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Heya, I finally figured out how you can subscribe to my blog! Just type your email address in the subscription box on the right side and confirm the automatic email you will receive. Afterwards, you will automatically be notified by email if I happen to update my blog and you don't have to check this website five times each day anymore (as I am sure you were all doing before :-)).

P.S. The new start date for Africa is July 3rd when we will fly to Kampala!

Back in Germany :-(

So I am back in Germany :-( To make things worse, my USB stick (which contains ALL of my pictures and movies from the trip) as well as my memory card are infected with a virus, so I am not sure how many of my pics will be saved... To make things even more worse, my travel buddy Natalie had problems at work and we can now only start our East Africa trip a month late, which means we will only have two months in the region (this makes me especially sad after seeing how fast time passed by in Southeast Asia...).

To look on the bright side of life: I will have one month of summer vacation in beautiful and exciting Germany and enough time to see all the doctors I avoided seeing for the last year...

If anybody should still feel like talking to grumpy Anne, please give me a call!

Running out of time in Laos...

Some weeks ago, I realized that I would most likely not make it all the way down to Cambodia. However, I did not expect to not even being able to see all of Laos! Here I am, six weeks later and only two half-countries further... So my supposed trip to Northern Thailand, Laos and Cambodia was cut down to Northern Thailand and Northern Laos and I am left with a very good excuse to come back to this wonderful region :-)

But here is what happened in the meantime: I took the slow boat down the Mekong from Huay Xai (the border town) all the way to Luang Prabang. This trip takes two days, but fortunately you stop overnight and get to sleep in a bed. There is the option of taking a speed boat instead, but these are quite often involved in fatal accidents and even if you make it to your destination, you will be pacing through the scenery with your ohropax, a motorbike helmet, in sunshine and rain - so that wasn't really an option for me...


This is our boat on the first day. Quite crowded already and not everybody got a seat, so people had to sit on the floor. It looks alright, but believe me, after 8 hours you simply run out of options of how to sit...



To make things a bit worse, it started to pour again (of course!), so we had to roll down the curtains and couldn't even enjoy the view anymore (which wasn't that impressive anyways on the first day of the trip).

This is one of the typical villages we passed along the way. The Mekong really dominates their lives and many of the villages can only be reached by boat. People use the river for fishing, washing and especially the children enjoy swimming in it.

You thought it couldn't get worse? The second day we had to change to an even smaller boat and we had more passengers (and thus luggage!)!

But the scenery got a lot more impressive and compensated us for the lack of legroom.

After two days and approximately 18 hours on the boat, we finally made it to Luang Prabang and the effort was completely worth it! Luang Prabang is Laos' former royal capital and it is one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

In Luang Prabang the Nam Khan and the Mekong merge and the city has some of the most beautiful sunsets I saw on my trip.

Laos once was a French colony and many French-era buildings and a lot of French food are still omnipresent today.

Me and a beautiful sunset over the Mekong.

I only mentioned French food before, but of course they also still have French wine!!! That was the first cup of wine I had since the start of my trip (nothing compares to travelling in Argentina, where you order the wine by the bottle, though...).

The next morning, I went elephant riding with Vincent and Philippe which I met on my trek in the north. So far, I haven't been particularly keen on joining one of these very touristy events, but I have to admit that I got more and more impressed by these cute animals the more I kept running into them. Our elephant lady was 35 years old (elephants get up to 85 years!), but still very childish and cute (e.g. she always tried to grab some food on the way although she knew that her mahout would get angry :-)).

While walking through the river tough, our elephant behaved while the other two splashed the people riding on them.

After the trip, I shared some of my bananas with our elephant lady. So cute!!! If I ever get a pet, it has to be an elephant!

Back in Luang Prabang, we walked up to Phu Si to see yet another stunning sunset.

The night market in Luang Prabang had some of the most delicious food so far. Here barbecued Mekong fish with lemon grass - hmmmmmmm...

