Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi both surprised me because I expected them to be relatively slow-paced environments, but they turned out to be just as busy as any of the other cities I've visited along the way.The last place I can remember that felt 'relaxed' (not myself personally, but the actual location) was probably Bali, and I think that had a lot to do with the beaches. Chaing Rai and Mai felt relatively relaxed, but there seemed to be quite a lot going on throughout the day, and lots of tourists milling around which made it seem like it was actually quite an active place.
Although I like to consider myself 'all action' (and if you read some of my blogs where I'd crammed in lots of sightseeing you'll understand what I mean) but by nature I'm actually a pretty laid back person, and I enjoy the opportunity to relax whenever it becomes available.
Being on my travels there are still lots of ways I can do this as I feel comfortable having a lie in, coming back between sightseeing and dinner, and also when I'm out I spend a lot of time sitting and people watching whilst listening to one of my podcasts or some music - I think it's something that comes naturally.
As I've mentioned, sometimes the gruelling schedule of travelling from place-to-place with no wasted time in between takes its toll on my body (and brain) and there are often times when I feel like I just need to rest or a day of doing nothing, but usually I try to factor this in with whatever I'm doing and in a strange way, get my rest whilst still being on the go.
Over the next couple of weeks the pace slows down a little as I have a stint in Korea to do before three weeks in Japan which I guess will still be busy but should involve a significantly less rigorous travel schedule
For now though it was time to shake off my tiredness of the eight hour journey yesterday and see what Laos had to offer.
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I couldn't remember if my hotel room came with complementary breakfast but as I woke up about 8.45am I heard the sounds of people clanking dishes which reminded me that I had been sensible enough to select a hotel which served the first meal of the day.
It's a double-edged sword really because I like the fact that breakfast is served in most of the hotels I've chosen, but it usually means I have to get up early where as if I didn't find a hotel with breakfast then I could sleep in longer but would likely wake up absolutely starving!
After taking a shower I looked up a few general ideas of what to do today, but it mostly involved just walking around the city and seeing what was about so I thought that it would probably fill a large proportion of the day. Having failed to follow instructions carefully last night and ended up getting lost coming back to my hotel, I consulted the map pretty thoroughly before heading out today and decided to go in the opposite direction to the one I had gone when arriving last night.
My basic plan was to walk down the Mekong River as far as it would take me and then loop back around and go through the city centre so that I could see it in the light - unlike last night.
I started walking to the left of my hotel this time and immediately became intrigued by the landscape of sweeping hills which appeared all around:
I headed right onto the main road and it appeared that there was a little fair set up in an empty field next to a temple which I'd walked past the entrance to:
The fair looked interesting but I was still taken a back by the views just behind it:
Even in five minutes of walking Laos was living up to it's reputation of being 'sleepy'. Sure, there was traffic on the road, but it certainly wouldn't have been a challenge for me to get across and back to original side had I crawled there on my hands and knees. Most of the traffic going up and down the road was tuk-tuks taking people towards the major waterfall which is in the same direction as the one I was walking.
I got to a major road junction and decided to cross as I was on the opposite side to the river and had seen a park which looked pretty interesting as I was walking along.
Unfortunately the map I possessed cut this part of the road off so I couldn't see what it was until I got up close and discovered that it was a monument for former president of Laos, Kaysone Phomvihane who was ever imortalised in statue form just a short walk away from the entrance.
Phomvihane served as Prime Minister after the founding of Laos PDR until 1991, and then became President but died after just a year in office:
He is obviously held in high regard by the people in Laos and I also noticed he is on the newer version of the 2000 Kip notes which I have a few of in my wallet. The park itself was pretty empty with only myself and a few other people there. There were several spots where you could set and look out on the Mekong River which suddenly appeared in front of my face....
and I sat for a while in the shade before I decided to move on and see if there was a way that I could get a little closer to the river itself.
The Mekong is obviously something I have some across before as I took a boat trip down a part of it in Cambodia. Remember these...?
....those were on the Mekong too. It's influence is strongly felt in this part of Laos and essentially the city of Luang Prabang is at the mercy of the mighty Asian river as it flows speedily through the middle of it.
