We Love Laos! : D

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Time to bring you up to date gang.... we've been a bit slack on the blog but as you will hear it is not really the Lao way to rush/work/do things on time... ''don't worry, no problem, we have time''.......

We were in Laos for a month so this may be a long entry, but with none of you at work because of the snow we've heard sooo much about, you've got time.......

Where do we start with Laos.... well all we can say is we thought it would take a lot to knock India off the top spot for our favourite place, but Laos has probably done it. There is nothing negative we can say about Laos, the people the food, the fun, the scenery, the drinks, the vibe is all top notch.

We left behind the floods in Vietnam in hope of finding sunshine and after 24 hours of moving from cramped buses to even more cramped buses and trapsing through medievil border crossings - we found it! woohoooo!

It all began in Vientiane, the most quiet, laid back capital we've ever been to. There wasnt much to do, but we were pretty knackered so had a toast and an amazing meal down by the Mekong river at sunset (note: beerlao, probably the best beer in the world ever! Carlsberg????? whatever). We only planned to skip through the capital in one night but we found ourselves sucked in by the way of life and slowed down. took our time and stayed a couple of days. The common phrase of ''we'll do it tomorrow'' was becoming more common. Even the food was lazy, they bring you a cauldron of hot flavoured water with a tray of raw meat, veg, eggs, noodles, chillis, garlic etc. and you just do as you like. and it turns out we like deliiiicious!

even though there was very little to do except amble around we begrudgingly left our skank, cat baby mutant infested paper wall hotel behind to head to fun mecca - Vang Vieng. My (mark) memory of this place is hazy in parts so I'll leave it to Hannah to divulge the info and gossip.....

Heheee! Yeah Vang Vieng was amazing!! we local bussed it there, pretty smoothly and checked into a really nice hotel, as its always good to have a oasis of calm when you know your gonna get waaaaasted all day long.. erm yeah so tubing - tubing is the thing to do here, so on our first morning, we woke up, bought some essentials such as bacon, egg, sausage, beans and short shorts and headed off bleary eyed to get our tubes

Once we got the beasts we headed off in a tuk tuk with about 10 other people, to the top of the river. When we got there, the landscape (while we could still see) was breathtaking, it was a crystal clear river lined with huge green mountainous karsts (wikipedia karst as we had no idea what one was) well, its basically a massive craggy limestone rock... but we're still not sure why its not a mountain. anyways... the music was already pumping at the first bar, the energy and nerves were high and it was mulberry mohitos all round (YUM!) then we plopped into the rather cold water and floated off, still not sure what was ahead. 100 meters down it hit us - a plastic bottle on a rope that is - it hits you in the face pretty much - you grab on and are dragged over to the next bar, a wooden platform, filled with happy people, loud music and Laolao a' flowing! (Laolao is Lao whiskey and it is LETHAL think nail varnish remover mixed with acid...)

We were sittng, drinking, chatting, our tube crew ever expanding and then we noticed the rope swings and zip wires. We thought they were pretty big at the first bar but as you drift down they just get bigger and crazier.

I think I went on every rope swing about 20 times, they were amazing. such a rush. I was high on adrenaline and buzzing. The bigest one must reach 20m into the air at the highest point and there are 2 options - maximise your time on the swing by swinging back and forth or let go at the highest point and fly like batman....

P.S. all the talk of ropeswings is Mark. Hannah did not go on any no matter how much dutch/laolao courage she downed.

yes Mark is right - I (hannah) was NO WAY going on them they were sooo dangerous!! smashed people had to climb up a massive rickety ladder, THEN hold on tight enough to stay on till the end then aim themsevles into the deep bit i.e. there were rocky bits! ALSO there was an almost constant flow of people swimming and tubing past that could've easily been splatted.
Mark got absolutely obsessed - he was as 'high' as he said. We'd get out our tubes and I'd say 'Marky do you want a bucket?' (for example) and he didnt hear as he was already half way up the ladder! I was so scared everytime he did it (being the paranoid girlfriend I am) he was so obsessed he even crawled up the bank (not the steps) like some kind of Rambo freak and smeared mud all over his face in a sort of tribal ritual and swung back in to wash it off. It was a bit weird, hilarious, but he was happy as larry, who was also a bit of a swinger..! : )

so tubing went on like that, float, bucket, swing, bucket, float, until the sun went down... and there was a bit of boogying round a big fire at the end! back at base we sat zombiefied like everyone else for a while, and then went off to parrrrty! although, it didnt actually last that long. The whiskey/beer/no food/sun/adrenaline overload/tube combo was cleary too much for mark, and before long he was waaaasted - it was incredible. He actually passed out ON THE DANCEFLOOR, well it was more of a STAGE. (I actually did a joke 'i'm so drunk i might pass out impression, that turned into an i'm passed out for real with my eyes open - - jokes.)
well....the story varies depending on who you talk to!! (trust the more sober one!!)
we had to leave the party, and I made Mark drink a whole bottle of water, I thought he was gonna die!! (drama queen)
as he fell off the bed and tried really hard to clean his teeth he said it was probably 2am anyway...it was actually 10.26. Oh what a night!!

