Good evening Singapore and welcome to Sleepless in Singapore episode 11. It's the end of the month, March 31st of 2024, and I am in Jakarta, which most probably will be an episode very soon. But today's episode will be again about my Southeast Asia trip with Hatim last year.

And before I get into it, I got some feedback about the way I pronounced Laos, the country, and I read up on it. I'm not a hundred percent sure it's true, but the theory makes sense. The French came to Laos and found the people there called themselves Lao. And then the French added their silent S in the end, because that's what they do. But they also still pronounced it Lao, they just wrote it a little differently. Like they spelled it with an S in the end. And then the Americans came and they took the French name and they pronounced the S and that's apparently why in English it is okay to say Laos, but actually the locals call themselves Lao. And they call their country Lao. And now that I think about it, in my passport, it also just says the People's Republic of Lao, L-A-O without an S. So I'll try to pronounce it Lao. If I say Laos, then that is probably because in Germany we also adopted the English way to pronounce the S. I apologize.

So, make yourself comfortable, lie down, and let my voice be your guide to a restful night. I think last time we finished in Koh Tao, where we stayed at this quite nice resort, Chamakhiri, the dive resort, we made our way to the ferry and we took a ferry to Chumphon. I hope I'm pronouncing that right now, otherwise I will have another correction next week. The ferry from Koh Tao to Chumphon was actually amazing because we walked in, it was full, it was hot, we were tired and then we walked all the way to the front to find a seat because everything seemed very stuffed and then there is a like vip or something room in the front with nicer seats but they were also kind of full so we walked even further and then there's another room which is the super vip room and they have very nice seats there. And there is a sign on the door that this costs I don't know, $20 extra or whatever. And of course Hatim and I, we look at each other and we're like, let's do it. And we sit there. It's super comfortable. There's a big TV and we sleep a bit. And we expect someone to come to charge us the $20. And one time even one of the boat guys walks in and we literally ask him if we have to pay and how do we pay. And he's just like, yeah, yeah, later, later. And it turns out we spent a couple of hours on this ferry and we never paid. I mean, we did pay for the ferry, but we did not pay for the super VIP comfortable seats. So that turned out great.

And then our arrival there turned out great too. We had a lot of time there, because we did not want to take one of the tourist buses to Bangkok. It was a train trip after all, or at least we tried to make it as much train as possible because we both like trains. So we took a car or even walked, I'm not sure, to the train station and we got some tickets for the evening. We had a couple hours to spend in the afternoon without much to do and I don't think there is a lot to do in that place. So we just walked around and we had some cake at a local Starbucks and I think we went for a massage, you know, like one of these $12 one hour back massages you can get. And we went for dinner. Oh yeah, that was fun. We went for dinner and there is not a lot of Western food, which is fine, because we both like Asian food, but they also didn't have any translations on their menu. So we try with the, you know, on the iPhone the Google translator app, or probably the iPhone Apple translator app as well, and probably also on other phones as well. In the app you can turn on the camera and you get a live translation. You point the camera at a text in a foreign language, in a foreign script even, and just like magic in your camera feed, the letters are replaced with ones that you understand. So I pointed my camera at the menu and I found something very nice and reasonable. It was some Kang Kong and some Morning Glory and, you know, like regular things we often eat and I like to eat. And then Hatim orders and gets a huge bowl of chicken feet. Chicken feet, for those who don't know, you can get boiled or fried. He got like a chicken feet soup, quite spicy. And you have the chicken feet in there, which is mostly bone, or like this little soft bone and bone mixture. And chicken feet skin on it and I think you have to like it to appreciate it I don't think Hatim liked it I liked making fun of him though. Then after dinner we went to buy some snacks, some fruit. I love that about Thailand. You have on every train station, on every boat pier, basically everywhere there are little, you know, like food carts, little vendors, little kiosks. And you can always buy all kinds of mysterious meats, which we usually don't do, but you also can always buy fresh fruit and snacks. And that we did. And then we boarded our train, which looked like one of these very old, very old but super amazing classic trains. And we boarded. It was an overnight train. It was a quite long train ride to Bangkok. Six hours or eight hours, something like that. And the seats we had for us was one of these like four seats, two facing each other. And there was a nice elderly Thai lady sitting with her mask on. And the other three seats, Hatim and I, could, well, divide between us somehow. Thing is, the seats were... They didn't even recline a little bit. It was a 90 degrees angle between the backrest and the seat. So it wasn't the most comfortable, especially not if you wanted to sleep. And we did walk around in the train a bit to find the food cart and to see what's there and to find like to see what's there and we found the first class which is really nice very nice leather seats and stuff but we wanted to do proper backpacker style so we went back to our 90 degrees angle seats and we managed to somehow arrange the very little, very small luggage we had and put our heads on it. Funny talks after the lady in the train, the small Thai lady, taking pictures and selfies with us. She didn't speak a word of English, but she took pictures with us and then she called her daughter to show her daughter that she's sitting next to two foreigners. And it was very entertaining, not very relaxing but definitely entertaining and eventually many hours later we made it to Bangkok and in Bangkok we didn't even have a night because we've both been to Bangkok many times. And I love Bangkok a lot for city trips. But that wasn't the point of that trip. So we only had the day in Bangkok.

