RE: Traveling to Southeast Asia: Night train to Chiang Mai, the unofficial world capital of digital nomads
Thank you! When I read your post, memories come from my own trip to Southeast Asia.
I decided to travel around Laos with Stray Asia, as I had good experiences with them before. From Chang Mai we traveled to Laos and then took a slow boat for two days to Luang Prabang. I liked the fact that they chose a home stay in a local village oppose to staying in a guest house which you do if you travel with the regular slow boats. It was really interesting to see how the locals live and they even did a traditional ceremony for us which was an unforgettable experience. This pass offers you the option to hop-off and I would recommend you to stop in Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng and perhaps Don Det a little bit longer than suggested, as there is a lot to see and do and those are really the highlights of this trip. Otherwise you spend a lot of time in the bus. I unfortunately didn't have the time to do that, but still managed to see the highlights in the given time frame. For the time we were in Laos we had our own bus, which was super convenient and comfortable. One of the biggest hassles traveling in South East Asia is organizing your transport and then spending long hours in a full and uncomfortable bus- Stray was a great alternative for that and worth spending a little bit more money on. We did a lot of stops on the journey and visited temples, waterfalls and many more things that you would usually skip. We had a local tour guide coming with our group and since he was from Laos he could give us a lot of information about his country and help to translate in remote areas. He suggested activities, accommodation and restaurants where we could eat together, but was also very helpful when you wanted to find an alternative. The accommodation that Stray chooses are guest houses with twin or triple rooms that usually have their own bathroom. They were basic, but clean and there was nothing to complain about. As I was traveling alone I stead one night in a different place in a dorm room, for the other nights I shared the room in the Stray accommodation with people I met on the tour and shared the costs. My highlights of this tour were Luang Prabang, tubing in Vang Vieng, seeing the stunning waterfalls in Pakse, cycling around the 4000 islands and seeing the caves in Khong Lor. If you want to see places that are off the beaten track, traveling in South East Asia for the first time or don't have that much time and don't want to spend your time figuring out how to get to place- then Stray is definitely for you.
Wow that story actually deserves a post for itself. I bet you would get some nice upvotes on that :)
I also thought about going to Laos via the slow boat, but I decided against it, because I only had 2 weeks to spare and I felt like that was not enough to explore Laos properly. Instead I flew to the south of Thailand. My plan is to visit Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia the next time I get to Southeast Asia.