Euroloop

Clearly I had the idea to write up this great trip we did ... about 2 years ago!

It was a really great trip - I'll summarise it now and maybe add photos later.

My idea was to take the benefits of using Interrail, in which you buy a pass allowing use of trains throughout Europe (potentially) over a period of time.  I'd done this as a youth a couple of times and thought it was great.  This time, the added benefit was that you could also use a number of ferries - and the plan I made was to travel from Paris (where we lived) to Italy, cross the Adriatic, ex-Yugoslavia, the Alps, then back to Paris.  I only had 9 days so this was enough!

I'll just say that, when you have time pressure, Interrail/Eurail is probably not economic.  For example, we started with an overnight train to Milan - this is mostly not funded by the Interrail.  Also, fast trains typically have a supplement which can end up being as expensive as cheaper (but slower) routes between the same places.
Anyway, off we went.

We departed Paris in the evening from Gare de Lyon.  It was early summer - and the day was hot.  This Italian run night train was not properly air-conditioned, while being completely full.  Also, the police entered the compartment in the early hours to harass the Tunisian guy on one of the bunks - entirely unnecessarily.

So we arrived in Milan at about 6am, with my youngest, who is autistic, looking very ill.  I was quite concerned, however it seemed to be a form of travel sickness and after 20 or so minutes he was okay.  We then found our way to the area of the Cathedral where we were to wait for an old (Milanese) friend of mine.  In the meantime we looked around the area and had some drinks in a quite reasonable café.

My friend showed us around and we had lunch together.  This was my second time in Milan - this time I liked it better, but much a prosperous European city like French or Spanish ones - according to this brief encounter.  My boys enjoyed it - both the company and, for instance, the quality ice-cream.

In the afternoon we took a fast train to Rome, stopping there briefly before going on to Naples.  The objective in the area was Pompeii, however Naples is a fascinating and charming city.  There's no question that it's significantly poorer than Milan, however there is a richness to the place - medieval alleyways through ancient crumbling buildings.  We stayed in a hotel built into a very badly maintained place - but inside it was fine - room large, airconditioner worked well.  Breakfast was around the corner at a great little restaurant, specializing of course in pizza.  Perfect with the boys.

We took the local train the next morning to Pompeii.  I was expecting it to be overrun with tourists - and that seemed to be borne out as we arrived.  But the tickets were cheap and once in the grounds, you realize the saving grace: it's just so huge!  You just have to walk a bit and you're entirely separated from everyone else, and as much as anything it is the experience of wandering in this ancient place that is most amazing - imagining how it would have been to live in an ancient Roman town.

I could have stayed longer, but a couple of hours were adequate and I didn't want to tire my boys attention.  I hadn't been sure it would be possible before I came, but I was pleased to see that their was a bus up the mountain of Vesuvius (responsible for the destruction of Pompeii) so I booked tickets.  There was little English spoken so we had to just see how it went - and this was quite interesting.  We took a minibus to a stop on the side of the mountain - and then transferred to a type of all-terrain vehicle, since the rest of the trip was on steep dirt roads.  Uncomfortable but fun!
We walked for about an hour - very hot and a bit difficult for my boys - but one we reached the crater rim, their fascination took over and we had a good time.  There was a little smoke, but no lava - to their partial disappointment!  The crater itself is huge and deep though, which was impressive for all of us.

So we returned back, very pleased by the local train.  It was crowded and in our car full of rebelious teeenagers daring eachother to do this and that... when one broke in to a control room at the end of the car I intervened - I was a little worried they might get violent at that!  In the end it was cool and they were okay with us.

We walked around Naples the next day and had some good meals - great fun "The Three Boys"!

Our next destination was Bari on the other coast so we could take a ferry to Albania.  It was an excellent high-speed train - very impressive.  We were in the front carriage.  The scenery was great rolling hills, farmland, rivers...

It was a day later in Albania that we heard that the following day's train - the same as we'd been on - crashed at high-speed killing and injuring many people.

We arrived at the centre of Bari and went about finding the port, the right ferry (basically a cruise ship) and how to get on it.  Quite involved!
We had light inflatable matresses and sheet bags - we were "deck class".  In fact the ship was enclosed so we found a place on the floor and lined up our mattresses.  We had a reasonable meal in the ship's restaurant and slept quite well.  Coming into Dulles was quite impressive - a fine port city.  I'd met a young MBA student of Abanian/Italian heritage who was their to stay with her uncle.  They helped find a place to withdraw money, and book a bus to Tirana - and we had a coffee with them.  Good people!

