Laid back Laos

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So we said good bye to Thailand for a while and 'sabaidee' to Laos. We got to Luang Prabang which is a pretty little town on the banks of the Mekong river. It was nice to observe the locals growing vegetables on the riverside and the local kids playing in the water. The place is quite touristy yet hassle-free and it was quite pleasant to be able to walk around without having to worry about getting run over. We hired a tuk-tuk for one afernoon in order to visit the Tat Kuang Si waterfall. It really is a lovely spot with crystal clear water set in the jungle. There is also a rescue centre for Asian bears at the bottom of the fall and we found the bears to be very entertaining, playing on their swing and splashing at each other in the water.
We then headed south to Vientiane, with an overnight stop at Vang Vieng, which was a beautiful spot to watch the sunset over the limestone peaks. This place is very popular with young backpackers who go tubing down the river stopping at every bar on the way and who spend their evenings at one of the many 'Friends' bars which show the programme on big screens day and night... quite bizarre!
We arrived in Vientiane after an interesting trip on a rusty old bus with three times as many passengers as there were seats available (the conductor had a genius way of increasing seating capacity by sliding out the seat cushion transforming two uncomfortable seats into three or four excrutiatingly uncomfortable seats). Anyway, we arrived in Vientiane all sweaty and drained but we were delighted to find that the local food was very French orientated with several mouth-watering bakeries and restaurants to choose from. One evening, Laure even had a whole cheese board to herself accompanied by a glass of French red wine! Well, that made a nice change from plain steamed rice and fried veg. We hired a bike and cycled to the Cambodian embassy to pick up a visa. We also cycled to the local golden temple of Pha That Luang with its extremely bling stupa. Strangely there was a French camper van parked there... long way from home!
We carried on south following the Mekong and, after a few days, got to the area of Si Phan Don, the Four Thousand Islands on the Mekong. We stayed on the island of Don Khong for a couple of days and went to visit the nearby islands and saw the very rare Irrawaddy dolphins which live in the river and are not as big a show-off as their New-Zealand cousins.
We met up with an Indian born Australian fella, Richard, who was also travelling towards Siem Reap, Cambodia. We left for the border on the same day as him and also met Lydie, a very friendly French girl - Laure and her immediately got on like a house on fire and found lots of things to talk about during the interminable bus journey.

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