This post is mostly about elephants

WE SAW ELEPHANTS.

Other cool stuff happened because Laos has a surprising number of interesting things to see and also good food but first – ELEPHANTS!!

Please enjoy this photo dump of the most magnificent and lovable creatures; elephants. Seeing elephants was one of my top priorities while visiting Southeast Asia but we wanted to do it responsibly. There are innumerable elephant tour companies in both Laos and Thailand, but most of them care much more about getting money from tourists than they do about the welfare of the elephants themselves. Thankfully, Byron had been doing research into elephant sanctuaries with good reputations, so when we stumbled across Mandalao’s office in Luang Prabang we were confident that they had a good track record of protecting, rather than exploiting, the animals in their care.

We also had a fair amount of luck – the coronavirus has seriously depressed travel throughout much of Asia, which meant tours that are often booked weeks or months in advance suddenly had openings, so we were able to book a walking elephant tour only two days in advance.

The tour itself was amazing. We learned a bit about the conservation work that Mandalao is doing, then headed out to meet our elephant friends – Tem and Peng. We fed them bananas (Tem just used her trunk to grab them out of our hands) and walked with them along a jungle trail to a clearing where we all had lunch.

The walk itself was pretty telling of how well Mandalao treats their elephants. When elephants are used mainly for tourism they are trained to do things on a human’s schedule – walk around for hours with people on their back, stand in water for hours so tourists can help ‘bathe’ them, and so on. Training these massive animals to follow commands can result in very poor treatment. Here though, we were on the elephants’ schedule. Our short walk to the lunch clearing took hours as the elephants stopped to munch some sugarcane, to tear down a small tree in search of tasty leaves, or just because they no longer felt like walking. These delays all felt like a win-win to me, the elephants got to relax and take their time, and the longer they took to complete the walk, the more time we got to spend with them!

The elephants alone would have been enough to make Luang Prabang a great stop, but the adventures didn’t stop there. We also motorbiked to the Kuang Si Falls just outside the city.

The falls themselves were beautiful – lovely views, clear turquoise water – but for me the real attraction was the bears. Yes, bears! Right next to the falls is a small bear sanctuary for Asian moon bears. These bears are often illegally snared and kept in captivity to harvest their bile. Thankfully, many of them have been rescued and are being kept in sanctuaries like the one in Luang Prabang. They are simply adorable.

We also spent time in Laos visiting temples, wandering around the town, exploring the surprisingly large night market, and enjoying the sunset beside the river.

We spent four nights in Luang Prabang, and then the real adventure began – getting to Thailand. We opted to take the “slow boat” up the Mekong River. The journey takes two days. In case you are ever interested in taking this route yourself, I’ve included a guide to the journey below.

Getting from Luang Prabang, Laos, to Chiang Rai, Thailand

• Arrange to buy tickets for both days of the slow boat through your hotel. Be only reasonably confident that you are buying the correct tickets because of the language barrier. Make sure you do not receive the physical tickets until the morning of your departure, or that would spoil the fun.
• Take a tuk tuk (basically a cross between a golf cart and a wagon that serve as taxis) to the slow boat pier, which is just a small concrete building next to the river bank. Hand over your tickets and wait for someone to nod encouragingly to reassure you that you are in the right place.
• Board the boat. This will involve walking down a long, steep set of stairs that have been carved into the stone river bank, then walking across the 8-inch plank of wood that connects the shore to the boat, all while carrying all your luggage on your back. Don’t forget – shoes are not allowed to be worn on the boat, so before you step inside make sure you remove your hiking boots… without setting down any of your stuff.
• You made it on the boat, congratulations! Now you can relax for the next 9 hours. Might I suggest some knitting?
• Okay, great, it’s time for the first stop – Pak Beng. First, reverse the process of boarding the boat by climbing another set of steep stairs (it’s easiest if you use your hands to avoid falling over), then wander the street of this small town until you find a place to stay. You could have booked a place in advance, of course, but again that would spoil the adventure. Also you were only reasonably confident the boat would get you here at all.
• Enjoy a sound night of sleep, then wake up bright and early to gobble down some breakfast before once again boarding the boat.
• Relax for another 8 hours.
• You have arrived at the border, huzzah! Now the real fun begins. There are no stairs this time – no, there is essentially a vertical rock scramble once you exit the boat here (have I mentioned infrastructure in Laos is basically nonexistent?). Best of luck.
• Once you make it to the top, take three breaths of fresh air to remind yourself you are alive.
• Good. Now board another tuk tuk with any other boat passengers trying to make it into Thailand. The tuk tuk will take you to the Friendship Bridge that connects Laos and Thailand.
• Go through Laos’ exit immigration.
• Board a bus to take you across the bridge.
• Go through Thailand’s entry immigration. They will be incredibly rude to you for no reason. Just accept it.
• You made it to Thailand! Only you are not anywhere in Thailand you actually want to be, and the buses to Chiang Rai don’t start until the morning. If you can, team up with the other boat passengers to hire a van to drive you to Chiang Rai.
• Book a hotel in Chiang Rai while waiting for your van to arrive.
• After your two hour van ride drops you off in the center of Chiang Rai, wander the streets for a while looking for your hotel. Google maps is only sort of functional here.
• After 30 min of walking with all your luggage, arrive at your hotel at 9pm. Cry tears of relief when they offer to make you some fried rice for dinner so you don’t have to go back into the city that night.
• Eat. Sleep. Rejoice. You made it!

The slow boat journey was simultaneously relaxing and exhausting. It was also our first real taste of just winging it. Never before had I started a day not knowing where I was going to sleep that night.

Chiang Rai itself was fine. We biked around the city, ate good food, and visited a few temples. The temples were quite beautiful, but it wasn’t clear how much of the beauty had any cultural significance, or if it was just built lavishly to attract tourists. This was especially true of the white temple, which felt more like an amusement park than a temple complex and had pop culture characters painted on the wall of the main prayer area. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, sadly, but it was really strange to see people praying devoutly in front of a giant Buddha statue on one end of the room while looking at pictures of Keanu Reeves from the Matrix, Yoda, Batman, a Minion, and a pattern of guns painted on the opposite wall. If there was something deeply symbolic about this juxtaposition it was completely lost on me.

Yesterday we bade farewell to Chiang Rai and boarded a bus to Chiang Mai. In true backpacker fashion we strolled up to the station and bought a ticket for the next bus… that was leaving in four minutes. Four extremely bumpy hours later we arrived in Chiang Mai, where we’ll be for the next couple days before taking a train to Bangkok. In the meantime my plan is to eat as much fried rice as humanly possible.

Knitting update: With the hat finished I’ve been scheming about what to do with the many skeins of yarn I purchased in Vietnam. I decided to start a sweater (we will someday visit cold places on this trip, though not anytime soon). I also wanted to incorporate images from our trip. I’ve become slightly obsessed with dragons after traveling through Vietnam, Laos, and now Thailand, so I found some graph paper and started charting.

I’m using a combination of intarsia and stranded colorwork which is pleasantly challenging, the perfect thing to keep my attention for hours on the slow boat. This is the right front of the sweater so there’s plenty more knitting to go. Elephants and bears are sure to feature somewhere!