Sawbadee! We are now in Luang Prabang (Lew-Ong Pra-Bong) and Brock has finally shaved so I don't recognize him anymore.
This is undoubtedly the most charming city I've seen in over two month! It's the perfect partnership between Asian and French colonial architecture (or so I'm told).
We've been here about a week and haven't gotten up to too much. I suppose I should discuss Laos a little bit seeing as how I figured we'd be here about a week and have now spent over 3 weeks here! The people are incredibly different from Thais and Cambodians without regard to how laid back they are.
Where, in those two countries, you can't walk half a block without someone trying to sell you something, but here everyone's pretty blase about entrepreneurial endeavours. Tuk tuk drivers even have hammocks hanging in their tuk tuks! When they see you walk by they'll slowly lift their hides and say, "tuk.... tuk" in a mildly interrogative manner that only half suggests they're actually interested in acquiring your business.
It's a nice relief. Even the child peddlers just hold out their baskets of crap and immediately leave you alone if you shake your head. In Cambodia they would follow you for a half hour and rap off their sales pitches 37 times before they'd surrender.
Anywho, it is lovely here and we went to visit one of the large waterfalls yesterday which turned into a huge ordeal because we were given the most dodgy tuk tuk the city has to offer and it stalled all of 6 times on the twenty minute journey turning it into an hour long journey. Brock had to get out and push, haha and when we were finally going good a truck careened into our lane and our driver had to slam on the brakes which really wasn't good for the vehichle so it took Brock and 6 little boys to push and push and until we found a downward hill to get the damn thing going again!
When we finally got there it was certainly worth it as the Kuang Si waterfall is gorgeous. And like every "trek" we make, there's always some indefinable path that Brock thinks will take us somewhere cool (which, to be fair, it does half the time) though we have to mountain climb for a good 40 minutes to get to the top. It did have a fantastic view of the top of the waterfall, but I had already slipped into a foot of mud by then so I hardly felt it was worth it. And there was a leech on me. Yuk.
Oh I forgot to mention, (with the exception of New Zealand) the 6 hour ride from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang provided some of the most spectacular landscape/scenery I have ever seen. I'm surprised more movies aren't filmed here.
Tomorrow evening we leave for Vietnam for a hellish 24 hour bus ride! Fun times to be sure. I believe we're going to be ending in Vinh which is a bit central and then we'll be heading North for a bit and then working our way south back through Vinh again. I know it seems silly, but it's actually one of the better ways of getting to Hanoi via bus from Luang Prabang. It's been a huge pain in the ass trying to work out routes and border crossings due to these not being really developed countries and all.
Still trying to sort out Vietnam though as that typhoon or hurricane Ketsana completely flooded most of central Vietnam so I'm not sure if we're even going to get to see some of the good things there like Hue or Danang (which has the beautiful China Beach) but is now all flooded. I think it's really rude of that storm to impede on my traveling, what a bitch.
Well, I'll talk to you next from 'Nam!
