Our time in Laos has come to an end and what a beautiful country (this may be because it reminds us of NZ!)
First stop was Si Phan Don (4000 islands) which introduced us to the Lao culture pretty quickly. The next 3 days were spent on our hammocks drinking Beer Lao and waiting for the Aussie guy to deliver freshly baked cakes to us at 5pm everyday...heaven! Sadly we had to tear ourselves away from the hammocks and visit some of the other provinces- Champasak, Savanakhet and the very western capital of Vientiane.
Viens b/day was spent in crazy Vang Vieng. This place is bizarre, TV bars,'happy shakes'and tubing down the river while stopping at bars for some infamous Lao Lao (rice whisky). We were lucky to have an awesome group of people to do the tubing and celebrate Viens b/day. Aside from the craziness of the place, the scenery was beautiful. We spent a day exploring the limestone caves around Vang Vieng with a gung-ho local guide who didn't speak english and led us off the beaten track. We reaquainted ourselves with tubes to venture into the 'water cave'(the Lao aren't very imaginative) and clambered a kilometer deep into another to swim in a pitch black and freezing underground spring.
Sharan has also made progress towards beating her fear of motorbikes and actually rode the two of us around Luang Nam Tha for a day AND she is even coming round to the idea of a motorbike tour in Vietnam Woohoo!(WHATEVA!!)We went on a 2 day trek in Luang Nam Tha. The trek itself was pretty good but the highlight was definitely reaching the Akha mountain village where we spent the night. Life in the village hasn't changed a lot in the last 1000 years or so; bamboo huts, more animals running around than people and they have a village chief! (although we didn't meet him cos he was 'unhappy' which apparently is really not good).
I did make a meaningful contribution to village life though, teaching the kids how to make paper planes! As this was the first time most of them had seen paper progress was quite slow. But, when they finished it was magic, literally, the kids thought it was magic that something could actually fly and cue hysterical plane throwing for half an hour afterwards. That night we sat around a campfire with half the village drinking a bit more Lao Lao than we should of, if you didn't you were a ladyboy (even the girls).
We've seen some crazy sights here- but the one that takes the cake is a little 5 year old boy waving to me with a cows head in his other hand...vegetarianism never looked better.
Our next stop is Viens homeland...Vietnam! Sadly, only a few weeks to go till the end of our travels :(
