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From Chaing Kong, Thailand, we made our way through Laos along the Mekong River, on the aptly named 'slow boat'. A two day trip of hurting our behinds on the wooden seats - didn't quite get there in time to blag the the leather easy boy chairs, made easier with laos Whiskey. Passed some stunning scenery, making it hard to believe that Laos holds the grand title of The most bombed country in the world.
Spent a night in between in Pak Beng, and after being told by touts in Thailand that we'd stuggle to get a room, which luckily we ignored, we were greeted by a menagery of local guest house owners fighting for our business, with offers of food and various narcotics thrown in. Settled for one for 20p per night (was worth about 10p) with only a handful of lizards to keep us awake- they make the stangest noise, bit like tellytubbies if you can imagine that - eh oh!
Ended up at Luang Prabang, a picturesque French Colonial town and certainly one of the richer places that we'd seen along the way, for a quick stop over before we hit Vang Vieng - the
chill out capital of Laos! Ended up spending quite a while there whilst we got our Vietnam visas sorted, which was a good excuse for lazy days, lounging around watching films in their slouch bars, tubing and exploring.
For those of you who don't know what tubing is, it's the best, wettest, pub crawl you can do. Set off in a tyre inner-tube 3km upstream and spend the next 6 hrs stopping off at numerous makeshift bars- with rope swings and zip slides and everything from Bob Dylan to MC Hammer to add to the experience. In short, brilliant... even if Paul got second degree burns to 60 percent of his body from the sun and came close to braking his shins on a ladder that he fell up and I, my back, cliff jumping (got scared and tried chickening out last minute)!
Managed to tie in our visit with the town's annual Rocket Festival- where, as expected they launch rockets into the sky, and sometimes the crowd if it goes wrong- didn't manage to find out the reason behind it but guess its a bit like our bonfire night.
Decided to do our own adventure tour
the next day and hired out mountain bikes to the blue lagoon, where local kids played on rope swings and offered to escort us around a nearby cave; three eight year old boys- one with the head torch, one who resembled Leonardo DiCaprio in 'What's eating Gilbert Grape' and the third being the business man of the group who changed into a shirt and trousers and picked up his brief case on the way. Getting into the cave meant climbing a 20ft bamboo ladder up the side of a rugged limestone mountain- typical of the Laos landscape. We didn't last too long inside once me and Danica got scared off by a big spider (paul didn't mind it apparently) and all freaked out by the thought that the kids could do a runner at any moment and we wouldn't be able to see our way out! As soon as our heels hits the ground the business boy piped up "5000 kip each", we paid them and they scarpered- well worth doing it the local way!
Managed to drag ourselves away to the capital, Vientiane, (check out their main road) for a night before braving the 23hr bus ride to
Vientnam...
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Ellie
non-member comment
Hey there!
Hi dudes, just wanted to say hi and that I'm loving your travelblog, it's funny and fab! Looks/sounds like you're having a very enjoyable/scary/interesting/drunken time! Like the way you're keeping it real with the commentary. Hope you enjoy Vietnam! It's the big day tomorrow - Jord and I off to Japan - so am very giddy :-) Take care, looking forward to your next instalment xxxx