We also went to a very impressive waterfall close by.

The water was turquoise - so how could you possibly resist to jumping in?!

One morning, we seriously got up at 5 am to observe the monks giving alms (in return for receiving food).

After a few days in Luang Prabang, Rebecca (which I also met on the trek and with who I ended up travelling for nearly two weeks) and I went to a village called Nong Khiaw. We stood in one of the bungalows on the picture with a nice few of the River Nam Ou (out of our hammocks) :-)

Nong Khiaw is nestled next to looming limestone cliffs and just a stunning location.

Little boys coming back from fishing.

We also hiked to some caves where the villagers were hiding for approximately three years during the Second Indochina War. One of the US-American helicopters attacking the caves eventually killed more than 500 people.

The caves themselves were very impressive and many ways led into the inner of the rock (I was happy we had a young village boy that led us out of this labyrinth!).

On the way to the next cave - surrounded by beautiful scenery.

Some buffaloes we met on our trek the next day (and we saw leeches again!!!).

Back in Luang Prabang (we intended to take the boat down the river, but again there weren't enough people...), Rebecca and I went straight to the night market to enjoy a delicious Khao Soi soup.

We also ran into two other girls (Hannah and Mary) we knew from the trek and enjoyed (this time a bottle!) some more red wine. We were really graving some cheese and walked for miles to get to this place that says "wine and cheese" on its door, only to find out that it just closed (and a platter of cheese would have been 11 US$ anyways...). This was definitely the fanciest night out so far!

From Luang Prabang, I took the bus further east to a city called Phonsavan.

Embarrassingly, I have to admit that I never heard of the so-called Secret War in Laos before I came to the country. From 1960 until 1973, the USA launched the largest bombing campaign in history on this tiny country. Laos remains the most heavily bombed (per capita) country in the world with half a tonne of bombs dropped for each person living in the country at that time. More bombs were dropped on Laos than by all Allies during the Second World War.

The USA intended to stop the North Vietnamese from bringing massive amounts of weapons and soldiers down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to South Vietnam. However, their bombings mainly affected / killed the villagers living in the area and still does affect them today since 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to detonate. This Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) still contaminates rural areas in half of Laos and causes many deaths (mainly by children who find the mainly anti-personnel bombs and play with them) every year...

All involved parties denied this war for many years and until today Laos and the people living in the UXO-contaminated areas did not see an appropriate compensation for all the harm brought over them.

As you can see on the pictures, this war that still seems very secret today is omnipresent in Phonsavan. Phonsavan is the capital of Xieng Khuang province which is one of the most heavily provinces in this most heavily bombed country and virtually every town and village here was bombed during the war.

Phonsavan itself is not a very appealing city, but it does have beautiful sunsets.

The main reason for coming to Phonsavan (although after seeing the Mine Advisory Group's information on the war only secondary) was to see the Plain of Jars. The Plain of Jars is a large area around Phonsavan scattered with huge jars of unknown origin. The jars are about 2,500 years old and might have been used for burial purposes.

The largest jar (on the right :-)) weighs as much as six tonnes!

Since I was running out of time, I went straight from Phonsavan to the capital of Laos, called Vientiane. Vientiane has about 300,000 inhabitants and is definitely the smallest and most relaxed capital I have ever seen! Even the Ministry of Health or the national radio station are housed in a bungalow!

People fishing in the Mekong in Vientiane.

The streets of Vientiane! There is hardly any traffic but roosters everywhere.

Unfortunately, I am close to the end of my trip already... From Vientiane I took a bus back to Bangkok and tomorrow is my flight home...

I have to admit that I am seriously in love with Laos (sorry Sergio!). People are friendly, the country is very rural, the scenery is stunning and the food is great - what else can you ask for?! It is such an absorbing place with such an interesting history and culture that it is hard to put in words. Anyways, I definitely want to come back very soon before it changes too much and gets all modern. Anybody interested?

