Advertisement
Published: September 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
CRIKEY! have i really only writtten up to Laos? I've knocked through Vietnam and half of Cambodia since then. Ok lets summarise:
Its been great, except i burnt my leg on a motorbike.
Cést finnee (i don't even know if thats French - come on you English!)
Alright, i'll try a touch more detail...
After Vietiane we went to.... god it was so long ago... Vang Vieng! Ah how can i forget - TUBING! Yeh its brilliamt! For those who don't know, its renting a rubber tyre and floating down the river. Genius in itself, but there is the added pleasure of bars and various types of jump every few minutes. I even went on a an aierial slide thingie (tres Krypton factor) in an unbridled display of not being a pussy. So yeh, it was so beautiful there, and we basically spent the day just mosying along, disturbed only by a few jumps, a few crashes into various shrubs, and a few Beer Lao's (which led to me and Shell's plan to start upa Facebook group 'í pee'd in the Mekong', until some spoilsport told us actually its some other river. Bloody geography). Actually, there was a
bit of a hoohah at the end when me and shell were so ''relaxed'' that we didn't notice it was the end of the tubing run, and as we were clear on the other side of the river we pretty much swept past it! I managed to kickmyself over to the side (which was really fucking hard as it goes) but Shell, had to be rescued by some do-gooding Thai's. Her rubber tube, was not so fortunate...
Next day we went to Phonosovan, the Plain of Jars. Its a kind of Stonehenge type thing. There's bascially several field which are full of these massive stone jars, and noone is 100% sure how and why they came to be. i believe the current suggestion in vogue is that they were for burying people. My suggestion that they were there as part of a massive and audacious game of Hide and Seek was sadly not picked up. There is some évidence'about the burial theory, i.e. we were shown a bone in one of them. I'm no expert i admit, but to me it looked a lot like a chicken bone.
Now, who knows anything about Laos? Yeh, me neither. They well had the shit bombed out of them by the US in the vietnam war! They say its the most bombed place in the world! Its always the quiet ones eh? But yes, my point in giving you this little info nugget is to explain that though there are loads of these sites around phonosovan, we could only go to 3, as these are the only ones that have been suitably cleared of landmines. Yup people, its bomb city - best to stay on the path you know! Loads of the jars have bben destroyed by the rather indiscriminate bombing by the US, and there are massive bomb craters all opver the shop. They love it though - in our guesthouse they had piles of bullets, hand grenades, missiles, et al. and there seem to be tanks just lying around all over the shop.
Our final stop was Vieng Xai, right near the Vietnam border, which is where the commies 'hung out'while they were trying to win a war and win a country. Not very touristy AT ALL, and we were glared at like the white freaks that we are. Everyone was really nice though... and in the usual way a group of drunk men plyed us with Lao Lao (rice whisky, though we'd actually only stopped for a cup of tea (have i mentioned Lao Lao before? Its fucking disgusting, but you really have no choice!).'But yes, caes were interesting - veryu roomy actually, pretty goddamn swish for caves i thought! We went to see the leadesr cave (Kaysone) and the Prince's (the name esacpes me now, but there was some Prince real high up in the communist party. his cave was dead flash. had a swimming pool and everything... this is much to long for a bracketed aside.)
But yes, that prettymuch the end of laos. In summary: I really REALLY loved Laos! Its so completely different from the rest of these countries, so peaceful, relaxed, such friendly people, just so much more ''real'' (sorry to sound pretentious but its true! Hope dave doesn't dump me for that one - i'm not a hippy i promise!)'. Also, I reckon that journey back from China in Muang Sing is one of my best holiday moments, and Beer Laos is DEFINATELY my best beer. So yeh, I just can't wait to go back again, and am in fact going to some expense to squeeze a few more days in the south in after Cambodia!
Ok, thats that! I think i sent the photos already? I have a look. Bye! x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.216s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0541s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb