Evelyn and Julie come to visit

We picked up Evelyn and Julie from the airport on 28th October. Their baggage took a long time to come trough because three large planes had landed simultaneously. We were beginning to get worried about them just as they emerged into the Arrivals hall.

They looked a little tired and dazed, not surprising. We took a Taxi to the City. We’re so used to how they drive here it doesn’t phase us now but the look on Julie’s face was classic. She thought we were going to be killed as they cabbie weaved in and out of the traffic. I know how she felt. When I first got in a Taxi from Bangkok Airport to the City I too thought I was going to die! Touch wood, so far I’ve never been in an car or other transport accident here.

Stopped off at 7-11 to get some beer. After checking them into their room in the same hotel we stayed up chatting and drinking until about 2:00am.

The next day we all headed out to the obligatory Royal Palace and Wat Po visit. This time as I wasn’t taking photos I saw much more than I had ever seen before. Little details of flowers on the sidewalls of temples and such. The Royal Palace is a deep well of things to photograph.

Breakfast was a very Thai. Rice and chicken in one of the Thai vendors in Sala Daeng.

On the 30th we took Evelyn and Julie to Chatachuk weekend market early in the morning. It’s the biggest market in the world. It’s so huge it needs it’s own map to have any hope of navigating your way through. Everything in the world is on sale here, including exotic and rare animals. Unfortunately we found the animal section of the market and got stuck in it trying to find our way out. It was very upsetting, and to Julie the most of all. I don’t understand the need for some people to feel like they have to own exotic and rare animals. I think they have a twisted gene somewhere.

There are supposed to be about 12,000 vendors here and the numbers of visitors is supposed to be about 200,000 over the weekends.

We found a great silk vendor. They had a large and inexpensive selection and understood we wanted to take our time and look at our leisure. Not that they didn’t try to sell us their wares, but they did it in a nicer than the hawkish street vendors and brazen tuk-tuk drivers. After some negotiation we all walked away with some nice silks.

After dropping off the goodies at the Hotel we took off for the airport and our flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

A visit to Bumrungrad Hospital, Bangkok

As a fair skinned Northern Euorpean lady nudging towards 47 years old, I’m more likely to suffer from cancer of the skin than many other darker skinned nationals. Since we’re going to be in the sunnier parts of the world for the next couple of years, I thought it would be prudent to get the moles and skin blemishes removed as a preventive measure.

In Bangkok this is no problem and it is relatively inexpensive. When we set out on this journey we did take out Health Insurance, but as this would be an elective procedure it’s not going to be covered. So I’ll have to use my own dime for the moles and skin blemishes.

Bangkok City has some of the best hospitals in the world. Many non-Thai nationals come here to have cosmetic surgery and other highly specialized procedures done, at a relatively inexpensive rate.

The Hopsital I chose, Bumrungrad, is so well attuned to servicing foreign nationals that it has the sense and feel of a Western Hospital. As far as I know it’s actually American owned and run. Packages available range from a ceasarian section, heart surgery to reconstructive and cosmetic surgery. Included in the packages are stays at the Hospital Hotel-like Residence, connected to the main building hospital by an overhead walkway.

Bumrungrad’s web site lets you search for and get details on Doctors from disciplines. I found it easy to search for a dermatologist, read their bios, see their photos, and feel happy about making a choice myself. There is no need to have a recommendation from your practitioner to attend a specialist like in the States. You simply look them up and make an appointment.

From Bumrungrad’s web site I emailed them the day and time period I wanted an appointment. Within 30 minutes I had a reply giving me an appointment time close to my chosen window with my chosen Doctor.

Bumrungrad’s entrance is a little whacky in that it’s down a very small side street, more like an alley. But there is signage so you can find it fairly easily.

Amazingly there is no smell of hospital at all. It seems more like a huge Hotel , with food and shopping areas on the 2nd floor. It even has a McDonalds. Weird.

The Skin Center is on the 3rd floor of the Residence building and as I’d come in the entrance of the Main Building used the overhead walkway to get there.

Around me there were patients and visitors from many countries. Over hearing people talk I could make out that there were Northern Europeans, Americans, Arabs, Japanese and Thai at the least.

One Arab looking gentleman who had some sort of a reaction or allergy problem on his arm arrived with his friend who took great care of him. He was already missing half his left leg and moved around on crutches. It seemed that the leg injury probably happened quite some time ago.

A tall young guy who I think was Japanese looked to have just finished his facial laser surgery. His skin had that redness and spottedness I associate with the procedure.

The Receptionists speak English, some better than others, but they’ve got enough to smoothly get you through the sign-in sheets and paper trail process and hand you over to the relevant appointment administrator. Curiously they ask you if you have a fever today as a standard part of the check in process. I wonder what they’d do if you said Yes?

