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So after Buddah Park, we headed back through the markets again to take a look at the cameras that we had seen earlier in the day, we didn’t think that we would buy a camera for Geoff, but there was a little canon camera that I had played with earlier, which I didn’t mind, so we went back to have a look.

It didn’t go very well, no-one had the manuals for the camera that I was interested in & they weren’t very willing to negotiate very much on the price. The cameras weren’t really that new, so I didn’t feel like paying too high a price.

We decided to walk back the long way to where we were staying DD Hotel & checked out the large city gate on the way (apparently it is very similar to one in Paris, Arc de Triomphe). On the way we saw a Canon billboard & decided to look, just incase there was a shop, it was. It was an actual genuine Canon shop, selling photocopiers, printers & even cameras - wohoo!!! There was a girl who spoke a little English (much better than our Lao) and she came to help with communication between us & the actual girl who looked after the camera section.

They tend to wrap everything in plastic, I had seen it with books & this shop had all the cameras shrink wrapped in plastic too which was a little weird. They happily let us have a play with the cameras, even unwrapped them (me Canon Powershot A3100 IS & Geoff Canon EOS 550D), which we both enjoyed doing.

It’s been a great combination of cameras actually - Geoff with a digital SLR & me with a little point & shoot, we get to use both of them at different times in our travels & they both allow us to do different things. I love macro photography, we do have a lense which we can use with the SLR, but not with us, so I just use a little one to take the shots that I like, plus Geoff Hogs the SLR. Nah, he doesn’t really hog it, he carries it, so he uses it more often. The last few days have been awful without any cameras.

Anyhow, we tried to negotiate down the price a bit & in the end decided to leave & think about it, we could always try to buy one in Bangkok. We went towards the night markets (wow what a disappointment they were), chatting along the way about the cameras & what we were going to do. In the end we decided that w could try to get the cameras in Bangkok, but then we would be wasting more time, trying to find where to get one & then all the negotiating as well. Laos isn’t exactly where we had in mind to buy cameras, but they did have pretty much what we wanted (without us reading any reviews on them - which was a little weird to do), so we decided to go back to the shop & try to negotiate some more & get the whole thing over and done with.

The original price was 10,465,000 Kip, but in the end we bought the cameras for  9,500,000 Kip, but they converted the amount to USD (about 1,161.00). Good to have some cameras again, Geoff enjoyed snapping a few shots on the long way back to our hotel, will be nice for both of us to have some cameras again.

We had a fantastic day today.

One of the sights that we wanted to see was Buddah Park, here in Vientiane. At first we didn’t know where it was, we had a postcard of the place, but we couldn’t find it described in the lonely planet book. Whilst on the subject of Lonely Planet, they really have proven to be a bit hit & miss with their information, either things no longer exist (and didn’t for a while) or they write good reviews about things that don’t deserve it & lame ones for things that should really be higher on the list of things to see for people.

The Buddah park, goes by a couple of names & the review that they wrote wasn’t really all that inspiring. If not for the fact that we had seen a postcard of the place, we probably wouldn’t have gone. I would really like to see more guide books with pictures, for the visually aware such as myself. If you aren’t going to have pictures then get someone to write some reviews on places that isn’t getting kick-backs & has no sense of writing style what-so-ever, I think that might be a bit of a task for them to achieve, so perhaps pictures would solve some issues.

Ok, now that I have said that I can get on with this post.

Buddah park was awesome, a photographers delight. Too bad all that we had to take photos with was my OLD shitty canon point & shoot (its so old that is all that you can literally do with it), although it was better to have that than nothing at all. We wandered up to to the bus station, which was near the (day) markets, stopping in to look at some of the wares for sale, namely cameras. Most cameras were pretty old, the newest SLR that they had was a 500D (Kiss X3), I found my old camera (the one that was stuffed in the jungle) for sale, but it was 2nd hand & had, had a bit of a hard life. They didn’t have any of the newer models (which are also now getting older in OZ, like the A3100 IS Powershot.

After wasting a bit of time there we decided that it was best to catch a bus. We found some nice looking waffles, which Geoff bought to eat on the way - thus was yet another example of when you shouldn’t buy something that looks western. The waffles were made from a sweet batter, but had pieces of corn inside …….. some days I really like having allergies.

The bus (#14) was pretty easy to find, we had a local tuk-tuk driver latch onto us as soon as we walked into the bus station. I was pretty suspicious of him at first & then he seemed to be being genuinely helpful. I was starting to think how pessimistic I had become whilst traveling, always thinking that someone is trying to sell you something & how I should reconsider, when he told us that he had a tuk-tuk & that he could drive us to Buddah park for 140,000 kip (I am assuming that was one way too, not return). I must say though that there is a little bit of touting that happens here in Laos, but it is nothing like China. Most times that we have thought “oh shit, we are about to get ripped off”, here in Laos, we haven’t. Man, if I found China “interesting” India is going to be awful.

