Nong Khieu rapids and racing

Going up the rapids in Nong Khieu River. The water was really shallow, this was our second attempt to try and get past the rapids. Our first attempt ended up with us stuck on some rocks at the rivers edge.

Racing the other slow boats (which could actually go pretty fast). The woman yelling in the background is the wife of our boat driver, urging him to go faster!

Nong Khieu

We'd heard that taking a slow boat up the Nam Khan River from Luang Prabang to a small town called Nong Khieu was a great way to admire the scenery. So that's what we did.

 The scenery along the way was certainly spectacular.

 Locals panning for gold (I think) along the riverbed.

 A stranded cargo boat. It was the dry season when we took the boat to Nong Khieu so the water level was really low. Even in our small, shallow boats we got stranded on the rocks a couple of times.

The town of Nong Khieu.

Luang Prabang

Our next destination was the former capital of Laos and UNESCO World Heritage site, Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang is a beautiful old town on banks of the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers, it pretty much has everything you could ask for as a holiday destination: spectacular scenery, history and culture, serious shopping and delectable dining. I've heard a few Europeans say that Luang Prabang seems like a typical French town mysteriously transported into the middle of mountainous northern Laos. Having never been to France I cannot verify this, but I'd say that the plethora of Buddhist monks wandering around the streets, the temple on every street and the abundance of tuk-tuk drivers all trying to tout their services were distinctly South East Asian!

 There were a lot of old, classic cars in Luang Prabang. I love this VW Bug, it looks to be about the same vintage as my mum's Bug (the car I learnt to drive in). I would have loved to have taken this one for a spin through the streets of Luang Prabang!

Vat Xieng Toung, the oldest temple in Luang Prabang. The exterior walls are decorated with very intricate mosaics, it is incredible how much detail has gone into them.

 Buddha statues at Vat Xieng Toung.

 The main street of Luang Prabang.

 Crossing the bamboo bridge over Nam Khan River.

 Some young monks in the grounds of another temple. Most Lao men spend at least a year in a monastery. Some of the monks we saw wandering around looked so young!

 Danny made a demon-friend at the temple!

 The famous Luang Prabang night markets.

We did a day tour which included riding elephants and going out to a waterfall. More about it (plus more pics!) after the jump.

Lions and tigers and bears...

We left China and entered Laos through the border crossing at Boten. The border crossing itself was indicative of how things were going to be in Laos. On the China side it was all very organised, with a big new(ish) border control building, security guards and customs officers with the latest computer equipment. The Laos side was a lot more...relaxed. There were a couple of guys in uniform in a small shed who were in charge of issuing visas and checking passports; no computers, all paperwork. The main features of the Laos side of the border crossing were the volleyball court and the charcoal remains of bonfires. Obviously the Laos border guards know how to live it up when there are no pesky tourists around!


From the border we proceeded on to a small town called Luang Nam Tha. The town reminded me a bit of a small, country town in NSW, with its wide main road, dusty streets, old wooden buildings and rolling hills in the distance. However, the tuk-tuks and abundance of backpackers were a constant reminder of where we really were.

Luang Nam Tha is right near the National Biodiversity Conservation Area, the town is famous for its eco-friendly treks into the jungle and to surrounding hill-tribe villages. The treks are pretty pricey though, Dan and I ended up paying approximately $30 each for a one-day trek through the jungle and to a Hmong village. Apparently a lot of the money goes to the villages and to conservation efforts, although it also seems that every layer of government (local to national) has imposed some kind of taxes or fees.

The trek itself was a bit disappointing. We basically climbed up a really steep hill in the jungle. Upon reaching the summit we found that the vegetation was too dense to actually see anything other than the trees immediately surrounding us. Then going back down the other side of the hill. The visit to the Hmong village consisted of us walking past a village on the main road, back to where a tuk-tuk was waiting to take us back into town. So trekking in Luang Nam Tha is not something I would recommend.

That being said, it was good to hear our guide’s stories about tigers and bears living in the jungle. He pointed out some bear claw marks on a tree and found evidence of a bear having passed along our track sometime earlier that morning. We also heard stories about tigers entering some of the more remote villages and being seen walking along the mountain crest where we passed by. Sadly no lions though, oh my!

 Dan in the jungle in Lao. Did I mention that Dan fell over while he was trekking through the jungle? And that I didn't fall over while I was trekking through the jungle? Mwahaha!

The track which led us out of the jungle and into agricultural land. The track was really, really, really steep. We ended up sliding most of our way down it. It really did seem like the jungle had finished with us and was spitting us out.

Black Dragon Pool and Baisha Village

Dan and I rode bicycles a few kilometres out of Lijiang to Black Dragon Pool. Apart from the pond, the surrounding parks contain a few old temples, pavilions and bridges as well as an (unfortunately closed) museum of Dongba culture (the culture of the ethnic minority group the Naxi people).

 Looking over the Black Dragon Pool towards the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. These mountains lead into the Himalayas and into Tibet.

 Dan at the Shuocui Bridge.

I don't know what this thing is, but I do know the animal in the centre is a frog and the Naxi people had some kind of frog-god figure. My guess is that is some kind of calendar?

After Black Dragon Pool, we rode our bicycles out to Baisha Village. Or tried to. We got horribly lost and ended up pointlessly riding our bikes along a Chinese highway. We then turned off onto a random dirt road which, eventually (and unexpectedly) led us to a resort. The resort workers (who were all out front having a smoke) were able to give us directions to the village. Baisha Village is one of the oldest villages in Lijaing and was an early settlement of the Naxi people.

 The village is close to the foot of the moutains, which makes for a very impressive back-drop for the store-houses! 

 Dan outside a traditional house.

 Local transport.

 Yay! We found it and now we are heading back to the heated hotel!

