The Crazy, Muddy, Sketchy, Horrible, Laos Motorcycle Rally

Once I got into Laos, I took the locally famous 2 day slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang. I had heard about this boat ride from various other tourists and it sounded pretty interesting to me because I hadn't been on a boat in awhile and wanted to mix up the forms of transportation a bit, rather than be stuck on another bus for hours and hours. I knew about Luang Prabang because it's probably the most visited town in Laos by tourists, so the boat was a good way to get there.

It was a beautiful boat ride and I'm really happy I decided to make it happen. You're basically on the boat for about 5 hours the first day as the river meanders its way through the lush green mountains of northern Laos, dotted with small river villages and communities that you would otherwise never even know existed. At the end of the first day, you stop in the small sleepy town of Pakbeng, which basically thrives almost solely on these boat rides. It's the only place where you can sleep for the night, so you get off the boat, find a guesthouse and some food and drinks, then call it a night and get up early the next morning to catch the boat again for day 2. On day 2, the boat trip is about 6 hours with more beautiful scenery before you finally arrive in Luang Prabang.

The slow boat lineup, with Thailand sitting on the other side of the Mekong river.
I spent the better part of two days on one of these bad boys.

Overall, the trip was extremely scenic and I'm really happy I did it. 11 hours in two days on a boat is a little long, but I still think it's worth it and would recommend it to people, especially if you have a good group to go with and you wanna bring some drinks along the way :) I was happy to finally be in Luang Prabang and see what this little town was all about.

Luang Prabang is a pretty amazing little place. It's the most visited town in Laos for a reason, and has a pretty incredible charm to it. It's one of those places where you just get there and walk around and enjoy the vibes of the place. There's a night market and a nice hill that you can climb to get some great views of the area, and of course there's a beautiful waterfall about an hour out of town that you can see. Overall, it was probably one of the nicest places I visited in SE Asia and I would recommend it to anyone to check out if they're ever in the area.

After Luang Prabang, a French guy I met, Vincent, and I teamed up and went down to Vang Vieng, which is another small backpacker town a few hours away via extremely windy and horrible roads. It was probably the worst road I've ever been on in my life. Extremely windy and bumpy for a solid 6 hours. It sent me airborne in the back of the minibus countless times and I absolutely could not wait to get out of there. When we finally made it we were pretty exhausted. Vang Vieng is well-known for being a party town, so when we got in late everyone was out drinking and it was a little entertaining to see the state that everyone was in when we arrived sober looking for a place to stay. We were too exhausted to join the crowds so we just showed up to a guest house, woke up the owner to ask for a couple beds, and slept in the hallway before getting an actual room the next night.

Vang Vieng provided me with quite an experience.. That next day we decided to rent motorbikes because Vincent knew of a nice loop to do around some villages outside of town that would give us a good glimpse of the area and take up most of the day. The semi-automatic bikes were half the price of the automatic ones, so even though we didn't have any experience using one before, we decided to wing it and rent a couple bikes for the day. It definitely took some getting used to, but after an hour or so of riding around we got the hang of it pretty easily. The catch here was that it was rainy season. And it would rain pretty consistently throughout the day each day, especially in northern Laos. So when we embarked on this loop it wasn't long after setting out that the roads quickly turned to dirt. But with heavy, interspersed rain storms the dirt turned into mud... a lot of mud.

One of the better-conditioned parts of the horrible, muddy road we spent most of our day on...

There was so much mud that I ended up slipping out early on in the drive. The left side of my body was covered in mud but I was fine, however, it looked like my bike had leaked some oil. We rode on and asked some local people nearby for a place that we could get the bike looked at. When we got to a place, we tried to explain the situation to some of the local people but they couldn't understand. Coincidentally, the place we stopped at was at the entrance of a short hike Vincent had read about. So we gave up on getting the bike looked at and went for a hike. We got to the top of the hike and had some amazing views. After that we were feeling pretty good and decided to keep going and hoped that my bike would hold up.

