Laos, Laos, Lovely Laos.

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Laos, lovely laid back Laos. It's a good job Laos doesn't have a coastline and a decent breeze as we probably wouldn't ever have left!

We arrived in northern Laos over the land border from Thailand. It was a little chaotic and sadly our first taste of Laos was a well planned and executed con. It takes a few hours to sign out of Thailand, pop over the Mekong and get stamped for Laos. It should only take 30 minutes or so but we were now on Laos time (which is perfect most of the time except for when you are dealing with bureaucracy). On making it through we were all set to take the slow boat down to Luang Prabang which takes 2 days. We received a stupendous pitch from the chap leading the border crossing farce about how the trip takes forever and you arrive at the half way point at night and will have bags stolen and be charged extortionate rates for a nights accommodation. I would guess that more than half the group (probably 60+ people) bought this story and opted to buy a bus ticket (because a 'new' road had been completed and was made to sound like somekind of German autobahn and would only take 5 hours to get to Luang Prabang - it took 12 as we found out to our amusement later). Everyone had already paid for their boat ticket so this was a nice little earner for our bus boy.

We decided to stick with the slow boat and loved it. We had a really pleasant cruise down the mighty murky Mekong taking in some great views on the way down. The night stop in a small village was fine - in fact probably the cheapest room we have had all trip! Not much happened on board but we met loads of people whom we keep on bumping into in random places on our SE Asia adventure.

After 2 days we arrived at sunset in Luang Prabang which is a beautiful town on the banks of the Mekong and a smaller tributary called Nam Khan (I must admit my geography lessons from school are being given a good dusting down with all the scenery we've witnessed!). We settled into Luang Prabang and decided to stay here for Christmas after having eaten in a wicked restaurant called l'Elephant. They were doing a Xmas special so we signed up after eating there.

We had a few days before Xmas so we booked ourselves onto a 3 day adventure around Luang Prabang - biking, hiking and kayaking mixed in with 2 nights in village homestays and an elephant trek. It was a lot of fun and we got lucky with having 2 other good fun couples joining us. One was a Brit/US combo, who were a couple of lively creatives types. The other couple were Dutch - Odin ＆ Femke (the Viking God of gods and a name of a Bond girl!). They were really good fun.

I guess we biked for 50km on some bumpy old roads and sandy tracks. I got a flat tyre and we had one little accident when our fellow Brit went flying on a steep downhill section - easily done. We then trekked for an hour to our first homestay in a supposedly remote village. The trek itslef was truly remote - through paddy fields, teak tree orchards and over the most enormous leaves we have ever seen. However just as we approached the village along our overgrown narrow path we popped out on to a bloody road!!! I've been more isolated and remote in Norfolk and the language barrier was just the same to!!!

We settled into a few cold beers (our remote village had a fridge!) and even ventured on to the Laos Laos homebrew whisky. They should flog that stuff to students and winos. In fact they probably do but rebranded under supermarket home labels.

Day 2 was spent trekking and after our Nepal experience we were dab hands, except for the fact it was damn hot & humid. Good fun though and we saw a few beasties including a giant flying bug (check out the photos). We got to our 2nd village which was properly remote but thankfully they still had enough electricty to cool the Beer Laos which we had most definitely earned. Both villages were very basic & simple places. Wooden houses on stilts, mud roads, tons of poorly clad, grubby kids running around and a multitude of animals wandering around clearing up anything the kids left behind. Accommodation was very basic - straw hut, ultra thin mattress, pillow & mossie net with a curtain separating the couples, but this was more than the locals had.

Only one place had a TV and I would imagine when cinema first came to London that the effect was similar. The whole village watched the one tv together. The kids that couldn't squeeze in the hut, now bursting at its seams, peeked through the well placed holes in the straw walls. In an effort not to miss more than a few precious seconds of TV when a pee was necessary, the kids appeared and squatted in the pathway either side of where we were having our beers by the fire! We caught a bit of the telly - think of 1970s royal variety performances with overdone slapstick humour filmed by a man with a twitch!

Day 3 arrived early and we set off on a short trek to the river where we were picked up by a boat and taken to some fabulous waterfalls. I can't describe it well enough but it would be a good spot to relaunch the Timotei brand if you can remember those old adverts. Cascading waterfalls over many levels with a jungle clad background. Afterwards we set off back along the river to the elephant sancturay where we had our elephant trek. We spent about an hour on board our 50 year old Nelly before having lunch.

We then embarked on the final leg of our adventure, kayaking back to Luang Prabang. This was good fun but very tiring because neither of us had really experienced kayaking and consequently we were somewhat exploited by our guide. Let me explain, we kayaked for about 4 hours which is like 4 hours of continuous lightweight horizontral press-ups (hope you're following this imagery). When we set off this was pretty easy and we soon established a rhythm, however it got harder and harder to propel our kayak at the same pace as the others. Much harder in fact and our rhythm suffered. Our (or probably my) competitive spirit meant we matched the others for pace. Only when we finished for the day and pulled our kayaks out of the water did we discover our boat weighed about 4 times as much as our Dutch buddies. Reason being, our boat had a bloody hole in it and so we had been paddling both ourselves and about a ton extra of the Tibetan meltwater that forms the Mekong. Hurrumph!!!

