As a group of 5 plus guide & 2 assistants we set out in the late Morning by tuktuk to go on a 2 day hike with camping in the forrest. As soon as the hike began, it became obvious that the group was wanting to go quicker than the guides, who took a lot of stops in short intervals. At each they would explain For moment a little about herbs & fauna, then rest. This way we got to learn about herbs/roots against stomach ache, a tree whose juice smells like bathroom refreshers, how to set up path markers & what they mean. Some of the food was carried along, so we had a delicious lunch by waterfall (chicken, soy sauce with chillies, sticky rice, vegetables & small, aromatic bananas). In the afternoon the hike passed through parts of the nam ha national biodiversity reserve that were used for growing opium years back & now are taken back by nature. In general opium is still grown, but not so widely consumed these days, a bigger issue seems java, a meth like synthetic drug. Since one of the groups members had been in the same area 25 years ago, he could confirm that many changes had taken place for the better living conditions of the people, mostly at the cost of nature. Not just in that region but also elsewhere large areas of woodland had to give way to rice-paddies, sugar cane agriculture & gum trees. As now is the dry season the extend of those decidious forrests is obvious. Later in the afternoon the camp was found, cleaned & the shelters refurbished with fresh banana leaves & soon the preparations for dinner began (rice prepared in bamboo, fish, banana flower with pork, soy chips, vegetables & lao-lao of course, the selfmade "whiskey"). the assistants from the akha tribe were also demonstrating how to create patterns, build baskets etc from bamboo & rattan. The morning after we set off to their village & passed by the "newly" claimed lands as well as see areas which were just "prepared" for utilization, mostly growing gum/rubber trees on the slopes of the hills, where old & young would work (weeding or planting, hunting with selfmade rifles,...). some former village had been outgrown, thus the field lay unused as the settlement had moved on to a different location.

Upon arrival we saw the usual picture of a rural village, mostly wooden houses with open storage on ground floor & living area on first, traditionally covered with plants, these days more likely with metal/asbestos sheets, loads of kids in the streets, satellite dishes on every other house, lifestock & garbage in the streets. At one of the assistants place a fantastic lunch was prepared, incl. Smoked eggplant.thereafter we set off for the mainroad & transportation back to muang sing. In town it the new years celebration of 5 hilltribes was still ongoing at the local temple, yet by the time we got there most participants had enjoyed their fair share of food & beer lao. By sunset all remaining activities, e.g. group dancing, rope pulling etc, would be over & the tribes would head back to the villages on scooters.

The next day the busride to oudomxai via luang namtha took several hours each & it was impossible to make the connection for phongsaly the same day (another 8hrs). Not much to see except chinese influence everywhere from signposts, chinese-Laotian coorporations & posh buildings along the mainroad. to phongsaly there is for now only a 1-2 lane road, frequented by old busses, scooters, chinese trucks fully loaded with sugar cane etc. The road winds up & down many hills, passes through poor settlements & towns, growing fast depending on the ressources available (large fields of peas/beans, rice paddies, herb gardens). Along the road it is not uncommon to pass over hills entirely covered by what might still be native forrest, just to turn a corner & see reclaiming of lands in process or an equal area covered with a banana plantation. Phongsaly itself is located beautifully on the back of a mountain & from the local temple one can look far. Since there was a large wedding happening it was a bit difficult to find a place at first. In the evening a few other travellers & I went to eat chinese, which was very good indeed.

The next morning the tourist office said no tours could be booked for the day, so an appointment was made for the afternoon to find more people interested in doing trekking. Meanwhile roommate thiery & I set off to see the nearby tea plantation (apparently the tradition of growing tea here goes back some 400 years - in our hotel some was given to us & not so tasty, but maybe we're just lacking the knowhow of proper preparation of same), found a bakery with tiny baguettes & went to visit the newly build village nearby. There is construction in progress of a new dam & thus a village had to be relocated. Upon returning to the tourist information it was said their guides / the ones for the trek we were interested in had to do surveying over the next few days, so weren't available. The prospect of taking a different tour quickly lowered the number of participants resp. Didnt make much sense as it would be just a walk out of town.

