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Published: November 15th 2007
Flew into Laos on a plane that looked like something from the flying doctors!! Im not fond of planes and when i seen this crocker (and heard about Laos air record!!), i nearly walked!! Got there safely anyway and as usual with me and melissa being so organised we ended up being bribed in the airport. We were suppose to pay our visa in dollars but we had only had vietnamese dong. The airport "official" was only to happy to relieve us of an extra 20 quid which is about a weeks wages for him to overlook it. I kind of admired his balls to be honest. He even tried to call me back after giving us our passports when i (purposely) left him short a fiver. Once i had my passport and visa i suddenly lost my hearing!!
Next day went to change our cash into Kip and got a bit of a shock. They give you this pile of notes so you cant even close your wallet. For 200 dollars you get something like 2 million kip and they look like individual notes. But some people here live on a dollar a day so they need to deal
with it like that. Luang Prabang is gorgeous. Like Vietnam some really french streets but the Laos people are so friendly, they are never rude and always say hello and welcome you were ever you go. They have a night market here which has really good stuff but best of all they never pressure you into buying anything. Nearly had to drag melissa out before she spent all her cash.
The only bad thing about Laos is there's a curfew of 11.30 so all the bars shut. It workled out funny the other night. We got into a tuk tuk and told the driver just bring us to beer. He dropped us off a this open venue type place and we tried to pay in. They gave us a free beer instead and told us to go in. It turned out we crashed a locals wedding("it was my first Asian"). We would have left only for the booze was free but pretty soon we were up doing some tandem dancing with the locals who were all dressed up to the hilt while we were dressed like something from baywatch!!! Met a lovely family though who were talking to us
for ages and drove us back to town with there kids and us drunkards in the back.
Managed to get something constructive done though. Went mountain biking and kayaking. We cycled to a waterfall and realised how boozing every night is really not too good for you!! Saw a huge scorpion on the way. Stopped at a village school aswell to make a contribution which was no probs as the kids were all lovely and happy even though they have nothing. After the dip we went kayaking which was good craic and had some great scenery. Apart from steering clear of fishermans nets(their livelyhood) there wasnt much to it as the river was pretty calm. Good day though.
So thats it really for Luang Prabang expect for visting a few temples around town. You have to though cos they are really religious over here and there are temples and monks roaming around every street in the town...Onto Vang Vien for some tubing and Friends re-runs........
(Theres 2 pages of photos up there)
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