A Step Off The Beaten Path

It’s been a while since our last post. Mostly that’s due to some really poor wi-fi where we’ve been staying. But it’s also due to the fact that we’ve recently crossed into Laos and have been in some pretty remote locations for most of the past week. We’re now residing in the city of Luang Prabang (in the middle-north of Laos along the Mekong river). Here’s a quick recap of the past week:

• Traveled by bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai (2 hours northeast of Chiang Mai – very far north of Thailand)
• Saw the amazing White Temple
• Crossed the Thai-Lao border (an experience all its own!)
• Spent 3 days and 2 nights on the Gibbon Experience tour in the national park (jungle) of Nam Kan
• Took the slow boat down the Mekong River for 2 days from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang

Whew! That’s too much for single post. So I’m going to break this up into Thailand (Chiang Rai) and crossing the border into Laos and then follow with a post about our Laos adventures.

So Chiang Rai is a newer city. Like Chiang Mai, it has an older section with a vibrant night bazaar that caters mainly to tourists. Even so, we really enjoyed wandering through the night market and sampling some of the foods. Anna and Lori even bought cute little elephant bags/backpacks made of cloth scraps.

The main things to see in Chiang Rai are the clock tower (at night, it changes color, plays music and has a lotus flower appear and then open in the middle), the previously mentioned Night Bazaar, and most importantly, the White Temple (Wat Rong Khun).

Evan hangs out with his new friend at the White Temple in Chiang Rai

The White Temple is a modern structure whose construction began in 1997 and continues to this day. Born from the mind of the national artist and architect, Chalermachai Kositpipat (try to say that 3 times quickly!), the temple and grounds provide a surreal vision of Buddhist teachings through fantastical sculptures and paintings that include well-known superheroes, movie stars and even popular cartoons. Perhaps most striking is the temple’s stunning white color with mirrors embedded, a marked departure from the expected gold. The white symbolizes the purity of the Buddha, while the mirrors reflect light and represent the Buddha’s wisdom shining out across the earth and universe. Almost every detail of Wat Rong Khun carries religious symbolism. It seemed to me that most of the messages allude to escaping worldly desires, greed and passion. For example, as you cross a bridge to the main temple hall, you traverse over a river of ghostly hands reaching up from below. It’s eerie!

Gage passes by the hands of greed and suffering

Crossing the bridge to enter the White Temple

Inside the main temple, the mural’s display modern-day images and characters. We all noted some of our favorites like Superman and Batman, Yoda, Neo from the Matrix, a minion, Voltron, and many others. At the altar sat a VERY lifelike sculpture of a meditating monk. We all agreed that this temple was by far the most interesting and unique temple we’d seen so far.

We said goodbye to Thailand and left early (8:30am) from our guest house to make the relatively short trip over the border to Laos. Our early start turned out to be very fortunate as we didn’t arrive in Laos until well after 2pm. Who knew that crossing the border would be its own adventure?! It started at the Chiang Rai bus terminal, where we had to figure out how to get tickets to the Thai border checkpoint at Chiang Khong. A ticket attendant managed to convey that we needed to take the “red” bus. So we walked down the line of buses and, sure enough, we found an ancient looking bus that was painted red. We boarded the bus and paid the driver directly (all of 300 Baht ($8.42) for the 5 of us), for the 2 hour trip, and we were on our way! The driver knew where we were going and stopped at the Friendship Bridge crossing, where you need to take a Tuk Tuk to the Thai Border checkpoint and get an exit stamp on your passport. Believe it or not, we’d been in Thailand almost 30 days and our original visas only covered us for that amount of time (without incurring a fine). After getting our stamps, we paid another 100 Baht for a bus to take us across the Friendship Bridge and into Laos to their border checkpoint.

Securing a Lao visa is an exercise in patience and your ability to deal with chaos. The first step is to figure out which window has the entry forms (to apply for the visas). Once you fill them out, you return them to the window, at which point they take your passport and pass you on to another window, where you get in line with other travelers (or in our case, a massive tour group of Chinese tourists) all clamoring to get back their passports/visas as well. Oh! And you have to pay for the visas in American dollars ($35/ea). The window attendant would hold up a passport photo and the owner would squeeze through the crowd holding US cash high over head to hand to her. I say “her” because she was the lone attendant. That’s right. One window for all travelers entering the country! And they’re in no hurries to process these passports either as evidenced by the fact that the attendant closed the window 20min after I got there to take her lunch – leaving us all standing their wondering what was happening. It was crazy!

Me, waiting in “line” to get our passports back and pay for a Lao Visa.

Kids were troopers as we waited . . .

Finally, she showed our passports, I paid and we were off on yet another Tuk Tuk (and another 200 Baht) for the 7km ride to the small town of Huay Xai, situated along the peaceful Mekong river. From here, we will embark on the Gibbon Experience tour. See Part 2 🙂

Sunset from Huay Xai. That’s Chiang Khong, Thailand on the opposite side of the Mekong River.