Laos

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Well we survived the 21 hours bus journey (+ slasher movie and kung fu films at maximum volume) to arrive in Vientiane in Laos. Immediately, you notice how gorgeous it is, the people are friendly and the atmosphere laid back and easy going. Spent one night in the capital (small, low rise town) and then did a mere 11 hours the next day on a bus to Luang Prabang. That was ok as well cos the scenery was lovely, memorised out the window for hours passing tiny huts on the hill side with the local villagers fetching water from the communal clean pumps and drying out rice and chillies on the road side. Very similar scenery to northern Thailand.

Arrived in Luang Prabang and found a nice little guesthouse with friendly people who set about teaching me how to say hello, thank you and goodbye (i forgot that one already). It's pretty cold here at night so we donned some comfort clothes of long trousers and hoodies, which was nice for a change. Luang Prabang has a curfew of 11:30 due to its World heritage site status so we had a few more chilled out days here. Really is a lovely town, very pretty, easy vibe and nice heat in the day. We got up at 5:30 to see the monks walk round the town to collect Alms from the local people, and then had a cultural day of visiting temples around the peninsula. That night we experienced the after hours enterainment of LP that is the local bowling alley! Met some people roudn the camp fire in a bar near our place and ended up following the corwd for a spot of bowling untl 3am! Did crap but all good fun and met some nice people who we'd meet up with later on in Vang Vieng.

We then signed ourselves up for an elephant trek which was amazing. We were staying in a lovely lodge over the river which was peaceful bliss with mountain backdrops. We had to change into our elephant clothes and then went for an elehpnat ride (on a bench) which Laura nearly crapped herself on. Her face was an absolute picture, so u can image what she thought of the next ride we did, which was to swap places with the driver and ride on its head/neck!) I went first, screamed my head off but eventually calmed down (althougth my knuckles did turn white). We strolled through the forest and then went down to the river and bathed them. Or more likely they bathed us, spraying us through their trunks, or just plain splashin us by banging their trunks down on the river! Was ahrd not to laugh, but you actually couldnt or you swallowed half the river!

Next day we had one last elephant ride and then trekked to a village for lunch. This really reminded me of the trek i did in Chiang Mai 3 years ago and much nicer than the "fake" sapa trek in Vietnam. The village kids wore hardly any clothes and were having a ball rolling about in the rice that thier mums were trying to dry out in the sun! Goats and pigs were wandering about and it was just very simple and authentic. After that we went to a watertfall which was very picturesque and me and laura were enjoying our swim until we saw the water spiders and then legged it out of there!

Next stop Vang vieng for an 18-30s bar crawl down the river on a rubber tube! Home of "in the tubing" the greatest social party of all time. Basically, after breakfast in one of the many cafes showing friends/family guy, if you can drag yourself down to the tubing shed. Pay for a tube, jump in a tuk tuk. They take u to a spot iby the river where you jump on your tube, only to float about 50m before the first bar with load tunes pumping out, serving buckets of Lao Lao Whisky and entertaining you with a rope swing! Go another 50m and you reach the next one, where they give out free shots and this time its a zip wire! You get the picture. A massive barcrawl with lots of tarzan swings, slides and zip wires into the river! All good fun until you forget to leave enough time to get to the end stop and you spend the last hour paddling like carzy to get back before dark (6pm) and get your deposit back! We just about made it, but it did go dark, get abit scary (but that was mainly cos you could see swarms of mozzy's eating you alive!)
We did tubing 3 more times, but each time cheated and got a tuk tuk back rather than do the long float down the river!
The second day of tubing i managed to Wind myself landing the last tarzan swing (!) and Laura landed funny off the slide and had purple thighs the next week, so on the third day of tubing, we stayed off the slides and stuck to the buckets and music! Met loads of nice people tubing and some of our friends from Vietnam too, but after a while it was easy to get sick of constant friends, western foods, and laughing at the drunk guys accidently going off with the local lady boys who hung out in the bars (albeit very pretty ones!).

Overall. loved Laos, would love to go back and see more of it, but after tubing we needed a break. Next stop...bangkok

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