Your blood pressure, pulse, temperature, height and weight are taken by the assistant nurse. The nurse apologies while she measures your height as in Thailand you it’s not acceptable to touch the top of a person’s head. Mind you she wasn’t touching it, the measuring bar was, but the society is so polite she apologized anyway. After that I sat in the waiting area for about 15 minutes.

A Thai lady sat down beside me and shortly thereafter struck up a conversation . Such a nice lady. Her name was Gaew and she was married to an American. They live in Bangkok. He had been in the hospital for about the last 3 weeks with some sort of problem on one of his legs. She had broken out with a small spot on her face and was at the Skin Center to have it looked at. I think she was a bit lonely from spending so much time in the hospital looking after her husband and just wanted to talk with someone.

I was greeted very pleasantly by the Doctor as I entered her office. She asked what I wanted done and then asked me why I would like the moles and blemishes removed. I had been wondering if I would be asked that question or would it be assumed I was there just for cosmetic reasons?

In about 10 minutes she had reviewed the moles and skin blemishes, explained to me the differences between each of them and gave me options on what I could do to have them removed. Most of them will be removed by laser, while the two moles will be surgically removed and sent for biopsies. I don’t have to get the moles biosied but I chose to as I feel it’s better to do it than not. We made an appointment for the following Wednesday to have the procedure done.

After leaving the Doctor’s office I spent a couple of more minutes talking with Gaew. She said she’s in room 889 with her husband most of the time and she’d be happy for me to visit, she’d even teach me a little Thai. Then I checked out by paying a whopping 80 Baht ($2) for the office visit.

All in all a very nice experience.

Back 'home' in Bangkok

It’s nice to be ‘home’ again in Bangkok and have dinner at our usual Isan restaurant. Dinner was delicious. I’ve forgotten most of the Thai I knew and tend to mistakenly use the few Laos words I picked up while there. Oh well, it’ll only take a day or so to get back into Thai.

What do a Mickey Mouse headboard and the 2008 Beijing Olympics have in common?

Our Guest House bedding and furniture are hilarious. The headboard is a pink and blue rendition of a bad Mickey Mouse cartoon celebrating the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Mickey is kicking a soccer ball. The mattress has a teddy bear and some words like Congratulations, weird.

As we leave Phonsovan we stop to have a soda in the ‘departure lounge café’ which is a bamboo walled wooden building. It can hold about 35 people when full.

They serve Laos, Vietnamese and Chinese fare according to the very old French language notice.

The runway is invisible because of the tall grass surrounding it. The local cows and water buffalo enjoy the tall grass around the runway, and have to be moved on before the plane lands by the guy who also acts as the brake guy for the plane.

Chickens peck about outside the door of the departure lounge Café.

We fly from Phonsovan directly to Vientiane, then take a taxi to the Friendship bridge to do our Laos into Thailand crossing. We were able to get a 30 day visa for Thailand, saving our 60 day visa for after our trip to Cambodia with Jeff’s Mom and Julie.

We stopped in Vientiane on the way to the Friendship bridge to pick up some pastries at Joma baker. Our driver was talkative and had fairly ok English. He told us he was in the Laos Air Force from 1965-1982, he had flown sortees over Phonsovan and the Plain of Jars area, where he had dropped bombs. He had been in the States for about 3 years where he learnt English and was trained in the military camps there.

Plain of Jars in Phonsovan

The honking geese and crowing cocks wake us up throughout the very early morning. We'd seen a small accident yesterday where a motorbike had crashed. Korean motorbikes cost 6 million kip whereas the Chinese motorbike only costs 4-5 million kip, more affordable. Here they also use ploughs attached to trailers as means of transport. Lots of satellite dishes surprisingly.

Tourism is highly controlled in Laos. We were registered by the tour company with the government as tourists to the Plain of Jars. I guess all our movements are known.

My memories of visiting the Plain of Jars, site 2 and 3 today, are many. Snippets of women and children, the children happily playing in the fields, on the road, everywhere. Babies carried on the backs of mothers and fathers in the traditional baby sling. Older children carrying younger siblings on their backs with slings.

Rice fields everywhere, water buffalo wallowing in ponds or wandering the roads caked in mud.

Travel on the road means avoiding ducks, geese, turkeys, cows galore, water buffalo. Not many cars so mostly the center lane is used on the good road. On the dirt tracks we used whatever side didn’t have a pot hole.

Swallow catching is a seasonal thing. Our guide stopped at one swallow catchers hut and explained how they captured them. There are several methods all employed at the one place. They stick the feet of some swallows to the branches of a thin tree. Others are thetered by thin fishing line to the ground, but they still make attempts to fly up – this is what attracts the other swallows. Once the unthetered swallows land by the captured ones, the nets on either side are suddenly snapped over them. Apparently in the high season for swallows 300 or so can be caught in one day. They are not only used for the locals food, but are sold at the markets to make extra money. The extra money means the family can afford to buy school books or other necessities for their children to go to school.