Tirana is a smallish quite modern city, not wealthy, not particularly attractive but interesting enough for a couple of days.  It is almost entirely Muslim but totally European - which gives it some charm.  We stayed in a backpackers place there which really added to the experience: well run, a good internal café/restaurant - even good internet.  My older son had a bad migraine there however - it's alsways sad to see a child in pain.

We took a bus the next day to Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, on the way to go on to Sarejevo.  Montenegro?  It's practically empty, that's my main impression.  That whole area would be brilliant for long relaxed holidays... I suppose this will be discovered pretty soon!

From Podgorica we took a direct route to Sarajevo.  You would have thought that a road between two capitals would be straight and well-maintained, even in that part of the world... and you would be very wrong.  It's winding, goes very high and is for significant stretches unpaved and shared with goats and cows.  It is also intensely beautiful climbing above gorges and lakes between significant mountains.  We stopped in pretty Alpine towns on the way.  Neither son (nor myself!) were travel sick to my relief.  10 hours but great!

As we crossed the border, the first sign we saw was "Welcome to the Replublic of Serbia".  I later found out this was the work of Serbian nationalists in the region - it seems the conflict still simmers... but we saw no more evidence of any hostilities - quite the contrary, Bosnia has a relaxed and rather happy feel.

Arriving in Sarajevo, we took a taxi to the AirBnB I'd arranged.  A nice little 1 bedroom flat a short walk the other side of the old historical centre - perfect for us.

TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Indochina Traversal - part 5 - Yangon and home

Central Yangon

Due to the time of year, and the relative level of development as a tourist destination Myanmar has reached, there were very few available hotels in Yangon. We had had to stop at a house on the way where the owners had a phone and would rent it out to those needing to call - as I say this is not a developed place - so as to call ahead to find a room.  Everywhere except a rather expensive place for a backpacking trip - The Panorama Hotel - were booked out.

Across the way, a typical residential building

However on arrival I managed to negotiate a cheaper price and late checkout due to our early morning arrival time.  As a result, our first view of Yangon was from a 9th floor hotel room in late morning.
Yangon is a medium sized city but in comparison with nearby capitals has the feel of a provincial town.  It is crowded but not particularly hurried.  Due to the fact that it is undeveloped, there's great charm in its architecture.  I hope that is not lost in the inevitable coming phases of its opening to the world.  There are numerous century or decades old buildings that are in bad states: Myanmar, please restore them - don't knock them down.

Down the street

My task was then to find a hotel more befitting a backpacker budget.  Luckily, taxi fares are absurdly cheap, so with the help of one son we visited all the Lonely Planet listed reasonable places in central Yangon - only two had a room so we took the best of those - The May Fair Inn.  Even given the taxi prices, we decided to walk there - and see the city on the way.  It was only a kilometer or so.

Across Yangon

After check-in, we walked to Vandoola Park that was nearby - popular with locals for family picnics and hanging out.

Myanmar is getting quite popular now but we were still rare enough to have a few requests for pictures to be taken with us - especially my daughter - all in a relaxed and positive spirit.
It's a rather diverse populace in terms of ethnicity - there are many "South Asians" - presumably Bengalis from Bangladesh amongst the anyway diverse Myanmarese.  There was no sense of conflict between the groups, rather, there was pervasive positivity.

Indochina Traversal - part 4 - the Road to Yangon

The land border crossing from Thailand to Myanmar at Mae Sot/Myawaddy had only been open 5 months.  The sense of surprise by the border guards suggested we might have been the first family to have crossed here.  Certainly we were well treated, being invited into the guard house and engaged with conversation by the officials.  Very pleasant in fact, if a little time-consuming.

Crossing the border was a stark change from that comfortable familiar modern Asia we'd come to since crossing from Lao - but Myanmar is very different to Lao.  Crowded, dim, smokey, active: exciting, while Lao was placid.  It was clear that this part of Myanmar is very, very poor.  A very crude and obvious comparison came to mind: a cross between Thailand and Bangladesh.

Street food in hectic Myawaddy

Our ride

I had read before, and it was confirmed by the border guards that to get from the border area to the rest of the country we had to cross a mountain range along one narrow road - so narrow in fact that traffic was allowed each way only on every second day.  It wasn't clear whether the next day was one way or the other.  So, having crossed the first order of business was to find out and possibly work out transport with some haste.  We checked into a hotel - the best in Myawaddy I was told, but a little shoddy really, especially for the price.  But on balance, I can't fault the service given that when I asked about getting transport to Yangon it was the Manager himself who invited me on the back of his scooter and took me to multiple offices all over town to negotiate a ride across the mountain.

