Luang Prabang Part 1

After our night in Bangkok we headed to the airport for our flight to Luang Prabang, Laos. We tell the driver to head to the International Airport and of course just like China, hao le, hao le, which means that he will take us to the wrong airport. Yup, just as we expected, our taxi driver wanted to take us to the domestic airport. We managed to catch the error in time and we had enought time to catch our flight.

We arrived in Luang Prabang on a small prop plane and quite excited to see Laos. We were in LP for two nights and looking forward to seeing this town as it is a UNESCO site. Everyone who has travelled here has told us to visit now, rather than later.

After checking into our hotel, we headed into town and manged to walk a good part of it.

We noticed that the menus were not only in Laos but in English, the sidewalks were clean of garbage, the locals spoke English, and when we had dinner, the entire town was full of westerners. We ended up at a bar called Hive, apparently the mecca for backpackers. We figure there were more westerners than locals. Not what we expected of Luang Prabang.

What we found quite astonishing is the fact that this town was suppose to be up and coming. We think it came and went.

First day of vacation. .

We left for our vacation to Laos and Cambodia but first we had to overnight in Bangkok. We were looking forward to leaving the dismal weather that has been plaguing us for the past few weeks. It will be nice to sleep in a dry bed.
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We arrived at Xiamen airport and ran into our friends Mark, Siew and family. They too were anxious to leave Xiamen and head home to Malaysia to celebrate the holidays. Ben took a liking to Mark's beard, as you don't often see facial hair on Asian men. Mark answered a few questions from Ben, and Ben wondered when he was going to shave his beard. Mark explained that he would in the summer when it's hot. Being a 7 year old, and no patience, he wanted Mark to remove his beard right at the airport.

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Once in Bangkok, we figured that we would do what we normally do when we travel - look for a jazz bar. We found one approximately 2 miles away and decided to walk. Okay, tuk tuks are about $2, so why we wanted to walk in the heat and humidity? Good question. We pondered this as well, as sweat was running down our backs. Apparently you are either hot or cold in Asia.

We found the place, listened to some jazz, had a chance to cool down, and took a tuk tuk back to the hotel.

Meaningless Milestone #2

Wow, with our excitement to get back into regular entries and with the now backlog of stories from our Chinese New Year trip we almost overlooked just how far we have come...
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That's right today's post is our 200th, so we figure that we are now about 112 posts past where we first thought we would run out of anything interesting to say. Who'd have thunk that we would still be able to tell stories that we feel are somewhat worth sharing. Some of it is tough since we've managed to get into a regular routine here now, and we know that just posting what we made for dinner or what DVD we watched isn't really that spellbinding (tonight it's Chili for dinner and The Killing Fields, a DVD we purchased while in Cambodia), but luckily there are enough odd things that we go though during most weeks to keep full of things to write about. We are also thinking that using the next week to catch up on the small hiatus we had will allow us to stock up some good little bits of new stories.
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So, as I mentioned last night, we were somewhat rudely welcomed back to Xiamen by a stubborn cold front. Our apartment was holding steady at a chilly 13C (55F) and everything had that slightly damp feel to it which just adds to the overall cold feeling. The wind also picked up last night which rattles all the windows and creates an additional draft throughout the place.
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Last night we heated our new rice sock, we learnt about this the last time we posted complaining (thank you), and climbed into our somewhat heated bed. Not working last night, too cold and too damp, and maybe just too soon after returning from needing air conditioning and staying in places that felt about that like Xiamen feels about heat.
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Needless to say we were freezing last night and decided that something needed to be done. Today the temperature dropped further (10C) and we have been told that the wet rainy month of March feels much worse. So, we finally broke down and bought ourselves a nice, hopefully toasty, portable heater - notice the neat side rails for drying our socks...
Yes, welcome to the Wichmann home our trusty new heater, tomorrow we will start telling you stories from our trip. Unless, of course, this heater doesn't work - then you'll get Tina's story about her trying to return it.

Back in China...

Ok, we've managed to make it back safely to Xiamen after our whirlwind tour of Laos and Cambodia. We visited 5 cities in a span of 10 days, and spent a total of 21 hours traveling between cities cramped on buses and on a boat, but everything that we saw and did made it all worth it.
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Starting tomorrow we'll roll back the blogging to when we left and do an almost daily recap of where we went and what we did, hopefully this weekend we will get a chance to load our pictures up to Flickr. We took just under a thousand photos, but most of them fail to really show the beauty of what we were trying to capture, and in looking through them quickly it seems like a lot of them are a little washed out.

Back in China we have returned to the cold of an apartment at 13C that is still damp with humidity, and to think that I had actually said I was kind of looking forward to the cooler temperatures when we were climbing hundreds of steps in 33C heat...

Year of the Wu Zi …

or Rat/Mouse in English. Most of you may be aware that the Chinese New Year is soon approaching. Stores are jammed with people buying gifts, red lanterns are hung by the chimney with care, oh, wrong holiday, but they’re still hanging everywhere. Trains are packed (or delayed if you’re in Guangzhou) with everyone travelling home for the holidays.

So the Chinese will say goodbye to the Pig and welcome the Rat. According to the Chinese, the Rat is the first in the cycle of 12 animals representing each year.

How did they get chosen?

This is what I found on the Travel China Daily website:

In ancient times, our ancestors counted the years with 10 celestial stems and 12 terrestrial branches. Although this was scientific, most people were illiterate and could not memorize or calculate easily. Thus the animals that influenced people's lives were chosen to symbolize the terrestrial branches: the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.
Legend has it that one day the gods ordered that animals be designated as the signs of each year with the twelve who arrived first selected. At that time, the cat and mouse were good friends and neighbors. When they heard of this news, the cat said to mouse: 'We should arrive early to sign up, but I usually get up late.' The mouse then promised to awaken his friend and to go together. However, on the morning when he got up, he was too excited to recall his promise, and went directly to the gathering place. On the way, the mouse encountered the tiger, ox, horse, and other animals that ran much faster. In order not to fall behind them, he thought up a good idea. He made the straightforward ox carry him on condition that he sang for the ox. The ox and mouse arrived first. The ox was happy thinking that he would be the first sign of the years, but the mouse had already slid in front, and became the first lucky animal of the Chinese zodiac. Meanwhile his neighbor the cat was too late; when it finally arrived, the selections were over. That's why other animals appear behind the little mouse and why the cat hates mice so much that every time they meet, the cat will chase and kill the mouse.
Mark and I will be travelling to Laos and Cambodia during this time and will not be updating our blog as there is limited internet.

By the way, Mark is the Rat and I’m the Tiger..

Chun Jie Kuaile