And what we did is we had our very small backpacks, very light luggage. So we just had that on our backs. And the whole day we were walking in Bangkok. We were taking the boats. I'm just looking at some pictures here, Hatim sleeping at the boat. I guess we both did that once in a while because we hadn't slept a lot the night before. And then we went to one of these floating markets which I can always recommend in Bangkok. It's always so much fun. There are a thousand little boats with locals selling fruit, selling vegetables, selling fish, selling all kind of stuff. It's a market on the water and not only is it very interesting, it is also extremely photogenic. I got great pictures out of that.

Then after we got a little bit tired, so we went to this place called, what is it called siam bangkok or something you know this very big shopping mall we went to the apple store because we needed i forgot what we needed pair of headphones or something and in the basement of this shopping mall there is a huge food court and I don't know if it's the most authentic. It's a shopping mall food court, it's not street food. From lobster to dumplings to very very nice mango sticky rice which is one of my favorite desserts you can get everything there and I think I mentioned that before did we have a Bangkok episode before I think we have a Bangkok episode where I already told you that all the way upstairs in that place there is a Starbucks with a rooftop with a very very nice view over the city. So obviously we went there too.

And then it was time for more food. And we found this burger place. And on my pictures it says Bunkun 1888 building. Prasern, Mitt Plaza. I will do my research because the burger was very nice and we also had a at the same place we had a steak. It was like a fast food place right? It wasn't a fancy place. We were sitting in the street but they had a nice burger. Looks very nice on the pictures. And I remember it was very nice. And we had a steak, which was quite alright too, for not a lot of money. And I remember we quite enjoyed that place, so I will make sure to find it again and put it up in the links.

And then quite early for our night train we made our way to the big train station where our train was leaving. That time we got the... I don't think they even had like seats to sit. We got a proper night train all the way up to Chiang Mai. And we had bunk beds. And it was super cool. I love these trains with the bunk beds. You always meet people and we met great people. Mostly great people, I gotta say. There was one guy walking in that smelled very funny and Hatim immediately texted me, oh my god I hope she's not staying with us. Because apparently to Hatim's nose his t-shirts smelled like a mix of rotten banana and fish market. And indeed, I remember it was very smelly. But we got lucky, the guy did not stay in our compartment. We stayed with a bunch of other people who were extremely nice, young backpackers. And I believe there was a dinner in the train. And most certainly there was breakfast in the train. And it was all alright. And by the time we arrived, we made a bunch of new friends who we planned to hang out with in Chiang Mai. There were two guys. I will link their Instagrams, why not. And then there was a Korean girl that somehow got lost again. We stayed at the Melia Chiang Mai, which as a hotel is beautiful, especially the rooms.

