Blogs from West, Laos, Asia - page 4

This morning we are up early. I could have done with another hour in bed but we need to be up and about before the sun gets too hot. We make our way to the bike hire shop. They want our passports as security. Fortunately our hotel isn’t far away so Ian is dispatched. :-) Bikes secured, we pedal our way up to the victory monument, Patuxai. This square, concrete monument has the look of a miniature triumphal arch. It commemorates the Lao who died in the pre-revolutionary wars and was built with concrete given by the USA to build a new airport, hence its nickname ‘vertical runway’. Patuxai is approached via a large dual carriageway which was practically under construction and little used on our last visit. Whilst the traffic here is not what would ... read more

Can it be that time already? We can't quite believe it! Today, we leave Vietnam and move on to our next country in Indochina, namely Laos and the city of Luang Prabang, in the mountainous north west of the country. The tour does return to Vietnam to fly home in a week's time (when our group of six, together with one other (Christine, the lady who had the unfortunate fall at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum all those 'weeks!' ago), have three days or so to relax on a beach east of Ho Chi Minh City), but for now, we say goodbye to this land 'South of China' and move on to, what is often called, 'The Jewel of Indochina'. Our one hour flight to Laos departed at 12.50 pm, and with the drive to the ... read more

Luang Prabang also has oodles of temples and oodles of things for tourists, although also has the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, French colonial influence, interesting element of the morning alms procession by monks (who collect their food for the day) and all sorts of fantastic scenery. Due to sediment from the limestone in the hills, some of the waterfalls are a spectacular blue color (and you can swim in them! but they are not warm :). In a completely random coincidence, I also met up with some friends I met years ago in Africa here - it's an oddly small world sometimes.... read more

Our second stop was Patuxai also called Victory Gate or Gate of Triumph. This is a war monument in the center of Vientiane, that resembles the French Arc de Triomphe. It was built between 1957 and 1968. It initially was dedicated to those who fought in struggle of independence from France. it has Laotian design, decorated with mythological creatures such as the kinnari which is half-female, half-bird.... read more

One airstrip, two stupas, three caves and more prosthetic limbs than we wanted to count This summer we spent five weeks in Southeast Asia. We travelled in four countries and we will here on the blog begin our story where we began the journey, in Laos. July and August aren't the best months of the year to travel in Southeast Asia. The time of the year we Europeans call "summer" they in Laos, Vietnam and Thailand call "the wet season". In Myanmar the same time of the year could with justification be described as "the monsoon period" and that explains why we never went there. Well, although it was the wet season we have to say that we were lucky with the weather. It rained a few days but since we were away for five weeks ... read more