Ten sunsets in Laos

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It has slowly hit us that we have less than two months remaining as Uncle Traveling Macs and so since arriving in Vientiane we have been using our time as wisely as possible and fitting as much as possible in. For those of you who don’t know we booked our flights home - we will be back on 29th April (flying from Kuala Lumpur to Stansted) so this makes every day seem even more precious when we no longer have 6 months of relaxation and gluttony in front of us!!

So we spent a day sight seeing in Vientiane - we started at a temple called Si Saket… following our good friend Tim’s advice over MSN that the emerald Buddha was well worth a visit. Unfortunately Si Saket is the former home to the emerald Buddha so we didn’t get to see this (nice one Tim!)… but the temple was a nice place for a stroll and housed something around 7000 Buddha images!

Next we wondered to the local market which sold some very strange produce including tortoise shells, dried geckos and horns of various animals. We wondered through goggle eyed and then made our way to the local bus station and took bus no.14 to the Buddha Park (Xieng Khuan).

This park is basically a collection put together by some fanatic and there are some seriously amazing statues there. You enter this massive bowl like building through a big mouth and wonder round the first floor before realizing you can go inside the middle of the structure where there are many Buddha statues. There are basically three inner floors and two outer walkways, with an entrance out the top to view the whole park - it was somewhat maze like as we both got lost trying to find our way out the mouth!

The rest of the statues were amazing too - with Laos’ biggest reclining statue there and almost every conceivable type of Buddha image… well worth the trip! So we jumped back on the local bus back to Vientiane….

After a quick lunch we headed in a tuk tuk to the Pha That Luang (Great Stupa) which is the most important national monument in Laos and appears on all their bank notes. Legend has it that Ashokan missionaries erected the stupa here to enclose a piece of the Buddha’s breast bone. We had a wander around and took in the beauty of the place, all gold and with lots of Buddha images… Pilch bought a traditional Laos flute music CD (god knows what that will sound like) and then we got drawn into the market close by and Pilch bought yet more clothes (he won’t have enough time in the year for all these new clothes!).

We headed back to our hotel knackered and had an amazingly cheap meal - two curries and a pitcher of BeerLao for 6pound! Love it!

Next morning we were off on a bus to Vang Vieng - we opted for the local bus, choosing price over comfort! Tanya spent four hours with two massive boxes oozing some horrible liquid in front of her legs restricting her movement for most of the journey -still we saved about a pound! 😊)

Vang Vieng was exactly as Lonely Planet described (it finally got something right!) -the streets were full of people drinking and eating whilst watching “Friends” or “Simpsons” - and these so called TV bars seemed to stick to the same programme every day!! Crazy!

However the town had its charm and the surrounding area with its limestone karsts and the Nam Song (river) was beautiful. We booked ourselves into a nice cheap guesthouse (with cable TV only at certain times of the day!) and then planned our next two days of adventuring.

We awoke very early (as seems to be the pattern - Tanya has never got up so early in her whole life … before work would even have begun -woken to star jumps from Pilch!) and rented some mountain bikes to attempt the trail down to the blue lagoon. This road was very bumpy and dusty (esp on such old rugged bikes!)… the local people seemed to find it amusing to send us off path with signs on every corner promising lagoons, caves and swimming! We fell for it the first time and after being very disappointed by a tiny smelly hole in a wall (which Pilch felt obliged to go in after the brief side track), we decided to keep looking for the real blue lagoon - there were plenty of other signs all the way to confuse us tho (we think we found the right one in the end)!

The blue lagoon once found was beautiful… first we climbed a very steep hill up to the Tham Pou Kham which was an amazing cave and well worth the climb. There was a gold plated reclining Buddha inside and we clambored around the rocks in the dark until we found the main cave and not even the camera would pick up anything! Tanya spotted a monkey sitting by the cave entrance which was magical but unfortunately too far away for a good photo!

Once down the steep hill we had a refreshing dip in the blue lagoon with all the fishes!! Pilch almost killed himself attempting the rope swing as he took in about a gallon of water up his nose!! We dried off in the sunshine before taking the long bumpy, dusting journey back on our bikes… we opted for a different bridge on the way back to town - made of bamboo and incredibly rickety!! Tanya made it over one before opting to walk across… Pilch made it across them all but then the locals drive their motorbikes over them at full speed!!

Once back on the other side of the river we couldn’t resist stopping at a bar and drinking some BeerLao whilst dipping our toes in! Such a chilled out place….