I had place amazing room and Chiang Mai itself is also always fun what happened in Chiang Mai is we got scooters we you know it's Asia you want to get around, you rent some scooters. And we even brought our licenses and everything, like we always do. So we got a scooter, we hop on the scooter, the other two guys we met in the train also each got a scooter. And we go around the corner of the scooter rental place and there is a police stop and they stop us. And they start a discussion about that our European driver's license or the US driver's license the other guys had is not valid anymore. And it was a whole discussion. And actually, one of the guys wanted to get into a discussion. And I kind of asked the police guy, hey, how much is it? And he's like, yeah, it's not a lot. It's maybe $20. And I said, OK, we'll just pay the $20, whatever. And he said, yeah, you can pay the $20. But also come with me. I will give you a temporary driver's license. And in the beginning, the police was like looking angry and serious. But the second I said, okay, we'll pay. He was like smiling. And he was our best friend and he escorted us to the police department and we were allowed to take pictures there's like a big selfie with a whole bunch of people there there are like two chinese tourists who turned up and had him and i and the two other guys we met on the train and there is a big selfie and the police guys like making funny faces like the the second we said okay we'll pay up he was all happy i guess he got his commission for the day who knows and we got some paperwork and he says okay it's not allowed to drive with your driver's license but this is the paperwork this one is your temporary license and you can use it to drive around for the next week or so in Chiang Mai so I guess that's the tourist tax we had to pay and then everyone was happy. And literally the next time we came up to the police stop, which of course there was another one, the next time we came up, we just waved our paper from afar and they were already like, oh yeah, okay, they probably got the temporary license.

Anyway, after all that, we finally made our way up to the temple. All of us on the scooters. It was maybe a half an hour, 45 minute scooter ride. So much fun, these winding roads up the mountain. And on the mountain was fun too. We went for a little hike. Quite a bit of a hike, actually. And we went to the temple and we got some blessings. We also got some nice pictures of the blessings, which was the main reason. And we bought some souvenirs. And then in the evening we went back to our hotel. And I went to my room because I had some work to do. Hatim went up to the bar. And then when Hatim asked me to come up to see him at the bar we almost got in a big discussion because you know I said it so many times we were traveling very light for me that meant I was wearing flip-flops because that's what I feel is comfortable in Asia and works most of the time, rain or sunshine. Hatim is the other extreme. He's wearing like proper hiking boots, like army hiking boots. Very heavy, very sturdy, probably very comfortable and very weather resistant too, but big and clunky. And the Milia in Chiang Mai has the most inflexible dress code and the most inflexible policies about the bar there is. So Hatim almost got in a fight with the guy because the guy wasn't allowing me in because I was wearing flip-flops. Everything else would have been fine. Shorts are fine. T-shirt is fine. Everything is fine. But I was wearing flip-flops, not even cheap flip-flops, like proper leather. Oh yeah, I talked a lot about these flip-flops the last episode. So I had these nice flip-flops. I wasn't allowed in. Tim had hiking boots. He was allowed in. The waiter was the most inflexible and most unfriendly person in the whole hotel. So very, very uncool.

And also we did not spend hundreds of dollars at their bar but in another place. The dinner we had outside was excellent. The breakfast we had next day at the Milia was quite alright. We went to the gym which we did I think two or three times during that trip, which is kind of atypical for me and even more so for Hatim if you know us. But we didn't want to give up completely on any kind of workout and movement because we had kind of a pool day planned. So we went to the gym, we did some workout. And then we were just lying by the pool having coconuts, having plates with fresh fruit.

Experiencing another very inflexible thing about the Milia Hotel, because Hatim wanted to have fries. And fries are on the menu of the poolside restaurant and they are on the menu of the main restaurant which was just like a couple of meters further behind glass doors and the pool restaurant the cold part of the food restaurants for the fruit platters and all that, that was open, so we could order all kinds of fruit. And the inside restaurant was open, so inside you could order french fries, but we couldn't order french fries at the pool. It was literally impossible to convince the guy to bring french fries to the pool from the main restaurant. We asked him if we could just order at the main restaurant, pay the main restaurant price for the fries and then bring them out and he said no you cannot. So we asked him why can we not just order french fries from the outside restaurant? Oh, because the fryer is broken or whatever. The hot part of the kitchen currently is not working. So we did not really understand. We had a lot of fruit platters instead of french fries, which probably in the end was the better choice anyway, but we just could not understand the policy or the thinking or the rules of this hotel were just like, I don't know, something's off.

