September 2011 Caribbean Cruise

Ready for a week cruise with Connie's cousins leaving today from Miami. Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Turks & Cacos. More later..........

Great dinner last night at Garcia's Seafood Grille. Grilled Grouper sandwich and shrimp appetizer overlooking the river. Marlin's new stadium very close. We know where to stay when the Sox come to Florida in the future. Can easily walk from our hotel. At least to the game. Stadium is on the old site of the Orange Bowl.

I like this image

This is the view from a big bridge in Nong Kiew, Laos pretty early in the morning, click on it for an enlargement

Vite Nam and Laos, the summary

Fantastic trip.



Best foods - banana pancakes in the village with no power in Laos. Tasted like french toast - I'd eat these every day! No one will believe this one! When we asked Lee the guide what a sauce was he said "You don't have this one". Fermented water buffalo hide paste was delicious. Spicy, chipotle taste, excellent for dipping sticky rice. Lao people don't use utensils much. Roll up a ball of sticky rice in the left hand and pick off a small amount and grab whatever it is you're eating with the right hand. Into the mouth - yum!

Vietnamese food was all delicious and we know the Thai dishes quite well from back home. We REALLY liked the Laotian dishes.

We tried several versions of bamboo, peeled fresh shoots and 2 different salads. Rattan was very good cooked - a lot like the bamboo. Beef was a little tough to westerners. Chicken and pork in abundance although most Lao eat mostly vegetables (meat too expensive). All of the vegetable dishes were fresh and a visual delight.

Lao coffee is served with a creamy, sugary glop of condensed milk at the bottom of a glass. The coffee sits on top of the milk until you mix it in. VERY good - I had it every chance I could even though I'm not supposed to have coffee. Tasted too good to pass up.

Viet Nam was very modern compared to Laos. Standard of living way better there. And, when we crossed over the border into Thailand from Laos it was like the world had changed for the way better. Houses were all very nice and made with better materials than in Laos. The Lao people are very friendly but are suffering compared to the rest of the places we visited. Very primitive dwelling, mostly all made with materials from the jungle. The big cities have better buildings but still pretty dismal. If there is electricity almost everyone has a satellite dish. The big giant dishes we used to have here. So, thatched roof, bare dirt floor, one light bulb and satellite.

One last summary of trip home "yesterday". We flew from Chiang Rai, Thailand to Bangkok, Thailand - 1 hour 15 minutes. 4 hour layover in Bangkok. Flight to Singapore was just under 4 hours. Then, a 5 lour layover in Changi Airport (Singapore) where we slept a few hours. There were rest areas with leather "recliner" chairs to sleep on. A little too light and noisy - airport announcements, etc but a nice place to stay over. Off to Hong Kong (2 1/2 hour flight) and within the hour we were back on the plane for the 14 1/2 hour flight to O'Hare. If I add it up total travel time seems to be around 31 hours. I didn't think it was too bad - the last 5 hours or so got pretty old! Got to see The King's Speech - very good movie on the way from Hong Kong.

So, trip was great and we're glad to be back.

3/1 "Morning" in Singapore, then Hong Kong - We're home

Earlier this morning in Hong Kong Airport

This was first stop after Thailand. Changi Airport in Singapore. Slept a little bit on the "recliner sofas", about 3 hours....... Heading for the showers in a few.

We're on United from here on out. Flight 0896 departs Singapore at 6:40 a.m. (1 hour and 25 minutes from now) and arrives in Hong Kong at 10:30. AFter a 1 hour layover (we don't change planes) we head for Chicago and arrive 12 hours later. We are scheduled to arrive at 11:40 a.m. Chicago time on 3/1. Ah, the wonders of the date line!

No time to post in Hong Kong - Had to clear customs and get right on the plane.

Just walked in the door an hour ago. L O N G flight(s) home but we're here. I think we've basically been traveling for about 30 hours with a few hours sleep in between.

Starting to wash some clothes and then off to bed.

Safe and sound after a wonderful vacation!!!!!

Just thinking, never thought I'd eat fermented water buffalo hide paste (and it was delicious). Used as a dip for sticky rice. Yum!

2/28, 3/1 Heading home

Emerald Buddha in Chiang Rai - Solid jade with gold adornments

Bright and fresh in the Chiang Rai Airport

Bangkok Airport, just before customs

Waiting for flight to Singapore from Bangkok

We're here!

