Chiang Mai: Songkran!!

I’ve been back in Khon Kaen for a few weeks now and I’m still ridiculously behind blogging and posting pictures from my travels! School started full force last week, and I’m loving it! I’m working with a different Thai teacher this semester and have a new set of kindergarteners and I actually look forward to going to school! I love my teacher, students, schedule, and keeping super busy by teaching special class (tutoring) five days a week. I’ll blog more about school once I’m caught up on traveling!

After Laos, the girls and I took an overnight bus to Chiang Mai, the biggest city in the North of Thailand.  Jenna and I have been planning to be in Chiang Mai for the second week in April since we arrived in Thailand. April 12 – 15^th every year is Thai New Year, Songkran, and its celebrated with a nation wide water fight. Streets are lined with thousands of people armed with buckets and water guns as well as pickup trucks filled with trash bins filled with ice water and Thais dousing anyone they can reach. Its all great fun and I had an absolute blast!  The Thais often take work off to celebrate and love having foreigners getting involved and I loved feeling like party of the Thai community.  Songkran is a fun Thai tradition and I’m so lucky I was here for this cultural experience! No where else in the world will I be able to experience a three day water fight!

We took a break from Songkran one day to go ziplining! Ziplining is something I thought I’d NEVER do because I’m sometimes afraid of heights, but I loved it!  I wasn’t even too nervous at the beginning because I felt that the rope and harness kept me pretty safe.. It was a blast!

The day before we left, we spent a whole day at an elephant camp just outside Chiang Mai. We learned commands in Thai (Yut = Stop, Qua = Right, Sigh = Left, forward, backward, slowdown, etc) and rode the elephants bareback to the river.   Freems, me and Kianna’s elephant, wasn’t always obedient and stopped a lot to munch on the plants along the trail. Elephants sure eat a lot! Once we got to the river, we swam and bathed with the elephants. Another fun day in Thailand!

Chiang Mai was absolutely amazing and one of my most favorite places I’ve ever been! It has a lot of culture, variety, and all the locals are so friendly and welcoming of foreigners! I’m hoping to go back again while I’m in Thailand.

Check out my album of pictures! :) 

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1810882585884.2094738.1054560056&l=30dc981853

 

Laos: In the Tubing

Traveling Numbers

91 hours on buses (approximately)

58 days on the go

14 cities

10 modes of transportation (bus, songtell, taxi, train, motorbike, boat, tuk-tuk, plane, songtell, and horse carriage)

5 islands

4 countries (and four different currencies)

AND 1 AMAZING TRIP!

LAOS: After the Thai islands, I made my way to Khon Kaen and was only there for 24 hours to repack my backpack. I unpacked my island gear and packed for my upcoming week in Laos and Chiang Mai. On April 7th, I got on the 8am bus from Khon Kaen to Vientiane, Laos without any sort of guide book or definite plan. I knew I was meeting Jenna, Kianna, and Alysha in Vang Vieng (Kianna and Alysha are friends from UCSB that came to travel with Jenna on our time off), but I had no idea how to get there or anything about Laos in general. My bus went very smoothly and of course I was the only foreigner on it. It was a short ride and only took three hours to get to the border. Immigration was quick for all the other passengers but took longer for me since I have a foreign passport and needed to get the visa on arrival. The bus driver brought me my backpack while I was one of my numerous lines. I was pretty confused on what was going on, but quickly realized that my bus couldn’t/didn’t want to wait and left me at the border! Normally I would stress about this situation.. being stranded at the border of a foreign country without a Lonely Planet (backpackers bible) and no knowledge of the currency or language, but I was abnormally relaxed about it. There were numerous drivers asking where I was going and I easily spotted the scams and avoided them. I buddyed up with this older man and his wife from San Francisco, they were visiting family in Thailand. We took a tuk tuk into town for cheap and they took me to where I catch the bus to Vang Vieng. After 4 hours on windy roads on a full bus, I arrived in Vang Vieng with no knowledge of where the girls were staying, so wondered around for a bit and booked a place on the river for my first night. I grabbed some dinner at a place with a lot of foot traffic, hoping I would see the girls walk by (our Thai phones don’t work in Laos) and luckily I spotted the girls later in the evening as I was going to use the internet! We made plans to meet up the next morning to go tubing!

Vang Vieng is a backpacker town and its main street is full of guest houses, bars, restaurants, internet cafes, tour agencies, western tourists, and various stands selling “In the Tubing” tanks and Ray Band sunglasses. Inner tubing down the Nam Song River is a popular attraction amongst backpackers, the river is lined with bars selling Beer Lao and equipped with rope swings, zip lines, and large riverside decks. The girls and I did two days of tubing and it was a great time! The first day, the water was really muddy because of rain the previous day. The second day, we attempted to float down the entire river which we were told would take three hours since its dry season and the water was really low. We needed to get our floats back into town by 6pm to get our cash deposit back, so after a few hours we decided to get out and grab a tuk tuk back into town. Tubing brought us all back to our UCSB days and reminiscing about Floatopia, a party that happens the first weekend of Spring Quarter and is known for floating on rafts and other home-made or store bought floating devices. Before it got out of control and police closed down the beaches, it was much like tubing in Laos but in the Pacific Ocean and with thousands of college students. Needless to say, I enjoyed tubing in Laos!

After a few days in Vang Vieng, we spent one day in the capital of Laos, Vientiane. Vientiane is right on the Thai-Laos order and situated on the Mekong River. We were only there a short time but explored some cafes and had breakfast at a delicious Scandinavian place. With its French influence, Vientiane has great food! After lunch on the 11th, the girls and I caught an overnight bus that left in the afternoon to make our way to Chiang Mai, Thailand!

