A piece of France in the jungle

Luang Prabang has got its charm. It is essentially a Laos town with a compact center built by French. Beautiful colonial architecture makes you forget that you are right in the middle of the jungle and not in a sleepy French town. Crispy baguettes and red wine complete the picture. Luang Prabang reminded a little bit of Georgetown, must the be colonial architecture, relaxed atmosphere and the fact that both cities are UNESCO World Heritage sites. Apart from the marvel of the architecture there was not much to do in Luang Prabang itself. The town center is easily navigated by foot in an hour. There is a temple on the top of the hill, but it is just another faceless temple-shtemple. Since this is Laos, there is an entrance fee too. There is Mekong and a village on the other side of the river inhabited by rather nice people. You can get a boat across the river or swim. I opted for the latter and it was good fun, although the current became a little bit too intense at some point and muddy water looked rather dodgy. Out of the town, there are two major sights: the beautiful Kuang Si waterfall and Pak Ou Caves. I gave the caves a miss, but the waterfall was easily one most beautiful one I have ever seen. I thought such waterfalls exist only in Hollywood movies and video games, but how wrong I was. The local countryside is supposedly beautiful as well, but I never got around exploring it.

One of the most interesting places in Luang Prabang is Utopia, a restaurant, a bar and a lounge with beach volleyball, gigantic jenga and decent music at times. Empty cluster bombs act as decorations. The place got burned down the day before my arrival. I could not see any damage, but according to the owner it used to be much larger. Strangely enough the place was open as if nothing had happened. The local nightlife is governed by the fact that curfew kicks in at 11PM and every bar and restaurant promptly closes. After that there are more or less three choices a) go to sleep b) go to a disco outside the town c) go bowling out of town as well. The disco came as the second most surreal club I have ever been in (the first spot takes a disco on Valaam island, home to a famous orthodox monastery). Tons of sound and lights equipment, but terrible quality of sound and crap music (surprisingly enough not your standard selection of Papa Americano radio hits). Oil barrels are used as tables too. I went on a Tuesday night and it was packed with mostly Asian people. The fun ends at 1AM though and after that the only choice is bowling, which is open all night long as long as there are customers. Laos does not make any sense.

Three days in Luang Prabang and I sort of liked it. Very quiet on the verge of being boring, but the charm and distinct character are there. And Kuang Si waterfall is easily one of the nature highlights for me so far.

Life in Pai (Part 2)

I spent nine day on Koh Tao not meeting any people or feeling like socializing. It was fine, I did not mind. Pai was the exact opposite for me. Everybody seemed to be on the same wavelength and meeting people was effortless. You just walk on the street and strike a conversation with a stranger. Instant friends for life. Even before arriving to Pai, I met a bunch of people on the way thanks to hitchhiking. While most places are dominated by Swedish, Pai is different. No Svenska here, but Dutch are the majority, followed by Germans. There are a lot of Russians too. Not your typical package-trip type, but apparently a down-shifter crew from Goa. There are surprisingly many Finns as well. In fact I met more Finnish people in the span of two days in Pai than during half a year of my travels. Funny that. One of the most interesting encounters was Anna from Helsinki. It turned out that we share a bunch of mutual friends and I had been several times to the commune flat she lives in, never meeting her before though. It is a small world.

While most tourist places are catered to Western junk food, Pai’s speciality is healh-freak restaurants. Vegetarian, vegan, raw food – make your pick. There is a small restaurant called Link, where they prepare everything from scratch, including picking up vegetables from the garden. A meal can take up to an hour to prepare (considering it is one woman operation), but the end result is well worth it. Then there is Witching Well with its selection of exotic herbal teas and raw foods. My favorite one, though, is Good Life. A charismatic restaurant owned by a Ukrainian man Kostya, who made Pai his permanent home. Some of the specialities they offer include bortsh, kombucha tea (a fungus that turns tea into a fermented drink), a wide selection of fancy teas, wheatgrass shots and so on. Not your average selection of pad thai and fried rice. Add good music and an impressive library (I snatched Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) and you have got a recipe for a perfect restaurant. On top of that, the owner does vipassana retreats once in a while in a forest temple not so far away. And all that in a small town lost in the mountains of Northern Thailand!

