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Published: December 22nd 2007
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Sa bai dee!
Well the mini bus was definately quicker but the whole journey was mountain roads. For 5 hours we were thrown around going through and around these mountains, rob felt as sick a s a dog, i had my travel bands on. What a state we were! Anyway we got there which was the main thing. We headed for the centre of town on a tuktuk as we got dropped a little out of the way, and after looking around a couple of places we found somewhere in our price range. The town is labeled as a world heritage site as it is meant to be one of the nicest places in south east asia, and it was a really pretty place! Again, quite french in style, it was really quiet too, not a mad city at all.
We went for a wander and booked ourselves up on an elephant treck and trip to Kuang si waterfall for 2 days time. As we decided not to go to Chang mai in thailand and instead go straight to Bangkok. So we wanted to ride elephants here instead. The poeple are so nice and friendly in Laos we felt
really at home straight away. Random observation; the butterflies are as big as bats they are huge! We headed for dinner and i wanted to try the famous sticky rice with mango. Its really good and tastes pretty much like rice pudding back home, just more solid!
The following day we got up and ready to sight see, first heading to Wat xiang thong- golden city monastery, right next to the mekong river, very peaceful and the amazing surroundings help. It was small but interesting. Boats can pull up on the mekong and walk straight up the steps to it, thats what they did in the old days anyway. Next we visited Phou si-the sacred hill. Which took a while to climb as it had 333 steps to the top. Our thighs were burning! At the top we bought some little birds in a small basket cage which you release and this is seen as good luck. By the time we had done all that, the night market had begun so we started wandering through, when we heard shouting to our left. It was Kate and Rhonda! They had met Rhondas friend Bailey too and had been up in
The mekong river
a bit prettier here! the local villages for a couple of days and had just got back to Luang Prabang. We couldnt believe we had bumped into them. We all headed out for an indian and a good catch up. It was so good we were made up to have seen them!
The next day we were up ready for our trip, we jumped in a mini van and arrived at the Laos elephant camp after just 30 minutes. We got on and started the 1hour 30 minute trek through the jungle. It was amazing, a whole heard of them wading through the jungle, ripping down nearly whole trees at a time to eat. We got to a river and the elephants took us right through, we were so deep they kept putting there heads under and snorkelling, really funny. When we got back, we could feed them bananas, which we spent a while doing. Everyone else didnt seem to be interested in doing this but our Mahout(elephant rider) let us under the barrier to really interact with them. It was just unreal, we were so close up - paignton zoo will never be the same!
After we got taken to the
Wat Xiang Thong
Inside with a grand buddha Kuang si waterfall which drops 60 meters. You can jump in and swim at various pools all the way down, which are the most amazing colour of blue. We had really good fun as the pictures show. On the way back we stopped at a local village called the Hmong village. It was a real eye opener into how locals live. They only earn between 10,000-40,000 kip a day which is between 50p-2 pounds. Really not alot!
That evening we met up with Kate,Rhonda and Bailey for one last time before we left Bangkok the next morning. We had a traditional Laos BBQ dinner which you cook yourselves in the middle of the table where the BBQ sits literally in it. We had a brilliant time but it was sad to say buy to the guys. The next time we would see them would be New Zealand.
Hope you enjoyed the blog as much as we enjoyed doing Laos, it is definately somewhere we would come back to, it had been amazing!
Until next time, party on!
Han and Rob
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