We kept going on the horrible, muddy, and slippery road, got lunch at a small local joint, and continued on. We were at least getting more comfortable driving on the muddy roads, and as we continued a local Lao guy rode alongside us and invited us to have a drink with him. We thought, "why not?" and agreed. So we followed him for a bit on the road and finally stopped at a place to grab a couple beers. This was a really nice guy. We chatted for awhile about Lao culture and learned a bit of the language. He was a tour guide and rents out kayaks to foreigners while taking them out on the river. He just finished up for the day when he invited us for some drinks. We had a great time with him. So good, in fact, that we had probably stayed a little longer than we should have and got a late start to head back to Vang Vieng. The guy suggested that we keep going and complete the loop, as it would be faster than doubling back the way we came. So we decided to continue, and it wasn't long after we started off that it began to get dark. This is when things would get interesting.

So it starts getting dark, the rain continues to fall in heavy bursts, and we continue down this stupid road in the mud and rain. Vincent suddenly mentions that his bike is running really low on gas, so we've got to keep an eye out for a place to fill up (which is very scarce where we're at). We ended up completing a small portion of the loop and got to a place where we needed to double back to get back into town. I remembered seeing a gas station a bit down the road on the loop we came from, so I go on to find it and ask for some gas while Vincent waits behind. It started to rain extremely heavily at this point and the road conditions weren't improving. It was also completely dark now. I couldn't find the gas station so I turned around and finally caught up to Vincent. It wasn't long after this when my bike suddenly won't go anymore. I didn't know what was wrong with it but it stopped working just before I got to Vincent. So I walked the rest of the way back to him and told him about it. We were in a pretty bad spot at this point.

One of the amazing views we got during the day that made at least part of this motorbike trip worthwhile.

We found someone to take a look at my bike and he pointed out that the chain had just come off on the back tire. So a quick reset fixed the problem and I was extremely happy now. We continued on the road but only for a few minutes before the chain popped back off again. This was disappointing, but it wasn't hard to reset and continue on. But then it happened again and again, and now we were beginning to worry a bit. Then it happened to Vincent's bike, and now things were really looking bad. His chain was not accessible from the outside, as it had a protective plate covering it. And to make things worse, the next time my chain came off it was on the front, which was also inaccessible from the outside. So we had two bikes with chain issues, one of them nearly out of gas, and we were stuck walking on the muddy roads in the pouring rain at about 10:30pm somewhere outside of Vang Vieng, still much too far to walk.

So now the only option was to basically leave the bikes on the side of the road and walk to a nearby village to find someone to call a tuk tuk for us and give us a lift back into town and grab the bikes in the morning. So we left the bikes on the side of the road and just as we began walking to the nearby village, a car came. Better yet, it was a pickup truck, and a godsend. Vincent waved the truck down and we explained to him what was going on. He spoke enough English to help us out, so long as we paid him for it. So we threw the bikes on the back, hopped in the truck, and miraculously got ourselves a ride back into town. It was the best possible thing that could have happened, and I was so happy and relieved when we got back. I couldn't believe it, and properly celebrated that night. The whole thing really sucked at the time but obviously looking back at it, it was one of the more memorable stories that I'll have of the trip as being a very bad situation that we somehow got ourselves out of.

After that interesting day in Vang Vieng I was ready to leave the next day and hopped on a bus to the capital, Vientiane, where I found someone to couchsurf with for a couple days.

Thai Times

I'm back with another blog post that will briefly cover some of the incredible adventures and experiences that I've had over the last month as I continued my travels through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.

I'll start by saying that Southeast Asia in general seems like it was essentially built for backpacking. From my experience this seems to be the best place in the world for backpackers. The people are extremely friendly, it's very easy to get around, and the prices are CHEAP. If I came to this part of the world at the beginning of my trip, I probably could've hung around here FOR A FEW YEARS. No joke, but of course there's a few other parts of the world to see too.

When I got back from Myanmar I got stuck in Bangkok for over two weeks. I don't know what it is about that place but it's one of my favorite cities in the world. I really can't give you any good specific reasons for it, but I met some great friends there and had an amazing time. I really found it difficult to leave. It was also really the first time I had gotten "stuck" anywhere, which can be a pretty common thing among long term travelers, but usually it's in beach towns or something like that. For me it was Bangkok, and I was okay with it.