A unique to Laos which I hould probably have already brought attention to is the cockerals. Nowhere else on this earth do I belive there to be such a competitive spirit between rival cockerals. I'm not refering to cock fighting but to the cockadoodledoing which echoes across every village, town and city we visited in Laos. Yocals have us believe that cockerals wake us up a dawn, this is a damn right lie. The cockerals crow at any time of day or night and rarely are they crowing to themselves. There are always 2 of the beasts and they wage cockadoodle war at each other relentlessly. I also reckon they deliberately station themselves either side of the room we stay in for maximum impact on us out of towners.

A well earned nights rest followed in a very nice hotel overlooking the Nam Khan river (a tribute off the Mekong and where Luang Prabang has nestled itself for 100s of years) and yes, we still woke to the sound of cockerals. This was to be our base for Xmas. The following day we emerged at about lunchtime and strolled the markets and shops to buy each other our Christmas presents. We'd arranged to meet our Dutch friends that evening to celebrate Xmas Eve.

Xmas Eve was a good traditional booze fest in a great bar with an enormous garden that was full of fellow westerners downing Beer Lao and lethal Christmas cocktails. They also gave us all Santa hats, one of which didnt leave Hils' head until Boxing Day! I think the pictures tell the story better than words and you can thank our Dutch buddies that we have the photographic evidence as we experienced a slight technical hitch later on and lost our own copies. Oops, bring back film! We stumbled the short distance home and nodded off waiting for Santa's tropical arrival.

We woke the next day to a white Christmas... well hardly in 25 degree heat! The sun's reflection off the river did dazzle in a brilliantly white manner. but it was hardly the bitter north wind that we knew from christmas past. Woo Hoo! Present opening time was dominated by gifts from the local market - Hils got a stuffed cockeral (ho ho ho!), ring (not a sparkly one folks!) and necklace. I got my desired elephant, a coconut and an xmas stocking with a few local delights, though the pork crackling was the most original, and very tasty indeed!

We spent Xmas Day at some cool waterfalls with both of us taking it in turns to pose with Santa's hat before clambering up the waterfall - a unique Christmas Day walking experience! We returned to town and glammed up for a big blow out back at L'Elephant (Mick Jagger has eaten here as there was a photo on the wall). Our dinner rocked (sorry but needed to link Rolling Stones in or the reference was pointless!). I went for the traditional Turkey roast which was unbelievable good, Hils opted for the Venison and not a morsal was left on our plates.

The most memorable part of Xmas dinner though was the wine list ... for those of you who dont know part of the reason for our travels is that my Mum passed away in May. Mum's name was Margot and we always spent Christmas together with the family in Norfolk. This was the first Xmas without her. Baring in mind we hadn't seen let alone tasted a decent bottle of wine since leaving home we were both amazed to see a bottle of Chateux on the 'special' wine list. Well, we just had to have a bottle so Mum could join us for our Xmas dinner. A bottle of Margeux had just become an annual tradition. Let's hope the economy is in better shape this coming Xmas or we may have to opt for a demi.

Next day we headed out of Luang Prabang bound for Vang Vieng which is the party town of Laos. It is famous for 2 reasons:
1.Its stunning natural beauty - it is set beside a river overlooking some monumental kast mountains which rise up all around and make for perfect climbing opporunities.
2.Its infamous 'tubing' trips where you rent a large inner tube and float down the river visiting various bars that literally pull you in.

We spent 2 days there and managed to enjoy reason 1 but had to opt out of reason 2 because for the first time in ages it was actually quite chilly. In hindsight, with a certain someone's proneness to accidents, it was probably a very wise move as we met many people who'd suffered 'tubing' injuries. One guy reckoned 75% of his trip were hurt in someway or other!

As we'd skipped the tubing adventure we decided to upgrade from the basic bus to Vientianne (the capital) to the kayak + bus option. It was really good fun especially as the sun came out. We kayaked though some rapids including one that was slightly more challenging than we'd expected... and yes we came a cropper as did every kayak in our group! Later on we came to a point in the river where we could hop out and do a cliff jump. Some of you may have heard of Hils' experience with cliff jumps and so she was keen to participate, meaning I had no choice! We clambered up the rock face with all the other guys and reached take off point. Boy oh boy did it look a lot higher when looking down than it did when looking up. It was over 15 meters high. After a few exploratory runs up, Hils' launched off in some style leaving me to follow suit. Wham a few seconds later I hit the water with some force. It really is quite an impact leaping from that high into the water as we found out. Hils' point of entry was not quite up there with a Chinese diver and she'd managed to hurt her chest (quote: “I feel like I've been punched in both boobs and spammed on my forehead!”). We got back into the kayaks and proceeded on to Vientianne, mainly with me doing the paddling!

Vientainne is the capital but it's very quiet and more like a large town than any city I've been to. Even Norwich has more going on (even on a week night!). It's certainly pleasant enough and the food was fab (in part due to it's the French legacy). Apparently, back in the day, it was a hotbed of cold war espionage but you really couldn't imagine it. Next day we flew to Vietnam and bid farewell to Laos. If anyone happens to come to Laos I would recommend also taking in the islands in the south - we didn't have time to go there but we have only heard great things about them - super chilled, super cheap, largely unexploited and just far enough off the beaten track.

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