Hit the rock!

Tired of being on the road, so 4 weeks of climbing in one area sounds like an idea.
Till now i have had 7 climbing days and 2 rest days. Already on first afternoon I met Boris from Switzerland who was also came alone and also wanted to climb routes of grade 6a, 6b, 6c and maybe some 7a. We decided to climb together during his 10 days stay. Just super! Yeah, I like to meet many people and climb with them, but its still better to have a bit more fixed climbing partner, otherwise I neet to search for loners every day or join some bigger and thus less flexible group. It has been raining every day, but its actually not that big problem because there are enough overhanging walls, so we just need to find a cap between rain showers to move between walls. Things are always wet anyway, because the humidity is high and its not possible to dry things.
Usually mornings are nice and partly sunny, in afternoon there is rain, then again ok, in evenings also rains quite often and at nights it also tends to be quite rainy. Wrong season 😂

sometimes you need to work a bit to charge your stuff

cave man

there are weird creatures in every step

low tide

what to do with trash? if there is no recycling system and removal of carbage, then its better to just make some art

arboritium

evening, low tide

morning, good weather.... dont worry, it changes always at noon/afternoon.... 13 or 14 o'clock

view from Melting wall, one of many climbing walls

Express hitchhiking from Vang Vieng (Laos) to Krabi (Thailand)

2 days in Vang Vieng was enough. First day I even had some climbing on Sleeping wall, but it started to rain soon, so it was 2 or 3 routes only..... and yeah, rope rental was too expensive to repeat it next day. At least my climbing partner was cool.... a guy from Israel who was also missing climbing. We met randomly in a bus from Luang Phrabang to Vang Vieng.

2nd day i tried to find another wall, but it was located wrong in 27 crags (a website for climbers). So i ended up in army gordon.... I walked back to town where I met two french hitchhikers who had made all the way through Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China by hitching. We went to rice fields to get lost, had a beer an played football on old airport area with a group of local guys.

rice field, Rafael and Clement

At night i met mostly people who had came there only to get drunk of free drinks that are offered during happy hours in bars. Thats what they come to do in Vang Vieng. Its mainly party town..... happy pancakes (they put some mushrooms into pancakes, so if you eat them, you will maybe get high... who knows...). I have different method to get high -  climbing of course 😂.

Next morning i started to hitch towards the capital of Laos - Vientiane.

It was first time when I got a ride easily in Laos. Directly to Vientiane. After some km of ride there was an other hitchhiker and driver picked up also him. A russian guy doing trip around the world by hitching.

Night in Vientiane, some karaoke with locals, a lot of good spicy food and back to road again. Just 20 kms to border of Thailand.

For evening i got to Suburbs of Bangkok, then it got harder. There were only taxis. After 5  kms of walking one motorbike picked me up and took to center of the city. How to get out? Walking, another motorbike, police and bus station. A bus to Pecheburi and hitch the road again. Long day on the road. I was picked up quite fast but people tend to move only 20-30km distances on the rosd to Krabi, so i needed to change cars many times... 10 timews approximately.
I was lucky. just before getting dark i was picked up by Kae who also hosted me in Phangnga, 100 km from my destination Tonsai.... and next morning she took me to the port where there are boats going to Railey beach  which is only 1 km from Tonsai.

monkey

another monkey, called Boris

try to protect your food, or...

So it was 3 days from Vang Vieng to Tonsai. quite good for SE Asia.

actually there were many interesting and weird things that hapened to me on the road, but i am just too lazy to write about it now.  I am in climbing paradise where i will stay next 25 days and deffinitely i am not going to spend itby writing..... but now its raining and storm is coming, so i even dont know if we can go climbing tomorrow...

Laos and its relationship with european stomach

After climbing Fansipan I just had a nice evening in Sapa and then I escaped back into the endless middle of nowhere. Hitchhiking in Vietnam is not really easy... they really dont have this kind of culture and i am not able to explain it as I dont speak Vietnamese and there are really few people who speak english fluently enough. Somehow I still got to Dien Bien Phu for the night (hitching a bus... they were ok with not paying which makes even harder to understand their mentality.... people who are anyway going to same direction dont stop, but busdrivers who are riding people to make living are ok with bastards like me 🤷😉).