Near the end of my long stay there one of the Thai friends I had made invited me into the countryside about an hour and a half outside Bangkok to meet with his mentor. His mentor is an older man in his mid-sixties who is a university professor and a well known local artist. He said it would be a good experience to meet him and talk to him about my travels/life in general, just to gain more insight from a more experienced person. I thought this was a really interesting invitation. From my experience growing up it was never common to befriend an older person simply to have good conversation about life experiences and try to learn a few things from them unless they were a relative or something. But my friend, Nut (who's my age) did just this and essentially looks up to this guy as a mentor. I thought that was a pretty cool thing, so I happily accepted.

So Nut, our friend Goop, and I headed out to the Nakhon Pathom province west of Bangkok to stay a night and become more wise. When we arrived we met Winai, the mentor, who also had a friend from Paris visiting. His friend, Gilles, was one of the smartest people I think I've ever met. Both of these men were very well educated and had been in academia most of their lives, and of course they spoke very good English. Gilles in particular spoke 9 languages! He also had 3 or 4 Bachelor's degrees, 2 or 3 Master's degrees, and I think 2 P.h.D's. Let's just say that after spending an evening with these guys over some Thai whiskey at a beautiful property I learned a few things about life and can say that this was definitely a great experience. We returned back to Bangkok the next day but I was so happy Nut invited me to do this, and I was more than ready to move on from Bangkok.

My friend, Nut, and I in Nakhon Pathom at his mentor's property.

Once I convinced myself to finally leave Bangkok (and to avoid any visa issues) I headed to northern Thailand, up to Chiang Mai. I heard so many great things about this place from other tourists, claiming northern Thailand as their favorite part of the country, so I knew that this would be the next destination. I really liked Chiang Mai. It had a nice, smaller city feel to it. While there I also checked out the Muay Thai traditional Thai boxing and rented a motorbike to explore the rest of the city.

A quick stint in Chiang Mai led me to see the small town of Pai next. Pai is a very small town in the mountains about 4 hours from Chiang Mai, but a very popular destination for backpackers. However, to make things interesting I decided that it had been too long since I last hitchhiked in Myanmar, so I made sure I would give it a shot on my way to Pai.

So once I got outside of Chiang Mai I stood on the side of the road for maybe 30 seconds before a car pulled up and a white girl rolled the window down and said "you must be going to Pai!" I said, "Yes!" and they let me hitch a ride with them in their car. Pien (the Dutch girl) and Sam (her Swiss boyfriend) had rented a car in Chiang Mai and were on their way to Pai for a few days. The timing could not have been more perfect, and it was by far the quickest ride I've ever hitched. They were such a nice couple and had been to Pai a few times before which is where they first met a few years ago, so when we got there I hung out with them for a bit and they gave me the basic rundown of the small town.

I stayed in Pai for about 3 nights. It was a nice little place, however, it was overrun with backpackers and there were far more tourists than locals. But somehow it still managed to be a pretty great little town with a really nice atmosphere. While in Pai I sort of reached a point in my mind about my take on the travels so far. I was at a point where I was caring a bit less about "what there is to do" in a place and focusing more on "what I wanted to do." For example, in Pai just about everyone rents a motorbike and rides out to a couple of the nearby waterfalls, goes to the canyon view, the caves, etc. etc. But I didn't do any of those things. At first I was starting to contemplate if this was me "burning out" on my trip or not. After all, I was about 10 months into the trip and this was the point I had heard about most people wanting to go home and take a break from it all. But on the other hand, I simply saw this as me exercising my right to just do or not do what I wanted.

The beautiful rice fields of the Pai countryside

Just because there's something that everyone does or wants to do at a certain spot doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do it too. Traveling can be a very selfish activity, but it needs to be because it's about self-growth and experiences that you have in order to learn more about the world and yourself, to develop your own take on what life means to you. This might be getting a little deep for a short visit to little old Pai, but it got me thinking, and I was totally okay with not visiting the waterfalls or the canyon or whatever. So I left Pai, happy that I visited but also with new ideas in my mind on this travel mentality.

