Loving Life in Laos

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Luang Prabang

After a few days in Luang Prabang it quickly became one of our favorite cities in south east Asia. We stayed at a great little guesthouse called Thanaboune...the only downside was that I had the equivalent of $130 CAD taken from my pack. I'm sure whoever took it had a good reason. Our guesthouse was on the main road within walking distance of the night market and many great restaurants. Surprisingly, one of the best meals we had was from a street vendor.. the vegetarian buffet was amazing and at $1 a plate it was hard to beat. We also came across a Canadian cafe called Joma which was a better version of Tim Horton's, a welcomed change after three weeks of stir fry and sticky rice.

One of the days we were in LP we climbed to the top of Phu Si hill to watch the sun go down. At the top of the hill there is a beautiful temple and you get a 360 degree view of the city..definitely a highlight. The following day we went to the Kuang Si waterfalls outside the city. I can honestly say this was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I wish I could find some where to upload pictures but I'm sure goodle has some good pics..basically imagine a huge waterfall in the jungle with endless pools of turquoise water that you can swim in. The fact that the water was cold made it even better after the long climb to the top of the falls. The next day it was off to Vang Vieng...

Vang Vieng

The journey to Vang Vieng is not for those with a weak stomach! For 5-6 hours you are doing hairpin turns through the mountains but the views are amazing. Luckily I came prepared with a costco sized box of gravol .. Most of it is already gone. Anyways, we eventually got to VV and found a place to stay. This place is famous for two things..drugs and doing a "pub crawl" down the river in an old tractor tire. We we're planning on taking part in the tubing but we both came down with an unfortunate bout of food poisoning or something. One day we tried biking to the blue lagoon but we only made it halfway before turning back. Later that night we decided to try eating again at one of the many restaurants in town. Unfortunatley, every restaurant had the exact same menu..the only thing that varied was the episode of Friend or Family Guy they were playing. Needless to say this was not our favorite town so after two days of bedrest we moved on to the capital of Vientiane.

Vientiane is a pretty sleepy city but it has good food and the people were nice. We ended up staying only one night as there wasn't much to do. This morning we got up at 6 to head to the Vientiane airport. Due to the situation in Bangkok we figured it would be easier to fly so this was one of the days that our backpacker budget went out the window. The ATMs weren't working, possibly because we were trying to take out 1.7 million Kip each, so we had to buy our tickets with a combination of US and Thai baht. It came down to the wire for Ash but I lent her every dollar I had left so she could leave the country. We got our tickets, flew to Bangkok, bought another plane ticket and flew to Koh Samui..by noon we were lying on the beach...now it's time to work on our tans (ash is failing miserably so far...she was clearly never taught how to apply an even layer of sunscreen)...to be continued

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