(Jenna had a waterproof camera which captured some of tubing! Unfortunately, her waterproof camera wasn't mud proof and couldn't handle the river water and broke.. but she got a new one in Chiang Mai! Thanks for the pics, Jenna!)

The girls and I in matching tubing tanks!

Gauchos tubing!!!

Ko Tao and Ko Phi Phi: Rain, Rain, Go Away!!

After 7 weeks of traveling and living out of a backpack, I’m back in Khon Kaen!  School starts next Wednesday so I’ve spent the last few days re-cooping, doing laundry, catching up on my shows, posting my adventure pictures on my facebook, going into school and preparing the classroom, and attempting to update my blog!  I had an amazing time traveling and want to share my adventures but I’ve been putting off updating my blog because it seems like such a daunting task. I kept a journal on my travels so I wouldn’t forget the good stuff.. so here we go!

After Ko Phangan and the National Park, Olivia, Jess and I jet over to Ko Tao on March 22.  While at Full Moon, the girls and I were still up in the air about which island to go to next (life is SO tough!).  We had two options..  

1. Ko Samui: a big and beautiful island that’s high on New York Times’ List of 41 places to go in 2011, but very touristy and resorty.. the kind of place you’d like to go when you have money to spend, which is definitely not us right now. 

And 2. Ko Tao: turtle island, a smaller island with beautiful coral and fish, therefore attracting a lot of people interested in diving.   

We decided on Ko Tao because we had heard great things about the island from friends who didn’t do diving, and I’m so glad we made this decision!

Ko Tao! We took the ferry from Ko Phangan to Ko Tao and easily found a cheap bungalow for the three of us to share on Sairee Beach, the backpacking hub of Ko Tao.  We spent the first day exploring our surrounding area and made a mental list of all the places we wanted to eat at and the bars we wanted to check out that night. The next day was Jess’ 24^th Birthday and we had signed up to spend the day snorkeling.  The water and fish were beautiful but it began to rain and storm mid day causing dark and rough water so we ended the tour an hour early.  It rained on and off for the next three days so we tried to stay dry during the day and went out at night, including a huge mud party festival on our last night. There was a performance stage set up in a large open area that was covered in a foot deep of mud. It was messy but tons of fun!

The next morning on March 26, the girls and I woke up and made it to the ferry.  Luckily it hadn’t started raining so we boarded the ferry without much thought.. the ferry needed to go from Ko Tao to Ko Samui to Ko Phangan then to the main land, so it goes around all the major islands in the Southern Gulf to pick up passengers before heading to Surat Thani, the main port on the main land.  As soon as we pulled out of the harbor, we knew this was going to be a tough ride. We hit the open water and it as rougher than rough, our boat was not only bouncing front to back but also side to side. We thought it would steady out but it continued this motion for the next three hours.  I grew incredibly anxious and began to panic grabbing the seat in front of me when the actual windows of the ferry were hitting the water due to the rocking. 30 minutes into the trip, I was convinced our boat was going to sink and I didn’t see a single life jacket.  I don’t normally get nervous on boats or seasick but it didn’t take long before I was sharing a large trash barrel with other sick passengers. The looks on other passengers’ faces were anguish and pain, and I could tell they were thinking the same thing.   I was feeling pretty crappy and accepted the fact that the boat was either going to sink or I wouldn’t survive the motion sickness so I curled up next to the luggage and piles of backpacks to try to fall asleep. The next thing I knew, we were in smooth waters and gliding to the dock at Ko Samui. I rushed back to our seats and to Olivia and Jess in tears and shaking. We were told we needed to switch ferries and take another boat to the other island that would take us to the main land.  I was terrified and couldn’t imagine being on water like that ever again and was considering staying on Ko Samui until the following day just to wait out the rocky water.  With Jess and Olivia’s help, they talked me into going on the next boat which ended up being no problem. The rest of our boat trips were smooth as could be! (I wish I had been competent enough to take a video of our boat but that was the last thing I was thinking of.. but I feel like I can't even explain how bad this boat was!)

            We found out later that our ferry was one of the last ones to leave the islands for the next week. The storm and flooding continued and put Ko Tao and Samui into natural disaster modes.  Ko Tao and Samui were hit hard with flooding and faced issues of no electricity and running water for days.  Thousands of tourists were stuck on the islands and the Thai Navy and helicopters came in to evacuate.  Although the ferry ride probably ranks high on my most miserable moments in life, I’m REALLY lucky to have gotten out of there when I did!

Ko Phi Phi: Olivia and I headed over to the other coast to visit some islands over there and our first stop was Ko Phi Phi!  I had been before with Jenna and Christmas and loved the island so I was excited to go back.   It rained most of our time there except for our last few days so we got a little beach and snorkeling time in, but I made friends with people who work on the island so we found something to do most days. I mostly wanted to stay on the island until the storm passed in fear of another rough boat ride. Ferries weren’t leaving the island everyday and many of the buses were canceled because they couldn’t drive up to Bangkok because of the flooded roads. When I left Phi Phi, my bus went through Surat Thani and actually began to fill with water because the flooding was still so high!  Much of Surat Thani still had no electricity and many people had lost their homes.  I have never first-hand seen such devastation, streets flooded, bridges collapsed, and homes washed away.  I’m really lucky that I left Ko Tao when I did and that Phi Phi wasn’t affected nearly as much on the other islands. After Phi Phi, I came back to Khon Kaen for 24 hours before heading to Laos!

Snorkeling in the rain on Ko Tao

Adorable little girl on Ko Tao

Mud Party!

Rain coming in on Ko Tao

Maya Bay for the third time in Phi Phi

Windy day on Ko Phi Phi

Flooding on the bus from Phi Phi to Bangkok!