Laos

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Hi again everyone. Hope everything is going well at home! Missing it quite a bit but really I'm having so much fun here. Shame about the canucks eh? Only found that out through internet as ice hockey dosent matter on this side of the world

Anyways Laos....


Brillant Place! After being in Thailand for so long a very touristy and busy place it was really relieving to get away from all that and Laos was the perfect place for it. It's still very untouched and beautiful scenory, temples, monks everywhere, friendly people.

Before entering Laos I was a bit devastated crossing the boarder and having to pay 42 dollars for a Canadian citizen wheras the UK and USA (who you might remember bombing the crap out of Laos making Laos the most bombed nation in the second world war) only had to pay 35 dollars. Whats up with that eh?

The first stop was in souther laos in a place called champasak. Very small island, right off of the Mekong river, a very peacefull island .We stayed at this guesthoused owned by probably the happiest man I have ever met. I had many a non successful french dialogue with him which ended in him laughing histerically. We stayed here a couple of days in which I we went to see some very cool ruins which overlooked the city.

From Champasak we went further south to the 4000 islands region. Again a very chilled out place, relaxing. Here I did 2 bike trips around the entire island (about 32km) both times leaving late so having to go as fast as I could and stopping off half way for a M150 (much like red bull) Got a really good feel for the people of Laos, all the kids yelling "sabaidee" (hello) as we biked past. Few bad stares from the older people dressed in army cargo holding very large knives. One guy actually drove right at me and verred off at the last second obviously not happy that we were there. Besides that though everyone was incredibly friendly. I also went on a day trip to see an incredibly stunning waterfall, the biggest in south east asia.

After a few days in Champasak I backtracked a bit and headed north up to PakseVery interesting place is Pakse because it is a city, but a very small one, and nothing to do really. so we ended up having a few drinks and admiring the mekong river.

From Pakse we went up north to Vientianne the capital of Laos although you wouldn't know it being there as once again it was one of the smallest capital city's i've ever seen! We went via night train ( which meant i got a bed, but being south east asia they tend to cram as many people on as possible so i had to share it with my friend and it being asia and me being very tall i didnt exactly fit....fun 9 hours really...oh and not to mention the laos karoke that they played the entire night over the speakers). Here I went to a national museum...very interesting history with the war and what not. It was also one of my friends birthdays so liqured him up dressed him up in short shorts and a girls top and headed to a night club ..as you do haha very fun night!

Up until Vientianne I had been traveling in a very large group about 8 of us. Which was a very hard number when your trying to get rooms, and its difficult to get a big group to decide on one thing to do so me and two guys both named tom decided to leave the group and go our own way, bumping into each other along the way.

First stop we made was Nam Ngun lake. Most bizarre place I have ever been too! It was a stunning lake, made by a dam which supplied energy to most of laos, many little islands. There was only one option as to where you could stay on the lake so we took it...and there wasnt a single sole other than the family who owned it...no electricity on the island either....and i have to admit when night came i was absolutley terrified. Maybe it was the fact that it probably used to be a prison during war times, or maybe it was that we were surrounded by 54 bombs dropped by the US and one night a massive thunder storm was RIGHT ABOVE US AND THE ONLY PIECE OF METAL WAS OUR HOUSE AND THE BOMBS SURROUNDING THE ISLAND. apart from that really enjoyed relaxing, and swimming from small island to small island.

From here we went to Van Vieng. Had an interesting trip to this place as one little boy decided to drop his pants in the middle of the road and dance and another guy thought the tuk tuk was going to vientianne which we clearly werent and decided to jump out of this moving car and he rolled around and looked quite hurt but he survived. idiot haha anyways van vieng is a bit more touristy as its main attraction is the tubing. Tubing is fantastic! Probably my best day in Laos was spent tubing. What you do is you rent a tube, tube down the river, along the way are bars which pull you out of the river. So slowly you become more and more drunk, and its a lot of fun. THE BEST PART however is that they have these massive rope swings. I spent all day swinging into the river having so much fun!!!! Van Vieng is really chilled out and have these cool bars where you lounge around and watch simpsons episode after simpsons episode.

However i paid the consequenes for it as I couldn't move a muscle for the next few days and got quite sick.

After few days in Van Vieng we took a very bumpy turny windy road which went on for a little too long to Luang Prabang. Another small chilled out place. Here I spent a 2 days basically being dragged around as i was still quite sore and sick. Did a bike tour, looked around the night market, looked around a few temples, and went to a really cool herbal sauna bath.

Thats all for now...bit long i know. After this I'm off to Eastern Laos to see some revolutionary caves and then into Vietnam for about 10 days! Bit fast paced but exciting stuff.

All for now, again hope everythings going alright at home and good to hear from some of you every now and then.

Danny

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Comments

[anonymous]

holy shit sounds amazing. Where the hell is laos? and did u get sick from the food or the river or what? what u doing after vietnam?