Warning: ob_start(): non-static method wpGoogleAnalytics::get_links() should not be called statically in /home/hvewvpd7lhrs/public_html/Newyoktonomad/wp-content/plugins/wp-google-analytics/wp-google-analytics.php on line 259 New York to Nomad | Page 7
You are using an insecure version of your web browser. Please update your browser!
Using an outdated browser makes your computer unsafe. For a safer, faster, more enjoyable user experience, please update your browser today or try a newer browser.
The last part of our southern tour of Laos was a three-day motorbike trip around the Bolaven Plateau, a higher elevated chunk of land with cool temps, dramatic waterfalls, coffee plantations and friendly villagers. Touring the region by motorbike is no longer a secret, but it definitely hasn’t reached epic tourist proportions. It’s easy to feel alone on the road, and at times, like when your bike has a minor failure — like when we failed to realize our spark plug ignition wire tube thingy was disconnected — it can feel frighteningly isolated. (A car connoisseur I am not.)
On Day 1, we headed out from Pakse on a rented motorbike (60,000 Kip/day) to Tad Lo, a village-town with three waterfalls. We stayed in a gorgeous bungalow in a jungle facing Tad (means waterfall) Hang. (The staff, who I’d like to think were more lazy than unfriendly, were less lovely to contend with.)
The bungalow was beautiful but not sure how I felt about the guesthouse’s caged monkeys.
Rainy season makes for brown water.
OK, I know we’re a little jaded, but it’s hard to be truly amazed by a waterfall after seeing Iguazu Falls in Argentina. But we found a new way to have some fun: elephants!
We seem to have a knack for visiting major sights only when it’s a downpour. (See Machu Picchu and Torres del Paine.) But on we went. It’s rainy season, after all, and the best we could ask for was for the rain to stop just as we arrive at the temples.
We were biking 10 km from our guesthouse in Champasak, a town that’s more like a village in southern Laos, to Wat Phu Champasak, a three-tier religious complex that was originally Hindu before it was converted into a Buddhist worship site.
After a few days in Pakse, relaxing at the very much palatial Champasak Palace Hotel, we headed by songthaew — like a big rickshaw with benches in the back — to Champasak. We didn’t have accommodation set, but decided to choose between Anouxa, a simple, authentic and well-reviewed guesthouse and a cushy, modern new hotel upon arrival. (OK, sue us if we don’t love rough living anymore.) When the driver of the songthaew turned out to be Anouxa’s owner, we took it as a sign.
And as it turns out, we loved his place so much that we changed our one-night stay to three and nixed plans to go to Si Phan Don, or Four Thousand Islands, further south. (A wise decision, according to a French traveler we met, who said Si Phan Don was a bit dirty, less charming and not as relaxing.) Anouxa is set by the Mekong River, with spotlessly clean, often spacious rooms, air-con and TV in some, and a sleepy riverside restaurant that was a prime example of mellow Laos. His staff and family were always smiling and so sweet, and their dogs were a riot. I fell in love with one in particular, who was nursing some serious wounds after he was hit by a car.
Happy to be without TV and WiFi, we spent our days sitting on our porch (unfortunately the hammocks were littered with red ants), fishing in the river (no loot) and cycling around the village. Food was generally so-so; Anouxa did serve amazing pho, but the second time I ordered it, it was filled with dead ants. You win some, you lose some.
Here in Champasak were some of the friendliest people we have so far encountered in Laos. Men, women, kids — all shouting “Sabaidee!” with a huge grin on their faces. It was the tranquility we had been searching for in Asia.
But back to the rainy ride. We gave in and bought some garish polka dot ponchos before plodding onto the site. I thought about turning back, but I’m so glad we didn’t; it made the reward that much sweeter.
When we arrived, we did our best to ignore the loud Thai tourists and the music blaring from their VIP tour bus. It was just us and our cameras — in our minds anyway.
It’s now been two weeks since we arrived in your country, and I have to say, expectations were high. Hong Kong was too busy, Vietnam (and as we’ll probably see in Thailand) too touristy, and Myanmar is still so new to the game that we figured you would be the perfect middle-of-the-road destination, one still in its tourism infancy but with enough infrastructure to keep us from pulling our hair out.
Well, I hate to be rash, but before I tell everyone about each particular adventure, I feel confident in saying: You have exceeded all expectations.
Your landscapes are unspoilt, your pace is so refreshingly slow, and the people? Oh, the people. Never have we mingled with a more friendly, smiley, carefree bunch. We’ll never tire of kids squealing “Sabaidee (hello)!” as we walk or bike past. (Your little ones are seriously some of the cutest we’ve ever met.)
We sometimes feel a bit ashamed to say we’re from the U.S., considering the pain our country-of-residence inflicted upon you, an unassuming country, who got caught in Vietnam War nonsense. (What a tragedy it is that it will take 150 years to remove all UXOs, or Unexploded Ordinances, from your fields.) But your people have never bat an eyelid or shown a glimpse of sadness. They’re a resilient lot.
We’ll admit, the bus ride from Vietnam into your country wasn’t easy. Ducks on the roof, people sleeping in the aisles, that feeling that we’re going to tip over — but now we see that transportation here should be taken with patience and a laugh. It’s just as much about the journey as it is the destination.
Thank you for letting us hear our own footsteps whilst walking among your many beautiful wats. Thank you for tasty rambutan and sweet (and seedless) mangosteen. Thank you for the best coffee we’ve ever tasted. Thank you for the endless number of cute dogs and puppies I meet everyday. (And thank you to the young waitress in Thakhek who let me hold her puppy through our entire lunch.) Thank you for empty streets, charming villages and the serene Mekong River.
