Country number 2. - LAOS

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Sabaidee from Laos!!!

To carry on from where we left off, we set off on the trek to Laos with our new best friends Thomas and Fleischberg (it really is amazing how close you get to your fellow trekees after 3 days in the Thai jungle!) We arranged our travel down with the guesthouse, it took 7 hours to reach Chiang Khong (I may have spelt that wrong) in Northern Thailand, a border town on the Mekong river. We were all knackered after the ride but after the guesthouse owner rounded a corner and led us to a beautiful view of the Mekong, then pointed and said 'Laos!' we knew we'd finally made it and were about to say our farewell to Thailand. We had arranged a package from our friendly guesthouse to take us to Luang Prabang in Laos. Included in the price was dinner and a nights accommodation. When we arrived we had dinner waiting for us, which included a huge BBQed fish that our friendly guesthouse owner "plonked down" on the table and simply said "FISH" and walked off. After dinner we decided that we would need a little night cap to help us sleep so we went in search of a bottle of Thai Whiskey "Samsong" which we managed to find for the bargain price of 4 pounds. We played silly drinking games until the bottle was drained and went off to bed.

The next morning we woke at 06.00 to the sound (which we are now getting slightly used to) of our friendly guesthouse owner saying "good morning, good morning, wake up, wake up, breakfast, breakfast!" After breakfast we went to tackle our first border crossing though the well named Siam Gateway. After a lot of confusion and a lot of queuing (which being British we carried out very efficiently) we made it through the various immigration points and into Huay Xai. After we had got our visas we were approached by a friendly looking man offering us a quicker way to Luang Prabang. We had tickets for the slow boat which we already knew was going to take two days on a cramped boat. Not being the best sailor in history (bit of a massive understatement!) I was not particularly looking forward to the journey. The person who approached us said that we could take a mini bus to Luang Prabang which would take 7 hours, and get in a very respectable 17.00 that same day. He said it was either this or 9 hours the first night on a boat with 120 other people, with no food or drink avaliable the first day, with an overnight stay in a town with no electricity and then 10 hours on the boat the next day. (LIES, which we would later find out!!!!)

Hannah was looking forward to the slow miander down the mekong for a coupleof days, but being the wonderful person she is agreed that for my sanity we could take the minibus and get an extra day in Laos. In order to get the mini bus it required another 6 people,so we promptly got to work recruiting another 6 people. This done we climbed into the minibus and set off on our "7 hour" journey.

We picked up another Laos man who we later realised was present to give the driver directions to Luang Prabang as it quickly became apparent that our driver had never driven there before. Neither the driver nor the man we picked up spoke English so after travelling for 7 hours with the road stones still saying 150km to Luang Prabang, we started to get a little antsy. Although us and our German companions were used to being messed around when it came to transport, the girls we were with were not. Of the 4 girls travelling with us, 2 were suffering with Delhi-belly and travel sickness so vomit and regular toilet-stops (or wilderness-stops) became a regular feature of the journey. A situation worsened by the fact that the Laos men we were with didn't speak English,so it was hard to get them to pull over. All this aside, and once we had resigned ourselves to the possibility that we may never reach Luang Prabang, Barney and I really started to appreciate the beauty of the Laos countryside, which is bisected by windy roads (or dirt-tracks - one of the reasons the journey took so long!) snaking around the hills. The sunset was stunning and the people live a basic but really happy life and apart from the one toilet stop at which we saw a man skinning a dog, we knew Laos was going to be fantastic.

We finally arrived at 10pm to a deserted Luang Prabang, it was a real stuggle to find a guest house still open to take us, and even more of a struggle to ask the driver to find us one as he was knackered from his mammoth 12-hour driving epic! Eventually, he just threw our bags from the back of the bus with distain (luckily leaving us in the centre of the deserted town - although we wouldn't know it until Luang Prabang awoke the next morning) and we found an overpriced guesthouse that would take us.

Our favourite bits of Luang Prabang...

1. The Sandwiches (baguettes EVERYWHERE!)
2. The French Colonial Architecture
3. Sunset cruise along the Mekong
4. The laidback pace of life
5. The night market which magically appeared at 6 and was gone by 10

Our saddest part of Luang Prabang...

Saying goodbye to Thomas and Gunnar... although we gave them a great send off the night before they left, staying up till 4 in the morning. A valient effort considering the guesthouse owner started to set-up his bed downstairs, turned all the lights off leaving us with only 3 candles at about 23.00, a bottle of whiskey, 6 beers (a total that increased by the end of the night to 8 beers after some clever Gunnar-candlelight-foraging, but don't worry blog-fans, we paid for them the next day) and a pack of cards... he was adament we could stay up as long as we liked...so we did!

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