Trekking in Northern Laos

So I did get to Laos! It has been a while since I last updated my blog, mainly because I was trekking for some days and then was stuck on a boat for two days. But let me start at the beginning:

The last time I wrote to you, I was still in Chiang Rai (Thailand) from where I took the bus to the border. Again, I encountered so many examples of plain Thai friendliness (e.g. the ticket seller on my bus was sharing her food - sticky rice with some chicken dish - with me which provided some entertainment for the entire bus since my hand-eating skills are not really the best ones...) that I promised to myself that I have to come back one day and spend a reasonable amount of time just in Thailand.

The border crossing to Laos was really nice since it included crossing the Mekong by ferry. The picture below is taken from the Lao side with the view of Thailand.

I was really excited about going to Laos, because not only did many of my friends tell me amazing stories about the country and travelling there, but also was I really keen on seeing how living in a communist country looks like today. So imagine the shock I had in the border town of Huay Xai: people were driving Mercedes Benz and all other kinds of new cars, there were amazingly big, new houses built everywhere and people even wore USA - T-shirts! So more or less, communism here looks like the one I saw in China and has nothing to do with my experience during GDR times... Of course, one should not forget that people here are still denied many of the basic human rights that we are enjoying every day without even cherishing them.

I didn't really like Huay Xai too much, so I left for Luang Nam Tha, a city further north, the next morning. This place is well-known for the success of its Nam Ha Ecotourism Project and I planned on doing a trek to the national park.

One afternoon we actually rented some bikes and wanted to go to a waterfall as well as discover some of the small villages around Luang Nam Tha. After about 20 minutes it started to pour down on us very heavily (if you have a close look at the picture, you can see our bikes in the rain!) and we escaped under the cowshed of one of the houses.

Soon, this little girl came out of the house to keep us company and then her father joined us and offered us cigarettes. Due to language barriers, we couldn't really communicate with them, but again, people seemed very friendly and welcoming.

This is one of the village we passed on our way (once the rain stopped after half an hour) and this is mainly how most Lao villages look like. Interestingly, they are quite different from the Thai huts I saw before.

The next day I started a two-day trek to the national park together with 7 other people from the US, UK, Canada and France. The trek led us through some real jungle and I was really excited about it! However, after one hour it started to pour down on us (again!!! Why can't I go trekking without being soaking wet?!?!) just that this time we couldn't hide under any cave and had to continue for several hours more... To make things worse, there were hundreds of leeches (Blutegel!) trying to suck out blood!!! I never saw them before, but they are really disgusting animals that quickly crawl up under your trousers to get stuck somewhere on your leg (or whereever they like really...) and suck out your blood. Once they are done, they look even more disgusting, they fall off (and you hope they don't get stuck somewhere in your clothes!) and your leg continues to bleed... I got really bitten by one and several others tried... The sad thing was that I couldn't really enjoy the trek that much anymore, because at one point you just start to freak out and constantly feel leeches (real and imaginary ones) crawling up on you :-(

This is the food we had for our lunch break! It was really delicious and mainly packed the traditional Lao way (in banana leaves), but we couldn't enjoy it as much as we wanted to because stopping and sitting down actually meant being an even easier target for the leeches...

These are some water buffalos we met after lunch - apparently they really enjoyed the rain!

After some more hours of trekking, we finally arrived at the Akkha village we were staying for the night. The Akkha are another so-called hilltribe that migrated from Tibet about 400 years ago. They are really mountain people but this village was forced to move to lower grounds by the Lao government about five years ago. Obviously, the main reason was to have a better control of the people, but still there life improved in some ways, too (e.g. they have a primary school in the village now and they live only two hours walking distance from a road).

Before going to the village tough, we first put our unbelievable wet and dirty clothes up to dry in our "lodge". This really felt like a déjà-vu to me...