Next day we had a tour booked (which we were both kinda dreading as you never know who you will end up with and how long the day will end up!) beginning with tubing through a cave… this sounds easy but it wasn’t!! We had a head lamp between us and the water was freezing! It began like something out of Chessington World of Adventures (Mr Burps Bubbles works) in the dark with a rope to pull yourself along but then turned into having to splash your way along with water not too deep and feeling soggy clay on your bum, or hitting rocks under the water. Tanya got left behind from the group immediately and got pulled along by the guide but then got the hang of paddling backwards - which feels a bit weird in a dark cave with no light!! After about 20 mins paddling backward we got to the end and were told we had to go all the way back so we turned over on our tubes trying to ease our tired arms… Tanya still got left behind and all Pilch could hear was her voice in the distance shouting to slow down as she was in the dark…. It was all a bit weird and it felt like we were behind the group - Tanya paddled with such might to catch up she has friction burn on both inner arms and had a black beard when she came out from the cave from the tube rubbing her chin!! (we couldn’t take any photos in the cave - shame)

We had a lovely lunch by the river being attacked by hungry ducks and an amazing display of hundreds of butterflies of many different colours - looked like confetti! Next we saw the Elephant cave which has a rock that resembles an elephant and an oversized man made Buddha footprint.

We then moved onto kayaking down the Nam Song - Tanya warned Pilch we would be going round in circles but it was only when we came to the first corner he realized what he had got himself into when we went straight into the river bank with the guide shouting “how much did you have drink last night?” and Pilch replying “not enough!”

After getting stuck twice more on rocks and Pilch getting out to rescue us Tanya did actually get the hang of it… however we hit some rapids about an hour later and unfortunately the people in front capsized and we went right over the top of them (kinda scary) - we didn’t know what to do so we carried on going but when we turned back everyone had stopped, we tried to do a 180 and paddle back against the rapids but soon realized we were going no where so we tried to moor up at the nearest stop and nearly ended up being pulled down another part of the river - out the kayak again for Pilch (think he spent most of his time in the river!)

We stopped for a while at the crazy bars set up alongside the Nam Song for people to tube down and drink all day - there are lots of rope swings and slides and bars selling mushroom shakes - we passed on all of these (except a beer) knowing we had another hour of kayaking to go! The rest of the journey was well relaxing esp as Tanya was much better at paddling - we wanna do it again soon!!

So next morning (slightly sore/ blistered/ tyre burnt) we got on a mini bus to Luang Prabang - we had been warned about the road as it is long, twisty and right through the mountains which can give you motion sickness (hence we took the mini bus). It was a long tiring journey….once in Luang Prabang we got ourselves a cheap bottle of Lao Lao (white whiskey - naughty at $1 a bottle) and forgot the days hardships!

After resting on the second day we went to Tat Kuang Si in the afternoon (waterfall with Asiatic bear centre) which was a many tiered waterfall tumbling over limestone formations into a series of cool turquoise pools which was beautiful. The bears were a little sad to see but they had been rescued from poachers. The pools were amazing to swim in and so refreshing!! Once back to the tuk tuk we again managed to do some more shopping - Pilch had made all his clothes wet from the swimming so went home with a new outfit!! We got dropped off at a Tourism Development Village on the way home which was basically a shopping tour -but we did get some new pillow cases and saw some cute locals and cute village!

That evening we stumbled across the night market and managed to spend a lot on new clothes - our bags are a bit heavier again!! It was such a cute market though and for once no one hasselled us to buy anything!

Next morning we got picked up at 7am from our hotel for the 8am bus to Huay Xai (Thailand Border town), however most of the signs said 8am bus, we were told 8am but it didn’t leave till 9am… we were told this journey would take 7hours and it took a total 12 hours! We arrived, ate dinner and went straight to sleep.

Today we crossed the Mekong river into Thailand, got a mini bus to Chaing Mai and have booked flights to Phuket in a couple of days…. Unfortunately we have had more trouble with visas as they only gave us 2 weeks as it was a land crossing (apparently they only just changed this rule) so we need to go extend it tomorrow (costing 38quid each - when its normally a free 30 day visa - someone has it in for us!!)

We are off to eat sushi now… oh and Alex we picked up some mangasteen wine today which is very tasty, you would like although the legs are a bit thin!

So we should be meeting Chloe in Krabi in a couple of days and then down to Malaysia for our last month (fingers crossed there are no more visa mishaps). We plan to go do some more adventuring both here in Chaing Mai and Krabi - Pilch is planning to do a bungee jump (Chloe has also mentioned this but you won’t get Tanya near it) - so watch this space for more adventuring and photos in the next month….

Phop Kan mai
xxx

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Photos

Vientiane market
note: the tortoise shell by product of tortoise curry