Beautiful Laos

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I don't even know where to begin with blog post... Laos was the most beautiful country I've been to yet. Every time I catch myself looking through my Laos pictures (which is more often than I care to admit), I get this warm fuzzy feeling inside and an urge to jump on the next flight there! It's funny because before starting my year abroad, Laos was the one country in South East Asia I wasn't too bothered about seeing. It's landlocked so as a sun, sea and sand worshipper I thought it wouldn't be the place for me. However my mind was changed randomly in Bangkok airport as I was waiting to board my flight home to Fukuoka in January after I got talking to some guy who had been travelling for 23 months and told me that Laos had been his favourite country. I became fascinated by Laos and after seeing pictures and hearing my friend's stories, I knew that I just HAD to visit so very quickly my travel plans changed to ensure I could fit in a trip to Laos. Whilst travelling I always heard two opinions about Laos, either people love it or hate it. I was in the former group of lovers. For me, I think the people I met there really had an impact as well as me being a sucker for beautiful scenery which the country is in abundance of! I have no idea what the guy in the airport was called but THANK YOU for making me change my mind!

Due to time restrictions, I only got to see the capital, Vientiane, and upwards unfortunately meaning I missed all of the south on this trip but on a positive, at least it means I have an excuse to go back. I also managed to bag myself a Laos husband whilst we were there who promised me a happy life on a farm if I went back in 3 years.. so thats a visa sorted too if I fancy it haha!

Vientiane is pretty famous for its night market along the river bank so on our first evening we went to check it out. It was a good little market but I was really shocked that it was really really difficult to haggle! In Thailand I always used to suggest half of the price they gave at first and most of the time they'd take it. However here it appeared as thought they weren't that bothered about selling and would not budge! We bought a couple of bits like sandals and handbags and then decided to try some street food. We got a bbq pork dish with rice and a beer each for about £3, south east Asian prices are great! It was here that I tried BeerLaos for the first time. They are so so proud of their beer that if you ask for a 'beer' they normally wont understand you but if you say 'beerlaos' they get it straight away! My friend I was travelling with contested that she didn't like beer when I first ordered it but as I told her, she quickly learned that whilst travelling you have to drink beer! Sure enough by the end of the trip she liked beer haha.

As with most of the bars and restaurants in Laos, they all close pretty early so we ended up in this club called 'Catwalk' as a guy we were with convinced us that it was great and every hour they had models doing a catwalk. I don't remember much but I remember enough to say this wasn't the case and it was a club much posher than we were dressed, luckily it was pretty empty so it didn't matter too much. The following day we decided that we would stay an extra night since our bus journey to Vang Vieng was only a couple of hours so we had the time to spend the day doing some cultural things (before the days were were all 'templed out' from South East Asia haha). We started with a small temple near our hostel. I love all the gold on the temples compared to those in Japan. After I decided I needed to try an infamous Laos coffee... this is an iced coffee with condensed milk and it was incredible! These became a bit of an addiction throughout my travels. Our next mission was to get to Pha That Luang, or the 'big gold thing' as we called it. As it's pretty much the symbol of Laos we thought it was important to see it and we weren't disappointed; It was so beautiful. Unfortunately, as it was our first day there and we were out all day, we'd forgotten all about having to cover up so weren't allowed inside the temple itself. Since there were a number of stalls around we thought that one of them must sell some elephant pants for us to cover up with but unfortunately not.. this is a trick the Laos people are missing out on! Regardless of this, just the buildings were so beautiful and the grounds were so well kept. On our final afternoon we'd had enough of the heat and decided to find a pool to take a dip in. We found a public pool that was just 1 dollar to use for the whole day so the afternoon was spent drinking BeerLao round the pool with some people we'd met in our hostel.... perfect!

I had no idea with what to expect about our bus journey to Vang Vieng, but despite the fact we left an hour and a half late and kept stopping at first for reasons unknown to me, the journey, as with all of my journeys actually, was drama-free. Every second spent on that bus was worth it when I arrived in the glorious Vang Vieng. You drive through mountains for a couple of hours passing only through tiny little huts that make up villages every now and again and suddenly you get to three streets that make up the town. It has, of course, been built for tourists but this definitely doesn't ruin the feel of the place. Everywhere you look are huge, beautiful limestone mountains, the river or little french-inspired buildings that look like toy houses. Words will not do how truly beautiful this place is justice, pictures will help but I don't think you'll ever get a true feel for it until you visit! There's a thing known as the Vang Vieng vortex whereby you get there and never want to leave, many travellers (including ourselves) find they end up spending a lot more time than planned there! It really is something special.