We didn’t plan to go to Hoi An, a beachy town in central Vietnam, but we needed to get to Laos via Hue, not far from Hoi An. So it made us think, before skipping out on Vietnam, maybe some due diligence on Vietnam was needed. After all, we had seen only the north.
Why the hesitation to visit the most-touristed city in the country, the one that people describe as the most beautiful and romantic? Well, after everything we read, the place sounded fake. And as it turns out, the old town, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, kind of is. It’s lit up with lanterns everywhere, which is pretty but also cheesy once you learn that shops are mandated to hang them. And when you stroll around at night, music plays as if from nowhere. It felt like Disneyland.
Lanterns aside, the main draw is the plethora of tailors who can fashion you a fine suit or dress for cheap. But I have no room for more clothes in my backpack, so that was a no-go. A second draw are the cooking classes. But with every single restaurant offering one, it seemed less special. And frankly, we found the food in Hanoi to be far more flavorful and exciting than Hoi An’s, despite the coastal town’s culinary rep.
But on we went. We were going all that way anyway.
Luckily, we knew well enough to stay outside the center at Sunflower Hotel, located midway between the town and Cua Dai beach. Once we were removed from the kitschiness, we finally got a taste for Hoi An’s relaxed, beach bum feel. (That said, the beach is nice, but don’t expect emerald green, clear waters. Don’t expect much breathing room on the sands either.)
We also took a day trip to the ruins of My Son, a plot of temples built by the Champa Kingdom with (now crumbling) statues of Hindu gods. It’s worth checking out in the morning (we left at 5 am) for cooler temps and to avoid crowds. (We were the only group at that time.) Though miniscule compared to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, what My Son lacks in size, it makes up with a remote, shaded, beautifully lush setting.
But the best thing we did in Hoi An? Something as simple as rent bicycles and veer off the main strip (that heads to the beach) to explore a village. We were the only tourists, so fishermen were happy to show us their loot and when we began to overheat, an old lady let us sit in her home with a fan. I’m consistently amazed by how friendly the locals are. It’s really been the best part of our Asian adventure.
In Argentina, we (mostly Eaman) were excited for the steak. In Asia, we (again, mostly Eaman) were excited for the street food. Besides being mostly vegetarian, I generally err on the safe/boring side thanks to a sensitive stomach, but there was no better way to build immunity for the remainder of Asia than with street food stalls. And it was a good thing because in Vietnam, it was the cheapeast, tastiest and most authentic introduction to the country.
We looked for high turnover to make sure food was fresh and dishes that were hot, hot, hot, avoiding anything uncooked that might’ve been washed with tap water. Other than that, we picked up chopsticks, settled into the child-size plastic furniture — that’s how all the seating works there — and chowed down.
And as a note, we had pho, but only at our hotel, which was good, but not the best we had. (That honor goes to our guesthouse in Champasak, Laos.) In any case, the idea of drinking hot soup in steamy Hanoi sounded miserable.
1. For pure taste, my favorite was the bun bao at Bun Bo Nam Bo at 47 Hang Dieu. (Most street food stalls are nameless and go only by address or meal offering.) It’s a noodle based dish with beef, crushed peanuts and herbs for $2.50. That’s all they serve, so you just tell them how many and wait for Vietnam’s best street food offering. We knew we did good when our Mai
Chau tour guide told us he eats there, too.
Our most enduring memory from Vietnam was, hands down, a three-day trip to Mai Chau, a mountain village town southwest of Hanoi known for its ethnic minorities, rice farming, bamboo production (lots of chopsticks!) and most crucial to us, an experience similar to the popular Sapa trekking in the northwest without the commercialism.
Though gaining traction amongst travelers recently, Mai Chau is still a sanctuary compared to what we heard about Sapa and its multitude of visitors. True, Sapa has grander mountains, but we didn’t like that most of the minority tribes dress in traditional garb just to catch the attention of tourists and their wallets.
Mai Chau was much more relaxed.
We did book a tour, but only as a means of transport. (It didn’t end up feeling like a tour at all, especially since it was only us and another young couple from Jakarta.) The tour ended at 3pm, but we stayed for two nights, left to do whatever we’d like.
We came prepared with the Vietnamese translation of, “Can we stay your home?” — homestays are common in the SE Asian villages — but to our luck, our tour guide was actually from Mai Chau, so we stayed at his family’s place. It was, in fact, an official homestay with lodging set-up for tourists, but that didn’t take away the charm. And once the tour left, we felt like, and were treated like, family. They gave us snacks, invited us to a community party and, with some broken English, even cracked some jokes. Being in this place was exactly what we needed after feeling shell-shocked and frustrated in big city Hanoi.
We spent our days bicycling the stunning countryside — made up of rolling green hills, geometric-shaped rice field paddies, villagers working tirelessly, adorable babies — and feasted like kings with all the food our guide’s sister cooked for us. (Few people in the village understood English, but we got on just fine.)
I aspire to travel like Anthony Bourdain on No Reservations, eating as the locals do, visiting anything but the touristy spots and doing it all with a fixer, a local who can navigate us across language barriers and through the inner workings of a place. And finally, in Hanoi, we founds ours.
If you follow me on Twitter and/or Instagram, then you know we left Hanoi Saturday night and spent the past days in Hoi An, a relaxed city on the central coast known for its food and romantic old town.
It was a pleasant couple days, but now we’re back on the road. It’s probably the fastest we’ve jumped from city to city, but after two weeks of lots of different types of experiences — more Hanoi posts are coming — we felt really fulfilled and ready to leave Vietnam. We skipped crowded beach locales like Mui Ne and Nha Trang, and the idea of going through hectic Ho Chi Minh City just to get to the south sounded miserable. No, our time in the north has been really special and we feel satisfied.