Not far from town is a place called komaen, in which the locals say tea has been grown since the early days of the settlement, around 400 years ago. For reasons unknown the tea plants weren't cut / trimmed for sometime, so that nowadays there are some tea trees (up to small fruit tree size), making harvest more difficult as the locals will have to climb up in them to pick the fresh leaves. At the moment just general upkeep of the plantation & houses is happening as it is dry season. In collaboration with the german development program "giz" a pavilion with info about the history & impact of the plantations on the villagers daily lives has been set up & is actually well done. All around this part of the country the efforts undertaken in order to improve the living conditions of the lao people are visible, e.g. information boards about food hygiene & disease identification /prevention by unicef & the swiss, promotion of accommodation facilities by new zealand, support in relatively small, more general projects by EU or germany. The largest contributions or at least the ones with the highest immediate impact for the locals are however the chinese ones, be it infrastructure, electrification, natural ressources or anti-drug campaigns. after visiting the plantations & catching a good share of sun walking there & back, its time to leave Phongsaly by boat starting tomorrow.

The 2nd day as full day in bangkok was spend looking for a new place to stay as the old one was overpriced for its conditions. Once the luggage was safely stored away, the trainticket for going north had to be collected. Loosing ones orientation can happen quickly & finding addresses sometimes turns out to be complicated. Finding the office by streetname took me 2h+ while google knew surprisingly well where to go (once it is fed correctly). in short some street names arent written in english & some locals speak English as well as I do thai. Being in the downtown area the large, well looked-after lumpini park & skywalk (walkway above the busy roads) werent far. The compulsory visit to mbk mall then took only 1.5h (its a big mall full of medium to tiny shops, stretching over min 5 floors). From there to one of the small channels in town its not far & longboat rides with collapsible roof for the low height of some bridges are fun. Leaving around golden hill monument I got talked into going for a tuk tuk ride with very special conditions (20 baht because today is tourist day...ok, for you only 10 baht...). so in the end it went to the 45m (rather feet) buddha statue of a temple, then to 2 tourist offices (at which the driver will collect his fuel vouchers) & on to the marble temple (wat benchamorphit, made from italian marble, possibly carrara). What wasnt mentioned is that the temple was about to close, and when I hopped the fence the tuktuk had disappeared. I passed throne hall, took a bus back & tried pad thai (a fried noodle dish, with sprouts, egg,..) & moved to sanam lang. Night had begun already & many locals made use of the large green area in various ways, eg. Singing friends letting kites rise high above or many cyclists going around the park on a speedtrack. Reaching the river ferries had closed for the night & following the roads there was what first seemed like a vegetable market, but soon turned out to have all the usual products. Particularly on offer where heart shaped balloons & flowers as valentines was coming up. Passing again through Chinatown I called it a day & went for beer on the hostels roof... from the close si phraya boat terminal it was to tha tien on the large river & for a visit at the temple of the dawn (wat arun), which was impressive for its decorations inside the temple (many wallpaintings & statues) & the fun in climbing the little monument with hundreds of other tourists in the midday sun. Since the lying buddha of wat po was just on the other side of the river, I followed the herd. the temple itself is quite a beauty for its architecture, yet for the many buddhas in every corner I quickly got tired of the cultural part & took the boat towards the khao san road area. Its a very busy market road with plenty of hostels close by & more foreigners than thais for those reasons. After a short stroll it was back to the hostel by boat & on to the station to catch the night train. The train was clean, spacious seats that lateron are converted into a bed by the personnel & with everything provided (breakfast can be booked too). as it was already nighttime nothing much to see leaving bangkok. In the morning mist appeared farmland, apparently for growing rice crops, salads & maybe corn, some cow farming & few Forrest, with trees appearing much younger than those seen in bangkoks temples & streets. Udon thani is famous mostly for its airbase/port, kept a clean city with little to see, it seemed. Thus I decided to move on by bus to lom sak. Turns out there are typically min 2 bus stations in town, one in the center the other further out for the long-distance connections. Telling the destination a ticket was quickly issued ( & a remark made). a lady said something about 5-6h travel, so when the bus came to its final stop after 3 h, I was thinking she surely had been wrong. But it wasnt yet lom sak, just a terminal to change bus for another 3h ride through flat land with mostly sugar cane & few banana/Coconut plants, and hillsides covered with dry/small trees. Arriving in lom sak it was yet another sleepy town on a sunday afternoon, so after a walk & some food - back to the bus, vip.

