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Published: March 14th 2010
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26/1/10: Around Prabang Australia day: Our feet were still bad but with our last day in Luang Prabang we had to make an effort to see the rest of the town. Because it was Australia day we had to do something special so we decided to hire a private boat up the Mekong River for 1 hour. It only cost 40000 kip and it was well worth the money. It’s not hard to find a boat to take you as they are certain to find you first. We bought a couple of Beer Laos and headed down to the shoreline and just before we got on the boat I noticed a rather large worm in the sand so I decided to pick it up and have a closer look. It was around 400mm long until I picked it up and realised that the rest of the worm was still in the sand. I slowly and gently lifted the worm until it revealed its true length of 1.2m long. I couldn’t believe the size of this thing and took a quick video, it was the biggest worm I have ever seen. If we had worms like this back home and there would
be a good chance it would get chopped up every time you dug a hole in a garden.
We started to motor up the river and I pulled out the trusty old Swiss army knife to crack our beers and celebrate Australia Day. The first thing I notice about the Mekong is the size and even though it was the dry season the river still had immense power and turbulence in the water. You could almost make out the terrain and structure of the bottom just by watching the bellowing compressed water boiling up from the huge rocks and boulders below. The river also had a far amount of speed and current and it took no time at all to motor past our beach once we turned around to head back. So with 15min still to go the driver took us down the river closer to the banks of the Mekong and the villages. Most of the sand banks were planted out with veggies and the soil must have been very fertile, this was confirmed by how big the worms were. With our Mekong boat ride over it was time to take in the back streets of town and once
were off the main road it was almost like being in another town. The back streets were so quiet and peaceful to walk and some of the early French architecture dating back 100 years was also impressive. Some buildings looked untouched but still in relatively good condition and this is what gives Luang Prabang such great character and sets it apart from most other towns. Satisfied that we had seen most of the town we spent the rest of the afternoon Skypeing and hitting the internet on information about Cambodia.
27/1/10: Our flight was at 10:00 so we caught a tuk tuk to the airport at 8:00. It was a drizzly day and the clouds hung low. Our flight was delayed by an hour so as usual we just waited and waited as you so often do in Laos. It didn’t matter too much because both of us were sad to leave Laos and it will always have a special place in our hearts. We were also upset that we never got a chance to see the four Thousand Islands located in the south eastern corner of Lao. Our Norwegian friends Annette and Marte were able to make it
down and said it was amazing and actually saw the freshwater Mekong dolphins that are slowly dying out.
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