Since I had so much success in hitching a ride to Pai, I decided to do it the other way, too. Once I got a bit outside of town it took maybe the same or even less time to hitch my ride out. It was amazing. A pickup truck with a couple local Thais pulled up and picked me up straight away. They didn't really speak any English but that was okay, I just told them I was going to Chiang Mai and we figured it out. It looked like a brother and sister but they seemed really nice. The best part was I got to hop in the back of the truck and ride in the back of a pickup through the windy, mountainous roads of northern Thailand for about 4 hours. It was a great ride, and after spending a couple quick nights in Chiang Mai I decided to head further North to Chiang Rai on my way to Laos.

Again, with all this success hitchiking I wasn't gonna let up any time soon so I decided to hitch up to Chiang Rai as well. It was a bit more challenging, but I eventually worked my way up to a small town via small payments of truck-taxi-things and got a real ride the rest of the way. The guy that picked me up was funny and a little flamboyantly creepy, but he dropped me off at my hostel in Chiang Rai without a problem. A couple nights in Chiang Rai and then I'd be on my way to Laos. Highlights of Chiang Rai included the White Temple (which was honestly one of the coolest temples I think I've seen) and the Black House (which is a really cool outdoor museum of a collection of bones, skins, and various other animal remains and artworks).

After my quick stop in Chiang Rai, I planned to make my way to Laos and then hop on a slow boat and ride the Mekong River for a couple days en route to the next main destination: Luang Prabang.

Memoirs of Myanmar

I had heard of a relatively untouched place in Southeast Asia. A place much less saturated by us Western tourists and influences. A place that still possessed true authenticity almost everywhere you went. Where you can see, smell, feel, and taste a preserved culture that’s existed and persisted for so long and in so many ways. This place is Myanmar, or Burma, as us Americans might still call it (Burma is the old, now unofficial name). Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to who’s traveled around Southeast Asia had unanimously declared Myanmar as their favorite country to visit in this region precisely for the reasons given above. And when it comes to long-term travel and adventures around the world, this is the kind of place that immediately catches my attention. After my arrival in Bangkok and seeing how cheap flights were to get to Myanmar from there, I knew I had to take the opportunity and go now before it’s too late (before tourism catches on and the saturation begins). Now is the time to go to Myanmar, and this is why I decided to go.

The famous fisherman of Inle lake

The only uncertainty was how much time I would spend in this mysterious part of the world. ‘What was there to see and how much time was needed to see it?’ - This seems like a pretty obvious question to ask when coming to a new, unfamiliar place. But for me, at this point in my journey, it’s not necessarily about what there is to ‘see’ more than it’s about how many people there will be to meet, to communicate with, to share experiences with, and to create friendships and memories that will last a lifetime. So how much time is needed to do this? I don’t know, but the visa gives me 28 days to explore this new place and it wasn’t long after I arrived that I knew I would need all 28 days.

Market day in Pindaya

Myanmar in particular is known for its people and hospitality. This is the highlight for most people that visit the country. The human connection. For me, after the first two weeks of being here there would be no exception. This place is quickly becoming one of my favorite countries I’ve ever visited precisely because of the incredible people that inhabit this place. The smiles, waves, greetings, and hospitality is nearly unmatched. My times in India and the people and experiences I had there would suddenly face some stiff competition, as the Myanmar people continue to surprise me with their kindness and generosity each and every day. There’s too many stories to tell, but highlights include:

• Staying at a monastery in Meiktila (in the center of Myanmar) for a week and helping university students practice their English while they showed me around the town, taught me so much about their local culture, and showered me in gifts for their appreciation of my visit.

• How easy it is to hitchhike nearly everywhere in the country (13 times in one week!) and all of the extremely kind and generous people that have given me rides (including a free ride from a tour bus).

• The little school girl that must’ve been 6 years old who greeted me in Kalaw (a small mountain town) and gave me a flower.

• The shop owner in Pindaya (another small town) who let me borrow his umbrella while it was raining during my walk to the incredible Shwe Oo Min cave pagoda, who then also took me to the market and treated me to an amazing home-cooked lunch the following day.

• The incredible family that didn’t speak any English, but hosted me in Yangon and took me around the city, feeding me and always making sure I was comfortable in a lower class home that would be difficult to feel comfortable in for us Westerners.

