Luang Prabang - Trekking

Once we arrived in Luang Prabang and caught sight of those spectacular emerald green mountains we thought 'we've got to get amongst them'! So we signed up for a 2 day trek visiting a couple of villages along the way and spending the night in the 'chief's hut' (only fitting don't you think?)

The first village was on the lowlands with the Lao Lum people. The children don't really go to school and stay and look after their younger siblings whilst their parents are out collecting food and planting etc (just as I - Suzanne was expected to do many a time during my childhood!)

This was the Hmong village, these are the poorest of all the villagers and live in the middle hills.

Keith was feeling rather hot (with temperatures in excess of 30 degrees I think you'll understand) and resorted to desperate measures to kill 2 birds with one stone, cooling off and a 'hair' wash at the same time!

There are no roads to the Khmu village in the highlands so the ladies troop off to the fields, fill their bags with millet and brave the 6 km trek with bags ranging from 25-60kg in weight tied to their heads - no mean feat I'm sure you'll agree!!

Just such wonderful scenery (the hills and mountains aren't bad either) and not a telegraph pole or a pylon in sight!

Our accommodation for the night. there was an upstairs in the hut and we all slept up there. There was also another room up there and that's where the chief and his wife slept! We were only the second group of westerners to visit this village so every one in the village were intrigued by us. They would stand around us and watch us do everything.

The villagers had lots of animals; chickens, turkeys, pigs, dogs, ducks, goats and cows were freely roaming around, both in the village and in the huts!

Yes that's a real life chicken that the boys holding. they carry them around like our kids carry their 'cuddly' toys!

The kids were so happy you have to wonder if they need all the stuff we give them in first world countries, I swear I've never seen happier kids. We also seen some similarities to our past. This kid for example, is sliding down the hill on the remains of a shovel. We used to slide down snow hills sitting on a plastic bag.

I had a tear in my eye when I saw this! It's a home made go kart, check those wheels out! They're made of wood. This reminded me so much of my Brother Ron and I when we used to make go karts out of wood planks and pram wheels (before our Fatha got his hand in his pocket and bought a real one - tight sod).

I thought this go kart was the closest thing I've seen to a 'Flintstones' car . Although technically it's classed as an 'Inyakker' as it only has three wheels.

This is the village first thing in the morning. We were all up early due to the cockerels and what sounded like a pig being butchered with a half brick!!

The kids are very curious of us. They've only been visited once before by westerners so when we were sitting having breakfast they lined up to watch us.

This may look like a visit to the hairdresser or perhaps even some platting going on. Unfortunately, the girl on the right is the 'Nit Nurse' - that means the one on the left is the 'inflicted' - or as they used to say in Havelock Juniors - 'she's got the lurgie'!!! Fortunately we escaped without catching any nits, I know how I avoided it but I think Elvis was lucky!

This little girl has the most beautiful face and she loved me to take her picture then she could look at herself, bear in mind that they don't have mirrors here, so they look at the picture with real curiosity, in fact some of the kids were not convinced that it was them! One little boy ran off crying shaking his head when I showed him his picture - perhaps he thought he looked like Johnny Depp or the likes and the reality was too much!

This is one of our guides Kai, demonstrating how they grind corn to make corn bread and animal feed. Don't look for the electric 'on' switch or the diesel engine - it's all manual labour here!

We left the village then headed down hill for two hours. Then we got into kayaks and sailed through some amazing scenery. The little kids that live in the river side villages would come swimming out to us and jump on board and then show us there dives from our boat. At one time we had so many kids on we nearly capsized!

This is the group kayaking picture - just! Ewan was just about to capsize trying to get in the picture!

The Germans capsized about half way through the trip and spat their dummies out! So that just left the Brits!! This is the Nam Ou river. If all this water has got you thinking about a cup of tea, well tell us what famous river does the Nam Ou flow into and you could be getting a free one.

The two Germans that were in our group had 'escaped' the group photo so here we are: Kai (our guide), Ewan, Elvis, Hodgie and Bandit (our other guide, yes that's his real name!) If you're wondering why we are all wet - it rained so hard in the van coming back we all got soaked!

A free cup of tea to Ginny - yes mango with anything fruit shakes are the business!!

We have a few more days in LP and a few more places to explore - probably for another blog though!!

Luang Prabang - Laos

We flew into Luang Prabang on the 1st April and found a wonderful little treat awaiting us!