As I continued on there were a few spots where you could see the river itself but only at the normal road level, and a lot of the initial pictures I took were obscured by trees and other shrubbery in the way:
Eventually as I carried on restaurants started to pop up which gave you a great view out on the river, and it made sense why I'd read in so many different places that a great thing to do is eat dinner and watch the sunset.
If the left hand side of the road was filling up with restaurants then the right hand side of the road was becoming guest-house central as they fought for space and probably gave great views out over the river itself.
Along the way I managed to find a couple of good places where I could take pictures and at one point I even managed to get down some stairs to take a photo at river level:
There were plenty of boats on the Mekong itself, a few touts tried to get me to pay them extautionate amounts of money for a one hour ride down the river, but I decided to ask at the hotel what a reasonable price would be instead of accepting what I thought was a good price and then discovering that I had been massively ripped off.
At one point I managed to get down to what looked like a little dock which I presume is used for river cruises and get some quite clear pictures:
There weren't just tourist boats travelling around however as fishing boats were also quite prevelant, and there seemed to be a shuttle service for taking people from one side of the river to the other which was something I'd become familiar with in Bangkok.
Generally the river was a quite an interesting and active place although I'd say it was probably about 50-50 between traffic on the road and traffic on the river.
The restaurants and guest-houses kept coming as I turned the corner and came to where the river splits into two and from here I left the trail of the Mekong and started following the Khan River instead which leads away from the city centre and towards the airport. The Khan wasn't quite as wide, but people seemed to be enjoying themselves on its banks as a small portion of sand was taken up by children playing and eventually swimming in the water:
As I continued my journey round the corner there was some people sitting and looking out on a group of fisherman busy at work, and just down the road from here I saw a strange piece of action which I still haven't had the chance to look up.
The main mode of transport here, apart from tuk-tuk is moped, and I'd seen a lot of moped riders who looked absolutely drenched riding past me as I followed the Khan. Just ahead from where I was I saw a bunch of people with a huge bucket of water filling up smaller vessels and launching water at each and every vehicle that passed by. I know that it's Thai New Year very soon, and their celebrations consist of some form of massive water fight, and I think that this might be a very similar concept - just starting a week earlier. I'll report back when I know more.
As I considered what to do next I saw that across the road there was a chance to potentially get a great view of the city below, and so set about climbing up some very steep and narrow stairs in order to get into what looked like a very small hilltop temple. There wasn't much to see up there, but it did provide a nice break from the riverside path I'd been following for over an hour:
I decided to retrace my steps a little and try to head back into town as it appeared that there wasn't very much more for me to see if I continued along the road. Walking back along the road into town I discovered I was at the very far end of the street which I ate dinner on last night and eventually I found an interesting looking temple to walk into called Wat Sen:
From there I carried on walking and got to another of the things I was hoping to see today which is Wat Xieng Thong. It is a Buddhist Temple and has about fifteen or twenty structures contained within the ground, all of which are very important to the country:
There were some traditional temples which I recognised the looks of from being in Thailand, but these seemed to be a little different and the details on them were more intricate. Where there are usually just solid colours there were what looked like mosaic tiles:
Inside one of the buildings it looked a bit like a museum and there was some very interesting architecture on there which was golden and very valuable looking:
I decided to walk from here and continue back through the town towards my hotel where I'd spend an hour resting myself before heading back out to dinner.
The main road looked very different without the street market clogging up the road, but when I came back out for dinner an hour or so later it was back in full effect:
Walking down the river a little bit after eventually navigating my way in a different direction to the one I'd walked this morning the sun had unfortunately disappeared behind a couple of clouds but I managed to get some good pictures as the sky began to change colour:
I walked further down back to the steps I'd been at earlier and I captured a couple of pictures as a man tied up his boat and headed home for the evening:
The river looked even more peaceful in the evening than it did during the day, and it was quite serene just to stand and watch as it flowed out of sight.....
Walking back home I was satisfied that I had filled by day with some good sightseeing.
Tonight there was a massive rainstorm just as I went out to get myself a snack and a drink. It was spitting just as I left the hotel, but soon started to come down and it seemed as though there were flashes of lightning from all different directions. Thankfully I made it safely back into my room without getting too wet or fried by a bolt of lightning and then made preparations what what I hoped would be an interesting day tomorrow.
Hold Back the River
James Bay (2014)
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