Blogs from Muang Ngoi Neua, North, Laos, Asia - page 2

Passing the border to Laos was, as Cambodia, not without a scam! Knowing a visa costs 30 dollars and you have five dollars of admission fee, we took only the amount mentioned needed on the governements website. Of course when we arrived at the border they asked 35 dollars for the visa, two dollars extra because it was a Saturday, two dollars of admission fee and three dollars to get your passport back. This really pissed us off, as now we didn't had enough to pay for these additional fees and felt after all not that smart only having the exact amount. Luckily, a very nice couple of Chile borrowed us the missing dollars to get our passports back! Happy to arrive at our first stop in Laos, Muang Kwa, after 18 hours laying as a ... read more

13-19th Mar It was so slow. We got a boat up to Muang Ngoi Neua. We had to go over rapids, they were so fun. The whole boat went up and down. We eventually got there and went to see some caves, they were so big. When the U.S.A came over to bomb Vietnam , if they didn't drop some on Vietnam they would drop them on Laos. There were more than 100 people living there. There were still some medicine bottles, food tins and gas lamps there. There was this really sparkly rock, which had lots of crystals in. It was as high as my whole arm. It was so dark we had to use torches. On the way back we went canyoning and tubing, I used the tube. On the first rapid I was ... read more

Our trek began with a boat ride south on the Nam Ou, adn a visit to Se Kong, a Lao Lum (a tribe of lowland Lao) village (in retrospect Meagan pointed out that this visit was probably because our local guide was late, but we didn't notice at the time...). We soon began trekking and the scenery was gorgeous, lush mountains one minute, then traversing dry rice paddies, strolling through animal farms (usually situated about a 30-minute walk from the villages) and then through jungle landscape. We stopped at Ta Lem, a Khmu village, and then for lunch in its H'Mong counterpart, Yong (many hilltowns are divided in two by tribes), where we could see people's activities during the dry season, since they are not caring for the rice fields. Everywhere people were tending to their ... read more

23 Dec: First night in Nong Khiaw; and 24 Dec: Tour to Muang Ngoi (note: a number of photos appear towards the bottom of the page). Upon arriving in Nong Khiaw I and a couple other women staying at the same accomodation grabbed a tuk tuk over to “Nong Kiau River Side Resort” (http://www.nongkiau.com/). This turned out to be my highlight destination on the trip for relaxing and definitely makes my all-time top 10 list for places I’d like to return to – I can’t recommend the location enough. While it’s was expensive in Laos terms it was nothing to what one would spend on a similar accommodation in NZ, AUS or USA. While checking-in I noticed that they were having an Xmas eve dinner for the following night so I booked myself a seat – ... read more

A cute small town located on the banks of the Nam Ou river. Karsts cliffs towered over the river on both sides. We walked to the Tham Pha Tok cave where villages hid out during the second Indonesian War. Just as we walked out we became engulfed in a huge storm and we ran back to the cave with some local kids to wait it out. The next day we went down the Nam Ou river back to Luang Prabang on a private boat with some other travelors stopping by a local village and the Pak Ou Caves full of budha statues.... read more