Lijiang

Brace yourself: there are a lot of photos in this entry. And there are more to come. These are photos of the old quarter of Lijiang (plus some beverage shots just because I can), the old buildings are all really beautiful and they are set amongst cobblestoned alleyways which meander around the small, fast-running river running which runs through them.

Looking out over the Old Quarter of Lijiang. Dan took this photo while we were at a cafe on the hillside above the old town.

Night time in the Old Quarter.

 The streets of the Old Quarter. It was winter and absolutely freezing while we were there. As someone who has spent the past year in the tropics, I had to wear a singlet, a shirt, a hoodie and a wind jacket. I also had to buy some socks and gloves to wear (and I had to wear two pairs of socks at a time).

 Dan in the back alleyways of the Old Quarter.

 Lijiang was originally inhabited by an ethnic minority group called the Naxi. The Naxi people have a pictorial alphabet, some of which is demonstrated in this photo.

Local women doing their washing in the wells. There are usually three wells in a row with varying water levels, the first is for drinking, the second is for washing fruits and vegetables and the third is for washing clothes.

Feeling thirsty?

Lijiang is absolutely packed with restaurants, bars, cafes and street stalls. Dan became addicted to bbq yak kebabs while I prefered the yak yoghurt. But it was sampling all the local tea that was a highlight for me. So many different varieties! The red tea was quite good, as was the chrysanthemum tea. The cold weather meant that I was almost constantly craving a nice, hot cup of tea; a craving which I inevitably yielded to at the earliest opportunity.

 Trying yak butter tea. It was ok, not something I would have again. It tasted like milk with butter added (which, obviously, was what it was), plus there were small chunks of butter floating in it - sipping on those was a bit disconcerting.

 Trying Chinese wine and a local Moon Beer.

Tea! I had a local special green tea and Dan had a plum tea. We went to this restaurant a couple of times - purely because of its extensive tea menu.

A week in China

Why helloooooooo there! It's been a long time since I wrote to you last. You'll have to excuse my recent lack of blogging, I've been off gallivanting around China and Laos for the past 3 weeks.

I only returned to Vietnam yesterday and my brain is still in holiday-mush mode so today's blog is coming to you courtesy of Dan. Below is Dan's account (in his own words) of my time in China, annotated in order to make more sense and/or to defend myself. Enjoy!

Day 1: Hotel tells us they do not have the special we booked, even though they told us they would put us in the same room we booked through the special. We booked a room through a discount website but Dan booked the wrong dates (he was one day ahead of himself) - so the hotel wouldn't give us the room at the discounted rate. Then we had to give them a deposit for the room which was double that of one night's accommodation. Given that it was after 10pm we had no choice but to agree. Not the best start to our holiday in China!


Day 2: Spent 4hrs in the morning walking around Kunming trying to find an ATM that worked and/or would accept our cards (during this period we could not even afford breakfast). Spent 4hrs in the afternoon walking around trying to find a travel agent, all of the ones in the lonelyplannet had shut down or moved (we could have passed quite a few on our walk, but no way to tell as no signs in English) Kunming sucks!

Day 3: Isabelle gets food poisoning during a 9hr bus ride to Lijiang, at the end of which she is thankful for squat toilets!! I got food poisoning off a vegetarian mushroom dish - vegetarian is meant to be the safest bet when you are travelling! Food poisoning was not meant to happen! And I was not thankful for the squat toilets - they were, hands down, the most disgusting toilets I have ever been in. Some of them were just concrete slabs either side of a ditch - and the 'cubicules' were just <1m high walls with no doors: you could see all the little old Chinese ladies squatting down and attending to their business. The only thing that I was grateful for was that there were frequent toilet stops and that, being squat toilets with no flush buttons (or any means of flushing at all), I didn't actually have to touch anything.

Day 4: Isabelle camera disapears. It didn't 'disappear', someone in Liajing knows exactly where it is. Grrr!

Day 5: Get lost trying to bike to a village in the countryside, turn a 18km roundtrip into a 30-40km one, still no English signs to help us on the way. Dan forgot to mention that, for the most part of the 30-40km trip, we were biking over cobblestones, which gets really uncomfortable after a while.

Day 6: Plane delayed, Isabelle gets a really bad bout of food poisoning as we board the plane, which continues long into the early hours of the morning as we search for a hotel. Worst food poisoning ever. We didn't find a hotel til after midnight, I'm pretty sure the one we ended up in is the absolute worst hotel in China - broken squat toilet, dirty room, hardest beds, rowdy guests and a couple out front having a domestic from about 2.00 - 3.30am. (Coming in a close second for the worst hotel award was the one we stayed at in Kunming - it was freezing there and the heating was centrally controlled: so they wouldn't turn it on til about 10pm then turned it off at 4am).

Day 7: Daniel gets food poisoning while we get stuck in a transition town with very little to see or do. It really was a boring little town, we were only there because it was handy to the China/Laos border crossing. We spent pretty much all our time there in the hotel room and feasted on instant 2minute noodles for our dinner.

Day 8: Leave China.

Luckily my time in Laos was a lot more enjoyable. I did like Liajing though, it is a remote city up in the mountains near Tibet. It has a beautiful old quarter full of lovely old Chinese buildings - all of which have been converted into guest houses, restaurants and souvenier shops. The food there was pretty good (apart from whatever gave me food poisoning that is), Dan particularly enjoyed the yak kebabs while I was more of a fan of the yak yoghurt. I credit the yak yoghurt for curing my first bout of food poisoning, unfortunately I didn't have any with me when it struck again.

Seeing as my camera is gone I can't post any photos until I get my hands on Dan's camera, this may take a while. But never fear, I'll get around to it... eventually...

More about Laos in my next entry.