But before that - what do you all know about the country of Laos - I bet not much! Own up, I bet some have you have never even heard of it? We didn't before we started looking into our trip. So get your cup of tea at hand and absorb some interesting facts about Laos, you may be shocked. As we mentioned in the last blog, Laos is land locked by Thailand, China, Vietnam and Cambodia. What surprises people the most is that during the Vietnam war with the USA, Laos was actually bombed more than Vietnam. In fact this beautiful place has the unfortunate title of being one of the most bombed nations on earth. This will amaze you; America dropped the equivalent of a full plane of bombs on Laos EVERY 8 minutes of EVERY day for NINE years (1964 to 1973) could you imagine that?




It cost the USA two million dollars a day and if that wasn't bad enough, over 30% of the ordnance dropped didn't go off and is still lying around in fields. At the current rate of clearing mines and bombs etc, it will take 100 years to clear all of Laos. That's why when you're in remote parts of Laos and you need a No.1 or 2, then you have to do it on the side of the road, if you wander into a field you may need more than a few sheets of toilet roll to clear up the mess - if you know what I mean!




All of this because Laos borders Vietnam and it was thought that communist Vietnam soldiers were using Laos as a supply line although at the time the USA never officially admitted to dropping a single bomb on Laos.




Having said all of that (and that's quite a lot) you'd be hard pressed to find happier people and a country with some outstanding natural beauty (like the first picture of a beautiful sunset over the Mekong River). So top your tea up and lets lighten the mood a little.




This is the night market - it's a bit like a wedding night buffet, but instead of sandwiches, pies, nuts, crisps, sandwiches, pies, nuts, crisps....etc. it's scarves, handbags, jewellery and t-shirts, scarves, handbags etc... Even Elvis got a little bored with it after a week and that's saying something!!









Here's some 'cheeky monk-ees'! A lot of males may become a monk for a short period in their life as a family earns great merit when a son 'takes robe and bowl'. There's a few interesting 'monk rules': women aren't allowed to touch or sit next to a monk or his belongings and the back seat on a bus and boat are reserved for monks.

This was a comical site, they had more paint on the ground and themselves than the building. They were also 'painting' with a brush that looked like it was used to sweep the floor. Just after we took this picture a monk dropped a whole bucket of white wash which hit the ground and splashed all over some tourists.

I love this picture of an old boy selling ice cream from the back of his bicycle. What a fantastic face eh!

There's two rivers in Luang Prabang, this is the scene looking up the Nam Khan. This flows around the east side of Luang Prabang and joins the Mekong.

Mmmmmmmmmm yes! We've both become rather addicted to fruit shakes. We'll be getting the blender out when we get home! Oh yes, and this is Elvis forgetting about the beautiful view of the Mekong and concentrating on her belly!

It's 'moped city' here with all the locals riding them. In fact tourists can't hire them anymore as there's been too many accidents with locals knocking them off their scooters after one too many! Notice how they ride with umbrellas up - not for the rain but the sun!!

The climb up the many steps to the temples on the slopes of Phu Si was worth it - superb views of the city.

A fisherman returning from his boat with the sun setting over the Mekong.

There are many fruits available for the divine concoction that is a 'fruit shake'. For a free cup of tea what is our current favourite? Hint: I wouldn't bother googling this!

As for the last cup of tea question, this goes to Rusty with the first answer of green chillies, red chillies and the other curry is yellow. A little thimble of tea for Ginny with the technically perfect answer courtesy no doubt of google. Oh.... and another thing, how exactly do we take pictures of us white water rafting? Bearing in mind you're in a raft that could overturn and we don't know anyone on the riverbank to take pictures - I don't know, think before you let those fingers type!!!

Many congratulations to Tom successfully got one one of only two places to study Jazz at Newcastle University - well done!! We're very proud of you.

Chiang Mai - Action Man!

25/03/08

What kind of 'action' were you expecting? Don't forget the modern man has to be able to cook too! This is the organic farm at the Thai cook school and that's no.1 student making a Thai green curry, a beautiful little number with enough green chillies in it to blaaa the lid off a nuclear sub! Some of you will be lucky enough to try out some of my new dishes when I get home and don't worry, I'll reduce the number of chillies! Before we went to the cookery school we had a visit to the local market for our supplies.