We walked through the rice paddy’s to get to site 3. Site 3 was my favorite. At both site 2 and 3 today we were the only one’s there. It’s an amazing experience to be standing on a hill in the middle of rice fields in Laos utterly alone. Peace and quiet.

Lots of subsistence farming as there’s not much else to employ people here. Without their farms the people would starve.

The tourist industry is only in it’s infancy, which is great for us. In 10 years time I’m sure Phonsovan won’t be recognizable as tourism takes over.

The old capital was wiped out by carpet bombing during the war. It’s being rebuilt and repopulated but it’s still only a tiny proportion of what it used to be and very simple.

The Wat in the old town was also bombed during the war, which destroyed it almost completely. The Buddha is still standing though, if a little the worse for wear from bombs. It’s still a working Wat and we talked with the one monk who was walking around the field where the temple and Buddha were. The field was home to a cow that was grazing happily in front of the Buddha.

There’s also an old stupa overgrown with trees and shrubs, just about visible still. A second stupa is so covered it’s hard to see it or to believe there’s a stupa under there. But there’s just enough outline to make out the stupa shape.

Had breakfast at Café Simalay and had a beer there after we finished the day’s tour of Sites 2 and 3.

The bull at Site 2 put me off going up to the second hill, but overall it was a gorgeous site. Especially with the herd of cows who took up residence around the jars and were not happy that we were there disturbing them.

Before climing the hill up to Site 3 we stopped at the Café at the bottom of the hill. The Café is more a hut with tables and chairs and a local lady who provides one item on the menu, noodle soup. They were also very happy to share some sips of Lao Lao whiskey with us. It’s the custom to share a drink with your host/hostess.

People wash themselves in the streams outside their houses. There’s not a lot of in-door plumbing.

A couple of quarries are close to town. Our guide said they are limestone – not the same as the ones the jars were carved from.

Many women and children wear the traditional Laos style skirt. More so in the outlying villages than the ‘Capital’, Phonsovan.

There are many new buildings and houses here. It’s obvious that a little money goes a long way here and the influx to the town from the small amount of tourism makes a huge difference.

Eventually Phonsovan will become a well known tourist destination and the simplicity and beauty of the town as it now is will be gone.

MAG is the bomb disposal program who have an office locally in Phonsovan.


The safe path marked by MAG signs

Internet access on a shared 56k dial up modem line to Vientiane sucks.

Our guide told us the story of why the water buffalo is the beast of burden for the farmers. Initially Buddha had asked the water buffalo to go to earth and tell the people that he wanted them to eat once every 3 days. On his way down he went into a dream and forgot the directions the Buddha had given him so when he got to earth he told the people that they should eat 3 meals a day. Buddha was very upset and as a result he gave the water buffalo to the people as a beast of burden to work for them.

It’s cold in the evenings here, you need a fleece to keep it at bay.

We saw an old lady sitting slowly making straw roofing.

For every adult there seems to be about 1 baby, 1-2 infants and an older child around.

Friday night beers and Lao Lao with our guide and his friends. Then off to the local disco on the back of their motorbikes. The disco is called FIFA and has a soccer ball as part of it’s signage. It had the usual strobe lights and loud music.

Our guide, Le, is getting married in February 2005. His fiancée is in Vientiane learning to be a chef.

The local electricity is supplied to outlying housing by means of one single cable. To get the cable to the house often in the middle of a rice paddy field the trunks of bamboo trees are used as electricity poles. Often with their branches still attached, though cut short.

Vientiane to Phonsovan

We flew from Vientiane to Phonsovan through Luang Prabang. Phonsovan and the eastern side of Laos is a UXO area. But as long as you stick with the well worn paths, you’re probably going to be fine.

Saw a little boy playing with a giant sharp knife.

Had dinner at Phone Keo Restaurant.

This is a very small town. As we walked from the Guest House (Maly Guest House) towards the town we came across a section of the road that had been entirely dug up for road work. It meant we had to walk downone side of the steep bank and up the other.

There are not many Farang here.

We found a driver /guide and car for touring the Plain of Jars. There are 3 official sites around the town that we are allowed to visit. Today we visited site 1. It was a little disconcerting to see the mine clearing team walking around the area we were just about to visit. It’s a well worn area which I would have thought was clear of mines by now. Our guide told us that they still find about 4-5 UXO per day around the area. I’m thinking it’s probably not on the well worn areas, but then why were they checking it?