After changing and looking a little bit more presentable, we went to the village which has 367 inhabitants. Most women here still dress the traditional way and children usually don't dress at all :-) (or they have some weird piece of clothing on them, e.g. no underwear, but a jacket). While carrying stuff, like the woman in the picture, they usually put a string on their forehead.

Most villagers were very friendly and open to us and you can't imagine how many children were in the village! Some of them were very shy, but others were just getting crazily excited about our cameras and wanted us to take like 500 pictures of them. Until only five years ago, when a woman gave birth to twins, the kids would have both been killed since the Akkha viewed this as a bad sign reminding them of animals. Nowadays, they supposedly don't practice this anymore, but still I didn't see any twins in the village...

One of the shyer girls in front of its hut.

If you have a close look at the picture, you will notice that the kid in the front seems to have red lipstick on its mouth. This is some special root the Akkha constantly chew which supposedly keeps their teeth clean (they don't use toothpaste or anything like this at all). As a consequence, they usually have really red-colored lips - and teeth! BTW, many of the women in traditional clothes, like the lady in the back, go topless.

Dinner time!!! As on my last trek, the food our guide (Xai) prepared for us was really delicious. The village chief joined us for dinner and we were able to ask him many questions about the Akkha and his village. After dinner, the young girls from the village were giving us a short massage, which is very common for the Akkha when visitors arrived from a long trip (and our trip through the rainy jungle with all the leeches definitely was VERY long!).

So after the massage we went to bed very quickly (see above) and the village chief waited for all of us to turn off the candles. Since we had quite some fun with him, he also invited us to his house for the next morning, so we could see how he lives and meet his family.

So this is us and the chief at 6.30 the next morning at his house. No, he is not pouring nice hot coffee for us into the classes, but rice whiskey :-((( In Lao, you always have to accept a drink when it is offered to you since otherwise it will bring bad luck to your host. So there was no way to escape... I don't know how many rounds of rice whiskey we had to drink this morning and I secretly skipped some of them, but after a while we all did not know how we were supposed to face 5 more hours of trekking this day... Just at this point, we found out that there would be a wedding in the village this afternoon and the chief invited us to stay. This also meant that we would only have to walk two hours on an easy way to the main road and we were all very keen on seeing the wedding. However, this meant that we had the entire morning for more drinking with the chief!!!

Our group with the chief in his hut (we look happy, but in reality we were all concerned about how much rice whiskey you can actually have on an empty stomach...).

Usually the older kids take care of their younger sibblings while the parents work on the rice fields. So you see many 4 year olds with a baby strapped to their back.

This baby was really cute and I think it liked me!

The little girl next to me kind of became my friend and she took care of me. E.g. she showed me to just spit out the rice whiskey when I really couldn't have anymore and then introduced me to the cute baby's mother and even brought me to a hut where they were having Karaoke (how did she know I love Karaoke?!?!)!!! I tried to sing in Lao (they had subtitles in English), but wasn't really very successful...

At the end she gave me a stone as a present and I really wished I would have had a polaroid camera so I could have left some pictures at the village...



I thought about taking this cutie home, but I don't think his mother would have liked the idea...

Ready to leave the village! Well, to be honest not really, because at this point of time, we were pretty drunk and nobody felt like climbing over some of the many tree-bridges...

But we eventually made it to the main road where a tuk-tuk picked us up!

Eventually, everybody made it to the road :-)

Seriously, this trek and particularly the stay in the village were amazing. Although, I visited some villages before in Thailand, this experience was completely different and particularly the village stay is hard to describe here. People there live in - for us - unbelievable conditions with most of them having no toilet or access to clean water, electricity etc. But still, they seem very content and were so welcoming. Especially for the wedding, they shared so much food (and rice whiskey...) with us and seemed to enjoy our company just as much as we enjoyed theirs.

After coming back from the trek, I took a slowboat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang where I am at the moment. But more about this later!

P.S. I published the pictures at a lower quality this time in order to upload them faster - please let me know if you prefer the high quality ones!