Pai’s nightlife is versatile, but yet tranquil, without a messy touch. Live jazz and acoustic music is on every night and proper jungle all-nighters are twice a month. And if that is not enough, there are always things going on here and there. The personal highlight was the art-gallery/installation/live music event at Baan Pittalepew. I did not know anything about it and had no expectations apart from “a bar with live music”. What I found was a massive open-air space with an art gallery, a gigantic bonfire, quirky but quality live music and dance/yoga performances. Mind. Blown. Just like a mini-version of Fusion with a Thai flavor. On top of that it was the season closing and also my last day in Pai. It made me really happy that I had not left Pai two days earlier as I had planned to. Talk about excellent timing.

Life in Pai (Part 1)

Lazy. Quiet. Slow. There is no sense of time. After a day here you are not sure anymore for how long you have been in Pai. A day, two, maybe more? No idea, nor it really matters. There is nothing much to do, nor anything has to be done. Doing my laundry by hand proved to be beyond my abilities. Same with writing this blog. I naively thought I would have had plenty of time to do lazy day things like writing the blog, watching movies and such, but Pai proved to be even lazier than that. Writing this entry a week later after leaving Pai, I am still feeling the effects of this profound laziness.

So what is the deal with Pai? Pai is a small sleepy village 150km north-west from Chiang Mai and 450m above the sea level. Elevation results in chill evenings and even cold nights. A thick blanket and hot water are must have. There are scenic waterfalls and caves, rivers and hills, hot springs and a canyon showing its best around the sunset time. The most stunning waterfall, Mae Yen, takes two and half hours to reach through the jungle (one way), but the view is well worth it. Lod cave is some 50km away from Pai, located near Sappong village is rather impressive too. Home to hundreds of bats and swallows, dark and large to the extent that there is a low oxygen sign deep in the cave. And indeed after some time spent there, I got a long-lasting headache. Local nature does not look tropical at all, but rather resembles taiga around autumn. Rather moderate, red-yellowish and abundance of the jungle is nowhere to be found. Must be the dry season.

Some words should be said about accommodation. I stayed in Baan Pai Riverside on the other side of Pai river. Very basic, cheap and tranquil. 150 baht for a bamboo bungalow or add 100 baht extra for a view on the river, a hammock and extra noise. Privacy and security are only an illusion. It is very quiet, unless somebody has a conversation. You can perfectly hear what your neighbors few bungalows away talk about. Bungalows are sometimes broken in, valuables are better to be stored at the reception. Bungalows are very basic, made entirely of bamboo (no wood) and some concrete on the floor in the toilet. There is no bed, only a mattress on the floor and a mosquito net. Ants are literally everywhere with toilet bowl being their favorite spot. Other inhabitants include huge spiders, frogs and slugs. That is ok, though. I did not mind, especially for this price. On the other hand there is hot water (actually hot), soap (!), toilet paper (!!) and even shampoo (!!!). In a nutshell, a very charming place, never mind all the downsides.

Black and white

I made a stop in Chiang Rai for two reasons, namely Wat Rong Khun aka The White Temple and Baan Dam aka The Black House. At this stage of traveling I have seen enough temples to have any interest in them. After you saw one, you have seen almost all of them. It is funny how guidebooks list temples as major sights, when in reality most of them are same-same. However there are ones that stand out of the rest. Lama Museum in Ulaan Baater was spectacular, as well as Angkor Wat in Siam Reap (visited it many years ago and might do it again soon). Wat Rong Khun is pretty special too and unlike any other temples. I learnt about it from a traveller in Singapore and after a quick search on Google Images I knew that it was something I would love to see.

