Ha Long Bay

We booked a tour to Ha Long Bay for two days and one night. For the one night we stayed on a boat somewhere in Ha Long Bay. The bus ride from Hanoi to Ha Long City took four hours and then we boarded the boat. Because we booked a tour we were picked up at our hotel and traveled with fifteen other people, most of whom were young enough to be our grandchildren.

We were talking to one very enjoyable lady from London who mentioned her 67 year old grandmother. But, we all got along quite well. We even met with two of the group for drinks later in Hanoi.

Since we were here four years ago the government has decreed that all the tourist boats must be painted white, completely destroying the ambiance of the boats that were painted different colors. The trip itself was wonderful. Last time we spent a second night on Cat Ba Island, but this time we opted to go back to Hanoi. Ha long Bay is a UNESCO World heritage site and deserves it. The islands jutting up from the water are amazing. There is another bay further north that is just starting to get tourists and is where we will probably go to next time.

In Hanoi

We are in Hanoi, Vietnam. We took an Air Asia flight from Bangkok to here. We arrived an hour before Joyce's flight from the U.S. so we waited for an hour at the airport and met her. We all took a car provided by our hotel to the hotel. It is a lot cooler here than it was in Bangkok.

We are now in the land of good $2 bottles of wine, which Vang Da Lat, which is bottled in Da Lat, the honeymoon capitol of Vietnam.

We are staying in the old quarter, which is a crowded, chaotic area. We really enjoy hanoi, hope Joyce does also.

In Bangkok III

We are back in Bangkok. We took an eight hour bus ride from Udon Thani to Bangkok. The bus evvn provided a meal. it was a fast and easy trip on a bus that could have used new shock absorbers.

While In Bangkok we got our yellow fever shots to go to Africa. We also ended up getting two other shots that had expired. We went to the Thailand Red Cross and they were great. Almost painless shots.

Back in Udon Thani, Thailand

For our last meal in Vientiane we at at Ray's Grill. This time Laura ordered a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich on a baguette. It was delicious, and she was eating bread. Ray taught us how to ask for rice flour. We say "Bang Cow", at least that what it sounded like to Jim. With the Philly Cheese Steaks we had red wine, which Ray did not chill to cellar temperature. But, it was still a pretty good French Merlot.

This morning it was time to leave, so we caught a bus to Udon Thani. The trip took longer than it did getting there because the border crossings were jammed with Thais heading home after New Year. Anyway, we made it and checked into our hotel, @ Home At Udon, which is less than $20 per night and a bargain.

But, we did bring a few baguettes with us from Lao. At the bus station Jim said "Bang Cow" to a lady selling baguettes and she nodded and painted at the baguettes. So, Jim bought half a dozen which we have been eating all day. Here's a photo of one after it has been mangled in the trip from Lao to Thailand.

Couple of thoughts on Lao that we never posted.

At our hotel is a French couple and their twenty-something son. They are here to visit Vang Vieng where their other son died last year. Very nice couple and very sad. There is French woman and her two teenage children that are traveling around SE Asia for ten months. They came in September and go back to France in July. Their daughter goes off to college next year so she thought this would be her last chance to do something like this.

We had salted fish a couple of times. The fish is caught then the complete fresh fish is grilled over charcoal after dipping each side in salt. When we say complete fish, we mean it. The fish is served with its complete head, tail, and entrails, and stuffed with an onion in its mouth. The fish was quite good, but we left the entrails along with the bones and the head.

Ray From Seattle

There is a great small restaurant down the street from our hotel which is owned by Ray From Seattle, and his Laotian wife.

Funny thing about the restaurant is that Ray cooks mostly Middle Eastern food, felafel and the like.

We were talking and he informed us that in Lao most baguettes are made with rice flour, and not wheat. Laura was excited. She can eat the wonderful baguettes they have here. Mike said to be sure to buy the cheap ones because the expensive ones do contain wheat. Just like soy sauce, the cheap stuff Laura can eat, the expensive stuff has wheat added. And, he said, do not order any baguettes in a French restaurant or bakery because they will surely contain wheat.

Ray told us about the baguettes after we finished our meal so we bought a grilled baguette from him and took it back to our hotel to eat. Laura ate half the baguette and has not had any problems, so, it's pig out on baguettes time. Jim had ordered a burger which came on a baguette and he hadn't even noticed that it was made from rice flour. He thought it looked and tasted identical to a wheat baguette so he was very surprised.

A Wet and Crazy Time

Today we ventured forth, on the first day of the Lao New Year. There was music and water everywhere. People were drinking Beer Lao, singing, shouting and throwing water. There were pickups cruising the streets with people in the bed throwing water on people waiting along the side of the street to throw water on people driving or walking past.

Within a few minutes we, along with nearly everyone else, were soaked in the 99 degree weather. The main streets were like rivers. Water came at you from hoses, high powered squirt guns, buckets and pans. The entire town is like a beach party, without the beach.

