It was getting close to the time that we had to start making some real decisions (vs the normal ‘what street food should I have today’ decision) about what we are going to do next, so today we finally came to some conclusions.
We did not have any fixed agenda when we got here, but the tentative plan was to perhaps go to Cambodia after about a week and explore some places we had not been to. We really had to make a choice though so that we would have time to arrange the flights and an actual destination.
Our worst case scenario was to just stay in Northern Thailand and explore some of the surrounding countryside so we always had a backup, but with time running short if we wanted to do something big, we took some time this morning to make a choice. In addition to Cambodia, we had talked about going down the Gulf of Thailand coast, or perhaps to some of the islands in the south, but in a strange twist of choice though Mrs. Columbus has decided that she wants to go to Laos!!
Laos was a country I have on my list to see at some point, but we had never really talked about it much before, however, at dinner the other night we were talking about our options a bit and our friend Ian told us about some of the things he sees travelers doing, and Laos came up as Chiang Mai is a pretty common gateway for travelers going to there.
The usual ‘backpacker’ route is to go up to the Thai/Laos border and get on a big, slow boat that floats down the Mekong River. The trip takes 3 days – a day to go overland to the border, and 2 days of about 8 hours per day on the boat, with an overnight at a small town at the half way point. I’m sure it would be an adventure, but 16+ hours on a full boat (40+ people) on a wooden bench does not get my adrenaline pumping! Coupled with the fact that we have a fixed number of days left we decide that we will just fly to Luang Prabang and save the 3 days that it would take to get there on the river and allocate those days to exploring the towns we are going to see in Laos.
We are planning for a few days in each of Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, and Vientiane and then will fly back to Bangkok for our flight home. So now to do a bit of research on the sights to see in each of those places.
After deciding that, we figured we needed a rest so for the rest of the day we have just been hanging around at our hotel and enjoying the pool, doing some reading, catching up on some emails, and chatting with friends and family back home.
We got a nice surprise at the end of the day – our friend Riam dropped by our hotel to shuffle around a day trip we had planned for tomorrow (she had a scheduling conflict and we have a pretty flexible plan 🙂 ) and she brought us a bag of fresh mangos! Picked fresh that morning and perfectly ripe they were like no mangos we could get back home!! Given that our minibar fridge is not that big Mrs. Columbus and I decided that the best option was to eat most of them straight away to best conserve the space.
We are planing to slip out for Thai BBQ (muu kata) for dinner tonight. It is something that the locals do a lot, but with all the other food choices here it is not one that gets a lot of attention from the tourists so it will be a new experience for us, and we are looking forward to it.
We did find the ice cream lady yesterday while we were walking through the Warorot market and treated ourselves to a true ‘Ice Cream Sammich’. It looks a little odd the first time you see it, but I must say that it tastes great, and with the freshly made coconut ice cream on the inside it hits the spot on a warm day!!