Andrej and Karen Brummer

The adventures of the Brummers

Monthly Archives: April 2011

In love with Luang Namtha

Within moments of arriving back in Laos we were reminded of our love for this country.  We had been offered food and drink, seats to sit in, and a shady umbrella all in our first 5 minutes back in the country.  Then our driver suggested he would wait for us while we ate lunch… everyone is just so accommodating and nice here.  Then on arrival in Luang Namtha, Kumbai who met us last time ran after our van and insisted on carrying our luggage up to our room for us.  Then Thong and Paet came around and we went back to their place for dinner, while others in town were waving at us and welcoming us  back to town.  We’ve made no secret of how much we love it here, and so Dre decided it was time for him to do another post:

10 things we love about Luang Namtha:


1. Having a good time is the national pastime, which is much more important than working.

2. The amazing variety and freshness of fruits and vegetables from temperate to tropical species many of which come straight from the jungle.

3. The warm smiles you get from people hundreds of times every single day.

4. People who have very little material wealth inviting you into their homes and giving you their food and drink wanting nothing in return.

5. The lush green-forested hills contrasted with the deep blue skies.

6. Seeing tribes living a hunter gatherer lifestyle from bamboo huts 10 km away from espresso coffee and wifi.

7. The locals not minding if you are looking or buying; they are just glad you came.

8. The amazing, pure children completely uncorrupted by video games, cell phones or TV content to joyously wave at you while playing with bits of stick or the occasional dead snake.

9. The laidback atmosphere, there is no hurry, no pressure, no stress…bopan yang (no problem).

10. The local people are genuinely caring, friendly and kind they are always happy to see you back again like a long lost friend.

We love you Luang Namtha!!!!

Chiang Rai (aka Dre’s haircut)

We arrived in Chiang Rai after swapping buses from Pai in Chiang Mai and headed straight to our favourite hotel.  We laughed about how cool it is that we now have ‘regular’ hotels in Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, KL, Lanta, Luang Prabang and Luang Namtha, and know our way well around these places.  Kinda of a nice feeling to arrive and know exactly where we are and where to find everything we need in town!  We were going to stay just 2 nights before heading to the border, but we enjoyed our chill time here so much that we stretched it out to the max of 4 nights, leaving it until the day our visa ran out to actually leave.

Pretty much the most exciting thing we did here was get haircuts!  Dre is super excited because for the first time since he was 14, he got a ‘real’ haircut.  And then subsequently posed for heaps of photos with his new do.

When we arrived here, we found out that a huge new mall has opened in Chiang Rai since last time we were here so we headed there to check it out.  We found an amazing hairdresser who trained in Berlin, and won, yes WON the world championship for some hairdressing competition in Berlin before coming back to Chiang Rai and setting up shop.  Lucky us!  The new mall also has movie theatres!  So after our almost-year-long movie drought, apart from KL, we now have a movie theatre in northern Thailand which shows one English movie a day.  (one is better than none!)

Also the temple that they have been building the past few times we’ve been here was finished so we went to see that too.  All in all a really nice catch up time before heading back to our Asian homeland, Luang Namtha :-)

Pai

After 33 hours in transit, (9 of which were on the most awesome bus so far – think air hostess with private screen and in-flight (ride?) movies) we made it to Chiang Mai where we spent a couple of days at our usual Chiang Mai bungalow to recover.  We also spent an evening on the sunday walking street which still never fails to impress us with the awesome stuff you can get there.

Then we took the bus to Pai, a hippie mountain town that we’d heard a lot of people talking about since we’ve been in Asia.  Chiang Mai to Pai is apparently something like 762 corners through the mountains and the drive was really beautiful.

On arrival our friend Luke from Koh Lanta met us at the bus station and took us to our little bungalow on the river and we then set about exploring the town and the abundance of awesome vegetarian restaurants there. We were really impressed by the selection and quality of western and thai food. We also spent some time riding around to see some cool views and temples, one of which had a huge 1.5m swarm of giant bees on the front.

