Chiang Mai

We arrived in Chiang Mai at around 1pm and the whole group decided to go out for lunch. It was very hot and I was feeling sick. Since last night my tummy was feeling a little funny so even though I attempted to go out for lunch I couldn't even see food and got very nauseous and decided to go back to the hotel!

 I slept the whole day until about 6pm when Sophia came back and I got ready for the night feeling a lot better.

It is very strange that I get sick when traveling but I think it might be a little bit of exhaustion! I've been sleeping so much and been so tired all the time!

I can't imagine how I'll survive 7 weeks in South America this summer!!! I'm already tired just to think about it!

At 7 pm the group got together and we went for some street food! Yumm

It took me a long time to decide what to eat and where to buy since all the food seemed to be non vegetarian until I found THE vegetarian cart!!! 

For dessert I of course had a delicious sticky rice and mango... Yumm

After a street dinner we went to Chiang Mai night market where we did some more shopping!!

and later.... A LADYBOY SHOW!!!!

We got to the place and two ladyboys took us to the table; one immediately claimed Lukas for her! Hahaha I think he was a little scared of the ladyboys!

The ladyboys were amazing! The show was so much fun!!! Wayyyyy more fun than the Vietnamese Water Puppet show!

We were all amazed at the ladyboys' body and the way that they looked! Some of them were really really really hard to tell that they were once men! And one in particular was very good looking!

Most of them worked those high heels better than any woman!

Hahaha... Lukas getting a little too much attention from the ladyboy!!!

Becca putting some tip on IT!

The show

After the show we went up on the stage and danced with a ladyboy!!!

We had so much fun and ended the night with a group picture :-)

The boys got a lot of attention

Wat Rong Ku

On our way to Chiang Mai we stopped at Wat Rong Kun, aka the white temple. This is a Buddhist temple designed by Chareum Chia, a very famous artist from Chiang Rai.

He decided to make the temple white because it represents purity. The construction started in 1997 and is expected to be done at least 50 years after his death! The funny thing is that he is still alive and keeps adding to the temple. At this moment he has two big teams working on the temple and has a lot of money aside for the project to keep going even after his death!

Chareum Chia has already spend over 40 million Bat ($1.3 million) on the temple and only accepts donations lower than $300 because he doesn't want people to ask for something in return when they donate money. 

Mekong Delta and our home stay in a remote village

Today we left Luang Prabang and took a slow boat for 9 hours to our home stay in a village in the middle of the Mekong Delta!

The boat ride was full of beautiful views of the delta. We also saw a lot of mountain goats and buffaloes.

To be honest the ride was a little too long, I slept for about 6 hours and played cards the other 3!

Playing cards with our local guides:

This is the view from one of the beds

At about 5 pm we arrived to the village where we were spending the night! 

We went back to basics! Very simple living! 

The village has around 65 families, a bunch of kids, dogs, and pigs.

They have a tiny primary school where they mix two classes together. Our local guide explained that The school is sponsored by a private company but still lacks teachers and materials.

Here are Lukas and Matt playing volleyball with the locals:

We went for a tour of the village and the women showed us how they get the husk off the rice grain. Here is Waffle putting his strength into practice:

The guide shared with us that the village does not have electricity but do get solar power. A funny thing is that they get satellite so they can watch tv!!! The best channels are from Thailand and apparently that's how the kids learn to speak Thai.

Becca giving kids some fruit

The kids love selfies and looking at themselves in the little screen

At night after dinner the kids came to visit us and we played different games.

Lukas taught the kids clapping games! I sang and taught everybody how to dance the Macarena. 

In addition, we played a couple of rounds of "what's the time Mr. Wolf?" And "star, star, looking" and taught them songs like "head, shoulder, knees,and toes", "hokey pokey", "twinkle twinkle little star" and the "itsy bitsy spider". It was so much fun and the kids really enjoyed interacting with us! They even sang us a school song! It was super sweet!

Blurry picture of Lukas and Haley playing "Star star looking" with the kids

At about 8pm we all had to go to bed!

Haley, Tiffany, Sophia, and I shared a bedroom at the main house and the others were spread into 2 other rooms around the village. Since they have no running water we had to squat and pee into a hole and then put a bucket or two of water for everything to go down into the ground... Lovely! The funniest part about the bathroom is that in the middle of the night they put a padlock on it so people couldn't access it... Leaving us with no option but to go in the wild!!!

At 5:45am we had to go back on the boat to make sure we made it in Thailand by 7pm when they close the border!

We spent the next 11 hours stuck on the boat taking naps, playing card games, and writing in our journals/blogs.

  

Made it to Thailand!!!

After what seemed like an eternity we finally made it to the border with Thailand!!!

We arrived to our hotel in Chiang Khong and we all headed straight to the shower! After two full days of not showering we were all in great need for a fresh shower :-)

Since Chiang Khong doesn't have much to offer we only went our for dinner and made it back to the hotel to get ready for tomorrow's early start :-)

Sick and tired of rice and noodles

So today on our way back from riding Elephants Griegan asked me questions about El Salvador  and I ended up talking about food and showing them pictures of pupusas and riguas with lots of melted cheese... We were all dreaming of cheese to say the least!

I think we have gotten to the point that we would do anything not to have rice or noodles for one day!

Once we got back to the hotel OLeang said that she was not going to join us for dinner tonight so we were on our own. I went up to my room and looked up restaurant recommendations on trip advisor and the #1 spot in Luang Prabang was a pizza place!

I immediately went downstairs to see if anybody wanted to join me for some pizza tonight and asked OLeang to make a reservation!

After sunset we all headed to the pizza place. In order to get there we had to cross a bamboo bridge, go up the hill until we found a white sign with the word "pizza" in it and some writing in Laotian. Once we found the sign we had to go into the English school and all the way to the backyard... And that's where the pizzas are made! In a school's backyard!

The menu was very simple... Only 6 options!

I ordered my vegetarian pizza and OMG... Pizza was FABULOUS! They make it in  a brick oven and the flavor was amazing! We were all quiet eating our pizza! It totally hit the spot!

We loved it so much that all of us decided to order a pizza to go for tomorrow's lunch! Yumm!!

After getting stuffed with pizza we all went for a night market walk to get fruit and snacks for the boat ride.

While looking for snacks I went into a busy alley and found a whole bunch of food stands selling pretty much anything Thai... Only not vegetarian :-(

Cycling Luang Prabang

In the afternoon some of the group decided to go to the waterfalls and some of us decided to stay. I rented a bike and went around the city with Tiffany!

There were so many temples!!!! I swear every other block had an amazing temple full of monks!

I also visited the national museum, which had one big temple and the residence of some king and queen of Luang Prabang! To be honest it all has started to look the same and I have begun to lose interest on all these temples... I'm tired of temples! Haha

In the late afternoon we went up mount Phousy to see the sunset!