Luang Prabang

Boats lined up on the Mekong. About nine dollars for an hour, twenty-five for half a day.

Main street (Sisavangvong Road) Luang Prabang. The tallest buildings in town are three stories high, and there are only a couple of them. No big chain hotels or fast food outlets.

Monks parade around town all day long from temple to temple to who knows where.

The markets are always interesting. Pots of fish, buckets of snails, and crates of what looks like giant cockroaches.

This is the guest house we stayed at. Small, only nine rooms. We're upstairs in the middle. The people were all very friendly and they made us dinner on our last night there. They had to tone down the spiciness for us but it was still too spicy hot.

Not sure what those things are on the left.

Chinese New Year in Melbourne

It’s Chinese New Year and celebrations are full-on here in Melbourne. Chinatown here seems larger and livelier than in Sydney. The choices are abundant as far as Chinese food goes, from high end (lobster and crab tanks in the windows) to a wide range of hawker’s type eating establishments throughout Chinatown. Also in Chinatown are other Asian restaurants from Japanese, Korean, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and anything else you can think of. Dumpling restaurants seem to be a big hit here and some are very good and quite inexpensive.
Chinese New Years falls on the same day as Australia Day this year so the entire town is jumping with activity. We went down to Federation Square to watch the fireworks with the thousands others who had the same idea.
We’ve just finished our tenth straight day of tennis at the Australian Open. A good thing too because it’s getting very hot. The forecast for this week is supposed to be the hottest week in a hundred years.

Melbourne Year of the Ox time:

Aunt Betsy and Kayla enjoying some girl time; note the magazine.....baby is all ears as Yee Pau talks about vacations and cruises.....

Chinese New Year's

We enjoyed our New Year's Eve dinner at R&G and having Aunt Betsy with us.
Missed both of you, Alan and Herman, and hoped you enjoyed the holiday.

Chinese New Year

Kayla dressed festive!

Australia

Federation Square

We arrived in Melbourne (pronounced Mel bin) a week ago and have seen just about nothing but tennis. Feels good to be back in a city where you can shower with your mouth open.
Our hotel is right downtown and within walking distance of the tennis facility across the Yarra River. We do have a small kitchen in our room so we make breakfast every morning before heading out to the tennis. Chinatown is just around the corner and we’re surrounded by Asian restaurants on all four sides.

It was warm and dry when we first arrived and has been getting warmer and hotter as the week wore on. Not the most comfortable weather to watch tennis in especially if you’re sitting in the sun like we are. We buy sandwiches or sushi each morning to take with us to the tennis. Sushi rolls are very popular here with all the usual fillings from raw tuna to California rolls. They even have canned tuna filling as well as beef and fried chicken.
We got up early to watch the Obama inauguration as there was a lot of interest and news coverage here.
Thirteen of our seventeen days here are tennis days so we’ll be all tennised-out when we return to Bangkok on February 2.

A Trip to the Golden Triangle

We left Michael and Kristine in Chiang Mai and took a three + hour bus trip up to Chiang Rai where we're staying for 6 nights. It's a pretty small town in comparison to Chiang Mai but we'll spend our time relaxing here before returning to Bangkok.
Michael and Kristine are in Phuket and we'll meet up with them before they head home next week.
We took an exhausting 11 hour day trip yesterday up through Northern Thailand. Our first stop was the King mother's park (above). Lot's of flowers and gardens, and especially Thai tourists.

We then headed up to the famed Golden Triangle where three countries come together. Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Laos. The green land on the left is Thailand. The pointy peninsula in the middle is Myanmar (Burma), and the sandy island is Laos.
This was where the Thai Opium trade was made famous. It's all been replaced by tobacco and tea plantations now but still is an enormous tourist draw. There are at least three opium museums.
But the Thais come here not only to sight see but to gamble. Gambling is illegal in Thailand but there are several Chinese owned casinos across the boarder in Myanmar (Burma). The Burmese government gets a pretty big cut of the profits.

We walked under the bridge between the Thai Burma border and took a boat trip over to Laos all in two hours or so.

These are Akha Hilltribe women. I was allowed to pose with them after making a donation.

Karen Hilltribe girls. They start the process off when the girls are still quite young. It's not a series of rings as some people think but actually a solid brass coil which is wound around the girl's necks.

We didn't know that visiting the Karen Hilltribes was part of our itinerary.

We've always had reservations about the exploitation of the hilltribes, especially the Karen longnecks, for the benefit of tourists.

These people are rarely seen in public because you could see how they would draw a huge amount of attention. Originally from Burma, where they are currently being driven out of their homelands by the Burmese government, many small tribes settled across the boarder in Thailand. The Thais in turn have taken advantage of them and kept them in camps as an attraction for tourists.

In a way it is a bit sad to see but some claim that the money they make from tourists gives them a much better life than they would have otherwise.

Many of the other hilltribes such as the Akha, and Moung are seen at local night markets throughout Thailand selling their wares.

Temple Hopping on New Years Day

We visited the Waroroot Market on New Years Day. Looked like a usual day there. Plenty of vendors, plenty of shoppers.

No idea what theses are.

flower offerings.

Dried Fish.

Jade stone and buddhas from Burma.

Golden Chedi

The City Pillar. The largest Chedi (or remains of it) in Northern Thailand.

We spent a good portion of the day temple hopping with Michael and Kristine.
We walked and walked. Then we walked some more.
Michael and Kristine's friends showed up from Bangkok, and we walked some more.

All in all, it was a full day of walking.

I think we did six temples on New Years Day.

Thanks to Uncles Herman and Alan

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Many thanks to Uncles Herman and Alan for showing us around Chiang Mai on New Year's Eve and Day! Here are some additional pictures from our time with them in the city.