Public buses are interesting, and definitely something to experience, the minibus that we were on had seats for 23 people & we would have had about 40 people crammed into it. I shared a double seat with 2 other girls & had a mans ass literally within 2″ of my face at one stage. I did get to sit the whole ride, which was nice, even with an ass in my face & being whacked in the head several times (with bags, arms, elbows etc.). The Friendship Bridge, which joins Laos to Thailand was one of the stops along the way, which we didn’t know when we embarked on our journey. I must admit that I was a little nervous as we turned up the road leading to the bridge, thinking oh crap, they changed the bus that goes to Buddah Park & at the same time thinking, oh well, at least I have my passport. Turns out that it was just a stop along the way to drop off people catching buses or other modes of transport over the border & picking up those coming back or into Laos …. phew!

The drive to Buddah park took about 1hr. The signs for the park were not HUGE, & we really had no idea where we were going, but a local saw the postcard that we had & understood that was where we wanted to go (see, don’t underestimate the power of a picture) & told us where to get off. It cost us 10,000 kip for both of us to get there & 10,000 kip entry (for 2), so all up in AUD it was $4.20 to get there, see the park & leave.

They had a nice noodle soup with pork & veggies that we sampled at the little eatery at the back of the park & they did really well with my allergies, which was encouraging.

It really is a must see whilst in Vientiane if you have time.

On the plus side, I my visit was not due to an anaphylactic reaction, it was my finger, from the jungle trek.

Keo had originally told us that the hospital was closed, but upon arriving in Luang Nam Tha we discovered that it was open until 10pm. Turns out that there are no doctors on a Sunday night though, perhaps not at all on a Sunday from what I could gather.

When we got to Many Chans I spoke with the ex-guide (I wish that I knew his name, he is Many Chans son & appears to be managing things for her, I will call him Joe, coz its easier) & showed him my finger. It looked pretty insignificant, as it was under a band-aid, but once Joe had helped me pull it off & had a look, even he couldn’t hide his surprise & revulsion at the sight of it. I must say that it looked a little better in some ways, when I first cut it, the insides of my finger were poking out badly, but when it was taken off by Joe, there was still a bit of flesh protruding, but not so badly. It was pretty obvious that it was a serious cut, there was a pharmacy next door, which we went to briefly & then confirmed what we all pretty much knew, I would need to go to the hospital to get it checked out.

I hadn’t had a shower, as we had just arrived & checked in, so Joe suggested that I go & have a shower, get cleaned up & then he would take me to the hospital. It took ages to clean off all the dirt, grime & blood from the past 3 days & waited for Geoff to finish his shower as well, before we headed downstairs.

We had organised to catchup with Manish for drinks & dinner at 8pm, but with Joe already offering to take me to hospital we were a little stuck about what to do, that was until we realised that I was going to be going to hospital on the back of Joe’s scooter, damn wearing a skirt didn’t seem like such a good idea after all, at least the ride wasn’t too far. Geoff stayed behind to tell Manish what was happening, with the idea that he/ they would meet me there.

I wasn’t sure what to expect there, I knew that it probably wouldn’t be to western standards, but probably still not what I saw. When we pulled up, there were 5 locals sitting on seats outside the emergency entrance, not sure if they were waiting to be seen or not, but they were still there when I left.

I pretty much followed Joe & his instructions, I would have hated not to have had someone who could speak both Lao & some English, as none of the nurses spoke much English. They looked at my finger, and like everyone else were impressed by the cut, however they seemed a little concerned that by the time I had come, it was now 28hrs after the fact.

I was asked my name, which I spelt out in English E-V-A & soon realised how much I wish I knew the Lao alphabet, we got there in the end though. After filling out a form, which only had my name & age on it, Joe took it up the hall & disappeared into a couple of rooms & eventually emerged with a small package (containing some squares of gauze & betadine). It was funny waiting near the desk with the nurses, one of them had their little boy with them & he was climbing all over the place, whilst the nurses (4) sat & gossiped.

Joe brought the bag back to the nurses & I was then ushered into a room, which looked a little like some of the hospital rooms that you see in war movies. It hadn’t been cleaned for a while. There was a bed in the middle of the room, which looked rather nasty, it didn’t have sheets on it, & the brown colouring of the mattress cover wasn’t doing a good job of covering up the filth. I couldn’t think of anything else but “please not the bed, please not the bed”. Luckily I was ushered towards a chair, which looked moderately better.