Basically though, the town is filled with 18 year olds getting drunk and then crashing their scooters, every 4th person you meet has motorbike injuries and the bars pumping until 4am every day was not our idea of fun.  (Being able to party when you want is fun but being forced to listen to loud music all night every night is not so cool.)  In fact there were so many ‘alternative’ looking people in the town that we thought our photos would probably be far more entertaining if we took photos of every person we met in town… but we never got around to it.

We always have said that we never want to travel so much that a place doesn’t impress us, but also sometimes it’s hard not to compare.  In a nutshell, the scenery at Luang Namtha is way more pristine and beautiful than Pai, there aren’t drunken idiots everywhere and the vibe in Pai just wasn’t for us.  So although it was quite pretty and the drive to and from there was awesome, we left after the 3rd night to get some sleep!  One cool bonus of leaving Pai when we did was that we got to experience our first bus breakdown.  What was cool about it was that it broke down going past a huge national park where we got to hang out looking at the mountains and trees for an hour or so and saw heaps of different kinds of huge moths.  It was so nice there that we considered getting our stuff and staying there a few nights, and if our Thai visa wasn’t about to run out in a few days we would have… at least now we’ve just found another awesome destination in Thailand that we can’t wait to visit properly next time.  Our photos of Pai are here.

Songkran

Our first Songkran in Asia was really nice, and we were glad we stayed on Koh Lanta since it wasn’t too crazy busy.  Songkran is the Thai/ Lao new year water festival where everyone throws water on everyone else, everyone walks around with huge water pistols, and generally everyone gets really wet.  It is basically to welcome the rainy season, because by April the continent is ridiculously hot and so the rains coming are usually really appreciated to cool it down a bit.  This year it didn’t quite work that way in the south, since we got heavy rains a couple of weeks ago and the flooding from that is still receeding, but still, any excuse for a party!  The main celebrations are in Bangkok and northern Thailand and Laos, and we were quite glad we stayed in the sleepy south because although it is really fun for the most part, it’s also kind of annoying if you just want to grab something to eat but can’t do so without getting saturated.

The main reason we stayed on Lanta though, was because our friend Melissa who we met on Cat Ba Island in Vietnam told us she was coming to visit.  It was really fun to catch up with her again, and also her friend Heidi who she brought to Lanta.  We spent the evening on the beach watching the sunset and then had an awesome dinner at one of our  favourite restaurants, Sonya Restaurant.

We spent our last few days on Lanta riding around the island, visiting Patu our friend who is starting his cafe at the Old Town next season (and who has a location to die for, on the waters edge overlooking the limestone karst islands), and admiring all of the beautiful trees in flower at the moment.  Now we’re heading north again for more Lao adventures, and to meet Ben and Lauren our friends from Sydney, before that though we’re heading to Pai, in northern Thailand to meet up with Luke who we met on Lanta and check out the mountain town that we didn’t make it to last time we were in northern Thailand.  Apparently it’s chilled out and filled with hippies, so let’s hope it’s all it’s cracked up to be!

Shanti shanti

This post goes out to our awesome French friends Ben and Fafa!  During our time on Koh Lanta we have become really close friends with these amazing brothers who spend part of the year in their hometown in the south of France, part of the year  in northern India, and part of the year here in Koh Lanta running their shop Shanti Shanti.

What Ben and Fafa do, they do with passion.  Never before have we met people who put so much of their hearts and souls into everything they do.  Their ice cream is to die for.  After we visited Italy, Karen didn’t eat icecream anymore.  Because nothing compares, nothing tastes as good… until we tried Ben and Fafa’s ice cream, which is now, in both of our opinions, definitley the best in the world.  Each time we visited their shop, which was often daily, one of these boys would excitedly tell us their new flavour of the day – they would make new flavours every single day and all of them were outstanding, and original, or something someone had suggested the day before so they thought they’d give it a go.  Our favourite flavours are lavender (which is seriously like walking through the lavender fields of southern France with your tongue out!), mango chilli sorbet, cinnamon, apple cinnamon, basil, banana pineapple sorbet, ginger sorbet, tumeric, thyme and paprika, star anise… and yes the list does go on.

