We apologise that it has been a while since we last updated you of our travels but internet seems few and far between. We enjoyed our last night in Luang Prabang and bestowed a beautiful gift to Sophie for her 21st birthday - Cobra Whiskey. Essentially a bottle of whiskey with a cobra in it, and yes she did drink it, did we - no way! It smelt horrendous!
We then left with half the gang and got into a minibus for a 7 hour journey to Vangvieng. Little did we know that it was going to be 7 of the most intense road, which I like to call the Road of Doom. Words really struggle to exaplain the experience - for those of you at home imagine a single lane Clyde Mountain, twice as high with curves and corners that somewhat resemble the pattern of a sand vipers tracks. That combined with a multitude of hazards meant this road was not for the faint hearted. Not only did we have to deal with cows lazily sleeping in the road, chickens playing chicken with the cars, significant landslides that left the road covered in a dense red mud, a worrying lack of guard rails and what seemed like the imminent head on collision as our driver overtook on countless blind corners, but the bumps left us feeling as though we were children being bounced on our parents knees for hours on end. On the plus side we saw some amazing scenery and got to play high among the clouds. We eventually did make it to Vangvieng to enjoy 2 days of tubing!
Tubing - pretty much hiring an inner tube and floating down the river. We were lucky to have a few rain free days as tubing was indeed cancelled the day before we got there. Even still 80% of the bars had been demolished along with the slides, swings and drinking options. The resiliance of Laos people is astonishing as on the second day - when the river was much slower - 5 bars had popped up out of the mud! Two days was more than enough and we left our travelling buddies and are now flying solo for a few days.
Today we took on the Road of Doom for the second time... although the landslides had been cleared it became apparent that in sections so did half of the road. We still dealt with the usual animal here or there and the new driver took some rather hair raising overtakings. But we have made it safe to Phonsavan with only a flat tyre to add to the stress. Tomorrow we are going to check out the Plain of Jars and the devasation that the Secret War has had on Laos.
Until next time.
L&R
