Blogs from West, Laos, Asia - page 11

After a really good Pad Thai and a couple of beer lao at a makeshift restaurant on the Mekong waterfront last night I decided to walk off the calories today. My first port of call was the COPE visitors centre. The Cooperative orthotic and prosthetic enterprise is a non-profit organisation that provides care and support to UXO survivors. The visitors centre educates about the devastating consequences of war and it's hard to think of a more fitting place than Laos to do so. Between 1964 and 1973 the US army dropped over 2,000,000 tons of ordnance on Laos making it the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. Of the over 270 million sub-munitions dropped 80 million failed to explode. Cluster munitions, bomb casings containing up to 200 smaller 'bombies' were designed to explode on ... read more

Last night we found another Laos BBQ place not far from the hotel. It was a busy place and we were the only westerners there. Ed was feeling about off colour so he only had a few bits of pork. They played games near a very rob irate mirrored shrine whilst Cas and I ate the soup and fresh veg which was very fresh and delicious. It's the first time that I've had beer served with ice. We turned the lights off to settle the kids when there was knock at the door with an additional bed, making four in total, and it meant that Ed and Hat wouldn't disturb each other. We rose late and skipped the hotel breakfast which was pretty poor. Instead, we headed to the Cafe Benito again for very Parisian croissants ... read more

After breakfast we took off for an hour walk as we had another four hour bus journey. We crossed a wooden plank bridges high was a bit narrow given the vans that also crossed with inches to spare as we moved to the side. We took a route that followed the banks of the River Song, before heading away from the river towards the hills. The rains overnight were very heavy so the trails were muddy and Cas had a number of near miss slips. In the end we all walked barefoot through the squelchy mud and orange puddles and it was great fun. We ended our walk at the base of Pha Poak, a steep hill with a bamboo staircase to climb up and a flag on the top (you can just make it out ... read more

Today was mostly about getting stuff done and stuff sorted prior to moving on again. I popped out mid morning to buy our seats on a minibus going to Vang Vieng tomorrow and opted for speed (4 hrs) over luxury (6 hrs). We sent Ed to reception with all our laundry, so that we have everything clean in our bags before we head to China in a few days. When I got back, the room smelt lovely and Ed and Hat had set up 'Lemongrass' which did massages and beauty treatments. Cas was almost asleep as Hat ran through her post treatment feedback form. I made an 'appointment' and was treated to a very professional head, hand and foot massage and I took the optional hair cut and shave. Very relaxing. For lunch we wndered down ... read more

We all took a shower to get rid of the mud on our arms and legs and then had some chill out time which included a nice bottle of red wine for Cas and I on our terrace. Cas found two great restaurants and the hotel provided what can only be described as an electric golf buggy to transport us there. It was very pretty as the tables were surrounded by a lily pad pond. Except...there was nothing on the menu suitable for Ed and Hat - so we politely left. A 15 minute walk along the main road, through the many stalls being set up for the night market and we and reached a bamboo bridge which took us across the river to the second restaurant. It was a really good decision because we had ... read more