Friday, October 17, 2014

Thailand and Laos - Part 3

Continued from Part-1 Part-2

There are Buddhist monks who walk the streets at around 6am and people donate food to them. We thought that at least once we should wake up early in our trip and we did wake up at 5:30am that morning. After seeing the monks we came back to our dorm and slept. Oh ya, at 6am we saw that the people who went for bowling were just returning back to hostel. Most backpackers see only one place in a day and just relax the rest of the day in hostel. We had overdose of Buddhist temples, so we decided to stay in hostel and do nothing. If there was no free WiFi, I would probably have killed myself out of boredom. [ Yeah, you get free WiFi in all restaurants and hostels in Laos. So if you have bought the local SIM then using 3g is not actually required]

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Thailand and Laos - Part 2

Continued from Part-1

We left the city the next morning to go to Vang Vieng. It was a 3hrs ride in a tempo traveller to the party town of Laos. In India tempo travelers have 2+1 seat layout and these had an extra foldable seat in the path in between to add another person.  We checked into the hostel at around 1:30pm and left for tubing. Tubing is like the lazy river in the water park except that the river is not that lazy and you have different start and end points. You rent a tube and get into the river. The flowing river takes you through the scenic mountains and greenery. After going some distance some guy from the shore throws a rope at you and pulls you to the river bank. This is where the party happens. Singing, dancing, football, basketball and lot more activities. Not to forget beer and food if that is what you are there for. There are 3 such places on the tubing route. While people get souvenirs from their trip, our friend Vikram has an art of losing things. He donated his spectacles to the river during tubing. We came back at around 8pm and freshened up. There are 3 pubs/disco in this town and you can do pub hopping if you are interested. Here we met a guy from Brazil who had come alone on the trip. He was one of the very few guys who was on a short trip. Yes, 9days is a short trip by backpacking standards. Everyone else we met on the trip had plans of 3-6 months covering at least 4 countries. 

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Thailand and Laos - Part 1

After 4 months of planning that involved several email conversations and meetups, we finally completed our two nation trip covering Thailand and Laos.

During my engineering days, I used to check for long weekends and linking holidays so that I could take a long vacation and go home. I still do that and I observed that taking a 3 day leave can get me a 9 day vacation. But since I stay with family now, I could travel elsewhere in those 9 days. So 3 of us discussed about it and Vikram pointed to us that we could go on a  Thailand and Laos trip. His friend had planned the trip but did not go on the trip. We agreed upon it and applied for leaves in office. We booked flight tickets 3 months before the trip date because the tickets were cheap then. We booked beds in backpackers hostel dorm and also applied for a Thailand visa. Visa on arrival was available, but we did not want to waste time (we ended up wasting a lot of time during  the trip anyways).