We discovered that children’s swimming pools make excellent reservoirs for water to throw on people.

Amidst all this chaos the temple were full of people offering prayers, sprinkling and pouring water over the Buddhas. The temples were off limits to the craziness going on in the rest of the city, and were an oasis of calm.

It seemed like all the food sellers in town had pushed their carts to their favorite temple so the devotees would not go hungry in between wetting down the Buddhas.The temples often brought the Buddha statues outside the temple so people could pour water on them.

Pai Mai Lao 2555

This is now Buddhist year 2555. In Lao they practice Theravada Buddhism, which is one of the main types of Buddhism, and is the dominant type in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

In the English language Vientiane Times, which is published by the government, they had a couple of comments regarding Pai Mai Lao, or the Lao New Year:

"Everyone has the right to put soot on a person's face to indicate they had some deficiency or that their behavior was inappropriate in spirit and word. Instead of putting soot on another person's face they often use flour, which usually goes over the face, in the hair and on the clothes, mixing with the water which is usually already there.

"Visiting a temple over Pai Mao Lao helps to set people free from their daily worries and should bring them health, happiness and good fortune in the year to come. Laura heeded this advice at Wat Si Muang.

After going to Wat Si Muang, Laura was looking at cloth to buy and this salesman was particularly insistent.

Life In Lao

Yesterday during lunch at the Talad Sal Market we were watching an overhead TV and a television advertisement caught Laura’s attention. The advertisement showed a modernly dressed Laotian woman washing clothes in the backyard of her house in a large wash tub. She was scrubbing away, and her hands were becoming red and irritated. The hands suddenly became animated showing the pain she was feeling in them. Then her husband and two children appear from the house and they are smiling with an idea. Laura thinks that they are either going to help her wash the clothes, or buy her a washing machine. No! They are going to buy her a different brand of bar laundry soap. Such is life in Laos.

Songkan - Lao New Year

Lao new year is celebrated every year from April 13 to 15. This afternoon from our hotel room we could hear music and singing so Laura decided to investigate. After half an hour Laura came back to the hotel soaking wet. She had found the party. It was at the Lao National Theater and it was a party the afternoon before the staff headed home to their villages for New Year. The theater people played music,sung, drank and danced the afternoon away. The party ended at 5pm as the people left for their homes.

We only stayed for about an hour. But, it was long enough to be completely drenched.


As Wikipedia put it "Tourists that plan to travel to Laos during the New Year are advised to be prepared to be soaked. This has an important role in Laotian culture - they are not only wishing a long and healthy life for themselves, they are also wishing the same for others."

Pommes Frites

Yesterday we went to the U.S. Embassy to get pages added to Laura’s passport. When Jim did it in January, 2010, in Chaing Mai, Thailand, it was free. Now, it costs $82.00. We gagged over the price to tape a few new pages into the passport but it was cheaper than getting a new passport. So, we did it. You can no longer drop in on the U.S. Embassy, you have to go online and schedule an appointment to have them see you.

After the embassy we went to the National Museum, which extolled the fight for freedom in Lao, from the communist perspective.

Here, we bought some woven fabric to hang on the wall from around Xam Neua in Hua Phan province, and Laura bought a silk Laotian skirt. We went to the market after going to the U.S. Embassy to look for Fabric to get a skirt made, actually Laura did, while Jim stood around. But, at the museum, Laura determined that it was a better deal to buy the skirt already made. She bought a very nice silk skirt.

The market is next to the local bus station and there we saw these glorified golf carts that are used for city buses, complete with the route number on front. Jim really liked the open air version.

Last night we went to Dao Fa bar for happy hour. Wine during happy hour is only $1.25 per glass. The bar is owned by a Frenchman, and is quite nice. We sat in the open air bar, drinking our wine, eating fried potatoes, and staring at the Western Union sign across the street.

The red wine was served slightly chilled, like it is supposed to be served, and at which it is rarely served. Maybe the French do know something about wine. After the first glass of wine Laura ordered pommes freits thinking the french fries might be listed in French, but when she asked for pommes freits, the waiter replied ”You want an order of french-fries?”. So much for our foreign language skills.

That Dam Stupa

We found the hotel we stayed in sixteen years ago. It’s located on the other side of the main Rue (street in English, Lao being a former French colony, there are no streets, only Rues) running parallel to the Mekong River. Jim remembered where it was by the big radio antenna next to it. We went in the hotel and talked with an Australian professor who, when he comes to Vientiane stays in the hotel, and has been staying there for twenty years. The hotel is the Day Inn Lao Hotel, and is French owned. The restaurant where we found the Laotian woman whose family lived in Liberal, Kansas, is gone, and in its place is a big hotel. The Rues leading up to the hotel are now paved, sixteen years ago they were dirt.

On the way we stopped by a temple so Laura could photograph and met a monk who had lived in San Francisco, California. He was going to be a monk for a week so his parents could go to heaven. Apparently if you do not serve as a monk sometime during your life, your parents will not enter heaven. His father had recently died so he was making sure his father would go to heaven.

