Beautiful, beautiful Laos...

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The first thing I want to say, if you hadn't quite caught on from my blog title, is Laos is absobloominlutely beautiful! Before we went I'd heard talk of this wondrous place where you can get wrecked and go tubing, jumping into the river and off zip wires etc. Having now been I find it so frustrating that this is all people talk about because the landscape is amongst the most exquisite I've ever seen.

The only other thing you ever really hear fellow travellers talk about is the 2 day slow boat that the majority of people take to get there. We too chose this option. Firstly you don't spend 10 hours a day on the boat as many people would tell you. It's more like 6 and it's not entirely unpleasant. Ok, so your bum goes a bit numb from sitting on a wooden bench for hours on end and perhaps your back will begin to ache but the comraderie amongst the passengers and the gorgeous (I'll try not to use the word 'beautiful' too many more times!) surroundings of the murky Mekong river more than make up for it. My advice...get your social head on and get hold of a card game called 'Phase 10'. We were introduced to this by two lovely American sisters. As the name suggests the game has 10 phases which basically means one game can take a good couple of hours, a fabulous way to pass time on a long wooden boat! The town where you spend the night is an experience. It's a small town called Pak Beng and the electricity here stops at about 10.30pm. This doesn't create the spooky environment that you might imagine. We had dinner at a nice little resturant with lanterns adorning the outside and then took the opportunity to get some much needed shut eye before day two on the boat, so the lack of electricity was really no great hardship.

The boat took us to Luang Prabang, a pretty town that feels a little like a more upper class version of Pai. I had one of the best days so far here. A perfect day in fact. We headed out to the local waterfall which turned out to be the most beautiful (theres that word again!) waterfall I have ever seen! It has 7 tiers and you can swim in several of them. One particular tier has a rope attached to an overhanging tree where you can swing yourself out into the idyillic turquoise water like a poor mans Tarzan. The top tier, where the highest part of the waterfall is, actually brought a tear to my eye. I'll admit that I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to things of great beauty (Robert Pattinson....Brad Pitt ...kidding..) but it is just so...you guessed it...beautiful. We then headed back into town and climbed up to the hilltop temple to see the vivid orange of the sun as it set over Luang Prabang. Finishing with Christmas shopping in the night market and dinner at an incredibly cheap street buffet (5,000kip, about 25p) with friends it was nothing short of a perfect day. 'I'm glad I spent it with you' guys!
We also went to visit the Pak Ou caves which have thousands of statues of Buddha. This was interesting to see but disappointing in terms of the word 'cave'...more a cavern I would say.

We then headed off to do the obligatory stuff of legends...tubing in Vang Vieng. We chose to take what is rapidly becoming a favourite mode of transportation, the local bus. Again, this didn't let us down. I sat there like an excited child, clinging to the window the entire way, staring out in amazement at the view. Winding roads through endless mountains that took us above thick fluffy cloud forest that went on for miles beneath a bright blue sky. Do it! Do NOT get a minibus! You'll spend more and see less. Vang Vieng is a funny little town. Surrounded by lush green mountains and yet feeling a little Koh Phangan-esque with it's bars and resturants playing friends and boasting cheap buckets. We decided to only spend a day tubing. Nothing compared to the several days that most people stay and even less compared with the 365 days one nutter has spent there. I would not be at all surprised to look inside him and see his liver peeking out waving a little white flag. The tubing is, as had been foretold, great fun. We had to be careful not to get carried away as they give you free local whiskey shots straight out of the bottle the moment you arrive and this continues at every bar you hit. There are ziplines at every bar which are awesome, just remember not to swallow too much of the delightfully brown river water or I'd imagine you'd suffer more than a well-deserved hangover! I was patiently waiting at one zipline where the bamboo tower seemed too small and shaky to hold the amount of people scrambling up it but in the end I realised I'd never get my chance if I didn't swallow the fear and climb up there with them. The zip line not scary. The wait at the top...terrifying! Standing with a bunch of drunk people, several of which decided to jump off rather than use the zipline is an experience my mother would hate me for and I'm just thankful I survived! Needless to say we were in bed incredibly early but this worked well with our plans for the following day.

We rose early, I'd like to say refreshed from our long sleep but go tubing yourself and you'll realise how unlikely a state that would be! We'd arranged with our American friends to make the trip to Vientienne by kayak and this proved to be another stand out day. We spent the day between a minibus and the kayaks. Steadily kayaking along the serene river in the glorious sunshine is perhaps one of the most relaxing things I've ever done. Throw in the occasional white water section and a jump from a 12m high rock into the cool water and you have the makings of an awesome day. That jump was terrifying and I, of course, screamed all the way down before hitting the water, coming back up and announcing I had the worst wedgie of my life!

Vientienne didn't, for us, possess much charm so we didn't stay long. Laos is definately a place I'd like to revisit and see more of the beauty it has to offer but for now it was fareful Laos....Good MORNING Vietnam....

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