Countless vehicles like this ply the awful road across the mountains

In the end we found ourselves the next morning in an aging sedan with the driver and I in the front, and 4 in the back seat - my wife and the children.  Then the fun began - that road was not only narrow, but in extremely bad condition and trafficked by outrageously overloaded pickup trucks.

Throughout Myanmar this mild narcotic is prepared and chewed

After crossing the mountains, the roads were reasonable however it became clear how fundamentally early Myanmar is in its development as a modern nation.  Government control doesn't extend to this zone - on the way to Hpa-An.  Instead there are frequent checkpoints staffed, frequently by children as young, I'd guess, as 12 though they looked younger armed with sub-machine guns.  It seems this is a known problem.  Everyone was smiling and seemed pleased to see us - I was all smiles too of course.
Internally I had a chill though.  My understanding is that this is a Karen rebel controlled area - I wasn't aware that these rebellions were so entrenched.

Fellow travellers

In Hpa-An we got tickets for a "luxury bus" - as it turned out, rather decrepit and un-heated - and at night it became very cold.  For some reason also it traveled slowly.  We arrived, exhausted, at a Yangon at about 4am - the distance of 266km therefore taking us 20 hours.  Nevertheless, somehow, that day - the New Year's Eve of 2014 - was a highlight of our trip.

Getting to Hpa-An

Food stop on the way to Yangon

Indochina Traversal - part 3 - Thailand

We spent most of the day continuing down the Namtha and into the much larger Mekong River.  Our driver made frequent stops on both sides of the river - the left side being in Thailand - delivering and picking up unknown cargo.  This is of course without any discussion with Lao or Thai immigration nor customs.  Well, up to him so long as he got us where we needed to go.

Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge

Due to the pressure of our schedule - we were to fly out of Yangon on January 3rd - I was anxious to cross the border from Lao into Thailand before the end of the day, so I'd asked for my family to be dropped at the base of the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge.  There was no pier here, so the driver found a spot without too much mud and reasonably stable rocks which we jumped to, having thrown off our backpacks.  It wasn't quite clear how to get up to the bridge and where we would go through immigration, but we found some steps and walked 1/2 hour, passed through Lao immigration and took the bus to the Thai side.

The transition into Thailand is quite obvious - a very different feel.  Thailand is more worldly and the Thais either themselves more enterprising or perhaps it's just that the tourist industry is so much more developed.  A bit of a come-down from the sense of both isolation from the world and connection with the immediate we'd felt for the previous couple of days, but at the same time the convenience and familiarity of developed Asia was comforting - 7 Eleven etc.

Chiang Kong: Lao can be seen the other side of the Mekong

Our plan was to get to Lampang because they have a centre there where you can be trained as an elephant mahout (handler) - I was thinking of getting the children to do it if possible.  Also, Lampang is not a great distance from the border with Myanmar.  But getting there is a little complicated - we had to over-night in Chiang Mai.  In many visits to Thailand, it would be my first time in this the northern capital.  Not a bad place, but very much a tourist town these days.

This elephant successfully painted a scene with similar skill to a young child.
I believe it was principally repetitive training - but impressive none-the-less. 

We saw the elephant centre, though it was mostly a form of amusement park that targeted mainly local Thai tourists.  My older children were asked to go down amongst the elephants to assist in the show - which was a treat for them.

The town of Lampang, though has real charm.  There's a long street adjacent to the river - Thanon Tlard Kao - with a number of beautiful old wooden houses with a variety of architectural styles.  There is a night market on this street - foods, trinkets.  Very much a local scene.  I have a feeling Lampang might be gathering a bit of a vibe based around this street - expect higher prices and more tourists.

 

Grand old mansion and the night market

Indochina Traversal - part 2 - Down the River

In order to avoid dangerous rapids the low water had exposed we took a bus 4 hours over un-paved road.  It was no more than 60km, but low road quality and one landslide slowed us down.

In Luang Namtha, about to depart.

Noodle soup and beer before we get on the river

Our transport for the next two days

The boat is basically the shape of a dugout canoe but powered by a 4 cylinder car engine driving a prop.  This is not the same thing as the speed boats that ply the Mekong - I took one of these 20 years ago - you had to wear a crash helmet and went at high speed over rapids.  This time it's slower but well adapted for the use.