In the evening we met two other guys, or actually a guy and a girl, a couple again, Leander and his girlfriend. Super nice people, really enjoyed meeting them. It's kinda sad we didn't keep the contact, we didn't keep in touch, because I guess everyone is busy but very very nice. And we went out for a place for dinner. I only have the Thai name of the restaurant here and obviously I cannot read that. It all ends in Niman. I think Niman must be the area or the shopping center or wherever that was. But again I will try to figure out which one it was, because that was really good food too. I'm looking at it. I had deep fried eggs with some kind of fried onion and chili on top. And we had roti prata and a curry and it was really nice. And we had a bunch of vegetarian dishes. Yeah super cool, very nice restaurant. I will make sure to figure out what it was and where it was and I will add it to the list of links.

And then eventually from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai and to the other places we were going there was no train anymore so we had booked a car. Very nice driver, felt pretty safe most of the time. And it also was a very cool car ride. Twice we stopped once for a pit stop to get some snacks. And they had some kind of onsen eggs. People having baskets full of eggs in there. And you could buy the eggs. And then the second stop we did was at this church. I think that was in Chiang Rai already. Pao Don Chai. Very... I'm pretty sure you've seen that on pictures. It's completely white. It's got a million of tiny decorations. It's hard to describe. I have never seen anything like it before. I suppose you could say it's quite pretty. It must have taken forever to build that.

And then from that place we didn't spend any time in Chiang Rai. From there we went to the border to Laos. The border to Laos was fun too. Leaving Bangkok was pretty straightforward. But then you sit there after the border on the Thailand side. But before you cross that river there is a bridge, like the Freedom Bridge No. 5 or something like that, or Friendship Bridge No. 5. And you sit there and you have to wait until enough people have collected to justify sending a bus and then eventually when there were enough people which was two hours later somebody sent a bus because you weren't allowed to just walk over the bridge and that bus took you over the bridge to the border on the Laos side and then on the Laos side that was funny too because there's this visa on arrival and you have to bring a picture. And obviously we didn't bring a picture because bad research. And the guy said, no problem, I can take a proper picture from you. For a fee, of course. And what the guy did is he had us look in his webcam, which is where anyone had to look anyway and that was taking the picture so another tourist tax luckily not a lot but funny how it works sometimes and then finally we're in Laos. We were staying at a little hostel called... Oh, first of all, we were staying in Huoixiai. H-U-O-I-X-A-I. And there we were staying at a hostel called The Little Hostel. Super nice, very nice owner. Very basic, of course, but also like $10 a night. At him and I sleeping in a semi-private room. Again, there was nobody else, but we had to stay in one room. They didn't have more. And there wasn't a lot to do at that place. but we walked around a bit, we went up to a little hill, and there was some kind of old fortress or like a military place. Can't really say what it is. It was definitely old.

We only stayed for one night because from there the next day we had booked a boat down the Mekong River I've always wanted to do that and we started all the way up in this little place, Huo-Wi-Chai. And we booked this boat. There are three boats. There is a very cheap boat, a cheap boat, and a relatively expensive boat, which is still not crazy expensive, but it was a hundred plus dollars for the two days on the boat, which comparably is probably a lot, but it was also totally worth it. We were maybe 10 people on that boat, a big, big boat. We had tons of space. We had our own table and our own sofa where we were just like lying down and relaxing. And that whole boat trip, I enjoyed a lot. We both enjoyed a lot. There's so much to see. You see the mountains. You see all these bridges in the beginning between Thailand and Laos. And there is a lot happening on that river. And sometimes it's slow and sometimes it's fast. And then also looking at the food they served at this boat was amazing. They called it a floating lunch. It was just a very very good time. It was far from being luxurious or anything but it was very relaxing and very very calming and just sitting there for two days looking out in the open. One time it rained a bit then you can lower down some plastic curtains but other than that we had great weather. We had a couple of stops. We went to a very very local Lao village with what I can only assume very very poor very basic living people.

The night we had, we slept at a place called... Oh yeah, that was Pak Beng, I think. And Pak Beng... Yeah, we had a very basic, not very nice dinner. Took some nice pictures of some guys playing football. Not that much to do in Pak Beng. There was the Happy Bar, which apparently is a place for backpackers. It's where all the young people went. They had the worst cocktails ever, but it was still enjoyable to talk to a bunch of random people. And then our rooms were also very basic, but they worked. Actually they didn't 100% work. Was that Hatim's room or my room? One of the rooms was completely, like literally 2, 3, 4, 5 centimeters deep underwater after the rain came in somewhere. I think it was my room. I just put my luggage on the bed and myself on the bed and I accepted that when I had to go up to pee I had to walk through water. It's a different world.

