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Published: August 3rd 2008
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Hi everyone!
Here is our latest from Laos.
We both absolutely adore this country. It has such a laid back atmosphere due to the simplicity of life and the happiness of its people. Nobody is in a rush to get anywhere, as its just not required. This can be quite difficult for us to grasp when we are used to having everything organised and on time!
On a recent bus journey, what should have taken 4 hours, took double that because we went back to pick so many people up from several places along the way. The concept of missing the public transport does not exsist! Also, the bus is never full. So everyone is crammed in the 30 degree heat! The best part about these journeys are the food sellers. The bus pulls up at a village, in the middle of the road and sticks with all sorts of unappetising looking delights are thrust into your face. Just to mention a few that made our stomachs turn: Fried Crickets (all pierced the same way so that their black beady eyes are looking at you in a line) Roasted Mice and Fried Spiders (huge). They also jump
Vang Vieng
Trying to read despite the calls for help from below into the already crammed bus to desperately make a sale. On quite a few occasions some of them got stuck on the bus as it left. We also got a flat tyre and that was pretty interesting just hanging around with the locals for a few hours while it was repaired. Unlike Thailand, the level of English is not that good and our Loas was non existant so the best we could do was big cheesey grins at everyone because there were no other tourists on the bus. Its not surprising that we broke down though, the bus was ancient!Very 1950's.
As Coll had feared there are no service station stops (or any service stations!) and it was quite funny when we had a convenience stop. Women on one side of the road, men on the other. As usual, the Lonely Planet guide was exaggerating and we escaped with all our limbs in tact.
Following our time in Luang Prabang we headed off south to Vang Vieng. Set in some beautiful limestone karst scenery at the side of the Song River it has an amazing veiw from where you're staying, especially if you get a bamboo bungalow overlooking
the river.It was just stunning. The atmosphere of the place is very weird though.
In the main town everything was backpacker oriented with bars serving any kind of food you wanted 'Happy', this could be Marajuana, Magic Mushrooms or Opium. Most people were openly smoking weed in bars. Lots of stoned guys and girls zombying their way around town with paranoid looks on their fizzogs or thinking they were invincible! Very funny, but could be quite annoying if you were there for more than a few days. To cater to the clientel, there were numerous T.V. bars where people laid down on cushions and vegged out to watch 'Friends' or 'Family Guy' all day. It was quite strange to see in the middle of Laos and slightly disconcerting that Vang Vieng had no trace of its traditional culture to be found.
VV is well known as a sort of backpackers playground where you can float down the river in a tractor inner tube, stopping at bars along the way. The bar owners throw out bamboo sticks attached to long ropes and haul you in for a beer which was great fun! They also have rope swings and zipwires
that you play on and then drop off into the river. It depends on how quickly the river is flowing whether you get to a bar or not which when we attempted it (being Monsoon season) was very fast so that was quite an effort but very funny!!!John was straight onto the swings. After a while, Coll decided that she'd plucked up enough courage to zip wire over the river and then drop off at the end. It began on a platform about 30 ft up and then dropped to about 10ft at the end for you to jump off! There was definitely a certain nack to this which unfortunately, Coll didn't know about! As the zip wire descended it picked up a fair amount of speed with her screaming until she reached the end where the handles met a stationary object. Most people let go before it gets to this point. The force of coming to a sudden stop whipped her 180 degrees so she did a spectacular head flop into the river. It stung a bit but was highly entertaining for everyone else watching.
We were wary about having too much to drink because you don''t have
Gourmet Travel Snacks
Do you want the skin on your squirrel sir?? a life jacket and for the past 2 evenings had heard people absolutely inebriated stuck in the side of the river in the pitch black wailing things like 'I can't see!!!' or if you peered over your balcony to try to show them where to get out in their distress : 'Throw me a rope!' or 'Who are you?' It's easy to believe that 5 people have met their tragic ends here since it all started.
It is pretty easy to drink to excess though as a large beer is 40p.
Moving South again we headed for the capital Vientiane, which is more like the size of Doncaster, for a bit of recovery. After some sleep, we considered what our next move was going to be. A trek further south in Savannakhet. It turned out though, that because it had rained so much over the past few days, the only option available to us was a one day trek, which was slightly dissapointing as we'd hoped to stay overnight but it was still a great day and our guide could speak very good English so we chatted a lot to him about life in Laos.
Next stop was
Pakse from where we had decided to start a 7 day motorbike tour over the Bolavan Plateau and then down to stay in a 'eco-lodge' which sounded like a lovely place to rest our sore bottoms. On the night before we started we met Julie and Bill who were travelling independently and had met up to do the same trip so we decided that we would go together. We collected our 'motorbike' which turned out to be a mopedand we were wondering if we were going to make it over the part of our trip with unsealed roads! There are quite a few animal hazards on the Laos roads as herds of cows, water buffalo and goats just chill in the middle of them and don't really move until you've just about run them over.
We stayed in some beautiful sleepy little villages of traditional wooden houses, one with a backdrop of waterfalls which were great for a swim to cool down and we tackled the dirt tracks with only a few flat tyres!!
Last stop in Loas before we crossed into Cambodia was our favourite place, an extremely tranquil little river island called Don Det. We spent
Salty Urchins
Salt miners children our time chilling in hammocks or riding around the island on bikes. There are no roads or traffic so it is very peaceful. Life there is relaxed in the extreme for locals and travellers alike. I think it would be fair to say that we both left a little bit of our hearts in Laos.
We are now in Cambodia but we'll tell you about that later.
Loads of love for everyone
Coll & John
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