My Yangon family: Ma Soe Ei San, Ko Soe Min Oo, and little Zu Zu

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of great sites to see in Myanmar. Bagan is one of the most popular places, with its hundreds of temples and pagodas scattered throughout the plains, and beautiful Inle Lake and its incredible floating gardens and villages that I fell in love with. But I don’t feel like it’s necessary to talk about these places as much as the people that live here. So that’s what I decided to dedicate my post about Myanmar to. I can say it over and over, but when it comes to traveling, it all comes down to the people you encounter. It’s easily become my favorite part of not just traveling, but life in general. Myanmar is one of the best places in the world to meet these people and experience the ultimate human connection.

An Oriental Introduction

After my incredible 2 month travel stint in India, I was on to the next part of the world and my first oriental country: Thailand. It was really a bit of a culture shock when I first arrived there from India. I don’t know yet about the rest of Thailand, but Bangkok is A LOT more developed in general than most parts of India, and after being in a lesser developed part of the world for a couple months it was a bit refreshing and overwhelming to be in a much more urbanized chunk of civilization. There were skyscrapers, fancy hotels, massive screens displaying various ads, and a plethora of visual media being consumed nearly everywhere you looked. There were sidewalks, gargantuan smartphones, and enormous amounts of traffic (which was nothing new, but nobody was honking their horn!) For me, it was serenity.

The craziness of Khaosan Road

I took multiple fancy automatic metro skytrains and a bus to get to the backpacker center of Bangkok: Khaosan Road. There were tourists everywhere! Another new site for me after my stint in India. A site for sore eyes? I’m not quite sure I’d put it that way. Somewhat unexpectedly I had actually become accustomed to being the center of attention during my Indian travels (selfish comment, I know). But in all honesty, being noticed by locals who are interested in your whereabouts can enhance the human connection experience of traveling. And because the locals here are so used to the saturated tourism that has been sweeping through Thailand for years now, you’re no longer necessarily looked at as a peculiar outsider. You’re no longer “special.” So not many stares upon my arrival nor did I really have anybody coming up to me asking me where I was from and what I was doing there, which was fine. But in Khaosan there aren’t necessarily any locals. This is where the backpackers go for cheap accommodation and partying. It was quite a change of pace for me but I embraced it as best I could.

Wat Pho

The irony in me staying at Khaosan Road during the first half of my 10 day stay in Bangkok was that I actually had only one night that consisted of really going out and drinking. I started out by myself and ended up meeting a group of random foreigners and a few Thais, where we had a great time in one of the nearby clubs. It was a lot of fun, but apart from that excitement the remaining days consisted of me locking myself in my hotel room and catching up on these blog posts, uploading photos, and planning my exciting detour to Myanmar, which I would be taking after my Bangkok experience.

Reclining Buddha with Selfie Stick

So Khaosan was fun during my limited exploration over the 5 days of staying there, but once I was mostly caught up on everything a change of pace and environment was needed. I felt like I was trapped in a bubble of tourism that was in a way detached from the real Bangkok that I wanted to see, so I found a hostel in another part of town and effortlessly moved to a new home. The second half of my Bangkok experience consisted of more sightseeing, socializing, and even a little partying, that permitted me to enjoy the city a bit more each and every day. Highlights included catching a very unsafe but way too exciting scooter taxi on the way home from the club after seeing a well-known DJ that I liked, going out again on Khaosan road for some drinks and eating a scorpion (which really didn’t taste that bad), and going to a ping pong show (which I will refrain from explaining in this blog, but trust me, it’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen).



So in the end, I really enjoyed Bangkok. It was reassuring to know that I would be back after my detour through Myanmar. From what people had told me about Myanmar it sounded like it could have the potential of being a top highlight of the trip, possibly competing with India. I couldn’t wait to find out why.