The nurse went to a glass & wood cabinet which was fairly dirty & pulled out a “sterile pack”, a metal dish that contained ’sterile’ scissors & other instruments to use. She seemed to be having some issues with trying to use the tweezers to remove individual pieces of gauze from the pack that Joe had gotten & resorted to using her hands (not sure when she washed them, but it wasn’t when I was there).

A big rubbish bin was moved near me, which had a fair amount of rubbish in it already & I was told to hold my hand over it, whilst my finger was cleaned. There was a bottle of saline (in a glass bottle), with a piece of plastic hose on it, which she used to clean my finger, although she dragged the plastic hose through the wound on my finger. I wonder how many other wounds it had been dragged through before mine? It was then cleaned with some betadine & wrapped up in some of the gauze (that Joe had gotten earlier) & that was it, I was allowed to leave.

I asked Joe how much I needed to pay & he told me not to worry that he had already paid. I asked how much & he told me 6,000 kip. I had brought all of our cash that we had with us in 50,000 kip notes which amounted to about $70, so when I found out that it all only cost about 80 cents (AUD) that was a bit of a shock, as I suspected that as a foreigner I would be nailed with an expensive bill, like they do in the west. I even got to keep the betadine & extra gauze.

Now I just have to make sure that I keep it clean. I was told to leave the dressing on for 3 days, but I am not so sure. It’s pretty nasty looking, not often that you get to see the insides poking out like I did, Geoff reckons it is pretty gross, worse than my 2nd degree burns where the skin melted away & parts of it rotted away as it healed. Just have to be careful not to get it infected, would hate for it to go gangrenous - wouldn’t that spoil the trip. Hoping that the nerves aren’t too badly damaged either.

The last day, was a bit like day 2, lots of rain & slippery mud to walk through. I neglected to mention that we saw a few water buffalo the day before & we saw even more on the 3rd day. We disturbed some that were in some bamboo at one stage & the noise that they made as they tried to escape & were busting up the bamboo as they went was amazing - made me fairly nervous, I thought that 1/2 the cliff was falling down. We didn’t get charged by any, which was good, those horns could make one hell of a mess.

Many of the villages within the park or close to the edge, have fences built to try to keep the Water Buffalo out of their villages and the rice paddies, after seeing the amount of destruction that they had caused to the track, which had only been made a week beforehand, I can certainly see why they would want to keep them out. Many of the buffalo that wander the park have now become wild, from time to time the locals hunt them & I can personally vouch for the fact that water buffalo tastes good. If I could have a freezer full of roo, venison & water buffalo meat, so that I had a ready supply of them I would be very happy, oh maybe some rabbit & moose too .. YUMMY!!

On the 2nd day my camera broke, some sort of lens problem (won’t focus) and on the last day Geoff had issues with his. When we were crawling under a clump of bamboo, Geoff’s camelback hose had the end ripped off & his camera ended up with about .5L or more pouring over the top of it. FUCK, that made 2 cameras busted in 2 days, on the same trip - not very happy. At least Geoff got some photo’s at the start of the 3rd day, but we lost the last part of the trip, perhaps we can get a few pictures from Manish (we did exchange e-mail address’s) :0)

The first day of the walk we spent some time in the village, whilst our guide tried to rustle up some porters to help with the food & we were mesmerized by the amount of corn that we saw hanging under huts to dry. We saw heaps more on the 3rd day, the colour of the corn was almost an unnatural orange. There was so much of it too, never seen that much corn ever before & doubt that I will any time soon, (sorry no pictures). Apparently they don’t eat it, they grow it to export to China, where it is made into corn chips etc. We did see a couple of the locals using some of the discarded corn husks as a means to smoke some weed, instead of rolling it in paper, interesting use of the corn husks & quite practical really.

We had a lot of river crossings (16+) which varied in depth, the rocks were a little slippery at times & the current quite strong in some places, but surprisingly enough, no major injuries came about, except of course if you count leech bites.

The leeches were ferocious, every few hundred meters would yield a dozen more leeches. When I injured myself the day before I managed to get them all over (on my wounded finger, armpits, chest (my crop top was soaked in blood), legs & even in areas down there that you really don’t want them to be) & probably quadrupled (+++) them in a few short hours.

Keo gave us each a small pouch of salt, which we dampened & rubbed on the leeches to remove them, which did work, but damn when you have an open wound, I have to say salt is one of the last things you want to rub in it (be it leech bite or deep cut). Both Geoff I wore our water shoes on the last day (may as well, we carried them with us) which resulted in our feet being massacred by leeches. Once they get you in one place, every other leech likes to bite that same place. Most that bit me did so between my toes, which made them quite hard to remove & for the most part I tried to ignore them as much as possible.