I was "wild" camping in Dien Bien phu city just under a small roof between houses. Next morning i did some shopping... only souvenirs I wanted were the local coffee maker (or filter.... or how to call it) and coffee itself..... and i had the possibility to wash my hair in the shopping mole, so it was doubble win. It was already 8 in the morning, so it was time to get back to road ( yep,in Asia people tend to wake up, eat and go to sleep much earlier than in Europe - wake up before 6, have breakfast at 6-7, lunch at 11 and dinner at 19-20, at 22 many people already sleep. Compared to my routine everything gets done ca 2 hours earlier).

Getting out from the city took a lot of time and many kms of walking. Finally one car filled with young guys gave me a lift to the border between Vietnam and Laos where I needed to wait 2 hours, because they had lunch break. In canteen they didnt serve me... i dont know why. I wanted to get the same food that locals were eating, but for some reasons they didnt want to sell it to me... lady who worked there was just looking at me with angry face. Real hospitality I need to say.

At 1 pm i finally started to cross the border. The border belt between two countries was really wide, maybe 4-5 km, so i was really lucky that one guy with motorcycle offered me a lift to Laos. It was raining heavily..... To get Visa on the border i needed to fill some papers but because of strong wind papers wanted to fly away, ending up in a small pool.... it would be much more friendly to provide some room for people who need to fill those papers 😒
Visa costs 30 USD, or if you have Euros, then still 30. +20 000 kip (Lao money) for service on sunday or after 4 pm. + another 30 000 kip for some other stamp.
so all together it was 40 USD.

The same guy with moto gave me lift to next bigger village.... some 60-70 kms maybe. It was physically quite hard, because the road was curvy and mostly going downhill, so I was always pushing the driver forward, away from the seat.... to avoid it, i needed to hold myself fixed with my legs.

Already in the first village I felt big difference between Lao and Vietnamese people. Differrently from Vietnamese nobody said hello or smiled to me. They didnt pay any attention to me actually, which was nice actually.... but when i went to ask in a canteen if i can go to toilet the answer was no and they even offered me an angry glimpse. It was similar also in other villages that i crossed to get in Louang Phrabang.
I got a ride to Moang Xai in furgone...

view from furgone

there were already 3 women and a small boy sitting on the floor. Of course they started to ask for 10 USD in the middle of the ride, even though i explained the situation already in beginning.
In Moang Xai some locals recommended me to put my tent next to police office, because they thought it would be  most safe. It was safe, but the result was 2 hours of showing my passport, things in my backpack etc. First i set my tent next to the building, but then one guy got the idea that its not safe there and i should put tent inside the building.... so i needed to pack my tent again, take it inside and mount it again. WTF, why didnt you say it before? I already felt tired and weird in my stomach (i ate some tasteless bbq meat, sticky rice and eggs... something of it was not really acceptable for my stomach). All night long there was washing machine working in my stomach and i probably had quite a high fever because i felt very cold.

I got up with head ache and still the bad feeling in my stomach. Even thinking about food made me feel like vomiting.

this beauty matched well with my mood and feelings

Hitchhiking didnt work at all, so i tried to walk but i felt too weak for that. After 5 hours of hopeless walking/waiting i got a ride to somewhere in between Moang Xai and Louang Phrabang. I got some more angry glimpses and after 2 hours of hitching I ended up in a van (local bus-like thing) which took me to my destination for 4 dollars. At least there were two person who spoke english (one of them from Lao and another from Denmark). The engine of the van stopped working10 kms before destination, so we were waiting another 40 minutes for another van to pick us up. Here moving from one point to another takes time.... Distance doesnt count that much.... more important is to pay attention on relief and conditions of roads and also on possible villages where the van will stop to buy some vegetables or something..... in small villages food is cheaper, so usually there are some shopping breaks during the bus ride. My stomach was still unhappy

And still is ;(

But today (12-th of sept) was better day. I met an British guy in hostel with whom we decided to visit Kuang Si waterfalls just 30 kms away. How? First we were thinking of going by tuc tuc, but as we were both missing some physical exercise, we changed our minds and decided to go by bicycles. There is a bike rental just in the guesthouse, so it was easy. Well, biking there during midday was not the easiest thing to do, especially with this bloody washing machine in my stomach, but...

natural swimming pool just above waterfalls

dont look down!

a small surprise. Guess if i was scared

buttery butterflies

some spider nets in a cave?

somebody I met in the cave