Blogs from Laos, Asia - page 528

We spent a couple of days in Vang Vieng where the highlight of our time had to be tubing down the river! There were swings and bars every 300 metres or so and much fun was had by all! The rain let up and we had a perfectly sunny day to boot! Unfortunately cameras were left at the hotel (for obvious reasons) so we have no photos! We pushed through to Vientiane by bus on Tuesday and, much to our relief, experienced none of the famous flat tyres that are par for the course in Laos! Vientiane does not quite have the charm of Luang Prabang, but none the less is a nice place to visit. We have spent a few days walking around visiting its temples and imitation "Arc du triomph" (spelling?)... read more

July 24, 2006 We woke up in Vang Vieng, Laos on our 2nd wedding anniversary in a hot, stuffy, dirty room! Yuck! However, we managed to get ourselves out of there and on to Vientiane, the capital, to enjoy our anniversary evening. In the morning we hung around Vang Vieng with our British friends, Michelle and Andy, for a few hours and then decided to hop on a bus and get to Vientiane. We paid $5 each for an “Air-con” bus (as they call them here), but after about 1hr into the 3.5hr trip all the windows were opened and the sweating began. Once we arrived in the capital, we checked into a much nicer and cooler room. We walked down to the banks of the Mekong River and enjoyed the cheapest pitcher we’ve ever bought! ... read more

Wow. I really don't think life could get any slower than this. This has to be the most relaxed place on earth. Don Det is one of "thousands" of islands on the mekong in the south of Laos(although right now with the water being so high I'm sure there are only hundreds). Although the Lao are busy transplanting the rice seedlings right now, apparently in high season business is purely in bungalows, with them working as soon as the first guest is up til the last guest goes to bed. $1 - $2 for a basic bungalow and a hammock, and really that is all you need here. So this entry will be brief because all I did was go for a couple of bike rides down to another island, Don Khon, and chill out in ... read more

Phonsavan, Plain of Jars. We left Luang Prabang and headed on down to a little dusty town where, scattered in the surrounding highland hills, lie huge jars that where carved from heavy stone boulders and somehow dragged to these sites and left to rest on these evergreen grassy hill sides. It is amazing that these jars survived the Vietnamese / American war, as over 2 million tons of ordinance was dropped on Loas during this time - more than what was dropped on Germany and Japan in WWII - and most of the world never knew, go figure. We took these sites in with a few other couples: Irish, American and British. The day was one of interest and wonder as we were transported from site to site in our super swift van. Locals always know ... read more

Saturday-Sunday July 22-23 Well, we’ve managed to convince 3 other couples to join us on a trip to the Lao-Vietnamese boarder to visit an archeological site in Phonsavan called Plain of Jars. To get to Phonsavanh we traveled about 7 hours in our chartered minivan. It was quite slow because we were going up and down, around and along these huge mountains. The scenery along the way was breathtaking! Huge rolling hills and mountains with lush green vegetation and shack villages along the road perched precariously between the narrow busy road and the edge of the steep cliff. Below the shacks the people were growing bananas, pineapples and other vegetation on these 45 degree mountain sides. They even had rice growing along there (the kind that doesn’t require standing water)! Also, we’d be driving along and ... read more