The focus of the day seemed to be more about getting back to Luang Nam Tha, I actually felt a little hurried at times, but it was still fun.

The whole trip was quite good. We ate a lot of food that grew in the jungle, which added to the trip & learned about many plants & what they were useful for as well. The Cardamon water was really nice & so was the fresh banana flower soup, bamboo shoots & other shoots that we ate. There was a really cool jungle vine that we had as well. I think that if you only ate the food that was carted in, the trip wouldn’t have been quite the same. I wish that I knew the name of the yellow fruit that we were eating, it was really nice. I think that we all really enjoyed being able to walk along & be able to identify different plants & know what we could & couldn’t eat by the 2nd & 3rd day.

Although it rained on both the 2nd & 3rd day, it added to the trip, after all we were in the jungle. It did mean that we were pretty much soaked for the last 2 days, but that is all part of the fun.

We had been walking through the jungle for a couple of days & with all the mud & everyone (yes, mostly me) slipping about the walking was taking a little longer as we all tried to be careful not to slip off the path. The path was made more interesting to walk on by the wild water buffalo that had walked through parts of the path & hacked it up pretty bad, so not only was it muddy & slippery, but the mud was now all trampled up too.

Keo had told us a few times before to be careful of the broken bamboo as it was very sharp, which I tried to remember when looking for things to steady myself when I slipped. The bamboo walking stick helped quite a lot, but there were times when you just needed that little bit extra. I recall looking at the fated piece of bamboo & thinking careful that’s sharp, then I slipped & as a natural reaction, I reached out for the bamboo to steady myself, at the same time thinking “careful where you grab it, it’s sharp”. You can see where this is going … I missed & managed to slit open my left middle finger, just above the first join. Blood pissed out everywhere & here is where it gets a little hazy.

I saw that it was a bad cut, very deep, not a superficial one, like so many others I already had. I remember a lot of blood, but not as much as everyone else does. I thought that it was pretty deep. Keo came up & with salt all over his fingers squished my finger to stop the bleeding. The first aid kit that was supposedly supplied didn’t exist, Manish at least had some bandages that he brought (we didn’t as we like Manish had been told our guide would bring one), my finger was wrapped in a band-aid & then part of Keo’s shirt, (which Geoff cut off) to help stop the bleeding. It was at the point that Keo grabbed my finger with salt on his hands & squeezed that I went into shock.

I remember not being able to see properly & being asked questions (which I am remembering now whilst writing, but couldn’t the other day) by Geoff - Who am I? Geoff, What is your name? Eva, My brothers names - Kevin & Gordon, My frogs names - Skinny & Cellophane, Where are your frogs? Australia. I thought that it happened in a wide area of the path, but apparently it happened in a really narrow area & when they carried me to a slightly wider area Geoff was hanging off the side of the hill/ cliff.

Thinking about it now, it was probably the pressure on my wound that put me into shock. I don’t like blood, but I have never gone into shock like that before & that is the only link I can see. It took me a while to recover, but at least we had brought some powdered ice tea mixes (full of sugar) which Geoff (I am assuming) mixed. Keo practically shoved it down my throat, which was weird - I remember that as I nearly choked on it. Once I had the drink that seemed to help me a lot & I was talking.

I didn’t carry my pack after that (25L day pack), Geoff did, whilst Keo guided & helped (although it felt like he dragged me more than anything else) up the path to our 2nd camp. It took us a couple of hours to get there after my accident.

I had been told after I came out of shock that it was only a little cut, but I felt a little more justified when we unwrapped it to clean out the wound a little more & put a fresh bandage on it & discover that it was a fairly deep cut. As I suspected it was deep enough for stitches, but not a clean cut either, so not sure if stitches would be viable. I still had colour in the top of my finger, so no big blood vessels were damaged. Other than that, I am no doctor & neither is Geoff. Being in the jungle & with so much rain & moisture about my finger was pretty moist & the inner parts of my finger were protruding out, kinda gross - going to have one wicked scar.

Needless to say, yet again I didn’t eat very much, between my finger, an upset stomach & sore molars I really didn’t feel all that enthused about eating an enormous amount of food again.

Day Two was a little different to the first one as far as terrain went. Day one was mostly up-hill, day two was a lot of down-hill, which was made more interesting by a typical jungle style rain. I have to say that it was some of the heaviest rain I have ever experienced.

It was a rather eventful day too, with my camera breaking & my injuries. I am fairly annoyed with my camera, as I bought it just before we left, so it’s less than 3 months old & completely stuffed. The camera lens seems to be stuffed, it won’t focus & makes an awful noise - really not impressed as I got it before we left so that I wouldn’t have to worry about having any issues & here I am in Laos without it - NOT HAPPY!!! It was a nice Canon camera, before it crapped out, pretty dodgy to break in under 3 months.

