Beautiful, beautiful Laos

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So we fly to Vientiane in Laos and then fly on to Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang is so different from Thailand. It has a very slow pace of life. It resembles Koh Samui more than anywhere else I have been. We headed out for a quick lunch at a restaurant that was situated on the most picturesque lily pond. Our lunch turned into a comedy of errors as the people around us were served our food and we were served every one else's- after our lunch eventually arrived we had only moments to eat it before making our way back to our group for the walking tour of the town.

The first Buddhist temple we visited was extremely peaceful. It was a beautiful sunny day and what made it lovely was that we were the only tourists in sight. I tried to get to grips with the camera that I was borrowing in place of my stolen one and eventually managed to get a couple of good pics outside of the temple. More and more when I enter these temples I feel that I really do want to sit quietly and just meditate a while but our tour necessitates we
get back moving pretty quickly, however I feel that in Laos I will have more opportunity to just sit and be than anywhere else.

Our walking tour then took us on to the most stunning set of temples I have ever seen, called Wat Xieng Thong. Apparently it was built in 1559, and the golden temple here is the main attraction, and for me it makes the solid gold Temple in Bangkok pale into comparison of this beauty but it wasn't the golden temple its self that captured my imagination, it was the other smaller temples around the bigger one that I fell in love with. They are all situated on the bank of the river and use brightly coloured mirror tiles to make beautiful patterns/mosaics including designs such as delicate flowers, images of people and animals. The temples also hung coloured lanterns from the eves and a beautiful Buddha that you can pray to is located behind the temples, sitting quietly in a little flower garden full of wild vibrant flowers. It must have helped again that we made up the very few tourists there and that the sun made the mirrored temple glimmer- giving this place a magical feel.

Inside one of the temples there were boxes for donations. Here I came across the lucky sticks for the second time on our trip. This is where you have a jar of sticks that have different numbers written on them; After popping a small donation in the pot, you pick up the jar of sticks and patiently you rattle the jar until one stick falls out and the number on the stick relates to a number on a piece of paper where your fortune is written out. My fortune turned out to be pretty good actually but we'll assume it neglected to tell me about the next two disastrous days for my own good!!

Any Way….. We carried on our tour of Luang Prabang seeing a couple of other temples, one including the biggest Buddha in Laos and another where young monks were congregating. Our tour took us through the night market which was setting up for a night of hard trading and already I could feel my shopping gene going into over drive. However feeling very hot and sweaty with a mystery bad pain in my foot, I left early with some of the ladies from our group and headed towards the massage place opposite our hotel. As one of my feet was really hurting I thought I foot massage might help. When there, all the other ladies were allocated a masseuse first and the only one left for me was a guy. They all checked that I was ok with this- which of course I was as he was the cutest guy I'd laid my eyes on for a while. However as I found out, cute did not also equal a good foot massage and although we had a laugh I ended up hobbling out of there in a very bad way, my originally painful foot was now unbearably painful. I could not walk of my foot and half way down the road the same masseuse approached me on his bike and gave me a lift to my hotel (bless him) where I laid my foot up hoping it was just a muscle thing and would sort it's self out.

Unfortunately it didn't but nothing was going to stop me hobbling round the night market. I was like a magpie to shiny things it was the best market I'd seen for ages and it sported very reasonable priced goods to boot. I recommend it highly to everyone who heads to Laos.

The next day we headed for the morning market which is also a big feature here (yes if you love shopping then come here) but the morning market was a bit different to the night one. We walked (well I hobbled) through rows of food such as vegetables, rice, dead and alive animals including: Frogs, live fish in an inch of water,, snakes and various other weird things you will only ever see in South East Asia. After this we headed in a long boat down the Mekong River where we first got off at a place that made rice Whisky. We all got to sample a bit which was pretty potent and then we looked around the markets and at some dilapidated temples. Next we hopped on the boat again and stopped at the Pak Ou Caves that you must climb up to see the many rock shelves packed with old Buddha's. In Buddhism you must never throw away a Buddha when it gets old so this cave is kind of a resting place for old Buddha's and it has to be seen to be believed. You can only get to it by boat and the sheer number of old Buddha's that line the craggy shelves it quite amazing. Unfortunately western tourists over the years have depleted stocks of Buddha by taking them home and I hope the soulless thieves take with them some bad luck too.

For me this is where things go slightly down hill. After feeling decidedly off I went back to the boat only to begin vomiting uncontrollably. After bearing the embarrassment of vomiting over the side of the boat all the way back and an after afternoon of non stop sick I, with my tour guide and Sarah, made my way to the hospital where I tried to get put on some IV fluids as it looked like I was dehydrated. I don't remember much after this but I was told I became very angry and they sedated me so hours after and plenty of fluid later I was helped back to my hotel and slept the drugs and my embarrassment off!

This morning we fly to Vientiane. In my very shaky state I had to endure all the stories from last night in the hospital from our evil tour guide; including me swearing at the nurses and me loudly snoring after they sedated me. I'm sure I will appreciate these stories more when I'm feeling a little better!!! Every one was lovely and helped me with my luggage and we arrived in Vientiane later that day. The Hotel was similar to the one in Luang Prabang, lots of wooden carving, French colonial style and very homely. I was instructed to not go on the walking tour and sleep so I stuck on HBO and watched Cat Woman before sleeping the rest of my shakiness off. That evening we headed to a Laos restaurant and enjoyed a yummy meal.

The next day I met our tour guide in the lobby early as he had promised to take me to the main sites I missed yesterday that the others had seen on their walking tour. I knew before I saw our guide, Simon, that he was going to be in bad shape as Sarah had only crawled into bed stinking like a good night out a few ours earlier and Simon is always involved in a good night out. Never the less he took me to the main sights of Victory gate, the Luang Stupa (which is said to contain the hair of the Buddha) and Wat Sisaket which is full of Buddha's. These places were fascinating but the amount of tourists put me off slightly and it felt entirely different from the experience I'd had in Luang Prabang.

After thanking our Simon very much and leaving him to skulk off back to bed I had lunch in a little bakery up the road and in the afternoon me and Sarah went to the local Museum and had a bite to eat before we got our stuff together and all checked out ready to fly to Vietnam!!

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