Lazy days in Laos

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Since our last entry we've made it into Laos and back out again into Vietnam so we're a bit behind on the blog updates.

Getting in to Laos was our first border crossing without having to get on a plane and it couldn't have been easier.
From the Thai border town of Chiang Kong we just had go to a little shed to get stamped out of Thailand and then jumped on a longtail boat across the Mekong river to Huay Xai in Loas which took all of 2 minutes.
Once we got to the other side we filled out a little form and paid our $35 each for the 30 day visa and we were in.
The money here is a bit confusing as they don't just use their local currency of Kip, they use US dollars and Thai baht as well so trying to keep tabs on what we're spending is a pain in the arse.

That afternoon we booked the 2 day slow boat to take us down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang which cost us 1000 baht each (20 pounds).
You get the option of taking a speedboat which takes just a day but only if your a big fan of death (they don't even offer cake).
So the next morning we boarded the boat and managed to get a decent enough seat.
It took us about 7 hours to get to our overnight stop in a town called Pak Beng and we pulled in just as it was getting dark.
As soon as we docked a hoard of kids jumped on the boat and we're trying to grab everyone's bags so they could make a couple of dollars for carrying them.
The only thing they went away with was several variations of 'fuck off' ringing in their ears.

Pak Beng itself felt like a bit of a dodgy place so we were glad to get back on the boat the next morning at 8.
We didn't leave until 9:30 as an American couple who had a couple of kids in tow decided to throw a hissy fit.
The day before they turned up late for the boat and there were no seats so a second boat was laid on for them and a few others (fair enough I guess). But on the second day they turned up when there were plenty of seats left, stuck their heads in, then buggered off for a bit until the boat was full (I know your game)
When they came back they threw their toys out of the pram saying it was rediculous for this many people to be on the boat and they should lay on a second boat again even though there was still room at the back.
Then Mumsy made some impassioned speech to the passengers which somewhat missed the mark as the boat engines were turned on to drown out her whining.
Then she said something like 'Come on, who's with me, Yeah!!'. If the engine noise wouldn't have drowned it out you could have heard a pin drop.
Nobody moved.
It was a beautiful moment.
Don't get me wrong, if the boat had been overcrowded everyone would have been in their corner but it wasn't and everyone new that they had their chance to get good seats but thought they new better.
In the end they got their 2nd boat by paying 3 times as much as the original ticket price and they did actually manage to recruit about 5 other enlightened souls.
At least it got them off our boat.

Sorry I'm ranting.
I'll stop.

The 2nd day on the boat was much more comfy as this boat had a few car seats at the back which we managed to grab (because we were on time and not whinging - sorry, i really am done now)
We had our guesthouse make up a few sandwiches for the trip which ended up having the added nutritional ingredient of ants. Yum!

At about 5pm we arrived in Luang Prabang and had a bit of a wander.
The entire town is a World Heratige site and it's full of old French colonial buildings so it ws a nice place to hang out in for a few days.
The only problem was that everything was so expensive, not something we had expected in Laos. The cheapest room we could get was just over 9 pounds.
We spent our time here just wandering around, checking out the night market and even spent an afternoon bowling which was a good laugh.

On the 10th we got a bus to the town of Phonsavan. It took 7 hours of winding our way up and down mountains so it wasn't the most comfortable ride.
Phonsavan itself is just one road with hardly anything on it and it's not somewhere you'd want to stay for long. The reason for coming here was to see the Plain of Jars which is a collection of three archeological sites which have these massive stone jars dotted around the landscape. There's several theories as to why they're there such as they were used for cremations but nobody really knows.
We were also taken to a village where they make the locals favourite tipple of rice whiskey which was actually not too bad even though it was only 10am.

The next morning we boarded yet another bus for yet another 7 hour journey.
This time the destination was Vang Vieng which is a bit of a backpacker hangout and as we found out a bit of a crazy place.
We'd been pretty much on the go constantly since leaving Pai in northern Thailand so we thought we'd spend a good few days here to recharge our batteries. It turns out Vang Vieng isn't a place to do that.