This market was not for the faint hearted and I wouldn't advise that any vegetarians visit either. The sight of chickens, goats, fish and even frogs being 'processed' is enough to put a man off his grub! We steered clear of the strange creatures during our class and stuck to chicken and tofu - and to Suzanne's delight, I learned how to make sticky rice with mango - her little favourite. I met loads of great people, had a good time but we never got friendly enough to swap recipes - ah well maybe next time! (I plan to do some cookery courses in India too - do all you readers have watering mouths?).

Now this is proper 'mans' action I hear you all say - rock climbing!! I used to be a rock climber between the ages of 5 to 16 (unofficially of course - and don't tell my Mother or she'll worry in retrospect) My brother, friends and I would often climb the local cliff face named Claxeugh Rock in Sunderland. Thirty odd years later I'm not as easy going anymore, however, although slightly nervous I had a fantastic day. It's something I should have done years ago and I was really surprised how fit you need to be. After the third climb I got to a point about 20 metres up where I could hardly take another step. I was driven though by the fact that no one in the group could do it (a 19yr old and a 20 yr old) so I got energy from somewhere and made it to the top. That's me at the top 'rubbing it in' celebrating! CS eh!!!

This is something that I've never really wanted to do, but I thought I'd have to try. It's called 'Rapelling' and it's kind of dangling on a rope and lowering yourself using a contraption around your harness. In this picture (which I hope you all appreciate was very difficult to take!) I am rapelling into the mouth of an underground cave, carved by rain water millions of years ago. It was excellent and the atmosphere was so eerie, I felt like I was intruding into one of natures little secrets! In case you're interested and NOT prone to nightmares, we exited the cave by following the now dried up river bed through a tunnel and after about 50 metres we emerged out the side of the mountain. I would have done the whole lot again but I was so thoroughly knacked I couldn't have, in fact I didn't recover properly for four days!

So for a simple cup of tea question, who can tell me the main reason a Thai green curry is green and a Thai red curry is red. And if you're feeling lucky (well arrr ya punk) tell me what other colour curry is popular in Thailand.

After all of this our time in Thailand was up and we were off to one of the few 'land -locked' countries in the world, Laos - surely the subject of another blog.

Chiang Mai

Current status: We're in Vientiane (capital of Laos) right now, struggling to keep the blog up to date!. This blog is from Chiang Mai, we arrived there on the 24/03/08 by train. It's simply the best way to travel, we got on the train at Phitsanulok and went to bed! When we woke up at 7:30am the guard changed our beds back to seats and we sat for an hour until we arrived in Chiang Mai all refreshed and ready to go.

We went a little 'activity mad' in Chiang Mai (see the next blog too) and we hired a motor bike and went through the mountains and stayed over in a place called Pai. The bike ride was beautiful.

This is a temple (called a Wat in Thailand - you can quite legitimately ask the question 'What wat is that wat then?) All the temples have statues or images of Buddha, usually in the grounds and the valuable ones, some made from solid gold, in the temples.

This is a rather 'portly' looking Buddha. It what happens when Buddha's retire - be warned Ron!

Some of the temples have lots of little pots, the idea being that you put a coin into each pot for good luck, health etc. Here is the 'shoulder covered Elvis in respect of the Buddhist traditions', furnishing each of the pots with a bit of silver!



The heat and smoke from the fields burning makes the sunsets quite unique here, long before the sun has set the whole sky turns a yellow colour and if you can see the sun, it appears as a massive red disk that you can look at without sunglasses on.

We decided we would do a two day trek up into the mountains of North Thailand and into some of the remote villages. You can't really do this by yourself so we joined a group and six of us went off into the mountains with two Thai guides. This is one of the villages we walked through.

Here's the group heading towards the village of a special tribe of people, they do have a traditional name but most people know then as the 'long neck' tribe (it's not too difficult to work out why!). After a few hours hiking we arrived at the 'long necks' village and we stayed the night there in very basic huts, it was good fun though as we had a great group with us; two - self confessed 'punks' from America and two guys from York in England.

Here is one of the 'long neck' woman (only the women do this as they believe it makes them more attractive to men - which would work if men liked their women to look like Jackie Charlton!!!). I couldn't help feeling that it looked painful and very restricting to their head movement, although it may also have it benefits, like sleeping on an air plane seat. They start with the girls very young, the rings are made of a heavy brass like material.

After a little more hiking the next day we transferred to the true 'hiker' of the jungle, the elephant. Do you know how to tell the whether this is an Asian elephant or an African elephant? Easy really, it can't be an African elephant cos we're not in Africa are we you daft buggers!! We took the elephants up the river and then transferred to rafts and then white water rafted through the rapids, then transferred onto bamboo rafts for a more sedate cruise down the river.