Just arrived at Changi Airport in Singapore - it's 2:00 in the morning here on the 1st. Connie already "resting" on a leather recliner in a travel lounge. No beds available at the Travel Hotel. I wanted to send emails as this was our first chance at wi-fi. Didn't work in Thai airports. Flight to Hong Kong in 5 hours - we can have a shower in the travel hotel area just before we fly out for $8. Seems like any $ would have been fair to me!

Changi Airport seems to be a pretty good place to have a layover - lots of shopping.....

So far, so good. Only too may hours to think about "today" Hopefully more from Hong Kong!

2/27 transfer to Thailand

On the patio at The Legends Hotel - Open air shower on the right

Longboat across the Mekong to Thailand

2 guys along the road in Laos, click in the body of the image to enlarge

We arrived safely in Chiang Rai, Thailand after a short hiccup at the Thai border. The Green Adventures driver was at the hotel just before 8:00 and smoothly transported us to the Lao border. We cleared customs and took a long boat across the Mekong to Thailand. After clearing customs we looked for the driver to take us the rest of the way. After 30 minutes I asked another tour person who was waiting at the pier to try and call The Legend Hotel directly for us. The hotel than arranged for a local guy to take us there rest of the way. I've contated Mr Mee at Green Adventures to let him know his guy wasn't there for us. The good thing is we're here and the hotel is great. We just had some Thai food for a late lunch and will go the the local night market later tonight. Tomorrow is the long and winding road home. Stay tuned.......

2/26 Biking Luang Nam Tha

Riding past the rice paddies

Local woman, Ep and Connie perusing textiles in village

Resting is a farmer's shelter at the hottest point of the bike ride

21 miles of this kind of road. Sweet! Were we ever dusty!

At the local market. That's rice in those sacks

Our cabin to the left at The Boat Landing Guesthouse

Monk in the tamarind tree

We spent our day with a wonderful guide named Ep. We learned that the white patches we’ve seen on village people are medicine for headaches. We also learned that there are two types of tamarind: one sour, one sweet. A monk had climbed a tree and was picking sour tamarind when we visited a temple; he gave us some to try. We spent seven hours biking on dusty, rocky roads for a distance of 21 miles.

Ws stopped for lunch in a nearly empty night market. We ate several new Lao foods: Bamboo shoots (which we peeled down to the good stuff), rattan, 2 types of bamboo salad, one plain and one fermented and steamed river algae. We next rode to where the big night market will be tonight. Saw quite a bit – it’s huge. Lots of meats we don’t see in many strange forms (with flies).
Next, on to Phoum Phuk Stupa that was twice destroyed by American airplanes during the war. The old stupa is still there and new one that was erected in 2003 is behind it. On the way to the stupa, we rested in a farmer’s shelter, surrounded by rice fields. The road was very hot and dusty, the shelter stop very serene. A friendly gecko was right above us on a piece of bamboo.

Finally a stop in a huge Black Tai community (1,000 people) where we bought fabric pieces, one piece in silk and the other in cotton. The owner had just returned from a wedding party along with many others in pickup trucks. All dressed in their nice skirts.

Tribes visited today: Lantaen, Black Tai, Akha and Khamu tribes. We saw bamboo paper being dried, indigo dying of fabric and Lao Lao (like moonshine rice wine) in many vats.

Ate another wonderful Lao dinner at the hotel and spent all of our remaining Lao Kip. Our scheduled pickup tomorrow is at 8:00 a.m. for a transfer by car to the border of Laos and Thailand. A short longboat transfer across the river to a Thai customs office follows. Hopefully, we will meet the driver to take us to Chiang Rai, Thailand. We have a sign already pre-printed from home with our names on it. The driver is supposed to meet up with us just outside customs. If all goes well, 4 hours to the border and another 2 to Chiang Rai gets us to our hotel around 2 in the afternoon. Stay tuned…….

2/25 Towards Nam Tha

Roosters greeting the day were pretty hard to ignore so I got up and took another walk around the village. There’s a lot of early activity as people are preparing for the day ahead. Fires are lit, food prepared and lots of sweeping up in the house and streets. Most of the homes have dirt floors but they really are kept clean if that makes any sense. I walked over to the local wat (temple) and heard a monk singing to himself. He was also sweeping all around the outside of the temple and then the sidewalk leading to the gate. I said hello to him and he said the same. I got back to the hotel in time to meet the others for breakfast. I heard the big drum from the wat and thought the monk(s) would be walking to collect offerings from the people. It seems that in this small village the people bring food to the temple instead.