Getting into phitsanulok first thing to sort was accommodation, since only 2 places were close to the station called hostel. The town itself was quiet, the market on the riverbank reached by the karaoke/concerts from the river bars offering the usual fabrics and good food. A german couple was looking for am internet cafe we ended up chatting a bit. Outcome was I now knew how to get to sukhothai the next day another recommendation for chiang mai. leaving the luggage at the trainstation Finding the bus was easy as can be, similarly everything worked exceptionally well to get to the historical park of what remains from the first thai capital. Many brick ruins in a beautiful forrest environment surrounded by earthwalls; it doesnt stop there but continues beyond them, also information boards with drawings of what it might have looked like are everywhere on display. After 3hrs of cycling around these remains in the midday sun it was time to get back to new sukhothai back to phitsanulok in order to pick up luggage catch the night train. Before reaching the trainstation there was a nice buffet place next to topland plaza - works like a normal buffet, but the waiters will bring two buckets with burning coals to your table you do the bbq and cooking by your own. More out of curiosity I took a look at the ticket which I still believed was for sometime after eight, yet the train was in fact due in a few moments!...but in the end was around 40 minutes late.

arriving in chiang mai in the early morning hours there was an elderly lady at the trainstation. Speaking english very well, we had a chat in which she says at 84 she is still running her own palm oil farm (lets others harvest every 20-24 days) & has now come from southern thailand by train to visit her children. Once the luggage deposit had opened I set out to arrive at one of the main temples at sunrise. Many of the monks were passing the streets already, at the temples others started their daywork. As the sun rose the mountains in the background started to appear formed a nice scenery. To one of those I intended to go next & waiting for songtheaw (pick-up type of bus) passengers a Chinese woman said she had similar plans, so we joined. The drive on a windy road through the forresty area was beautiful only a few hundred steps to climb at the end to reach the temple. Inside were the usual mix of golden chedis, buddha statues, bells, candles & oil lamps, more buddhas, a great wood carved panel depicting important religious scenes, beautiful trees as well as mostly artificial flowers. Somewhere in between all the tourists every once in a while the orange robe of a monk appeared, as they are usually living very there. The view from the mountain was very foggy, thus fong I went to discover a path by the cemetry & on into the national park. Soon there were indications to a route passing several waterfalls haveing found a map we set off for it. The 2.5 km took roughly 3 hrs in the end, but were an amazing walk through the forrest (huge trees with aerial roots, bananas, bamboo > 10m,...). in the end we passed all 3 waterfalls enjoyed the little hike a lot. By chance there was a ride back into town. the local university campus is said to be very beautiful, but at the guarded entrance we let us get talked into the "only" way to see it, by a bus tour (campus actually is big) - in Chinese. In the evening bicycles were rented & with a group of more, fun chinese we set off for nightmarketS enjoyed another table bbq (hot pot). the following day I visited a few temples towncenter had planned to leave town. Over a delicious papaya salad at breakfast I learned the chinese new years was to happen the very same evening, so decided to stay for a day more. during the day another walk through town & in the evening through the Chinatown was up - somewhat unusual also for the chinese there were no fireworks at midnight, but to happen the night after... So on new years day I set off for laos, after a long busride (lush green hills shortly after chiang mai soon changed into farmland for rice, tobacco & sugar cane, occasional cow & goats) where everything worked really well, passed the border & had an enjoyable party with friendly as can be lao people & the other guests. Off to northern laos In an overcrowded minibus (huge areas of forrest cleared for kautschuk trees), now in muang sing, where people are yet to celebrate new years...tomorrow going on a camping hike for 2 days.

Hey there,
Hows it going? its just a try on bringing the blog back in use, so dont be scared :p
on 11-02-15 the journey was continued, this time around to SEA(south east asia). not sure how it will keep up to the current events, but its worth giving it a try...
more or less out of interest in places I haven't been to & for the availability of time (& money) the flights got booked?...
bangkok is pretty big & fairly organized, as far as I can tell after such a short time. Public transport works very well from airport to town & within. maybe due to incompetence or rather ignorance I spend a lot of time getting to the stay for the first night, partially due to its location in a place a bit hidden in the backstreets...in general the orientation around town is a bit difficult due to most signs being written in thai (surprise), but also google is adapting to this habit...thanks to a flawless telecommunication providers service at the airport, tourists get equipped with sim cards right away, +668 7387 9302 being the new # for thailand.
in short, bangkok is a bit like india for the chaos on the roads, the apparent difference of lifestyle & culture (writing etc) as well as the olfactory impressions...
so long
edit: lao # 020 9510 8543

