Laos travels

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Hello!!


Been busy bee's! Spent another couple of days in Chiang Mai...we really enjoyed our time there. Its a very peaceful place. Geoff spent a day on a zip wire adventure, with Dan, while me, Becky and Havi spent the day shopping! (window shopping should I say!) We booked our tickets to Laos.



We left Chiang Mia on Monday and spent 5hours on a mini bus to reach the border. We stayed the night, and got the slow boat on the Tuesday. The slow boat, was as its title suggests! Very hard wooden benches and packed in like sardines. Wasn't too bad though, as got chatting to lots of like minded people. 6 hours later we reached a place to stay...very basic but quaint! We then had to get on an even smaller, and packed slow boat for a further 8ish hours! The views were beautiful...but theres only so much river a person can stare at 😊. As we were floating down the river we noticed some locals on the beaches, the boat pulled over and what can only be described as a live wombat type thing was brought on board. Then before we could look a cooked one made it on board too as did a live flapping fish! I was just happy I didn't have to sit at the back of the boat with them! We arrived in a great town called Luang Prabang, full of lovely little bars and restaurants...we spent the evening the Laos Laos bar, watching the football-although we had a ten minute power cut for the first 15minutes. Which is a common event I think!! The next day we took ANOTHER boat to the caves...was interesting but the stairs to the top cave were a killer. My favourite part of the day was the waterfalls...clear crystal water, so refreshingly beautiful. Also, it homed those little fish that nibble the dead skin off your feet-so it was like a pamper treatment as well 😊


Spent today on a bus traveling to Vang Vieng (tubing mania!) Just checked into our hostel...its fine but the bed is hard as rocks! Going tubing tomorrow, so will write a bit more on the blog in a couple of days.




Tubing was brill! Basically the surrounding villages take turns in making a profit on selling the tubes (Giant rubber rings) You get taken further up the river in a tuk tuk, get into your tube, in the river and just GO! The river is surrounded by zip wires and slides...when you decide where you want to be dropped off u kick as hard as you can and hope that the rope the little Laos guy throws at you will 1.reach 2.not hit you in the head and 3. have enough strength on his side to pull you across! Geoff was monkey man of course, flying through the air on numerous zip wires! Where as I just chillaxed in the sun and met plenty of cool people. Its a big race at the end, because you have to get the tubes back by 6pm to get your deposit ...so it becomes everyone's mission! People are floating as quick as they can kicking and flapping like crazed ducks, trying to get to the edge of the river. Then the people start to run-which is pretty funny, until it is you doing the running! We had no shoes, carrying this giant tube, trying to make it down the road in time-the locals found us all highly amusing! We tubbed for two days, then finally said our goodbyes to Vang Vieng and our rock hard bed, and got on our bus to Vientiane. The bus journey was short, only a few hours...we just had a chilled night (recovering from a few days of madness)



We got our Vietnam visa today...Geoff's now out and about trying to find us a bus for tonight. Will take us approx 24hours to get to Hanoi!

Lots of love x

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Photos

Slow boat
Kids playing in the river

Slow boat
Katie and Jo...comfy :)

Slow boat
Beautiful views!