and loads of Wats decorated with coloured lanterns for the festival celebrating “Bun Awk Phansa” (End of the Rains Retreat). The morning started at 6:30am watching a stream of about 60 saffron swathed monks walking silently down the street collecting alms from kneeling locals. The rest of the day was spent wondering along the river banks watching boat races, eating baguettes and getting foot massages. The night market swallowed us whole with its beautiful stalls of fresh silk, paper lanterns, paintings and food. Eating barbequed pork on a stick with finger-fulls of sticky rice at a wooden table in a smoky alley filled with vendors, locals and grubby, smiling children under a full moon. This is why we travel.

Early next morning saw the beginning of our slow boat trip up the Mekong for 2 days passing pristine jungle, remote mountain villages and naked children playing in the shallows while water buffalo looked on. Sadly no sign of the tigers, elephants, sun bears, or clouded leopard reportedly inhabiting these parts, but it’s good to know they’re out there somewhere. There were some signs of the logging industry threatening to gorge on

Laos

, like so many other countries in South East Asia. Interestingly, it has become more obvious the more north we’ve come, which also means the closer we are to the Red Giant. (Legally or illegally, I guess the hungry dragon must be fed.)

By the time we reached the small border town of Huay Xai the full moon festival celebrating the end of the rainy season was in full swing. We also met up again with Natalie and Harriet, the same girls who joined us in Borneo for the diving. Our reunion was celebrated with a sky full of paper lanterns and great big paper boats covered with candles released onto the river. Beautiful!

The next day began the Gibbon Experience, a 3 day adventure playing Peter Pan deep in a

Laos

reserve that involved some hefty hiking, sleeping in tree houses 40m above the ground and zip lining/foofy-sliding across the jungle canopy. A mind-blowing experience that must be the closest realization of those flying dreams everyone has when they’re children. Incredible enough to put even the thought of leeches and spiders at the back of our minds. (Although not enough to keep them away from our feet! Pete, who shall henceforth be known as Pablo, Sanchez or Pedro due to the fuzz on his top lip (in honour of Movember), fended off leeches left right and centre and managed to survive with only one blood-sucking bite.)

Back into the border town after a pretty hairy drive on roads that made the

Transkei

look like the N1 out of Cape Town. After a good shower and dinner it was a sad farewell to our travelling buddies again before a good night’s sleep in preparation for the border crossing the next day. A relatively painless experience with a quick ferry across the Mekong to the Thai border and a 5 hour bus ride to Chiang Mai. Two days of relaxing before the legging it to Bangkok.

In Chiang Mai, Pedro decided to take the day off for a good sleep in while I went off to do a day of Mahout training at Chang

Siam

Mahout Elephant Training Lodge (say that fast 20 times!). Nestled in a little valley with a beautiful stream, I met Dodo, a 4 year old ele with a penchant for sweet vrot bananas. With him, our little group of 5 learnt the necessary commands to control an elephant before being given fully grown ones of our own:

1. “Song-suun” – lift up your leg so I can stand on it, grab your ear and swing myself onto your neck

2. “Huh” – move…forwards preferably

3. “How!!!” – Stop!!!

4. “Toy” – go backwards…pleeeease!

These commands were given with gentle barefoot nudges to the back of the ele’s ears. But while they made us feel like we had some control, we were very aware that the massive animals beneath us couldn’t give 2 hoots what we were trying to say to them. After about an hour in the jungle plodding along, trying to stop our elephants from scratching their backsides against passing trees and eating their daily 70kg quota of jungle, it was time for a river bath. And what a bath! While the elephants lay on their sides completely submerged by the stream except for the tips of their trunks, we scrubbed them down with shoe brushes and got soaked by the mahouts who leap-frogged from elephant to elephant trying not to get wet while dumping buckets of water over us. A farewell trunk-full of water in the ear later I drove back to town to meet Pablo who had spent the day getting a massage and sorting out some “admin.” The rest of the eve was spent eating and catching up with some university friends who were fortuitously in Chiang Mai the same night we were.

Another day of eating and massages before catching the overnight sleeper train to Ayuthaya, the old capital of

Siam

. Saw some pretty impressive ruins, including a Buddha head wrapped in tree roots, but this still palled in comparison to the glory of

Cambodia

’s Angkor Wat. Squeezed in our last meal at a local night bazaar before crashing in the heat and hiding in the aircon for the rest of the night.

Second last day and we arrived safe and sound in big, bad Bangkok. Finally found a hotel near the river and managed to catch the Royal Barge Procession, the royal version celebrating the end of the rainy season and a Thai tradition that’s over 700 years old. A stunning farewell to round off an incredible 7 month adventure.

South East Asia has been quite the geographic, gastronomic and cultural experience. Thank you for sharing it with us here and we look forward to sharing more with you all in person.

God bless and see you soon!

Love Pablo and Amanda