Bangkok street food is simply the best

India Reflection

Because I had such a profound experience in India, I figured it's only appropriate to write an actual reflection on the whole thing. I really wasn’t sure about going to India in the first place, and I’d been debating with myself about it for a while, especially after I decided to take my trip around the world. There was even a point where I decided that I wasn’t going to go and it wasn’t going to be part of the trip. Then, after speaking with a few people about it who had been there before and had some interesting views about their experience, I had a change of heart. I think I was in Israel when I made the decision to finally go, and began to plan my entry into Asia via India. I think the main reason why I decided to go was to challenge myself. I heard from people how challenging it can be to travel in India, with the aggressive touts and beggars and overall quality of life there. But I had decided that I was gonna be up for the challenge, and I wanted to further grow from this experience and see if I could do it.

Flying on the Mumbai local trains

Boy was I glad that I decided to go. People honestly told me that “for the first two weeks, you’re going to hate it, but give yourself some time to adjust and you’ll learn to really enjoy it there.” I took this advice to heart without knowing what to expect, and I think I approached it with a mentality that did not allow myself to be unpleasantly surprised by some of the initial sights and sounds of India that slap you across the face when you first arrive. I’m going to be truthful when writing this post because I think it’s more important than just trying to make India seem like a traveler’s paradise, which it is, but in a different way.

When I first arrived in India, like most people, I was pretty overwhelmed. I arrived in Mumbai but I think if you arrive in any big city it’s impossible to ignore all the horns, tuk tuks, litter, people, heat, and just overall life that hits you. You notice a lot of things when walking along the streets that aren’t sanitary at all, and you see and smell things that would be mostly unacceptable in our Western culture, but you take it all in as part of the experience and you just move on. India de-sensitizes you in this way, but these are all external forms of the busy and overpopulated society that exists here. With the right perspective you can look past these things that might initially appear to be negative and begin to see the true essence and beauty of what lies in this country’s culture and lifestyle. That’s how it works and that’s how you have to look at it if you want to get the most out of the experience.

What's an India reflection without a picture of the Taj?

But India is not all about the external material pleasures. I mean when it comes down to it, it’s the people and the internal qualities that you feel when you’re exposed to this kind of environment. As a foreigner, I had never been to a place with people like this. I know that other people have had very different experiences when it comes to this aspect of India, and unfortunately scams and horrible things still happen so I’m not saying this is all fact. But from my experience, I had never seen people so interested in where I was from or what I was doing. I had people coming up to me to ask me where I was from, shake my hand, and then try to continue holding conversation even though they couldn’t speak another word of English. There’s this irresistible urge that they have to meet you and learn about you and what you’re doing even if they can’t properly express their curiosity verbally. It’s still magical. In my opinion, it’s the ultimate place for human connection. The waves, smiles, hellos, and shaking of hands from all ages and walks of life in this country is something special, and I think it was my favorite part about visiting this place.

Happiness

And of course, India challenges you. I think in general you just have to be more vocal and verbally aggressive in trying to get what you want, especially the price you want. I found myself growing quite a bit in this department. Yea, I had been social enough when traveling, but I found myself having to develop a little bit more character when interacting with people in order to get what I wanted, the price that I wanted, or to just have fun with each interaction; because there’s a lot of interaction going on in India with the amount of people saying hello to you or trying to sell you something. It’s very important to try to have fun with each interaction or else you’re gonna lose your patience real quick.

India tests your patience more than any other country I’ve been to, especially when it comes to traveling within the country. As I’ve mentioned before, depending on where you’re going of course, I would say that wherever you go you’re gonna be spending at least 10 hours on average getting there. If it’s a major trip, you can spend up to 30-40 hours on a single train or 50+ hours in transit from one side of the country to the other (if you’re not flying) and you’re going to have people constantly trying to talk to you during and after your exhausting travels. Overall, it’s not a bad thing, your tolerance for travel time increases exponentially and just about any other country you go to will seem like a breeze when it comes to transportation. But again, it’s all part of the experience, and you treat it as such.

Overall, India has allowed me to grow in a way that no other country has. This is of course based on my own personal experience, and there are plenty of people who might think otherwise based on their own individual experience. I can talk for hours about my experience here, but I will always remember it as one of the more memorable and life-changing trips I’ve taken. I would recommend to anyone to come to this country and challenge themselves and see what life is all about. In my mind, this is the holy grail of backpacking and the traveling experience. There’s always more to be seen and explored but for the time being, for me, India is the final frontier.