Blogs from East, Laos, Asia

Known amongst travelors for its 4 day scooter loop, including the famous 7km Kong Lo Cave, we hired some scooters for a couple of days to take on the incredibly bumpy roads and amazing scenery. However after discovering a really awesome german rockclimbing resort just outside of thakeak in between karsts cliffs, we quickly ditched that idea and stayed there instead. We went rockclimbing and swam in a beautiful pool that trickled through this huge cave into a quiet river on the other side. We set out on the scooter and visited caves and swimming holes near by, scooting past amazing scenery of farms and karsts cliffs before watching the sunset on the river. The morning I left on the scooter with my all my stuff, the sky was black with clouds. It wasnt long before ... read more

Xiangkhoang, on the north east of Laos, border to Vietnam. The capital is Phonsavan literally means "Hills of Paradise". Its original name was Muang Phouan. A population of 37,000. Its lush green forest, with pine trees everywhere, rugged kartz formation, valley with plenty of rivers, caves and waterfalls. People are friendly, mostly agricultural and livestock. Peaceful and breathtaking. People have other names for this place. I called this place, The Swiss of The East. About two kilometres from the town, there is a plateau which was named Unesco World Heritage. It is the Plain of Jars. It is about 2500 years old, a megalithic archaelogical landscape, scattered at the low foothills and uphill valley. The archaelogists has discovered prehistorical burial artifacts and human remains. There are about 400 jars discovered this moment. In the morning, we ... read more

We had a brief stay in PHonsavan which was so interesting learning a bit about the Laos recent history, and the "secret" war with America. This area was heavily bombed for 9 years when America was at war with Vietnam and is still heavily affected by millions of unexploded bombs (UXO's). The Plain of Jars that we visited is one of the few sites which has been completely cleared, for tourism purposes and while we there we had to keep within markers so we didn't venture into uncleared territory. It was a very mysterious place with stone jars from 500BC which no one is too sure why their there. Archaologists guess that it may have been to do with burial rituals. There are myths of giant gods who used them for making Lao Lao (a famous ... read more

31st Jan ’12 Luang Prabang to Phonsavan (home of the Plain of Jars) Time to hit the road again, this time by tuk tuk (which was actually late this time) to the bus station and then by minibus to Phonsavan which was supposed to take about 8 hours. The minibus was a bit of a surprise as it was actually pretty large, newish and had only 8 seats in the back. The luggage all went on the roof and as there was only 9 passengers (1 went in the front) we all had a good bit of space. Not so good was the fact there were no head rests (and when you are jolting along for 8 hours this would have helped the old neck) and the small Lao boy who was travelling with us was ... read more

Armed ready with a mug of steaming Lipton tea hoping to get some creative juices flowing to explain part deux of our slightly less than comfortable journey into Vietnam! Although drinking hot tea in 30oC heat is far from ideal, but listening to a guy playing acoustic guitar is making it much more bearable. I'd much prefer to be curled in front of my dads open log fire in my fave hoody, slouchy jeans and my feet all snug in a pair of pink fluffy socks while tickling Baxter's tummy (the dog)! Grass always being greener and all that jazz, but I'm not complaining, were still enjoying every single second and wouldn't change it for the world! If I remember right, I cut the blog short last time as it turned out to be quite a ... read more

As I mentioned in my previous blog, we left Luang Prabang by express bus for Phonsavan - an eight hour journey down highway 13 and then onto highway 7. Both highways are now paved which made the journey a little less life threatening. We were lucky to have a half empty bus. There were only seven of us foreigners on the bus - and we had all been on the same slow boat to Luang Prabang. The rest of the bus was half full of Laos people. We were able to take two seats each to ourselves, which was going to make for better sleeping. At least, we THOUGHT we would sleep. It is pretty hard to sleep when the road makes a roller coaster feel tame. The road wound through mountains, following the countour of ... read more