The Plain of Jars are a series of stone jars that could be about 3,000 years old. The limestone they are carved from is not available at the site, apparently they were carved at a limestone quarry some distance away and carried to the hilltops to be set down. Our guide told us it was elephants that moved them. He also told us several stories about what they were used for. One story tells of giants who used them as rice wine cups. Another says that they are for funerals. Most experts are supporting the theory of funeral jars, but there’s no evidence one way or the other to indicate that’s true.


Plain of Jars, Site 1

Some local Laos teenagers were dallying with their girl-friends around the area. Eventually one of them plucked up the courage to talk to us and ask that we take their photo. Which we very willingly did. It was hilarious to see the girls pretty themselves up first for the photo. They were laughing and giggling all the while.

We promised to print the photo for them, but that proved difficult as the town doesn’t have a digital photo printing capability. After searching around we found a photocopy and traditional film developing place that had PC’s with a color printer. We printed it on the color printer and left it at our Guest House for the teenagers to pick up.

Our driver’s name is Le, but he kindly said we can call him Lee if we can’t pronounce it the Laos way. But we managed.

There are 11,000 kip to a $1. This is a very poor country.

The town has very little street lighting at night and after we had finally got the photo printed it was pitch dark, most of the tuk tuks or other forms of commercial transport had gone home. The town was very quiet. It was too dark to walk back to the Guest House along the road. Eventually a tuk tuk that was obviously taking some locals home after they’d been out on the town stopped to help us. They didn’t speak any English but we were able to communicate the need for a ride home, and they knew the name of the Guest House. The driver communicated the amount of money he wanted by showing us the bills, and that worked fine. A ride home was negotiated.

Border trip to Vientiane, Laos

Took the train from BKK to Vientiane, with a 2nd class sleeper. At the Thai/Laos border we took a tuk-tuk to the Friendship Bridge where the immigration posts for both countries are. First we paid our ‘tax’ to leave Thailand, then walked a few yards to the Laos Immigration where we paid an entrance ‘tax’. Everything to do with immigration of any sort costs money, money, money.

Took a taxi from the Laos Immigration side of the Friendship Bridge to Vientiane, about 20km away. We had asked to be taken to the Boulichanh guest House on Lane Xang Ave, but he took us to another one. Obviously he was going to get a commission if we took a room there for a night. Which we did as it was the end of a tiring journey and late. The room was fine and Jeff talked them down from $15 to $10 for the night. Unfortunately the Guest House was way out of town so it was a fair walk to anything. But we walked to the center of town and had dinner at Le Provence, beside the fountain in the center of town. It’s a lovely restaurant but spendy. After that we found the Khop Chai deu bar and restaurant. A local ex-pat hang out which is packed every single night of the week.

Had a lovely walk along the Mekong river, eventually walking into the poorer end of town.

We rented a motorbike and biked around the city for a little. Got myself another motor bike burn on my right leg. Driving in Laos is crazy. There’s a third invisible middle lane that everyone uses to overtake, turn left, turn right, whatever they need to do. What with the third invisible lane and one way streets galore it’s challenging to ride around Vientiane. But it’s a lot easier than Chiang Mai.

Vientiane is a very dusty city. I’ve also noticed there seem to be a good number of NGO’s here. They’re the ones with the cars and trucks.

Found the JoMa café for breakfast. It does bagles and waffles which are very good. Unfortunately Jeff’s waffle order seemed to get lost in the kitchen and he ended up waiting ages for it. I was well finished my bagel and coffee by the time it finally arrived.

Our goal is to get a 60 day visa from the Thai consulate here in Vientiane. We missed the time to drop our passports in on Monday so dropped them in on Tuesday. Our next stop is Phonsovan and the Plain of Jars, but there’s no flight on Tuesday. We ended up getting a flight for Thursday and returning Saturday to Vientiane. Then take a train on Saurday from Vientiane to BKK, arriving Sunday morning.

Most evenings we end up at Khop Chai deu bar. The pitchers of beer there are only $1.50, way cheap.

One of the local strings of mini-marts is called Pimphone.

The town has 135,000 is the Capital of the province. But it’s more like a small countrytown in Ireland about 40 years ago.

Lao coffee with sweetened condensed milk is just delicious. The Full Moon Café for dinner. Quiet and relaxed. Big cusions on long benches, subdued lighting, very well placed paintings from local artists. Owned by the Laos wife of a local American NGO officer.

Tables at Full Moon have table settings in a basket, so it’s easy to set the table without having it already set. Had Indian curry with chicken and fried rice. Food is very good. The chicken was a little too prepared in exact bit size pieces. Jeff’s tasted better. It was a real chicken piece, skin and all. Done well and very tasty. Som taw was spicy but not too spicy. It also has a book exchange where you take a book and leave a book.


The temple is the playground for this little Laos boy