While we're here we should go to Laos...

I'm actually posting something from the day it happened!! First here are some pictures of the place we're staying:

Eating area is from the balcony. Our bungalows are back behind the jungle greenery to the right.

View of the Mekong and Laos

View from the dining area

More views from the dining area

The people who run the B&B are so sweet. After we were done with breakfast, they brought out fresh fruit for us. They sliced the pineapple and then brought out lynchee fruit (background, think Muppet looking fruit) from their garden.

So as I said before, we’re staying at this place right on the Mekong River, which means that we can see Laos. So the logical thing to do is to go to Laos, right? Right! Well more on that in just a second, but first we started out the morning meeting with Kru Ti (Teacher Ti) about some of the environmental concerns of the Mekong. For those of you who don’t know (which would have been be before this whole Thailand thing got started), the Mekong starts in China, runs through Laos (in parts), boarders Laos and Burma, boarders Laos and Thailand, runs through Cambodia, and then finally goes through Vietnam before it deltas into the sea.  The big controversy is over hydroelectric power created by a series of dams.  There are already several dams, many in China, that effect water flow (and fishing) pretty drastically (from last night to this morning the river dropped 50cm, which for us Americans is just over a foot and a half).  There is a push to build 14 more because some countries want more power, okay just one country, but it would be a financial interest to the others to sell that power to China.  So even though there isn’t necessarily a need for more power it could be potentially lucrative to build them anyway. However, as with everything else, nothing comes at zero cost. It would disrupt fishing, water levels, and could drastically effect rice production (this one is just for Vietnam). Anyway, we met with Kru Ti to discuss the concerns that he has about the building of the dams and some of the things that are currently going on to develop compromises.  It was really interesting, he obviously has a bias perspective (he works for an environmentalist organization), but he was able to discuss the pros and cons of the dam building as well as alternatives that would help both the fishing and rice growing as well as the power/financial needs.

After meeting with Kru Ti, we went on a boat ride on the Mekong for a couple of hours, which was beautiful! The mountains here are the very beginning of the Himalayas (don’t get too excited, they were pretty small mountains), and the layers of them in the scenery were gorgeous.   It was fun to ride around for a while and see some people fishing and some temples too.  Our driver made sure to tell us that when we were in the Lao waters, which was fun too.

Our boat driver pushing off. (Then he went to the back to run the motor and steer)

Laos to the left and Thailand to the right

Laotian mountain and temples

Enjoying the boat ride

Laotian Temple, check out those stairs!

Bringing in the day's catch

These little guys were practicing their fishing and having some fun. They were so cute!

We’d hired a driver to take us up here from Chaingrai, so after we got back, he took us up to the Golden Triangle which is where Burma, Laos, and Thailand meet.  They all meet by water, but there is a look out on the Thai side where you can see all three countries at once, which was really beautiful. There was also a ruin of a temple up there, so that was really fun too walk around too.  At the foot of the lookout, there was this gigantic Buddha statue and several shops, so we stopped there too.  I had asked previously if we could go to Burma or Laos (just to step on shore, nothing fancy), and Cathy had said she didn’t think so, but when we got down to the Buddha, there is a company that will take you over to Laos (or at least a little island that is still considered as a part of Laos).  So we did. We took the boat, and our driver got us really close to Burma, but we couldn’t go ashore. So then he took us over to the Lao island. It was fun to say we’d been there. They gave us these little pieces of paper to staple into our passports (they can’t actually stamp it because it isn’t part of the mainland), and there were several shops. Clearly it’s there just for the tourists, but still fun. They did sell a few things that I haven’t seen in Thailand. Mostly alcohol with snakes and scorpions in it.  They had three big vats of whiskey, one had a HUGE cobra in it, one had several snakes, and the other scorpions. Eww. I’m not sure that even if I drank I would want that.

At the Golden Triangle (standing on Thail soil, Burma to the left and Laos to the right).

Steps up to the temple at the Golden Triangle

They actually gave us life jackets for the boat ride to Laos...they were a little big.

Yep that's a real snake in the whiskey...

Anyone from the Dore-clan remember these beauties that Grandma got? There were tons of these hats for sale!