After breakfast we loaded up again into a nicer boat for the return trip to Nong Kiew. The bags were collected from storage at the River Side Resort. The security guard recognized me as “Viet Nam” as I’ve been sporting a military pith helmet. I had to have a picture taken with him. This was after I saw a kid wearing and Illini shirt when we got off the boat. Small world – I’m sure he had no idea why I wanted a picture with him.

We had 2 vans – 2 couples in each and we headed towards Luang Namtha. It was supposed to be a 7 hour ride with 4 stops to visit different villages. The road was so bad that we only made 2 stops – with a forced stop of around ½ hour to wait for the road to be repaired. I struck up a conversation with 3 kids from Norway that were on a 5 month trip around most of the world after their high school graduation. Their English was perfect – makes you wonder why we don’t speak other languages better.

This road was pretty bad and we bounced around quite a bit. Eventually we arrived at the Boat Landing Guesthouse and it is spectacular. Nice cabins, hot water, lots of electricity and another fabulous meal. This Laotian food is simply amazing! I may never use utensils again – the whole grab some sticky rice and pick up the other stuff with the rice is really easy to get used to.

The rest of the group goes off on their trek to stay overnight in a local village tomorrow morning so Connie and I will be by ourselves for the rest of our trip. Our guide for the past 4 days is heading off with them as well so it will be good bye to them all at breakfast. We’ll be sad to see them go but we have a great day planned for ourselves. Another guide is meeting us at 9:00 for a 6 hour bike ride through and around Luang Namtha. As always, stay tuned……

2/24 Biking and Ning Ning

View from local wat

Our room at Nong Kiau River Side

Our cabin at the end

Slept great! The night cooled off to the point where were nicely refreshed this morning. Our room has a air conditioning unit (unlike some of the other cabins) but we didn’t use it. I hear the roosters crowing in the distance. The plan for today is to bike for around 3 hours, leaving our bags in the cabins until we return. Shower up and check out of the rooms leaving the bags with the hotel while taking a over night bag for this evening. We then will go 1 hour more north by another boat to where we will spend this evening. Tomorrow we return back to Nong Kiau River Side to pick up our bags and go by a bus to Luang Namtha. This way we won’t have to have the big bags lugged up and down the steep hill to the river several times. That’s the plan – we’ll see how it goes.

Went walking pretty early this morning to see the village. A little foggy but nice and cool.

2/23 Boat trip up the Mekong

It’s hard to describe what we saw today because it’s so unusual. We were on a boat for almost the whole day – from 8:30 in the morning until around 6:00. In all we traveled 66 miles on the water and it seemed to fly by. We started on the Mekong and then branched off onto the Nong Kiau. The scenery is so pretty and we had 3 breaks off the boat so it really wasn’t a burden at all.

The first stop was after we had to get out of the boat and walk around some really low rapids. The extra weight of the passengers was enough that we couldn’t even push the boat over the rocks like we had done earlier in the day. The river is just about as shallow as could be this time of the year. However, during the rainy season it can be up to 8 meters higher! Lee, the guide thought this would be a good time for a break for lunch. He had brought a picnic lunch along with him on the boat and we sat on a mat and ate Laotian traditional food. Lots of beef, pork and chicken dishes combined with sticky rice and Laotian dipping sauces. Delicious! We even had a fish that Lee called catfish, but we thought was more like perch. 2 nice sized fish barbequed in one piece. You just peel the skin off and eat the meat. We finished the picnic with fresh mango and papaya for dessert. More food than we needed and Lee was apologizing that there was not enough.

We stopped at a Tay village next and went into a household and learned about their daily routines. A lot of really hard manual work in involved from what we saw. All the kids run up to look at us while we are snapping images of them. This seems quite the strange thing to me and something we probably wouldn’t do back home. Imagine inviting 8 total strangers into your home just because the happened to want to know more about how YOU live. The women were very interested in our ages. They also thought that our women were very beautiful and the men not so much! I agree. They did say that I looked quite young and would be able to have another wife if I lived in Laos. It is quite common for men to have several wives and they all live together as a big family. Lee has 3 mothers and about 12 brothers and step-sisters. He says that his father is a very lucky man because he has so many children. In Laos you marry early (13 or 14) and immediately have children – to help with the chores.