Hannah has not allowed me to tell any stories about her being wasted on past occaisions due to her cleaner than clean image, but one day i'll spill the beans........

That was us for 2 days (the second day we were pikey and did it without the tube), we met the best people had the most fun and after a third day of recovery we hooked up with a couple of cool Irish tube buddies and headed to Phonsavan for a change of scene and pace and it turns out a change of weather.

Phonsavahn was a weird ghost town built on the basis of a special tourist attraction. The plain of jars.. woooooooo. It is a feild scattered with ancient stone jars and UXO's (unexploded mines and bomblets from the Vietnam war). From the title it is more plain than jar. We were expecting millions of jars as far as the eye could see. However it was a few dozen in 3 small spots. No one knows why the jars are there, which is quite cool, its a bit like Laos version of stonehenge, but it was sooooooooooooo freezing cold there, to be honest we couldnt give a s**t about jars...
thank goodness we were with fun people!! they asked questions about the trenches and we talked about jar lids, it was great! and you can always rely on an annoying person nearby to give you something to make fun of. (enter loud ignorant single Aussie lady from HELL)
but despite the slight overratedness of the jars and the awful weather and souless town, it was pretty fun! We even found an amazing Indian restaurant on the first night and Ivan and Rosie lost their Indian food virginity (and are subsequently ADDICTED!) then on the 2nd night, when we were about to get hyperthermia the hotel dudes invited us into their living room to warm ourselves up by their fire.

We sat and chatted for ages with one of the locals, partly because it was the only warm place in town, but mainly because he was such a funny guy. He claimed to have 3 wives, no problem. each one in a different house, no problem. If any of them ever gave him any lip, he'd show em the back of his hand, no problem. He used to be a monk, for 9 days. no food, no cigs, no booze and no sex were not rules he could follow, he was a baaaad monk..... He also explained to us the finer points of the working day. Wake up, drink, cook some eggs, something on tv??? watch. Nothing on tv??? sleep. go to work when you want, then drink until you fall asleep, maybe eat, tv??? and so on.......he had no problems..... what a happy guy, he warmed our hearts as much as the fire.

The next morning we all headed up to Luang Prabang, the ancient capital. it was a really beautiful town, with lots of temples, pretty little houses and a fantastic night market. We visited a nearby waterfall and it was stunning, we've never seen such naturally blue water before it didnt look real!! mark jumped into a lagoon - off a tree, and then off a waterfall!!!!! hannah had heart failure again! but still plucked up courage to trek right to the top of the highest fall where we all stood looking over the edge, about 100 meters down, crazy!!! (Unfrtunately we have a gap in our snap happy adventures because our cameras were both broken, : ( Besides that we rented bikes again to roll around and just soaked up the history and atmosphere. It is a really religious town and there is a midnight curfew and monks come around at 6am begging for food. They call it offerings but begging is begging....... hmm yeah that was a spectacle. we dragged our asses up at 6AM just to see a load of fat american (we presume) tourists giving them sticky rice whilst blinding the poor buggers with super gigantic american style camera flashes. good times.

A few Indian (thanks to our Irish addicts) meals and early nights later we said a sad goodbye to Ivan and Rosie and were heading further North to Huay Xai. Via a 2 day boat with a stop over in a town colder than ice. It is really weird to be somewhere so cold but so close to the equator.....

The reason we were heading to the mediocre border town of Huay Xai was to embark on the only thing we booked in advance since our flights!!!! the GIBBON EXPERIENCE!! Woop Woop!!!!

This is the trek of all treks - you spend 2 nights in an amazing wooden tree house and spend the days getting up at dawn, trekking through the jungle and zip wiring on massive long cables, really fast and really f***ing high! The wires are about 150m above the ground so you soar above the trees, and can see for miles and miles over the jungle covered mountains and valleys. It was so beautiful and just the most incredible experience!! Once we had settled into the tree house after a day of zipping and jungling and waterfall swimming, the guides would zip off in the dusk sun to bring us the best food. Once bringing a full kettle of boiling water down the zip wire. They were crazy, singing and spinning in their harnesses as the zipped above the trees.

We were more quiet, pensive and nervous on our first few zips, but we soon got the hang of it enough to look around as we went along!

oh we had a really cool group aswell! weirdly, after coming all this way to stay in a remote jumgle, we were with 4 Essex lads haha! despite coming from there.. (blah!) they were really cool and we had loads of fun, they were WAY more prepared than us, they had speakers, ipods, hip flasks and everything!!! although getting drunk 100 meters above ground with no one around is not really recommended...! One guy went down to the lower level to use the toilet and went right instead of left and almost stepped over the edge!!! It wasnt Mark...weirdly....