Wat Rong Khun is a contemporary buddhist temple, which looks like as if H. R. Giger was asked to design a buddhist temple. In fact the temple is the creation of Thai visionary artist and hardcore buddhist Chalermchai Kositpipat. The work began in 1997 and is planned to finish in 2025. You cannot hasten visionary art. The temple really lives up to its name, the entire environment is glittering white being almost painful to watch in the sunshine. There is a great attention to the details, like white fish in the ponds or traffic cones on the temple parking with skulls on them. No smoking or drinking signs are rather hellish looking and clearly remind you that these habits are not very healthy for you. Not your average “no smoking” sign by any means. Skulls and other death attributes are in fact everywhere, which goes in a stark contrast with the white theme. Memento mori indeed. If the temple was not weird enough, there is a statue of Predator in one of the corners of temple. Very odd for a buddhist temple, but it kind of fits the overall theme.

Less known is Baan Dam aka The Black House located some 30km from Wat Rong Khun to the north. It is not featured in any guidebooks or tour itineraries and is somewhat difficult to find unless you know where to look. Baan Dam is created by another Thai artist Thawan Duchanee and is work in progress as well. Even though Baan Dam looks like a temple, it is a massive complex that can be best described as something in-between an art gallery, a chill-out space and a sacrifice ground. The main building is the home to an impressive art gallery featuring works of local artists and other buildings are sort of galleries-warehouses hosting assorted art pieces, animals skins, tortoise shells and horns. Very spooky and not intended for animal rights activists by any means. Toilets of Baan Dam are the most impressive: black and artistic and completed with wooden carvings and art pieces. Free to use too. There is also a wood carving workshop on the site, so you can see how traditional Thai wood carvings are created in real time. Baan Dam is not as popular as its white counterpart and the area is quite deserted, which only makes the strange enough environment even more eerie.

Media other portraits Wat Rong Khun as heaven and Baan Dam as hell respectively. In reality they are both pretty weird and sinister looking. Both creations are true pieces of visionary art, unique and simply mind-blowing. Not to be missed.

Other than that, there is nothing exciting about Chiang Rai.

Passport juggling

Russian passport can be useful sometimes. Apart from making traveling in Russia a lot easier, no visa is required for short stays in countries like Laos or Vietnam (both are officially communist countries). So equipped with two passports I left Chiang Khong in Northern Thailand and crossed Mekong to the Laos side. Problems started right away. The immigration official went through all the pages in my Russian passport looking for a Thai departure stamp. After not finding one, he told me to get back to Thailand for the stamp. I explained my dual citizenship situation and demonstrated the stamp in the Finnish passport. Not possible. The departure stamp must be in the same passport used for leaving Thailand. We argued for a bit through a language barrier, until they fetched a woman, who spoke better English. She told me either to get back to Thailand for a departure stamp in my Russian passport or stop being so extravagant and get a visa as everybody else. A boat to Thailand and back is only two bucks and half an hour, compared to 35 bucks for a Laos visa (plus one extra buck for a weekend fee). So I took a boat back to Thailand, filled an arrival card and handed my Russian passport. Almost immediately I realized that this trick would not fly as I did not have a Laos departure stamp. It indeed proved to be the case – in order to enter the country using my Russian passport, I would need a departure stamp from Laos. Catch 22 in action. One supervisor and a lot of effort spent social engineering my situation after, they a) denied me to enter the country using the Russian passport b) refused to give me a departure stamp in my Russian passport to take my life easier c) told to get back to Laos. Back on the boat to Laos. Some more arguing and explaining here, but all in vain. One visa application, one photo and 35 bucks later I got a 30 days Laos visa. Lesson learnt here, use the Russian passport to enter South-East Asia in the future.

Ironically enough that completely ruined my plans. I had planned to spend two weeks in Laos, go to Vietnam and then go back to Laos for some finale chill-out action. Now it looks like it is going to be only one visit to Laos and then probably Vietnam and Cambodia. By 10AM I already had an adventure involving immigration officials of two countries and a complete change of plans. Not a bad start for the day.