Laos

---

Here's a quick round up of our time in Laos. It wasn't a long stay but it was a good one!

From Chiang Mai, Thailand we picked the popular route into Laos over water rather than land by taking a slow boat trip up the Mekong river from the border to Luang Prabang. The slow boat ride takes 2 days, with an overnight on land stop in between. The main draw of the trip is to see the Mekong and it's beautiful surroundings of thick forest and river beaches, and also the remote settlements along the way, fishermen going about their business and the like. Unfortunately the first day was pretty overcast and not all that sunny so we were more wrapped up in our hoodies huddling rather than appreciating the view! But the second day treated us to sunnier skies and we had some lovely views along the way for the final relaxing 8 hour day. We also had ample time to meet some good people and make some friends!

After the slow boat we stayed in Luang Prabang for a couple of days, which apparently "may be the most beguiling ancient city in Southeast Asia" - as quoted in Lonely Planet by a writer who had clearly been sampling the local Opium. We were obviously in the wrong town, as the fantastic Buddhist and French architecture we'd been promised seemed to be distinctly lacking! Nonetheless, the town was nice enough and we took a day to go out to the local waterfalls with the group of people we met on the slow boat, which actually really were beautiful! And had fun jumping off rocks, rope swings and swimming about.

Our new little group decided to get a mini bus together to our next destination, Vang Vieng. I'd love to be able to tell you that we made up for Luang Prabang by immersing ourselves in the cultural and historical splendour of Vang Vieng; but anyone who's been there will know, this is not the place for intellectual or cultural enrichment! Vang Vieng is famous for tubing, and you probably wouldn't go there for any other reason. Needless to say we had an awesome time! Tubing essentially involves floating down the river on rubber rings, and there are loads of bars pumping out music to stop off at along the way with slides, rope swings and of course drinks... Think your standard one week holiday in Magaluf/Ayia Napa/insert party town name here kind of vibe. We don't have any photos as once again we weren't keen on seeing if the camera can swim, but they would be mostly of us partying so nothing you haven't seen before.

So after 3 days in Vang Vieng it was time to say goodbye to our little group and we booked on the bus to take us to Hanoi, Vietnam. We decided not to spend any more time in Laos because there weren't really any places we were dying to see, and we knew there was a lot to pack in to a couple of weeks in Vietnam, so onwards we went...

---

Photos

weirdness
not entirely sure what it's about but more temple weirdness

Excitement
Overjoyed on the slow boat

Tropical
feeling the heat on day 1

Ring
Standard evening games

Comments

[Brian Maslen]

Great trip and pics again.
Trip looks fantastic Nic and James, you are so lucky to be missing the recent bad weather here. So have you seen enough temples yet? We are looking forward to the next entry. Love Lin and Brian