Other than our fellow travelers (the two couples) and us - my wife and I and our 3 children there was only the driver (or captain?) and a "mate" who's job was to use an oar at the front for extra maneuverability when we entered rapids.  Neither spoke any foreign languages at all.  None of us spoke any Lao.   We didn't see any other foreigners until we were well up the Mekong the following afternoon.  This was fine.

It was initially exciting - due to the experience of the boat, and then both relaxing and interesting as we meandered with the river through rain-forest interspersed with tiny villages or river-side subsistence farms.  This is a very remote place with no access by road.  The river is the highway and boats like ours the biggest of the transport due to shallow water.  Most of the population use much smaller canoes, either using a single oar or a small out-board engine.

Take your kids to work day

The village we stayed at was multi-ethnic - united by profession rather than ancestry.  Most of the villages we had visited were each populated by just one of the 40 or so ethnicities in the region.  Here they were boat workers of various types who had gathered to form the village due to its convenient position on the river.  There is no land road to the village at all - the only accessibility is the river.

Where the action is.

The village population is no more than a hundred.  Life is obviously slow.  Walking around, up the slope of the bank where it perches I felt I'd stepped into a separate existence, parallel to the one I was familiar with.  It was disorienting but fascinating.  I painfully felt like an intruder but there was no hostility from the people there only a little shyness.  Emotionally it was intense and exhausting.

Everything happens under the huts - here spinning and weaving

The village is clearly bread-line poor.  It is mostly subsistence, with a small amount of cash derived from the river trade, which is seasonal due to the water level and some weaving.  From earlier conversations back in Luang Namtha generally for villages here in northern Lao, there are only a few months per year when there is economic activity at all.  The rest of the time the people here survive at the whim of the weather, the river and the surrounding forest.

While food is cooked on hap-hazard wood fires on the bare earth, the satellite dish is correctly mounted and positioned.

However, at every small village we visitied about 1 in every 3 huts had a satellite TV dish - even while few people had shoes.

What future these little girls?  Very hard to judge.

We stayed on mattresses on the top floor of a house built with funding from a scheme to encourage eco-tourism. 

Indochina Traversal - part 1 - Yunnan and Luang Namtha

This was actually a family trip - all five of us went including my wife (not just Dad and kids).

It took some planning and I had worries about how everyone would hold up, my youngest being 8 (a boy his older brother being 11 and sister 14), and none being used to backpacking - because that's what it was: our first family backpacking holiday.

I was not completely sure the time available was enough to complete the trip, and since I of course needed to book and pay for the flights ahead of time, that was real concern.  Further I hadn't heard directly from anyone who had crossed the land border to Myanmar (other than the internet) so there was some risk we'd be stuck there.  I should add that while the backpacking aspect was for the great fun of it, it was also to keep costs low since we have little disposable income so getting stuck - there or anywhere - would have been more than irritating if it had meant taking a flight down to Bangkok and another to Yangon purchased at the last minute.

Well, none of these negative scenarios came to pass, and while the trip was far from any prior expectation in terms of actual events, it was, in the end utterly wonderful for everyone.

The plan

My idea had been to impart experiential learning for all of us but perhaps particularly the children within a loose cultural framework: the Buddhist cultures of upland areas of Indochina.  These areas historically have been effectively a contiguous region of nations that have remained distinct from their geopolitically ruling countries due to the mountainous and forested landscape.  We needed to traverse some reasonable subset of this region taking cheap local transport without needing any special or difficult to obtain visa arrangements.
I did a little internet research on the hill cultures, but there's not much detail easily available outside academia seemingly.  Well, anyway the idea was to find out for ourselves.  I came to the conclusion that we should see a little of such each of Yunnan, northern Laos, northern Thailand and a part of Myanmar.  The map above shows the loose original plan.  Broadly we ended up following this, though the realities of doing so were not as expected - that's the "experiential" bit!

Yunnan, Surprise Surprise, Can Be Cold

We flew from Hong Kong to Kunming (a return flight), then took a one-way to Xishuangbanna (also called Jinghong or "Banna").  Since it was our first backpacking and we'd be arriving in the evening I'd looked on-line and booked what seemed a reasonable hotel for the first night.

Local architecture

My thought was to use this as a base and do a simple trek in the nearby hills.  I had an image of Jinghong as a village, basically of some mix of Chinese and Hill Tribe nature.

