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We're now in Thailand having spent a week in Laos. Our journey into Laos from Vietnam went well. Andy almost got ravaged by dogs at the border post, but our 'bribes' to the border guards were returned, unlike those of the locals. The Plain of Jars at Phonsavan was fascinating - 2,000 year-old jars equivalent to Stonehenge in that it is not known what their use was. There are over 50 jar sites, with anything from 5-250 jars of which we saw the three largest.
We crossed northern Laos from east to west and it was all beautifully green and mountainous but very poor. We 'hung out' in touristy Luang Prabang for a couple of days before heading further NW to spend 2 days jungle trekking and staying on the edge of an Akha tribe village. The women's headresses were interesting, as were the 'bachelor pads' for boys aged 15+ (see the photos). We've since passed into northern Thailand and were wowed to see Boots (yes...the chemist) in Chiang Rai, the first large town we hit.
We're now in Chiang Mai, which neither of us recognise since our last visits (14 and 21 years ago). Today we've been communing with elephants at a nature park south of Chiang Mai (www.elephantnaturepark.org). It was an amazing experience - almost all of the elephants have a sad life story prior to arriving in the park set up 14 years ago by Lek, an incredible hill tribe woman. Commercial logging became illegal in Thailand in 1989 and thus the 25,000 elephants involved in the trade were unemployed. Many have since died of neglect and today there are 5,000 remaining. The Park has just 35 of them. We got to watch, feed and bathe them ... another highlight of our trip to date.
Tomorrow we take the night train 500 miles south to Bangkok where we're looking forward to meeting up with Emma & Jay for a couple of days. Then it's on to Hong Kong where after a lot of time on the net it looks as if we'll be able to get a Russian visa. We don't think we can organise the tickets in advance though, so buying them en route will test our Russian and probably our patience!
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