One can go trekking in the jungle from Luang Namtha, visit 'hill tribes' etc., but I don't go there to see or do anything - it's just a nice laid-back place to be, and the pho in the morning market is good.
One can go trekking in the jungle from Luang Namtha, visit 'hill tribes' etc., but I don't go there to see or do anything - it's just a nice laid-back place to be, and the pho in the morning market is good.
Alex, I have had this pulled on me at the West Bus Station, as well as at the train station. I usually don't need a taxi at either place, just take the bus, but occasionally have wanted one and have just tried another cab, possibly after walking a block or so. It worked, total wasted time about 3 minutes.
Note that the next meeting will be at The Park. Everybody welcome who has read the book and/or has a book to propose for the following meeting.
@Tiger: Note that there are no railroads in Laos.
Raina's description is a good one, although I'd rather look out the window of the bus than listen to a book on tape - the countryside is beautiful. I also like some of the Lao music that is blared on the buses, and I suggest that you try to avoid the buses on which the passengers are 90% western foreigners.
What Raina says about not being rushed in Laos is key - I ran into a couple of traveling Americans there once who expected things to happen 'on time', and they were repeatedly getting near-apoplectic when they didn't. Sitting and just watching the rive flow is, for me, a major attraction.
As for airhead post-'traveler'-era backpackers in Laos: yeah, there are a lot of them.
Note that this is the rainy season, and in Laos it is more serious than in Kunming, even as it is in Kunming this particularly wet year. It's just getting cranked up now.
Luang Prabang is a real gem, although it's small and is way overinfested with tourists and commercialized tourism.
Suggest you go by land, it's a good trip, and you don't get bribed for the visa available to most nationalities at the border.
Another thing, really pleasant if you don't fight it: don't expect things to happen on any tight schedule.
Vang Vieng is a waste of time to stay in, full of dopey folks who think they are backpackers sitting around doing drugs & watching old US TV shows - although it's a beautiful area.
I like Luang Namtha, just over the border from China (called Nanta in Chinese - direct buses from Jinghong).
If you get way down south, go to Khone Island & the Falls area on the Mekong just north of the Cambodian border.
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Not quite what you'd call a jumping place, but not bad at all for rather standard US-type meals, not overly expensive, and with a really good salad bar that's cheap, or free with most dinner dishes after 5:30PM. You can get a bottle of beer or even wine if you really want to, but I've never seen anybody do it - maybe that's just to take out. Chinese Christian run, and they hire people with physical disadvantages, who are pleasant and helpful. Frequented by foreign (mostly North American) Christians and Chinese Christians - was started by a Canadian couple associated with Bless China (previously, Project Grace), who are no longer here, but no religious pressure or any of that. Steaks are nothing special, and I avoid the Korean dishes, which I've had a few times but which did not impress me.
As a shop and bakery, it's very good bread at reasonable prices, of various kinds (Y18 for a good multigrain loaf that certainly weighs well over a pound. Other stuff too, like granola and oatmeal that is local, as well as imported things, including American cornflakes and so forth, which some people seem to require.
Large portions, seriously so with the pizza, which is Brooklyn/American style, I guess. Convivial, conversational, good place to drink with good folks on both sides of the bar, especially after about 9PM.
Too bourgeois.
Really good pizza and steaks. The wine machine fuddles me when I'm a bit fuddled, & seems unnecessary. Good folks on both sides of the bar.
Ain't no flies on Salvador's.
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者@HFCampo: Now accept the fact that you were mistaken in literally calling for the death of all drug users and get back to a reasonable argument about drugs and the death penalty. It's really okay to do this, HFCampo, everybody overstates things without thinking sometimes, and there will be more damage done to your ego by not rethinking and restating your position than by admitting you went over the top. Other people's opinions and arguments really can improve your own thinking, they are not necessarily personal attacks - the point is not about 'winning', it's about mutual learning.
I write this not only for HFCampo, but for others who seem to think discussions, even arguments, are duels to the death, or perhaps will lead to ego-dissolution or something.
Right: it's off topic. Maybe somebody will think I shouldn't have said this. Maybe they are right - if so, say so, I'll probably pull through the enormous shame of having made a mistake, I've been getting used to it for years.
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者HFCampo: perhaps you should note that the laws you refer to about cannabis are only US laws - brings up a suspicion I have that at least some of the Americans on these forums seem often to be unconsciously assuming that foreigner = American. Are they living in an American bubble in Kunming? I'm not accusing anyone in particular, but I see evidence of this syndrome here quite a lot, sometimes almost to the point where it seems that foreigner = westerner = US American.
As for drugs, I think that killing people is a bigger problem than drug use, which doesn't usually involve killing anybody, though it often does when substances are made illegal (e.g., people with brutal attitudes involved in the illegal drug business, rather than, say, legal corporations making drones, napalm, etc.)
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者@HFCampo: Everybody affects everybody else, what's so special about casual drug users?
When you want drug users all to be killed, do you want the state you don't respect to do the killing?
I'm still not sure whether you are just putting us on.
And if this is indeed 'the only solution to the problem', I suggest we not solve it.
As for drug users contributing nothing to society, how many artists, musicians, writers and scientists would I have to name? Perhaps you'd suggest that they'd contribute more if they weren't using 'drugs' - I'm not sure you'd be right about that, but I'll entertain it as a possibility. Killing them will put an end to their drug use, that's for sure - at what cost?
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者@HFCampo: Your original comment: maybe what you say is the best argument for not thinking about everything, including drug policy, as a 'war', which is largely an American weirdness, doubtlessly associated with the nature of US foreign policy on too many occasions to need giving examples (oddly enough, US authorities very often disguise their actual wars (invasions, hired soldiers, weapons, bombs, death, etc.) as something else (police actions, military assistance, pacification, etc.)).
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者@HFCampo: trouble is that I don't think you wrote very clearly. E.g., drug 'problems' are government projects: are you talking about governments running program that encourage drugs, or government conducting programs to suppress them, or what? And what do you mean to say that governments sponsor disease and death - you seem to mean a conflict with health/medical programs, and that pot somehow interferes with them. Or do you mean something about doctors wanting the right to prescribe drugs restricted to themselves?
@blobbles & anybody else who might listen: for God's sake get out of the habit of turning (or faking) honest disagreement with somebody into personal attacks and insults. And who the hell cares about the word troll, or how it might be defined, anyway? Put me down as a committed volunteer troll, however defined, and be done with it.