Thailand Round 2 - Nong Khai

So Nong Khai was a place of action!! We had serious business here…there was mini and half marathons to be run, there was volunteer work to be done, we had to sort out Toms fractured finger and of course the blog, as always, was three or four countries behind!!!

We stayed in Nong Khai for 2 weeks and it was so nice to be staying in one place for a reasonable period of time again! It gets tiring packing and unpacking your back pack, reading a new town map, finding accommodation, sitting on buses or planes etc when you are moving every two or three days!! Of course it means you get to see lots of places and it’s the only to way to see the amount of things we have seen but the few wee breaks in between have been nice!!

First on the list of things to do was the marathon!! Tom was running a half marathon and I was running the 10km. The registration money for the run was in aid of building a new school for disabled children in Nong Khai and it was the first time the town had organised such a big race. We were 2 of only a handful of foreigners so everyone was staring at us and anyone who had any bit of English came over to chat. People were so friendly and helpful. Toms run started at 5.00am and mine started at 6.00am so it was a very early start but at least it was not as hot as it would be at midday!! Tom ran his half marathon in 1.59.31 and I ran my 10.5km in 1.14.07 :o)

After the marathon it was off to the hospital for Tom to sort out his fractured finger and off to school for me to teach english to cute little Thai kids :o) As Tom put his feet up in our lovely hotel garden (www.mutmee.com) and rested his finger, which was now nicely wrapped up in a cast, I went to work for a charity called Isara (www.isara.org). It is a small charity that offers local kids the opportunity to come to their learning centre after school and learn english for free in a fun and non-threatening way aswell as going to local schools to help their english teachers with their lessons. The level of English in Thailand is pretty basic as the national curriculum focuses on just learning the language required for their exams (pretty much like learning French at home!!) and so when the kids come to Isara its all about learning to read and hold conversations. Whilst I was there I visited two local Thai schools aswell as teaching and writting a curriculum for the learning centre. The kids are amazing...they get so excited when they see the volunteers arriving and are more than willing to pose for the camera as you can see below!!!  

On our last weekend in Nong Khai there was the annual rocket festival when local villages compete to make and launch a rocket to the highest height possible. We thought it would be a cool thing to go and see but we totally did not imagine that the rockets would be so big, loud and travel so far!! After getting lost quite a few times, and Tom coping with my wild driving on the moped, we arrived in a field just outside the town were the rockets were going to be launched. We saw a big crowd gathering around a big wooden structure so went up for nosy!! I nearly had a heart attack when the rocket launched...it was like a bomb had exploded beside us and there was smoke everywhere!! Health and safety is clearly not a high priority in Thailand!! So we took a few steps back, (to a beer tent!!) amongst the betters who were putting money on which rocket would go highest, to watch the rest of the launches. It was a fantastic day to end on in Nong Khai :o)

 

Laos PDR (Peoples Democratic Republic or Please Don't Rush as the tourists like to joke!!)

We headed from the wonderful Chiang Mai onwards to our next destination, Luang Prabang in Laos. It took us 3 days, 1 day on a minibus to the border and then 2 days on the ‘slow’ (no false advertising there!!) boat along the Mekong river. On the first day we stopped off at a white temple and to be honest we were getting templed out at this stage but this one turned out to be very interesting. The temple was the idea of a Thai artist, Mr. Chalermchai Kositpipat, who wanted to build a temple all in white to signify the purity of the Lord Buddha and also because he felt that the gold in most Buddhist temples represents lust and greed. He is completely funding the building of this massive and ornate temple by himself as he does not want to have to be constrained by other funders ideas - obviously a man with quite a lot of money!!

The temple was very different from any of the others we had seen. The entrance to the temple was paved with statues of desperate faces and arms stretching up from the ground and small ponds that surround it, representing hell. These people have earned their place through their evil actions in previous lives. Inside the temple there is a painting of a demon and in its eyes were George Bush and Osama Bin Laden!!! This is to show that our world is being destroyed by those who want to build weapons to kill and are never satisfied, just wanting more power, money, etc. The artist was hurt by seeing all the human lives that were lost because of these two men and placed them in the eyes of the demon. There were also comic like illustrations of super heroes like Spiderman, Superman, Neo from the Matrix, Avatar etc trying to save the world. He explains in the leaflet on the mural that these superheroes represent a false morality and that they do not exist in real life - we need to develop as a people our own sense of morality, by following Buddhism.

The next 2 days were spent on the super slow boat. The relaxed approach of the locals was obvious from the minute we got on the boat to Luang Prabang. The boat was a long boat with car seats which were not fixed onto the boat so as more people arrived more seats were lifted on board and as the car seats ran out plastic seats were used. We were squashed in like sardines, it was comical. It was interesting for a while, admiring the Mekong river and all the goings on, fishermen trying to catch dinner, kids swimming and playing on their makeshift bamboo climbing frames, locals being dropped along the banks of the river in places where it didn’t look like anybody was living, after that it was just a long slow slog!!

''Come on now people keep moving back - we can fit at least another 10 seats on here''!!

In Luang Prabang, we stayed in a lovely boutique hotel for only 15 Euro a night!!! It included gorgeous breakfast every morning overlooking the Mekong river, free beer, coke and water and free bikes!! It was perfect after the slow boat mingingness!!

We used the bikes to cycle round the town and see the sights. There were monks everywhere going about their daily activities wearing their saffron robes and umbrellas. We got up at 6am one morning to seeing them collecting the alms. It was an amazing experience seeing hundreds of monks strolling along the pavement collecting food, mainly rice, from the locals.

One of the hot days we headed out to some jungle waterfalls called Kuang Si. It was a beautiful setting, families having picnics, kids playing and swinging off a tree into the pools. I off course had to give the swinging into the pools a go and on the first go Michaela didn’t get the photo of me in mid air so I went back for a 2^nd go and she got the picture but I held on too long and damaged my hand. It was badly bruised and in a weeks time I discovered that I had fractured one of my fingers!!!

We also met up with 2 guys, Eoin & Dan on the slow boat and went with them for a few beers in some cool cafes and bars around town. It was just such a great town to chill out in. Beer Lao was one of the best beers I tasted in SE Asia and certainly the cheapest!!

We took a local bus to our next stop, the capital of Laos, Vientiane. The city had obvious signs of the French influence, baguettes being sold everywhere, a monument similar to L’arc de Triomphe and Petanque (which my French & Belgium colleagues had taught me how to play when I was based in Brussels). On one of the days we hired a moped and headed out to a sculpture park where we saw some impressive statues. On the way we saw whole families on motorbikes, locals carrying their complete shop on their bike and kids playing Sepak Takraw (game like volleyball but using a rattan ball and you can use your feet, knees, chest or head to keep the ball up). 

It was amazing to see just how much you can get on a moped!!

Locals playing Sepak Takraw and Petanque

The Sculpture Park was amazing - full of huge stone sculptures of Hindu and Buddhist Gods with really intricate carvings.

Michaela had her first moped driving experience on the way back (one I won‘t forget in a hurry!!!). Her practice run in the car park nearly ended up in disaster but after that she started to get the hang of it and became my chauffeur from then on. So we lived to tell the tales of Laos and headed back into Nong Khai, Thailand.