We all managed to slip & slide all over the place, unfortunately me a little more than everyone else. I had a few good falls too. One of the first big ones was walking over a log, where I slipped & did a face-plant. I had thought that putting the bamboo instruments from the day before into the back of my back (I have a space in my pack which can be used for ventilation or a water bladder) was a great idea that morning, but when I fell over, I realised how bad an idea it was - & ended up with a bruise where it hit me.

I had a few others of course (me being me) another memorable one was when I slipped & grabbed a long stick of bamboo (almost like a vine), which stopped me from sliding off the side of the hill/ cliff, but it wasn’t strong enough to support me, so I slowly fell backwards onto the path. I had to be helped up, as the weight of my pack still strapped to my back made it hard to get up by myself + my feet were not really on anything that was really that solid as well, which didn’t help. It was quite funny though, it all happened in slow motion, but fast enough that no-one could help stop me from falling back.

I had been feeling a little dodgy for most of the day, I think that maybe the pork that we had the other day (or some other food) might have reacted badly with me so the walk was interesting, I took 3 imodium tablets & was still having issues. Needless to say I didn’t really eat a lot at lunch, I ate enough, but not the HUGE serves that I normally do - I certainly didn’t do my 1KG steak + sides reputation any good.

It was about 4pm that the real drama came about though…

Wow, what a trip. I decided to do this post in sections - day by day to make it a little easier to read (hopefully)…..

Day One

We were told the night before that we needed to get to the treking office (a few doors up from Many Chang) at 8am. So we quickly got ourselves organised, putting passports etc in the safe (a room that was locked) & our packs stowed at Many Chans + gobbling down some breakfast (I had fruit salad & Geoff had yoghurt) & getting my allergies translated by the guy who looks after here & is Many Chan’s son, & a former guide. Wow, my allergy list is HUGE & so is the reaction when people read it. I had gotten another one translated the day before, but it said that I was allergic to all field vegetables & fruit, instead of saying peanuts alone.

When we arrived at 8 & paid the balance of the deposit owing, we were told that we wouldn’t leave until 9/ 9.30, so we went back to Many Chans for a 2nd breakfast (cut up 1/2 boiled (still a bit hard) potato, raw tomato (cut up) & bacon & Geoff had scrambled eggs & a hot dog sort of roll). By the time we finished it was 9am & we met Manish (another tourist like us) & our guide Keo (which we all pronounced as Gail & only found out his real name when we got back).

We all piled into the back of the tuk-tuk, with our packs & food. We stopped on the way to pick up sleeping bags & more food. On the way up to start our trek Keo realised that we had forgotten the water, so we stopped in a village along the way to get some (had to make a couple of stops to get enough). Then we stopped at our destination, the start of the trek, a village by the road. We were given a quick lesson in Lao manners, 1/ Don’t walk across the table 2/ Ask before you take a photo 3/ Never touch people on their head (that is their connection to the spirits).

There was a little bit of confusion as to who was coming to help Keo with carrying all the food etc for the 3 days. He should have had 2 others, but instead he only managed to get one & that took some effort in convincing someone to come. We had a young guy called Som who eventually came, he spoke a little English, & we suspect he knew a lot more than he was able to speak.

We walked through the village & past rice paddies, which was a great start to the trip. There is low lying rice paddies & high land. The low-land is the rice that needs a lot of water & is stickier than the highland (which is still sticky) & from memory needs less soaking time to cook. We were shown lots of plants as well & Keo explained what a lot of them were used for. I really liked the plant that they get ethanol from, when you break off a leaf & crack the stem closest to the leaf then blow on it, you can make bubbles - very cool. We saw some awesome butterflies and I saw heaps of frogs near the rice paddies (so tiny, I didn’t manage to catch any though).

We stopped for lunch & enjoyed the little packages of food, wrapped in banana leaves - as Manish said, “environmentally friendly packaging” - very cool. I think that I might be slightly allergic to bee stings too, as I was stung & had a bit of a reaction, my lips & tongue started to swell, but I managed to have some antihistamine & prednisone fairly fast, which seemed to help. I didn’t want to use my epi-pens, or the trip was over before it even began. Our guide reckoned that it was only a leech bite, at first, but realised later that it was a bee or a wasp.

There is tonnes of bamboo in the forest, so we stopped to make some bamboo trekking poles & some musical flutes + a pipe to attract the barking deer (didn’t work though).

It was quite a hot day, so I quickly drank my allotted 2L of water (per day) in a few hours. When we got to camp Keo & Som boiled up some water with cardamon root that they had collected earlier on the walk - it was really nice to drink, I reckon that I could drink it again as a hot tea.

