Day 9 - Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng

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We were up and ready this morning by 5:45am as we were getting picked up to go and feed the monks.
The local people get up at about 4:00am every morning to prepare food to give to the 400 odd monks of Luang Prabang. The reason for doing this is that is part of the ‘rules’ of being a monk that you aren’t allowed to purchase or prepare your own food, you can only eat what is given to you. Any food that you do receive must be consumed by midday as they are only allowed two meals a day, the rest of the day they can only have water, tea, coffee etc.
The locals had prepared baskets of sticky rich for Contiki to hand out to the monks. We had to do grabs about the size of golf balls of the sticky rice and place it in the monks containers. Tui had told us not to scrunch the balls up too much because the monks will think it’s dirty and won’t eat it.
After this, we headed back to the hotel in tuk tuks for our own breakfast. Bacon and egg rolls were on the menu this morning. We had about 90minutes to fill in before we had to leave so I had a brief nap then Jackie and I walked into town to post some postcards. By the time we walked there and back and played on the free wireless internet it was time to jump on a little bus to get out of town because coaches aren’t allowed in the city. We piled into our coach and headed on our way towards Van Vieng.
The drive was about 6 hours and it wasn’t too bad as we stopped about 2hours in at tiny little place for a toilet and snack break, stayed here for only about 15minutes. The toilet situation was interesting.. It’s not the first time we’ve come across it on the trip but it’s the first time I’ve mentioned it as these were in a class all of their own. A lot of the toilets here are squatting toilets, all the hotels have been western toilets but at places outside of the hotel they generally have squatting toilets. I still don’t understand the concept of a squatting toilet but whatever, I don’t think I ever will, but I was taking it in my stride and doing what had to be done.
We drove for maybe two more hours before arriving at our lunch stop. Where we stopped for lunch was remarkable. Not only was the food incredible but the view was amazing; we had almost a 360 degree view of the mountains/jungle. Lunch consisted of everything from sweet chicken curry (which was to die for), sweet and sour fish, veggies, rice, beef and veggie soup, chicken and ginger and for dessert was pineapple.
After lunch, and some more photos of the magnificent view, we continued on our way to Vang Vieng.
It was only about 2 hours before we reached the most brilliant hotel ever. It’s called the Elephant Crossing Hotel and I could highly recommend it to everyone. It’s right on the river and when Jackie and I went up to our room it was a double. Two king size beds separated by a divider, we had 2 sinks, am en-suite and even a couch and two chairs; it was twice the size of everyone else’s rooms. Score.
After we chucked our bags in we made our way to the lobby to have our brief tour of the town. It really was brief as there really isn’t much to this quaint little town. There are a lot of bars, a lot of tourist shops selling fake sunnies etc, a super small hospital and a few other little shops, that’s it.
We found out that apparently Vang Vieng isn’t liked very much by the people of Laos as it is basically the ‘Cancun’ of the country; the party town. It is where all the tourists come. Apparently they thinl this because it doesn't show the 'real Laos'.
After, we walked in to a few of the shops and had a quick walk around the town; we sussed out where we had to hire the tubes for tubing tomorrow, changed over some cash then made our way back to the hotel for dinner.
Dean, our tour manager pointed out three places that he knew were good to eat at as there is apparently a big problem here with food poisening. Nice. So we stuck with the restaurant hotel for dinner. I had the Hokkien Noodles with beef and we started with a plates of spring rolls and garlic bread to share. We followed it up with sticky rice and mango for dessert. It was so nice.
After dinner we had our showers and headed to 'The Island'.
We had to cross this rickety old bridge to get across to 'Smile Bar'. There wasn't a huge amount of people there so we had a couple of drinks while sitting round the bonfire then headed next door to 'Joker Bar'. There was even less people there so we headed back across the bridge to 'Oh La La' where some of the others were. We weren't here long before the others decided they wanted to check out 'The Island'. There still wasn't many people there so we crossed another bridge to the 'Rock Bar'; no one there either so we went back to 'Smile Bar' and chilled on the hammocks for a bit with drinks before deciding it was time to head back to the hotel.
we sat on the balcony for a while, taking it all in, watching my gecko friend catch his dinner on the roof above me before hitting my very comfy king size bed.

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