On top of amazing ice cream, they source cool clothes and jewellery from northern India, and also are DJ’s.  They used to host massive parties in France with more than 1000 people, and it really shows!  The parties that we went to with Ben and Fafa DJing was the coolest vibe, the coolest music and the best time ever.  They are just so passionate about their music and it shows.

Anyway, Ben and Fafa, we just wanted to say we think you’re awesome, and you’ll definitely see us again, whether you visit us in Laos, or we visit you in Lanta or India or France, or all of the above, we can’t wait!  Anyone visiting Koh Lanta definitely needs to pay these boys a visit – for ice cream and personalities you will never forget.

A beachy life

The past few weeks on Lanta have been pretty similar to the first, although we had a crazy storm which saw the beach have waves for the first time ever according to the locals.  We have spent a lot of time with Ben and Fafa, our French friends, and Ben’s wife Bo and Fafa’s girlfriend Ying.

We have also spent lots of time on the beach, riding around and visiting many different beaches.  We have now been on all the roads in the entire island so have a pretty good lay of the land.  Our favourite beaches remain the ones from 2 beaches north of where we live, our main beach across the road, and the many pristine deserted beaches of the south.

We have seen a huge number of elephants lately too.  On the beach, on the side of the road, walking down the street, swimming, it has been great.  They seem to be everywhere on this island and it has become really normal to see them around the place.  We also have an Eagle that visits our house almost daily and have had tree frogs and huge praying mantis’s visit us as well.

Because the rainy season is coming we have also had a lot of insanely beautiful sunsets which has been really awesome.  By the end of this week, we will be able to officially say we have spent 2 months on a Thai beach, which was actually something we said we wanted to do before we came on this trip, so mission accomplished!  With all the people we have met and things we’ve done here, we really feel like we were meant to come here and it was a good thing that we didn’t make it into Cambodia just yet.  Plenty of time for that!  Our photos are here.

Insights after travelling in SE Asia for 10 months…

Just a few insights after travelling in south-east Asia for ten months:

You know when you have been in Asia a long time when….

1. It seems completely normal to have chilli on your breakfast.

2. You don’t bat an eyelid when you see someone washing his or her elephant in the ocean.

3. You are most attracted to restaurants that don’t have any English signage as this is where you get the best local foods for the lowest prices.

4. You have been bitten by at least 7 identifiably different species of mosquito and 6 species of ants.

5. Your normal state while doing any outdoor daytime activity is profuse sweating.

6. Huge insects no longer grab your attention like they used to, now you are looking for super-huge insects!

7. Gecko shit is a part of everyday life.

8. You have tried ALL the crazy ass fruits and vegetables!

9. You have a favourite local food place for each local delicacy.

10. Sticky rice becomes your bread replacement.

11. You are amused by other tourists taking photos of shops and streets, which now appear completely normal to you.

12. Meals without copious amounts of various types of chilli just don’t seem right.

13. You can tell when food doesn’t come with MSG by taste alone.

14. At the start you wouldn’t eat fish with bones, now you not only sift through sharp bones, you happily chow down on fish head like the locals do.

15. You can spot the Asians from “out of town” and know which country they come from based on sight. You also can correctly identify all the European accents of your fellow travellers!

16. You know which type of chilli (dried, fresh, in fish sauce, in oil, pickled) goes best with what dish.

17. Crazy Asian hair-raising public transport becomes mundane.

18. You know the locals will quickly realise you are not just a farang (foreigner) you are a white local!

19. You have seen every conceivable spelling mistake known to man.

20. You know all the train, bus and flight timetables around asia off by heart.

21. You can predict which dessert snacks are going to be salty!

22. Things like toast, mashed potato, peas, hummous, salmon and western herbs are elevated to such a celebrated status you engage in hour long conversations with other long term travellers in their honour.

23. A ten hour bus trip is not much of a drama.

24. Stones, wood and bugs in your food are an expected weekly feature and no longer surprise you like they used to.

It’s funny cos it’s true…