The sleeping area was quite cool, we had a hut for sleeping & there was a hut for cooking. There was even a toilet (porcelain squat style - fully enclosed for some privacy). With only 3 (tourists) & one less porter, we managed to get 3 mattresses each to sleep on - wow was that comfy & mozzie nets.

Wow, what an interesting couple of days we have had. Yesterday we decided that we were finished with Kunming & would catch a late sleeper bus to Jinghong. We asked at reception at our hostel (Cloudland) how long the trip would be & they said it was about 15hrs, so we booked the 10pm one so that we would have most of the day to get some stuff done & then we would arrive at a decent time at our destination to try to find another bus to get us closer to the Lao boarder.

Our first stop for the morning, was to send a package to Canada, this time we sent it air-mail, but it will take at least a month to get to Canada rather than 3 days & 1/2 the cost. We found it very confusing that there are 2 different types of air-mail. Anyhow, the guy at the post office (which was near the hostel) spoke really good English, which made the process much smoother than if we solely relied on our Chinese & my mime. From there we went in search of the minibuses that take you to the bamboo temple, stopping to get some nice figs on the way. We searched for ages & read the guidebook numerous times to check the details, but still couldn’t find the buses & gave up, choosing to catch a taxi instead.

The Bamboo Temple was great, it’s up in the hills & best of all, there aren’t many tourists there. The temple is full of statues of hundreds of monks, all very different in appearance, most of which seemed to have rather sad expressions on their faces. We had a few hours to spend there, but managed to see it all, rather lazily, in under two. The vegetarian restaurant was closed, which apparently serves some fantastic food, which was a little disappointing, but we did enjoy our figs. They had a nice area at the very back with a pond which had turtles, frogs & fish in it (+ mozzies, we could have stayed longer there, but they were hungry little guys). It was a rather nice place to take photos & just chill out. The entrance fee was only Y6 each too, so really quite cheap. We managed to catch a minibus down into the city which was nice, only Y5 each & then a #27 close to our hostel.

We did a few more little errands, buying some more of my favourite chips for the trip, wasabi flavour (YUM!) & more figs, plus a couple of bananas & cucumbers for the bus trip. There were a couple of video game arcades that we passed, which we went into & spent $2 for 7 or 8 games, not bad really - sooo cheap. We might have to do that again, perhaps our next trip to China, when we go back for Tibet.

We left in a bit of a hurry, eating some food as quickly as possible & then hailing a cab to the bus station. One of the girls at Cloudland wrote “South Bus Station” for us in Chinese to give to our driver. It was about an hours driver from the hostel to the bus station & we were cutting it a little fine, as we left at 8.30, when we had planned to leave at 8pm. As we were driving along, we thought that some of the scenery was looking a little familiar & when the taxi driver took us to the Western Bus Station we knew it wasn’t good. He insisted that was where we needed to go & we weren’t getting out, I left Geoff in the cab & ran in to find someone to confirm that we were indeed at the wrong place, which I did & I managed to get them to write in Chinese “South Bus Station” for us to give to our driver. Unfortunately the girl at Cloudland wrote the wrong place (we checked later to confirm that the taxi driver didn’t just take us to the wrong place on purpose). Holy crap!!!! It was now 9pm, we needed to be there no later than 9.45 & apparently it was an hours drive. For a very rare moment, I didn’t really feel all that worried about it, but the taxi driver was a little worried & so was Geoff.

Somehow we got there by 9.30, I don’t know how, but we did. I didn’t really have a lot of time to think about any of that though, I only just managed to step out of the taxi, when I was pushed aside by someone else who wanted our cab. China has been a bit of a culture shock for me, to put it mildly. I don’t mind it there, but some of the cultural norms annoy me (Spitting - not just on the street, but in shops, restaurants, trains, buses etc., Pushing & Shoving, Lining up & being pushed to the back because everyone else doesn’t line up, Ripping off the foreigners, because we apparently have money, Constantly haggling over prices, Screaming into mobile/ cell phones, Staring - often in an almost menacing manner, maybe they don’t like Western people). There are still some great Chinese that I have met, but because there are so many people in China I guess that you see more of the negatives, or I am just noticing it more. Having to be constantly vigilant so as to not get ripped off (or at least not as much as you could be) is quite exhausting.

Anyhow, so we got on the bus, which left at 10 exactly. We asked for one top bed & one bottom, along the side of the bus, which we got, only there were on opposite sides. Most of our luggage was stored underneath, with each of us carrying our little packs on. There is a small area for storage but not much. Sleeper buses are notorious for people having things stolen, so we were pretty careful with our belongings & didn’t have any issues. Neither of us slept very well though, as the bus went around corners, you constantly felt like you were going to fall out, which didn’t help.