We see signs of deforestation here more than around Luang Prabang. Everywhere we went along the river we saw mostly the same things. Right along the water are incredible vegetable gardens. Corn, cabbage, beans all arranged in neat rows. Just behind the gardens are stands of teak trees. They are not very thick in depth but they are everywhere! I would say that we saw teak planted most of the 60 miles we traveled up the river.

The last stop was at a Kehmer village and although the village was only an hour up the river very different. They speak a completely different language than Lao. Lee told us that they have very little contact with white foreigners and really don’t know what to make of us. We walked around and were invited into a home but we moved along pretty quickly. We were in a bit of a rush as darkness was approaching rapidly and we didn’t want to be on the river after it got too dark to see. I asked Lee if these people ever come to Luang Prabang and he said “almost never”. They may go up river to Nong Kiau if they have something to sell but not much further than that. No idea of the scale of the world – their world is their village and not much more.

Finally we had one more hour in the boat arriving at the Nong Kiau River Side Resort. We tried to help with toting our bags up an incredibly steep hill but quickly gave up. The hotel had porters bring them up and they really earned their tip this time! Our room is nice and big and comfy but without the bells and whistles of our last stop. What would you out in the boonies of Laos? The rooms are all separate cabins with electricity, running water, western toilets a huge bed with mosquito netting. Nice dinner for $6 a person – tons of food and off to sleep.



There is limited internet here - I'm sitting in the hotel restaurant right now - won't work in the room. So, I may or may not be able to communicate for a while. But I've been surprised before so as usual stay tuned.

2/22 Luang Prabang, Walking tour of Wats

The bottom of the hill - Phu Si

On the way to the top

2 Nagas - snakes


Monks under the Bouganvilla

Study hard!

If you can lift this over your head you'll have good luck. Must only hold Buddha by the arms.

Wat where the last King's ashes rest

Tamarind Restaurant

Returned to the hotel and had breakfast after feeding the monks. Around 9:00 we got the van from the hotel to take us to town to start a walking tour of Buddhist temples (wats). Wat Pha Mahathat is at the top of the highest hill in Luang Prabang, Phu Si. Many interesting Buddha images along the path to the top of the hill. Once up there we had panoramic views of both the Mekong and Nam Kahn Rivers. We walked around for about 4 hours watching the monks as they walked around the town.

We then walked to the new location of The Tamarind Restaurant. We went to where the guide book said it was but it had moved 3 blocks away. It's now on the banks of the Mekong and we got a taste of Laotian cooking experience. The owner prepared many traditional Lao food dishes and just kept them coming. To give you an idea, we spent around $15 per person for this meal. That included all the food, desserts and pre and post meal drinks. This is pretty pricey in Luang Prabang (relatively) but an appetizer at the hotel we're at was $15 yesterday at the pool.

Came back to the hotel for a swim and a little rest before one last night of shopping at the night market.

Tomorrow early we get on a boat for a 6 hour trip north on The Mekong. Each place we saty at from this point on will be much more "rustic" to say the least. I may have internet access the first night but I doubt it the night after that. Having said that we have had perfect wi-fi access everywhere in Viet Nam as well as Laos. So, even though we will be out in the countryside we may have the internet there too. Stay tuned.

2/22 Luang Prabang, Monks at dawn

Got up at dawn and went to give offerings to the monks. I charged my battery last night and left it in the charger! Had to run back and get it or no images from me. Rookie! There seemed to be a thousand monks walking this morning. More than I have ever seen before in our travels. Here's a couple of images. People line up to give sticky rice, bananas and cookies or crackers to the monks. Buddhist's believe this gains ultimate favor for them on the path to enlightment.

Time for breakfast and a walking tour of Luang Prabang later this morning.

2/21 La Residence Phou Vao

Balcony breakfast area

Bed, duh

Bathroom, with geek taking image

Pool at La Residence Phou Vao

Baggage in lobby

Our plane at the Ha Noi Airport

Exiting the over night train

Dining car this morning. Coffee and tea.

Took the overnight train from Sa Pa and transferred to the Ha Noi Airport. Just arrives at La Residence Phou Vao. Pretty swank. Heading for the pool - it's HOT here! YES! says Connie. Spa treatments @ 4:00, relaxation in between. More later........

2/20 Bac Ha Market

This market was amazing! We're in the Ha Noi airport waiting to fly to Luang Prabang, Laos in the hour. It's the morning of the 21st. I'm going to post a few images and will do more when we get to the fancy hotel later.