Advertisement
Published: December 14th 2006
After our first couple of weeks in Thailand, we arrived in Laos in the beginning of december. We immediately felt like entering a new world when we got out of our little ferry boat on the Maekhong river. You could say it is like going back in time: dusty dirt roads, very old and rusty tuk tuks,... One big difference is that instead of finding a picture of the king on almost every building, you'll see communist flags all over the place here. A good thing though is that people drive on the right hand side of the road again, which makes crossing the street less of a life risking adventure.
Our first goal was to get out of the small border town, so we headed for Luang Prabang, one of the bigger cities in Laos. A 10 hour boat trip seemed to be the ticket to get there. We had a great time relaxing on the slow boat and enjoying the mountain views and nature on the border of the Maekhong. Compared to the cities in Thailand, Luang Prabang turned out to be a rather small town with a very peaceful atmosphere. You only see bikes, tuk tuks and
motorcycles on the streets, so we decided to go local and discover the city and surroundings by bike. Other than the former royal palace and the obligatory wats there aren't a lot of highlights in Luang Prabang itself. A couple of kilometers away are the Pak Ou Caves and Kwang Si Falls. Funny thing is that post offices, banks etc. are indicated in French and some older people still speak French too.
Next up was Vang Vieng, a popular city south of Luang Prabang. The ride in the little minibus turned out to be the most amazing so far. We drove 6 hours trough an impressive landscape with ricefields, mountains and small villages. Vang Vieng itself was a great surprise, it looks like the Las Vegas of Laos: a very artificial tourist town with only bars with beds and tv's. Not the real Lao life, but a great place to kick back for a couple of days so that's what we did. Vang Vieng is famous for two things: tubing and the caves. Basically, tubing is nothing more than sitting in a big tube and drifting down the river. The great thing about it though are the bamboo bars
on the riverside where you have beach volley, death rides, 'flying foxes' and of course Beer Lao. No surprise we went tubing two days in a row... We visited the caves by rental motorcycle and to be honest, driving around was more fun than the caves themselves.
Our final stop in Laos was Siphandon (which means '4000 islands') in the far south near the border with Cambodia. After a lot of bus rides and boat trips we arrived on Don Deth, one of the three main islands. On this island there's really only one thing to do: relax. We stayed in a little bamboo hut at the riverside with our own little terrace and hammocks, price per night: 1,5 US$. We killed the time with eating, reading and swimming. We also went to Don Khong, the biggest island, which didn't have the nice laid back island atmosphere at all so we stayed only for one day. We drove around the island by motorcycle and apparently drew a lot of attention from all the locals since everybody was saying hi and waving enthusiastically.
Now we're on our way back to the north of Laos to cross the Vietnam border
one of the next days.
Sabaidee,
Nick & Steven
Advertisement
Tot: 0.246s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 9; qc: 61; dbt: 0.1965s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Hakke_D
non-member comment
Full moon
Jow Gick_N, alles wel cava daar precies in het verre oosten. Hier in België gagget zenne gewone gang: vooral werken en heel af en toe een pintje drinke ;-) Zie dagge nor zo'n full moon-party zé gewest...En hoe was da? Voor dak hier gon afsluiten u nog ff op de hoogte houwe van den antwerp. De voorsprong van dender is geslonken van 11 nor 8 punten en de zaterdag komt dender op bezoek in de hel van deurne-noord. Dus zaterdagavond om kwart voor 10 is de voorsprong nog mor 5 punten! Red Army! Soigneert het daar nog een bitje en groeten on den thoone. Juuw