Laos is amazing. It is a small country on the border of Thailand, China and Vietnam. We arrived there after a long long long slow boat journey that took two days. The boat on the first day was not bad. We had room to move and cushions to sit on. We willed away the time by having a few beers and taking lots of photos of the amazing scenery. I wont bore you with scenery talk only to tell you that we saw heaps of really old school villages set up on the banks of the mekong. So so cool to see how the other people live. We stopped overnight in a town called Pak Beng. You can get Opium until your heart is content but definitely no internet or power after 10.30pm! Small small town with the best bacon, egg and cheese bagel ever!
From there we jumped on the boat for the second leg. This time the boat was smaller, more people were crammed on and we stopped to pick up a shit load of locals including live animals. Very very very very long day. My ass was numb and our nerves stretched to their limit. After 9 hrs of going 30kms an hour we made it to Luang Prabang.
Luang Prabang was gorg. Amazing food, coffee and people. Monks in orange robes walking the streets and I have to say the best massages so far. The people drive on the right side of the road and the town is very modern art deco. They have night markets and the best food stalls so far. We often got noodle soups for 50c and freshly bbq whole fish with sticky rice and chilli sauce for $3 awesome. Luang Prabang is modern but still has a night curfew of 12am. We found that out the hard way on the first night by getting locked out of our guest house and then told off harshly by the chick in charge. Worse than being at your parents house when you 15! No surprise we left there the next day and found somewhere new. The only place open past 12am is the local bowling alley. We ended up there until 3am drunk bowling. Loved it. Got to bed a bit late that night and a bit pissy so no surprise we woke up late with only 15 mins to pack, pay for the accommodation and get to the bus stop for our bus to the next town of Vang Vieng. Oopps!
Vang Vieng is a small country town that tourists go to primarily for the tubing. Thats where you hire a rubber tube and jump in the Mekong and float down river stopping in at all the make shift bars on the river banks. The tide takes you and there is a guy at each bar that throws you a rope as your coming past to pull you in. Each bar has something different. The first had a flying fox. Jess and I had a go and loved it. I lost my ring and smashed my heel and Jess did a great big belly flop!
Another bar was a big mud pit. Hilarious. By this stage everyone was well on their way to being fairly drunk and mix that with mud calls for a lot of people falling over at your feet. It was also interesting to see that no matter where in the world you are when Kings of Leon "Sex on fire" comes on everyone from every country sings at the top of their voice.
After this bar we went to one more before we timed out. I was having buckets of local whisky, ice and coke. Drunk is probably an understatement. We jumped (fell) back into our tyres and had a brilliant (not) plan to keep floating down the river to our accommodation instead of getting in the bus like everyone else. There we were floating in the middle of the river in the dark on our own. Jess with no tyre only holding on to mine! It didn't take long for my imagination to go wild and think hang on a sec, there could be good knows what animals in this river and no one knows this is where we are... shit shit shit. I made Jess pull us in to the bank and we climbed up and into a wet, rain soaked vacant lot in the middle of nowhere with no lights and tried to find our way to a road and a lift into town. We lost thongs, money and god knows what else but we did find a road and a lift and all good was restored.
The next day hungover to hell we left Tubing central and headed for the capital Vietienian.
We stayed here for 3 days and did basically nothing! Played a lot of chess on the riverbank where they had lots of foodstalls and low lying tables with candles. Relax to the max.
I was lucky enough to find an awesome yoga teacher who was actually from Australia. I had a private lesson for an hour and half and then met Jess at the pub for lunch. Being the monsoon season it rains a hell of a lot but nothing like what I saw this day. We were having lunch and within an hour we went from no rain to the streets being flooded and water knee deep. In an hour! The water was coming through under the door to the restuarant by time we left. Woa.
Well that's it for Laos. We took a 13hr bus trip to Bangkok to fly to Vietnam that day. We got ripped off with the bus and were not happy jans at all but even so we made the flight and shouted ourselves a nice hotel room (instead of the usual dive of a guesthouse) in Hoh Chi Min!