The actual town is very chilled out with people just lounging around on these bed like platforms in bars. Almost every bar & restaurant plays Friends on a continual loop which must drive the staff nuts as apparently it's been like this for years.
But at night you can go over to an island in the middle of the river where there's these huge open air bars where anything goes. Stupidly cheap buckets (like the ones you make sand castles with) of spirits and magic mushroom shakes are all on the menu.
We had a few interesting nights over there and met some really cool people, probably.

The other thing to do in Vang Vieng is tubing down the Nam Song river.
What you do is jump into a big tyre inner tube and float down the river until you reach a bar, which doesn't take long. There are about ten bars along this stretch of river all with swings, zip lines and slides over the water.
Reps from the bars in town are out in force with bottles of whisky to dish out free shots and shoot whisky into your mouth with water pistols.
This all ends up with very drunk people (including us) firing themselves off the already dangerous looking swings.
We had a few goes on the heighest swing at the last bar which was surprising as Vickie's shit scared of heights (the wonders of alcohol).

When we left the last bar we thought we had enough time to float back down to the town but after about 15 minutes it started to get dark. We were with a few other people at this point and once it got pitch black and we were all scraping on rocks we all decided that it was probably best if we got off the river.
We ended up coming out on someones private property but luckily they were nice enough to give us a lift to town in the back of their truck, for a small price of course.
We found out later it would have taken at least another hours floating if we'd have stayed on the river and if we hadn't got the lift it would have taken about the same to walk back. So we had a lucky result!
We had planned to go tubing again the next day but we woke up in too much pain from the various cuts and bruises we'd got the previous day. The hangover didn't help much either.

On the 18th we finally managed to drag ourselves away from the place and get a bus down to Vientiane which is the capital of Laos.
While we were there we had to get our Vietnam visa processed and sort out our onward plans.
It's surprising how much time we have to spend just getting things arranged like transport, finding places to live, doing laundry and our favourite thing of packing and repacking our backpacks.
We only stayed in Vientiane for 2 days as we wanted to be in Vietnam for March 1st and there were a few more places in Laos to see before then.

So we got a night bus down to The 4000 Islands which is a collection of islands in the middle of the Mekong river.
The journey down took about 18 hours which was a bit longer than expected but the bus broke down so we were stuck for a while.
We went to the island of Don Det which is possibly the most laid back place on the planet. We managed to get a hut overlooking the river with a couple of hammocks on the balcony for about 3 pounds a night which was lovely except there was no mains electricity on the island so therefore no fans in any of the huts and it was a bit on the warm side in the late 30s.

We stayed on the island for 3 days and had a few dips in the river, a fairly hot and sweaty bike ride over to another island and generally relaxed and read on our balcony.
We took a day trip to Li Phi Falls which is a massive waterfall on the Mekong river that's a pretty impressive sight.

From Don Det we booked a bus ticket to our next destination, Tadlo.
When it came to getting the bus it turned out to be the local bus and wasn't really a bus at all. It was a sawngthaew, which is basically a pick up truck with a cover on the back and two benches on either side. For really long uncomfortable journeys they add another row of seats in the middle by way of a slightly padded plank.
We got to sit right in the middle of the plank which meant we were completely squashed in from all sides by people, boxes and chickens for 3 and a half hours. Every now and again we would stop so that women could run up and shove chickens on sticks and cockroach kebabs through the side for our perusal.
Wasn't hungry.

We luckily changed to a less compact bus for the final couple of hours.
When we got to Tadlo we were surprised to find that there's somewhere even more laid back than Don Det.
There is one shop, about 4 places to eat, only a handful of guesthouses and a few waterfalls.
We got a very basic hut for 2 pounds a night which is our cheapest place to date. It might have been a bit shabby but it had a balcony overlooking the river and waterfalls so it was fantastic.
We spent 2 days there in which we took a few walks and cooled off in the waterfalls.

From Tadlo we headed up to Pakse which was just a nights stop over before we took the bus over the Vietnam border.

We've made our way up to Hanoi in Vietnam but I'll get to that in our next update as this one's starting to look a bit too long.


Lots of Love

Jack & Vickie

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