Thailand

If Christmas in Vientiane was quite unusual, then it has to be said that the new year in Luang Prabang wasn't too normal either. The town itself is a quiet little place in northern Laos; It seems that every other local is a monk or a tuk tuk driver, and the pace of life is nice and slow.

However, on new year's eve we managed to find a street full of late opening pubs (normally they close before midnight), with everything from Beerlao to buckets of whiskey on the menu. The night was far from quiet and the new year was received in style. The next morning when we were trying to find a new place to stay (no, we didn't get kicked out, the place was just overbooked) there was no sign of the mayhem of the previous night and the monks were walking down the streets in orange processions like always (to be honest, there are very few things more annoying than other people's serenity when you have a hangover, but you can't really go and shout at a monk).

We left Luang Prabang on a slow boat and sailed up the river towards Thailand. It took two 10 hour days on the boat to reach the Thai border and our bottoms were getting rather numb from the wooden seats but the scenery was beatiful, and the only other way to do the journey would have involved the "fast boats" that looked like motorised surfboards and had an incredible accident record.

In Thailand our first stop was Chiang Mai in the north. There isn't that much to do in the town itself but there are a lot of trekking and adventure travel possibilities just out of town. We signed up for a one day elephant tour. That turned out to be a truly excellent experience with riding, washing and feeding the elephants.

From Chiang Mai we caught a night train to Bangkok (the first train since Vietnam). Bangkok didn't quite live up to the expectations, although in fairness we only saw a very small part of the huge city. For me though, it seemed like any other big city. Maybe we just went to the wrong places.

Another reason for my lack of enthusiasm may have been the fact that we had booked ourselves flights from Bangkok to Christchurch, New Zealand, and I found it quite hard to concentrate on anything else. I don't really know much about New Zealand, but I think it will be a nice change from southeast Asia. We'll find out soon.