The next day the lady was going to drive us back to the boat. That was the agreement. And first she pulled out one car, or she didn't pull out one car, she tried to pull out one car, but she couldn't start it. Battery, something, I don't know, car didn't work. The other car was gone. And then she got this little scooter with a side passenger kind of thing. And then also the scooter wasn't working. We were all on the scooter including the dog and the chicken and Tim and I and the lady, everyone on the scooter. Scooter doesn't work. So eventually we gave up. Lady was very nice, apologized, but in the end couldn't help. So we got up and we walked for, I don't know, half an hour or so to the boat, which actually wasn't a big problem because we didn't have a lot of luggage. And on the boat they were already waiting for us. We had another breakfast which was very nice. Some of the people had these shots of some weird local I haven't tried that so I can't comment on it.

And then we made a stop at this rock church, which was like in the rocks, in the caves, there was a church or some temple, something religious, with like hundreds of statues people brought there into these caves. And also they showed us in another village, they showed us how to make that kind of alcohol we had tried or some of us had tried and you can buy that alcohol with a bit of ginseng and a snake in there like a baby cobra snake. I'll make sure to put the picture somewhere so you can see that.

And then eventually, at the end of these two days, the two days we loved a lot, we made our way to Luang Prabang, where I at least have been before. Our hotel in Luang Prabang was... The first one we had was really not great. First we had a room that was so extremely smelly that you couldn't even be in there for more than five minutes. Not exaggerating here. And then we had another room where the showers weren't working. And in the end, the hotel solution was we could sleep in the room where the showers weren't working and we had to shower in the smelly room. We just had to keep it short so we don't you know are in the smell all the time. That was a bit strange. And so the second night we changed hotels and we stayed at what was it called oh yeah the Pullman Luang Prabang. And that actually was a quite proper hotel. Very nice rooms. Very nice pool. Very nice view. Again, we took nice pictures there. So that was a great day. And in the evening we went to the local market in Luang Prabang for dinner. What did we have there? I kind of don't remember. Probably nothing very special then.

And then from Luang Prabang, oh yeah, before we left, we also had a hike where I almost killed Hatim. I remember the first time I was in Luang Prabang, you could go to these waterfalls, the thing that Luang Prabang is kind of famous for. You went to these waterfalls and if you walked all the way up to where the waterfall started, there were like little pools of water and you could swim there and it was absolutely amazing. And I wanted to show that to Hatim and so I made him walk up there and the poor guy was like asking for oxygen tents multiple times because he barely could make it up there but I was always like baiting him with look up there is gonna be amazing and then we were up there and it was nothing like I remembered it from many years ago. It was probably the wrong season or I don't know there was nobody up there. All the trees and stuff were falling into the water and the water really didn't look safe, not even like to swim, definitely not to drink or anything, but not even to swim it looked safe. It looked very, very dirty, very, just not nice, not as nice at all as I had remembered it so poor Hatim had to walk down again for nothing.

And then we made our way to Vientiane from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. There is a train, like a Chinese low high-speed train, that was very comfortable. And to be fair, our hotel in Vientiane was also very acceptable but I think by the time we arrived in Vientiane it was extremely hot and we were a little bit travel tired after three amazing weeks. So we spent three or four days in that hotel in Vientiane, kind of just waiting for our flight home. We didn't have a terrible time there. We just stayed there. I had a bit of work to do. I collected some tasks I couldn't do on the road, so I was doing them from the hotel. I'm just realizing I mixed something up here. We were not in Vientiane. We were in Fangvieng. The last days we spent we were in Fangvieng. Yup, I mixed it up. I'm very sorry. The last stop we had was not Vientiane, it was Vang Vieng, but everything else is still correct. So on the last day, we made our way from Vang Vieng to Vientiane and from there we took a flight back to Singapore where Hatim spent another couple days I think at a hotel and I obviously was just back home. Yes, that's the correct order. And with that, I think it's time for some Tom Sawyer.