A quick tour of Laos

---

My journey to Laos started with a slow boat cruise down the Mekong River from the Thai boarder to a town called Luang Prabang in Northern Laos. It was a slow (two days) and beautiful journey, with lush forest on both sides of the river most of the way and great limestone cliffs increasing the closer we got to Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site and is protected to maintain its old world Asian charm mixed in with the French colonial influence. It is a pretty little town that sits on the fork of the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers. I was traveling with a couple of girls and we visited temples, wandered the streets and swam at waterfalls to get a feel for the town for a few days. My highlight in Luang Prabang was the Tamarind Restaurant, where we were able to get platters of traditional food from Laos, all delivered with an explanation given on how to eat it (mostly with our hands). It was all great food and so exciting to use our new found knowledge at all of the markets and stalls around town. Luang Prabang also had a great night market, which sold beautiful crafts and Laos Silk weaving and scarfs.

From Luang Prabang we caught a bus down to the backpacker haven of Vang Vieng. It is a tiny little town and must be filled with twice as many tourists as locals. There are lots of cafes lining the streets with low tables, cushions on the floor and TV's playing continuous reruns of Friends, you can get lost in there for hours, especially with no ads. Vang Vieng is popular on the backpacker trail because of its highlight - tubing down the Nam Song River. Tubing involves taking a tuk tuk ride a few km's north of town, then sitting on top of the inner tube of a tractor tyre and floating down the river. Of course this is not the only attraction, there are several bars along the way all desperately trying to vy for our business. As you are floating down the river you try and steer towards the bar you want to go to, then they catch you as you float past using great big poles. When you are at a bar there are all sorts of amazing activities, like flying foxes, volleyball, table tennis, petanque, sling shots, jumping platforms and my favourite - the trapeze like swings that start from platforms 12 m above the river and have you screaming as you swing backwards and forwards a few times before plunging back into the river. It was so much fun! I enjoyed it so much that I did the tubing two days and kayaked past again on the third day.

From Viang Vieng I caught the local bus (an experience in itself) and headed down to the Capital of Laos, Vientiane. We hired bikes for the day here to check the city out. Got out and about to see yet more temples and the Laos version of the arc de triumph called Patuxai. It was rumoured to be built using concrete donated by the Americans for the airport runway.

My trip through Laos ended here and I caught a flight out to spend my remaining week in Cambodia.

---