Into Laos and out

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Hello everybody, been sometime since we last talked so without pause i shall continue the story. We left thailaind crossing the mekong river to laos immigration. Here we spent 2 hours and $35 later we had our laos visas and we're officially in our 2nd country. We traveled down the mekong river by slow boat over 2 days to luang prabang. We had a total of 16 hours on the slow boat with just tiny wooden benches to sit on - as you can imagine it was bliss. However the scenery down the river is amazing, lined with jungle covered mountains and valleys. We spent a night in pak beng to break the boat trip in two - lots of other travelers doing this route. we arrived in luang prabang in torrential rain and ran up the shore to find the nearest guest house. ended up in a pretty decent one and next door was Blue Lagoon Cafe - this is by far the best restaurant we have eaten at and am fairly confident will be the best we have the entire trip. For 15-20 $ we had 3 course meal of the finest food in south east Asia - it was fantastic...so we ate here every night for 4 days. We did not do a great deal in this town, we just relaxed for few days. We booked plane tickets to hanoi and got our Vietnam visa. From here we traveled to Vang Vieng on a 5 hour bus journey. Vang Vieng was pretty cool, a very traveler chill out mecca. We spent our days tubing down the river ( u get a inner tractor tire tube and float down river on it) and stopping at the river bars that line the route. There are also swing into the river that are cool, from bout 10-30 feet in height - and being me i fractured a rib on the second one of these! We got mopeds out one day and went to a massive cave where we spent 3 hours or so walking around inside with a guide - was so vast with underwater rivers and a huge underwater lake that we swam in. To get to the cave we had to cross the river on a taxi boat but on the way back we had no money and the guy wouldn't take us across. So being the intuitive and resourceful men we are we decided to swim it. And being me i went first and yes the current was a lot stronger than we imagined and after going several meters down the river swimming frantically i managed to get to the shore. The others followed soon after with equal results but we did it! We were quite lucky in at our guest house as we met few lads who happened to be from just up the road in hildenborough, and couple young lads from Oz. After 8 days here we left for the Laos capital Vietienne. This was only a 4 hour bus and when we got their we found a guest house that resembled more of a prison but hey was cheap. We only spent 2 days here and we used our time wisely to wonder the markets and but pointless things and rest of our time in the English style pub watching all the sport - rugby, football and F1 - really experiencing the culture. We flew from here on 22nd to hanoi and that is where my next blog will begin.

Hope you are all well

Paul xx

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