da war doch noch was...
mitllerweile bin ich schon soweit wieder im alltag angekommen, dass die gelegentliche aktualisierung des blogs voll au dem blickfeld gerueckt ist.
am 18. august war ich abends bei meinen eltern in erfurt wohlbehalten angekommen und konnte den ganz normalen luxus wieder in vollen zuegen geniessen.
im wesentlichen verliefen die letzten etappen der tour noch durch weiterhin recht flache landwirtschafltich-gepraegte landschaften, die wunderschoene innenstadt poznans, vorbei an den tabakfeldern an der oder weiter nach zgorzelec/ goerlitz. letzteres schien gefuehlt mit npd-, aber auch anti-rechts-plakaten gepflastert zu sein. weiterhin en route befanden sich noch bautzen, meissen, riesa und leipzig, von wo es dann ab weisenfels gemuetlich flussaufwaerts bis in thueringer becken ging. auf den letzten kilometern stellten sich die bekannten probleme der auffindung und des folgens der radroute wieder ein, fast so als kenne man sich dort nicht aus...
in uebertriebener langsamkeit erfolgten in den naechsten wochen natuerlich die besuche von verwandten, wohnungssuche in freiberg und sehr allmaehliche pruefungsvorbereitung. und nach all der anstrengung war es an der zeit fuer eine pause; die selbst im urlaub befindlichen eltern wurden auf der in antwerpen gestrandeten amelie besucht. nach behobenem anlasserproblem konnten sie ihren segelurlaub gluecklicherweise fortsetzen. nach ein paar schoenen tagen mit ihnen auf dem boot und einem kurzen abstecher ins niederlaendische delft gings dann wieder heim.

von daugavpils aus suedwaerts gings erstmal eine schnurgerade strasse entlang und irgendwann bei zarasai nach litauen. weiterhin durch huegeliges terrain ueber ignalina ins schoene vilnius, wo sich abends die chance ergab, die Odessa 4 nochmals neben anderen live zu erleben. ansonsten war erfurts litauische partnerstadt auch sonst sehr ansehnlich, einzig die beschilderung war wenig vorteilhaft. von der hauptstadt dann richtung westen weiter ueber die dem touristenansturm noch nicht ganz gewachsene stadt trakai mit ihrer grossen, auf einer der inseln errichteten festung weiter ueber huegelige nebenstrassen nach alytus, bis lazdijai und nach polen einradeln. vorbei an elk, pisz und szczytno durch masurische landschaften mit meist scheinbar versteckten seennach olsztyn, wo es neben backsteingothik auch dermassen viele deutsche handelsketten zu finden gab, dass ein fast heimeliges gefuehl aufkam. nach ostroda gings entlang der 16 und dann der teils fast schon bergigen 15 folgend bis heute ins mit nochmehr backsteingothik uebersaehte torun.

kurzmeldung:
von tartu gings beladen mit neuem reifen richtung polva. am naechsten tag dann durch polva nach voru, wo kurz vor der einfahrt dann auch der latschen gebraucht wurde, also wunderbares timing. ueber rouge mit seinen seen und alternativen energiequellen dann durch estlands berge zum hoechsten baltischen punkt bei haanja. am darauffolgenden morgen folgte der einritt nach lettland im nieselregen durch immernoch recht huegelige landschaft. in aluskne stand das naturmuseum mit einer sammlung von flouroszierenden mineralien und anschliessend die fahrt nach gulbene in der schmalspurbahn an. am bahnhof wiesen zwei im lokschuppen untergebrachte briten den weg zur traditionellen saune, die sich gewaschen hatte. nicht mehr ganz so huegelig gings dann weiter in richtung madona. von da aus dann nach laudona, wo das erwartete grosse zewntrum zu den nationalparks nicht, dafuer aber fahrtechnisch interessante strassen zu finden waren. so ergab sich im laufe eines anstrengenden nachmittags auch gelegenheit zur hautroetung und gestern abend nach einem verdienten malztrunk zur abkuehlung vorm aufbau des zelts noch ein zwischenspurt ob freilaufender hunde. im laufe des heutigen tages dann weiter nach daugavpils, wo ein sehr modernes hostel und eine gerade aufspielende militaerblaskapelle den nachmittag erfreuten.
so long