We arrived at Jinghong just before 7am, (about) 9hrs, much shorter than what we had anticipated (15hrs). The bus driver had to get us off the bus, everyone else had gone, I thought that they were having a smoko (as they did at the other stations we stopped at on the way) so I was catching up on some sleep - so disappointed to get kicked off, that was the best 20 minutes sleep from the whole trip. I minded the bags, whilst Geoff went into the station to see what  our options were for the bus & luckily a bus was leaving at  7.20 for Laos - Wohoo! So off one bus onto the next.

We were supposed to get off at Mohan & then we had thought that we would catch a tuk-tuk over the border, but we didn’t & boy did that make it so much easier for us in so many ways 1/ we could say that we were on a bus & point to the other passengers (you need to give a flight or bus # etc) 2/ we didn’t have to worry about which way we were going, well that happened after we worked out that the bus was going to Luang Nam Tha, our desination 3/ we didn’t have to worry about our bags & getting them from one place to the next.

The Chinese side as always was very fast & efficient with their processing of our passports etc. We even had 3 immigration officials come out to ask if they could get photo’s with us, which was amusing. The Lao side was slow to say the least.

It took then an hour or more to process us & by that time the whole bus had been done & was waiting for us. We waited at the immigration office at Botan for a while, then someone came, took our passports & we waited some more, then they came back (20 min later) & gave us some visa paperwork to fill out & left (oh bring your own pen, they don’t give one), then much later they came back, took the visa paperwork & passports, then later someone came & did our visas & gave us more paperwork to fill out, which you then had to wait for someone else to come & look at it & stamp your passport to say that you have entered Laos.

It was kinda amusing that as I was getting my passport looked at (visa checked etc - which costs $32 USD) some woman came up & slammed 2 passports down in front of me, wanting to be served immediately & seemed very annoyed that I was having my passport done & not hers. Geoff told me later that apparently she didn’t have enough money to pay some sort of fee, so her rushing & trying to jump ahead really didn’t get her very far.

After I got my passport stamped etc I rushed off to find the bus & make sure that we hadn’t been left behind, all of our bags were still stowed underneath & we really weren’t 100% sure that our mixture of Lao, Chinese & Thai + mime had been all that successful, but apparently we had managed to convey not to leave us behind. It probably helps that we stand out compared to everyone else on the bus, but we did take a HUGE amount of time to be processed.  Oh well, the customs area took even longer, I think that we were there for about 2+ hours & we weren’t the ones that held up the bus that time, got to catch up on some sleep which was nice.

The bus stopped at a small village, perhaps still Botan, not sure & everyone had some lunch. One of the locals offered us some of his food. He bought some frogs on a stick, pork & sticky rice, fortunately he offered us a couple of pieces of the pork & the rice, but no frogs. Not sure how long that stuff was sitting out for, but hopefully we don’t get too sick from it (I have the weak stomach, Geoff’s is made of steel), was nice of him to offer it to us. We didn’t bother eating anything there, we only had about 22,000 Kip & weren’t sure if we would need that later (which was a good choice). We saw a horn-bill bird (a bit like a toucan), which was very cool when we wandered around in search of a toilet.

It wasn’t much farther to our destination. We choose to stay at Manychan’s, as the one & only ATM is located across the road. Luang Nam Tha isn’t huge, which makes it really nice, so chilled out compared to China. Rooms here are only 50,000 kip, the double rooms have a double bed, desk with stool, wardrobe, TV, fan + bathroom (with a western toilet). There is an air-conditioner, but as I understand it you pay extra for it - I am assuming that you get the remote for it when you pay, so you can use it easily.

We did our trip out to Shilin to see the Stone Forest, today.

There was a slight delay in getting ourselves on our way, we had to check out, put our baggage in storage, try to find a bank to get some more money (which was a bit of a task), then try to find some food. We found a bakery with some weird Chinese style western breads & Chinese style too, Geoff bought a Yaks meat Danish (which didn’t look like a Danish & the Yaks meat was probably just cheese), Buckwheat cakes (fruit filled - like cookies/ biscuits that you get with fruit inside), Blueberry Caterpillar fun (a bun with squiggly lines on the outside, which was cut in half & had some blueberry spread inside, then put back together again). We found some fruit for me at another shop, mango & nashi fruit + we bought a bottle of juice & some chips. Again we had read that the food at the Stone Forest was expensive, which was partly why we bought some before we left, but mostly because of my allergies, you get food supplies where you can.

With us staying at Cloudland Youth Hostel, we caught the #22 bus to the Eastern Bus Station (not far from the hostel & the shops that we went to) & then another bus to Shilin, which stops near the Stone Forest. For some reason we didn’t seem to get harassed by the touts as much on this trip, which was nice. We got off the bus & wandered down to the stone forest area, through the market stalls.