The gibbon experience ( even though there were no gibbons in sight) is easily one of the highlights of our trip, such a unique experience that we will remember for a lifetime. 3 days later we were back in Huay Xai, having drinks with the guys in a bar, and it all felt like a really surreal dream! We were right on the Thai border, we could see Thailand over the river but we still had 10 days left on our visa and we wanted to make the most of Laos having had the most amazing 3 weeks. We needed to get south as fast as possible and luckily there was a flight the next day.

As we neared the airport, our initial 'yay we're saving loads of time by flying' became, oh crap what are we doing, that plane is 50 years old with propellars, the terminal is a shack, the most technical peice of equipment is a large red windsock and passport control is a massive book that they write your name in. But hey, it must be safe as that book is really big.........oh and lonely planet said 'is it safe? pretty much.'
we went for it. and as you are reading this you can probably guess we made it, just......
it was REALLY scary and I (Hannah) would not do it again, no way!!! I would (mark) Although I think they should replace Laos airlines with a massive rope swing....

We skipped back through Vientiane and headed south to Na Hin, a sleepy village in the mid-south area. A small town with one karaoke bar and another waterfall. It was nice, the people were unbelievably friendly!! every person you walk past gives you a massive smile and a ''sabadeeeee'' (thats 'hello') it was so lovely!! we were in the area to visit ban kong lo and tham kong lo - a 7km cave/river that cuts through another massive karst, or is it a mountain, and the village nearby.

We'd never been in a cave of that scale before, it was breathtaking literally! we climbed in our little wooden long boat (with our new mate American Paul) and 2 young guides, it was a boiling hot afternoon, but after being in the cave for a minute you forget that, its cold and PITCH black. really scary!!! After 5 mins in the cave the boat scrapes along the bottow and the guides say ''out, out!!'' I( can tell you It is quite scary walking up rapids, in the dark, in a river 500m underground..... you stand there, with a pitifully inadaquate torch (the wind up baby) shining it around the edge and you get a sense of how huge this thing is. at some points its 100m high and 100 wide too. crazy. at one point we climbed up the side to see some amazing stalagmites and stalagtites (knowledge!) they were so cool, the whole thing looked so alien though, the shapes were so meticulous and strange they didnt seem natural..

We made it through to the light at the end of the tunnel, drank some Laolao and made our way back through the cave to ban kong lo village.
this was a great experience!!! we did a 'homestay' where you pay a family to stay in their home with them, they cook you dinner give you a bed and breakfast too! we met our family, which turned out to be this cute little old couple, they spoke absolutely no english, but we think their names were Pa and Kong... while they were doing dinner, we went to explore the village.

The kids were so adorable, when you see one they are shy as anything but as soon as they are in a group they are really brave and outgoing. They'll play with you with high fives and hysterical laughter all round. They are all posers for the camera, even the adults. We spent hours walking around saying hello, playing football, playing chase, being mobbed and showing everyone their picture. The village was so picturesque aswell, the sun was going down and my favourite smell of firewood was in the air, there were puppys, chickens, goats, pigs, and cats everywhere and the little wooden huts with thatched rooves were so idyllic, I could've stayed for days.. By sundown our faces were hurting from smiling soo much and we were lost.

We eventually made it back to our house, and dinner was ready!! it was really tasty, and just as we were about to go to bed (at about 7) Pa and Kong's neices came over to say hello - they actually said hello! they spoke English yay! they even bought their English school book over it was so cute! so we practiced with them for ages, they would practice their english and we would our limited laos. It was really fun and we actually improved on the 2 words we knew in Laotian.

We headed further south to our final destination - Si Phan Don, the 4000 islands. Our island of choice was Don Det...
Wow, we thought everywhere else was chilled out - here was chill city. we stayed in a little hut with hammocks on the porch and there was nothing really to do so we just hung out (literally) for a whole week! our next door neighbours were these wicked German hippy dudes who we chilled with, and the occaisional local dude would come and say hi for a bit too, along with an endless supply of puppies and dogs.

We just sat, chatted to randoms, played cards, drew stupid pictures, bought cakes, swam a little (in rapids!!!) and relaxed. It was a real slow pace of life, ok there were a few little crazy escapades, but the blog doesnt need to know about that! ; ) after all it was my birthday!

And a HAPPY birthday it was :-D

Unfortunately our 30 day visa was at an end so as we had done for everyplace we had been to we dragged ourselves away, and off to Thailand.
So people you are now officially up to date! as of the 5th of January, we are in Bangkok, I (Hannah) have actually had a really horrible cold since I got here : ( so there hasnt been much party yet, but we are both realising that Bangkok is a cool cool cool city!!! we've been here 4 days now, but we'll save the details till next time!! oh except to say we're staying at the D&D WOOHOOO roof top pool baby!! : D

see you next time

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