Laos forum

That's very tight -- I'd be nervous!

Bus from Chiang Khong (the Thai town opposite Huay Xai) to Chaing Rai takes 2.5 to 3 hours. So, supposing you do get in at 5pm (unlikely, but possible), you'll have to clear immigration, boat across river, clear immigration again, tuk tuk to bus station (let's say that all takes 30 minutes), then a bus is leaving within 15 minutes of you getting to bus station and it takes you 3 hours. That has you into Chiang Rai at 8.45pm, then you've got to get out to the airport, check-in etc.

Perhaps push the flight back a day and overnight in either Chiang Rai or Chiang Khong.

20 minutes from downtown Chiang Rai to the airport is about right, but from Chiang Khong to Chiang Rai is at least two to three hours.

There's always the speedboat...

I understand there are a couple of boat options into Luangprabang, slow boat and speed boat? Does anyone know how much speed boat cost, and projected travel time? Thanks

Hey Bruce, did you get my comments on your travelblog? I love that zipline!!! Very cool.

Thanks Bruce. My wife would definitely go to Chaing Mai. She's mentioned it once before already.

She is ethnic Laos, but man, she does not like the place even a little.

"Am I sort of hearing you your wife is is ethnically Lao, but aspirationally western?"

She lived in Germany for 12 years. In her view, western civilization is superior. She makes no bones about it. She has reluctantly accepted returning to Thailand because it makes financial sense, but if money were not an issue, we would be living in Germany right now. My wife has very little tolerance for:

Bad Sidewalks.
Unreliable water or power.
Lying (which unfortunately Thais and Laos do a lot)
Government incompetence and corruption (say what you want about the Germans, but their bureaucrats are nothing if not efficient).

She also laments the fact that Thais are so ignorant of the world outside, which she was fortunate to experience but most Thais do not.

She hates the fact that the only food we can get here is Asian food - she loves German and Italian and Greek and that's just not happening here.

She's bascially a westernized Isaan woman. And where I might actually share some of her views on occassion, I temper them with "this isn't my country, and the people here can make their own cultural choices." My wife doesn't have that sort of break. So she has not problem is saying to Thai people "You people are just so backward."

"I dare say that if you spent much time in your US, you'd also find negative attributes to describe them."

Absolutely. I find that even when I go home for relatively short amounts of time. It's not their fault of course. Many people (like my Uncle) are disinclined to travel. In their view, why should they go somewhere else and spend all the money it costs to do so when they are perfectly content to stay where they are.

Others simply have no excess cash for serious travel - big families to take care of and so forth.

In 2005 I went home and pulled into the full service gas station about a mile from my house. A guy walks up to the car and asks me "Fill er up sir?" It was a friend of mine from high school. He had been working at that gas station when I left for University in 1980, and he was still there 25 years latter (manager now). The furthest he had ever travelled was Maine (I grew up in Boston). I was stunned. He thought I was strange for every leaving.

I don't consider myself superior because I have lived all over the world, but I do recognize that it has given me a different perspective on life and it makes it hard to go home and be satisfied with the limitations there. The limitations here are of a different flavor and still relatively new for me. But, of course, not for my wife. It's easier for her to be more jaundice in outlook than I am about this region. For her to live here is like for me to live back in Boston only worse for Boston is far more cosmopolitan.

"Upon reflection, that's one of the reasons that ppl go to SEA!!!"

Not me. I don't much like nature and I like modern convieniences. BUT, I recognize that some of the lack of modernity is also tied to the reasons why the cost of living is low - and I do like living fat, which I am. I get three massages a week, play a lot of chess, go box and teach dance. I have a very hedonistic lifestyle - which I like after three decades of little hedonism.