Blogs from South, Laos, Asia - page 75

Getting there Getting to the cave - supposedly one of (if not the) largest limestone caves in Asia was a trek! We left at 6:00 am taking a tuk tuk to the bus station, a bus to Thang Beng, another to Ban Na Hin, and a sawngthaew (covered utility/mini truck with 2 bench seats down each side) to Sala Bin Houn - a guest house overlooking the river which led to the cave. Getting to the bus station at that hour meant getting supplies for the ride - water, sticky rice. A little conservative you might say? Well after we did a quick inspection of the foods on offer and saw various barbecued delights, we went for a stomach settling option. We were offered barbecued frogs though (see pic). The trip took until 2pm and the ... read more

With our 15-day visa in Laos quickly coming to an end, we needed to start making choices based on time management. We decided to forgo earlier plans to visit the Plain of Jars, which is Laos’ site of archeological mystery and intrigue, a kind of "Laotion" Stonehenge. As the name reflects, the Jar of Plains is an expanse of fields, filled with variably sized stone jars of unknown origin. The largest one weighs 6 tons and the jars are believed to be around 2000 years old. Research has been challenging due to remnant landmines and other ordenance, which is just recently being cleared. Archeologists from all over have proposed theories to explain the random stone jars but all remain speculation. Local legend, our favorite explanation, claims the jars were made for the fermentation of rice to ... read more

Hello everybody! Its Chris writing again me and Mandy have become aware its been a while since we updated so we thought we should, update you all a bit. First of all thanks to everybody who's keeping in touch. I know its what friends and family do, but its still nice to get loads of e-mails the other side of the world! Were into Laos now, at a town called Pakse which is in the south. The last update ran up until Siem Reap in Cambodia we think? Anyway Siem Reap was really good, the temples of Angkor were really impressive, although I personally preferred a temple called Ta Prohm to Ankgor Wat, the temple which Cambodia is most famous for. Ankgor Wat was amazing, although Ta Prohm was better because it hadn't had anywhere near ... read more

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur and spent a few days climbing tall buildings and eating hot Malaysian food, courtesy of Simon's Malaysian friend, William, before flying up to Bangkok. I have to admit I was quite worried in advance about Bangkok being 'too much', but we surprised ourselves by actually really liking it! We didn't have long there though, just enough time to sort out a few visas before bus-ing it to a small town in eastern Thailand called Ubon Ratchatani. It turns out that hardly anyone goes there as it is not a typical route into Laos and we turned out to be quite a novelty! At first the town seemd dead and we wondered where we had ended up, but it turns out that they were just preparing for a big local festival, which ... read more

I added some pictures to the last entry, make sure you take a look. We had a change in plans, and decided to go see Cambodia before we went through Vietnam. This allowed us to see Southern Laos on the way. We to had a "VIP Bus" from Vientien down to a southern Laos town Called Pakse. The bus was an overnight ride, about 11 hours long. The bus was certaintly VIP, but with a lot of flavour of Laos culture. Each window had pink curtains with turqoise ruffles on top, there was a tv up front blasting kareoke or Lady Boy comedians, we had stewards wearing weird little uniforms going up and down the isle bringing us food, and the outside of the bus was pink and yellow! Once it came time to unload the ... read more