Here is the 'group picture' Elvis, Hodgie, Drew, Dana, Mark and Joe at the end of the trek

After the trek we took a motorbike over the mountains to Pai and returned the next day. Pai is a little mountain paradise of easy living and we fitted right in! The scenery on the ide was fantastic and the bike was pretty good too - we had a real bike for a change which was much better than a 50cc scooter!

These are the huts we stayed at in Pai - very basic but effective!

After all that hard trekking what's two tired travellers to do? A Thai foot massage of course, just be sure to tell them to be gentle cos these little women are incredibly powerful creatures with hand made of steel!

While we were here I (Keith) also got into some other action activities but to know more you'll have to wait for the next blog.

The first cup of tea to my nephew Ryan aka Dave/Ryster/Reggie/Ry for correctly naming the ex-president of Thailand as the owner of Man City. Ginny the researcher gets the bonus (on her second attempt) for correctly identifying 'Chang Beer' as the shirt sponsors for Everton.

Sukhothai (via Phitsanulok)

To get from the 'Bridge on the River Kwai' to Chang Mai in the North you need to get back on the main train line - so we decided to pick up the line at Phitsanulok and stay there one night because it's very close to the ancient capital of Siam, namely Sukhothai. So when you look at these pictures conjure up the image of Yul Bryner dancing around shouting 'et cetera, et cetera, et cetera'.

This is a picture of us in the local bus! It left at 5:30am (that will explain why my face is all out of kilter) for a 2 hour journey but arrived at 8:45am - we needed to catch another bus and by pure luck it was leaving the bus station as we arrived, someone on our bus shouted and waved and the bus stopped and we were able to get on. Lesson learned - don't believe everything they print in the bus timetable!!

The main street at Phitsanulok was great to walk around and had a fantastic market with great food. The next day we took a short bus ride to the ancient capital at Sukhothai.

This is a Buddhist monk ringing the 'prayer bell'.



















The best way to get around the ancient city is by bicycle - so here we go! Probably one of the most picturesque cycling paths you'll ever come across. So feast your eyes on the wonderful sights - starting with the cyclists of course!

This particular Buddha has a golden hand! The idea being that for a small donation you can give your self 'good karma' and get a very small piece of gold leaf. You then rub the gold leaf on the Buddha. I estimate by 2075 this will be just 'another' Gold covered Buddha!!

Spot anything unusual about this Buddha? Yes, two apprentice Buddha's either side!

You probably won't find this sign in your Highway Code. Just in case you're not certain what it is, I'm helping by performing a faultless impersonation (if you're looking Ben and Justine, this puts Ben's 'kangeroo' attempt to shame).






Time to leave for Chiang Mai, so we head for the train station and then......... wait......... what's that we see? Is that really a local with a Sunderland shirt on? I couldn't believe it, the poor guy probably thought he was going to get mugged when he saw me running toward him! Anyway, he couldn't speak a word of English and from our limited hand signals, I ascertained that he didn't know what the shirt meant (sometimes I know exactly how he feels!). We had a laugh though and his family were laughing their heads off at our picture shoot.

People in Thailand love football and often wear footy tops, the usual Man Utd and Chelsea etc. But for a cup of tea, can anyone tell us why it is that most Thailand football supporters wear Manchester City shirts? And if you're feeling lucky punk, the next favourite is an Everton top - again, why would that be?

No, this is not a picture of me in one of those strange Thailand bars where you can have your own booth! This is the supreme luxury of sleeping on a train - can you even imagine how comfortable that is - especially when your previous train journey was 21 hours sitting on a rack? This is me in the bottom bunk, Elvis is snoring away on the bunk above. In the morning, when you arise, the guard will come around and convert your bed into a nice little seat for two. No cups of tea for this question - it's too easy, but would anyone like to guess who was last to roll out of her bunk?

So after a lovely nights sleep, the train rolled into Chiang Mai at 8:30 am - just in time to start a new day in a new place that must be the subject of a new blog!

Rolls Royce loses a 'legend'!

Well after *# years of hard work for Rolls Royce Dad Elves has finally hung up his draughtsman's pencil and taken his well earned retirement!

CONGRATULATIONS Dad, so looking forward to spending some weekday time with both you and mam when we get back - take it easy and enjoy!!

As we couldn't make the retirement celebrations we sent two 'cardboard cutouts' instead for the photo shoot (they're good aren't they)!