The Stone Forest is nice, but NOT worth Y175 per person. We had 4 bus trips (2x #22 buses to & from the Eastern Bus Station @ Y2 each way = Y4 + 2x buses to & from Eastern Bus station to Shilin & vice-versa 1x Y50 & 1x Y52 = Y110 each) which didn’t cost as much. We did see some people (foreigners) using photo ID cards, (which were drivers licenses) to get a cheaper price, saying that they were student IDs & they got Y45 off so from Y175 it went down to Y130, still an obscene price, but it would have been better than paying the Y175.

The park was nice, but like every other place, full of Chinese tourists, which is fine, it’s just that there are so many people about, which can make finding a quiet spot interesting. We did manage to find a few places that weren’t as busy & once you do, it makes it so much more enjoyable.

I managed to have an allergic reaction to a plant that I touched in the park, which made the day interesting. I was trying to look at one of their signs, which had a plant that had overgrown in front of it, so I could read the map. At first my arms were a little itchy & then all of a sudden I had a red rash that covered my arms. We washed them with a bit of water we were carrying & then I put some Paw-paw ointment on my arm - wow that stuff really works well. It took a while for it to completely go away, infact I still have some spots on my arm now, but at least it isn’t as bad as it was.

We got some videos in Auslan about the park from a place called Sword Peak Pond, which was a lovely spot to chill out for a while & not too many tourists there, although most people stopped to have a stare whilst I was signing, which was a little off-putting.

I am used to people staring when I am signing, but this is a different stare & it doesn’t just happen when I sign here, it happens all the time. The women are the worst, they stare & give you filthy looks & when that happens dozens upon dozens of times each & every day it gets a bit much. The staring is done in a really rude way. Every once in a while I do something back, like hold my hands in front of my face like I am a caged animal being gawked at or Geoff and I have had staring competitions with each other (which does actually turn them off, you gotta stick with it for a while though) or you just stare back, but I find the later one really hard to do & I can’t do it with the same menace & rudeness that they do. Not saying that every Chinese person stares at us, but there are soooo many that do.

We walked around the outside loop of the park towards the end of the day, which was nice, well worth it if you can, not only are you away from the crowds (you just have the odd group of tourists in their little buggies being driven around) but it is really quite nice scenery there too. We got back to the car-park around 6pm & had a little trouble finding the bus. We did eventually find one, there are a couple of ways into the main carpark area (both with boom gates), one has a dude next to it, who lets out buses and cars, the other has a building, which is a bus ticket office (when you are in the carpark, facing in the direction of the Stone Forest, it is on the right side). We bought our ticket & waited for the bus, we had heard that the last bus was at 6.30pm (18:30) but our bus, which I think was the last one, didn’t leave until 18:50. The trip back was quite fast, only about an hour & we were back at our hostel by 9pm (it’s about 45 min from the eastern bus station to the stop closest to Cloudland, Zhong Xia).

When we were at the Eastern Bus station (on our way back), we saw a Deaf couple which was cool, but as we were waiting for our bus & they were obviously in a hurry to get somewhere. Not sure where they were from, but not Chinese, they had a home-made Phrase book, that they flipped through to converse with people, pointing to different phrases, it was quite cool.

Anyhow, its time for dinner & we have laundry to do (about 2 loads - their washing machines are small) better go & see if I can have anything to eat here. Tomorrow wee head off, will go to the post office to post some stuff back to Canada, try not to spend too much on postage like last time & then we head off down south towards Laos, we will probably catch the bus to Jinghong.

Bugger, it’s raining, well, it’s pouring to be honest. What a bummer. We are supposed to go to Shilin today, perhaps there will be less people because of the rain - hahahaha, shouldn’t get our hopes up on that one.

We have to move rooms today, at the moment we are in a twin, which is nice, but to be honest it’s a little weird at the same time to have separate beds. I find it amusing that the bathroom is in a little section off to the side, no door. It’s ok for us, nothing that we haven’t seen, but in a room that has twin beds I am assuming that they generally have “friends” that stay in these rooms & they don’t necessarily want to see their travel buddy on the toilet (it’s a western style one) or nude in the shower, or maybe that is just my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I like the style of bathroom, it’s quite cool, just a little weird in a twin style room. Not really sure what sort of room that we will end up with, when we made the booking we could have either a dorm bed or a twin, but when I looked at their brochure this morning it appears that they have double rooms too, so maybe we can get one of those….

Breakfast this morning is fruit, a peach & mango - yum! Geoff is feasting on the mango seed - yum, I better get some too.