We also went to Patuxai, which is also known as "The Vertical Runway”. This monument was built by the Lao government using money and cement which the U.S. provided to build a runway, hence the name. When we were here before the area around the monument was dirt. Now, it is the most popular park in Vientiane.

This is a sign on the wall describing the building: "From a closer distance, it appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete"..

The final stop was That Dam Stupa.

Here's the Wikipedia article on it: "The That Dam is a large stupa in Vientiane, Laos. Many Laotians believe it is inhabited by a seven headed nāga who tried to protect them from the armies of Siam, who invaded in 1827. It is also known as the Black Stupa, the English translation of the Lao name "That Dam"."

Jim likes the English pronunciation of the name, which seems to be his feeling toward seeing all these temples and stupas.

In Vientiane, Laos

We are in Vientiane, Laos. To get here we took a two hour bus ride from Udon Thani. The border crossing was a breeze thanks to us getting our Laos visa in Bangkok. We had to show our visa in order to buy the bus tickets from Udon to Vientiane, and then again at the border.

Vientiane has changed quite a bit since our last visit sixteen years ago. There are so many new buildings that we can’t figure out where we stayed before. Here there are a lot more female farangs than in Udon. In Udon whenever we saw an American, British or Australina man, he was either with his Thai wife (temporary or permanent variety), his Thai boy, or with other men. Here the men are quite often with European looking women. Laura doesn’t feel like such an oddity.

The first thing Laura did after arriving at the bus station in downtown Vientiane was to get her nails done by a woman walking around the station carrying her own water and supplies. It cost just over a dollar.

Last night we went to a free showing of the silent film "Chang", which had been filmed in Lao in 1927, back when Laos was part of French Indochina. A screen had been set up along the riverfront where they had also built coliseum type seating on the side of the river. This was all new since our last visit. The area is still under construction, having been started two years ago. There is also an active night market along the river. The movie was subtitled in both French and Laotian. The orchestra accompanying the movie played traditional Laotian instruments and Laotian music.

In Udon Thani

We took a ten hour train ride from Bangkok to Udon Thani. From here we are going to take a bus to Lao. We arrived after dark and as we walked out of the train station, the first sight was a huge night market, with a bright orange McDonald’s sign shining over it all. Naturally, we had to get an ice cream cone for 7 Baht (less than 25 cents). After we got off the train we saw people climbing all over the train, including the roof, with flashlights, checking it out and probably looking for bombs.

This town is the major commercial hub for NE Thailand and since the bombings in the Southern Thailand, the country has been on high alert. The paper is reporting that the explosion in Hat Yai was a car bomb parked in the Lee Plaza Hotel’s underground parking lot, which caused an even bigger gas explosion. We instantly recognized the area because it showed McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken neon signs next to the bombing. I’m sure the ATM which I used to get Thai Baht to go on our cruise suffered heavy damage as it was right next to the explosion.

During the Vietnam War, this town had U.S. air bases nearby. B-52s flew from this are to bomb North Vietnam. Our friend Doug was partially based here during the war, and Laura’s brother in law, George, flew in and out of here. The town still has a very large number of farangs here, who seem to be mostly pot-bellied men with their Thai wives. This is a booming economic area of Thailand. Our hotel is right next to the largest shopping center in town and is also on the street known as Soi Farang because of all the bars and sex tourism opportunities on it. The guidebook used the term “sex tourism opportunities”, which I thought was a great euphemism.

When you travel on the train in Thailand, at the stops people get on to sell you food. For supper on the train we bought a whole skewered chicken. It had been pressed flat and skewered on two flat sticks then cooked over charcoal. It was really good. Here, when you buy a cooked whole chicken, you get a whole chicken. The chicken came with both feet and the head attached.

For our last lunch in Bangkok we ate at Mos Burger, which labels itself as “Japanese Fine Burger & Coffee”. Their slogan is “Making People happy Through Food”. The best thing about Mos Burger is that they serve a lot of their burgers on buns made of pressed white rice, so Laura can eat the bun. This time they added Lettuce Burgers to their menu. These burgers are served between two large pieces of lettuce, with no bun at all. Laura was quite happy with her lettuce burger.

After the Mos Burger we went to Patty’s Fiesta for margaritas during happy hour. Laura had previously talked to the tall, deep-throated, short-skirted adam-appled, waitress named Fen about the cost of drinks during happy hour. So, this time we went. The restaurant has been on Silom Road for thirteen years and has nightly Mexican music performed by a Filipino band. And, like most Mexican restaurants, it has a religious statue in a corner of the bar, although this statue is a very garlanded Ganesh rather than Jesus, and Fen, lit joss sticks to place in front of it, rather than candles. This is Fen.

Benjamin and Dagmar were staying at our hotel. He is from London and she's from Austria.