Multilingual

I had two surprises: Jinghong is a much more a city than a village and is very much Chinese.  Ethnic hill tribes people live within the constraints of a normal Chinese city and must conform to those norms.  It's not their city.  That's not to say there's any sense of repression (none visible) - but certainly we hadn't arrived at in the cultural space I'd been looking for.

Eat your vegetables

The other surprise was the cold.  All research (and prior experience) suggested it would be mild - dry and warm, but not hot and certainly not cold.  We had barely enough clothes and hotels in the region were not at all built to insulate from this low a temperature (5 - 15C typically).  This was an irritation, but we were aware of hot-humid conditions enough to agree we had the better alternative.

Delicious street food

Market food

So, while not a fascination of Buddhist ethnic diversity, Jinghong is nevertheless an interesting place as every Chinese city is - but with a regional flavour.

A wide variety of street food is eaten, due, surely, to the diversity of culture in the region.

Snacks

We visited a botanical garden for instance - but the interesting aspects were the walk there and the behaviour of other, mostly Chinese tourists there and towards us.  We're reasonably used to and expect this: often we're more interesting to other tourists than the tourist site itself.

I'm the interesting one...

Jinghong rests on the banks of the Mekong River - I took my older son down there, observing, even in the city, that locals use that fertile land to grow various crops.  We walked down amongst them.  We would experience the Mekong again later in the trip.

City farming by the Mekong

Christmas in Lao

"Laos", the normally given name of this country is not correct.  It's better to refer to it as "The Laos" since the 's' is in fact a plural, the country being formed through the uniting of three kingdoms.  Some, to avoid the missed plural, call the country just Lao.

We arrived there after taking the bus from Jinghong, overnighting in Mengla.  There's a sharp reduction in wealth on crossing the border - there's a shanty just there - and the road is worse.  Of course this is the far reach of a large, poor and underpopulated country.  It becomes apparent quite soon that much of the funds that reach this area come from the north.  It's also clear that the locals are dubious of the implied quid pro quo.

This time of year is high-season in Lao and in particular the trekking areas in the north around Luang Namtha, therefore I had pre-booked at a recommended guest-house there, Zuela, for the 3 following days.

Bamboo Oven

Our arrival in Luang Namtha was really the first real backpacking: we arrived at the bus company's premises which was rather distant from where we wanted to get to.  Of course it was a little different this time for how it had been for me when I first started backpacking, since I immediately pulled out my GPS phone with MapsWithMe installed which already had Zuela tagged.  Still, arrival in a strange, poor town where none of us spoke the language was exciting and a bit unnerving for my wife and the children.  So we traipsed through this new world for 1/2 hour to the guesthouse - it was a great feeling for me - sharing freedom of backpacking with my family.

Opening the Oven

The feast.

But we had (rather non-backpacking-like) time pressure - so we organized a 1-day trek in the rainforest combined with visits to villages of ethnic minorities for the next day.  It's possible to do treks of up to a week, sleeping each night under a lean-to.  That will be for when the our children are older.  We did, however, eat food found by our guides in the forest, combined with what we had bought that morning in the market, and cooked in a bamboo "oven".

The villages are poor, quiet and slow.

Hand-woven scarves are promoted as a way to bring in needed cash

They use a particular dye made from local plants.

We stayed for three days, including Christmas, which was uneventful - no-one made much of it, not the locals who are Buddhist or Animist nor travelers who've come this far to get away from such things.

This guy is "The Chinese" who's lived there 40 years.  He sells noodles or exchanges it,
weight for weight for rice since villages very often have no money at all.
He then uses the rice to make more noodles.

A "machine" to de-husk or crush various agricultural products

In the Luang Namtha market

This is a trap for snakes or rats, made entirely from forest materials.
The animal goes in one end and triggers the other causing the log to fall.

Down the River

We had to head to Thailand but could reasonably spend a day or two getting there.  The plan was to go to a town near the border by bus, stay there and look around, then head across.  But then I saw advertisement for trips down the river (the Namtha).  I'd thought this was only possible earlier in the year due to the low level of the river, but on asking, they said is was possible (on an adequately small boat).  Could we organize to go all the way to the Thai border?  Yes we could!  - but we'd have to book the whole boat, which was pricey.  A fellow traveler then mentioned he'd seen a note up on a notice board asking if others were interested in joining their trip - so I inquired.   In the end I convinced them - two couples - to join the trip I was organizing.  There followed two full days entirely disconnected from the outside world - we saw no outsiders and met no-one who could speak English.