And then there was one!
You find me safe and well in my last day in Luang Prabang. Tomorrow morning I will take the 6am bus for 10 hours to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. Kari and the other people that we have met have decided to take a shorter bus ride to the town of Viang Veng, to do some tubing down the Mekong. This basically means putting yourself into a tractor inner tube and floating down the river, stopping at the various pubs (and other intoxicating substance venues) along the way. I have decided against this because of time, but LP has been a great place to relax for a few days.
Yesterday all ten of us took a trek Kuang Si falls, which were breathtaking. Here there are multi tiered waterfalls falling over limestone formations, tipping into turquoise pools. It was really great, and we had a good time walking up over a tree that was over a pool, just to jump into it. At night time we strolled the markets and got some street food, which looked dodgy to say the least, but which tasted fantastic! For 25p we were given a bowl and told that we could help ourselves to anything we wanted, until the bowl was full. I took the lady at her word and had a great meal of rice, vegetables, sticky rice and mango and other weird and wonderful delights.
Today, it was up early to walk up the mountain to get a better look at the town. The mountains and the Mekong River make it a really scenic spot. Then, we took ourselves to the Royal Palace museum. During the revolution, the Royal family were exiled to the north and never heard from again, so the palace is a little eerie. There are the bedrooms and throne rooms that are all really well kept, and there were some facinanating cabinets full of gifts from other nations including swords from China, glass wear from Japan, and, amongst other things, a model moon Lander from the USA.
Now I will close because we are meeting for a drink to say goodbye to some other friends. Then, I will have some dinner and get ready for the early start tomorrow.
Hopefully, barring any bus related incidents (you can’t begin to believe the state of the roads so far) I’ll check in with you all in the Capital.
By the way, a big thanks to all who have left comments. I am trying to email you all when I get some extra time on the internet! Thank you again for reading.
I’ll leave you with a poem from one of our group who wrote it to describe her experience on the slow boat. I apologise now for the coarse language, but I thought it summed up the point perfectly!
All aboard the luxury cruise,
Along the Mekong, we do booze,
Hearded like cattle, we board the boat,
The bloody thing, it can barely float.
Luxury cruise, this is not,
The engine sounds like it’s full of snot,
Many people we do see,
Most of which are trying to pee.
Pass the whiskey, we do sip,
Bloody hell, how much did I pay for this trip?
We see two feet without the aid of a boat,
Poor bas*ard, at least the f**ker could float....
Twenty minutes, thirty minutes, forty minutes more,
It’ll all be worth it if we manage to score.................
Kate Morello