I think I could write my blog solely about Vang Vieng so I will try and keep this as short as possible. We were lucky enough to be offered a lovely private room for the same price as a dorm which we were very happy about and probably contributed to us staying there double the time we were supposed to! During the day, the town is very chilled with TV restaurants where you sit around a table on big cushions watching countless episode of friends or family guy or other such programmes. Unless of course you go tubing!! For those who don't know what tubing is, basically you sit in a big rubber ring whilst floating down the river and being pulled into bars along the way! There are numerous drinking games and so much fun to be had along the way. Between us we lost two pairs of shoes, 2 pairs of sunglasses and all of our clothes in the river and we ended up absolutely freezing after the sun went down but it was SO much fun. The highlight for me was in the second bar where we all decided to get into this huge mud puddle; I left completely covered in mud, in my ears and everything but it was great. There was also the most friendly, sociable cow I've ever met who was rolling around on it's back like a dog to allow people to stroke it's belly! SO cute! I got dragged out to one of the clubs after tubing but admittedly I didn't last long, I was practically falling asleep before making the very responsible decision to take myself to bed! Unfortunately I have no pictures of tubing given that I didn't think it was a good idea to take my phone or camera into the river. I guess these memories live only in my head and maybe this is a good thing! However somewhere on facebook there is a video of us in the mud puddle.

One day we also visited the Blue Lagoon. We were surprised by how much the tuk tuk driver wanted from us but once we got on the road there we understood why!! This road was the worst I saw on my travels, it was literally a dirt track with huge rocks which meant we were banging our heads off the top of the tuk tuk the whole way. I saw some houses offering tyre repairs along the way and instantly thought how clever these people were! The blue lagoon was beautiful but I was a little underwhelmed with how small it was. We swam and of course, I jumped in off the top of a tree and off the rope swing. Another day we went caving which is something I'd never done before. Luckily a girl we met in Laos (who we actually ended up spending our whole time in Laos with!) was a lot braver than us as this cave was pitch black apart from the head torches we rented so I don't think I'd have gone in as far as we did without her! It was so cool inside, it was how I'd imagine the very very bottom of the ocean to look and we walked so far in that I felt as if we were literally right in the middle of the mountain! The rest of our days were spent chilling down by the beautiful river, sunning ourselves and watching the beautiful sunsets over the mountains before heading out for dinner at one of the many TV restaurants along the river and usually on to drink free buckets and whiskey in the bars.

Our final stop was Luang Prubang, a UNESCO world heritage site. We made the decision to take a night bus there as we didn't want to waste a day travelling and we were told that the night bus would arrive at 7am the following morning so although this would be early, we thought at least some things would be beginning to open by then. However, at 4am we were awoken by our driver to tell us were there! Of course everything in sight was shut and the place was deserted, especially since we were dropped outside of the centre! Luckily there was a tuk tuk driver who came to our rescue and after speaking to some of the girls we'd met on the coach, we managed to get a room for the night at the hotel they'd already booked.

We had heard all about the famous Kuang Si waterfall a little way from the town so we made it our priority the next day to go and see it! We certainly weren't disappointed. I couldn't believe how big and blue it was. We walked up and up and it just kept on going! I had another jump off a tree and then wanted a picture under part of the waterfall (the main bit would have killed me!). This attracted lots of Korean tourists who all started taking pictures of me too haha. I have to say, I was surprised by the number of Korean tourists in Laos, I think there were maybe more Koreans than any other nationality. We got talking to a group of really sweet Korean girls in Vang Vieng and we actually saw them again at the waterfall! There was also a bear sanctuary as you walk up the falls which was really cool. Although i had mixed opinions about it; I understand that they are saving the bears from being poached but then they are still fenced off from their natural habitats and being stared at by tourists all day every day.

We did some more temple visiting whist we were there and I discovered just how much the monks chanting freaked me out! I really don't know why but I find the noise of them all chanting in unison really eerie!! We also made the stupid (due to the heat) but great (because of the view) decision to climb the mountain in the middle of the town. Mount Phou Si is over 200 steps up and we decided to do this around midday! Its safe to say we were dripping with sweat by the time we got to the top but the view was truly breathtaking. You could see the whole town shimmering with the gold from all the temples, the mekong river and mountain ranges behind it all. Luckily the walk down was much easier!

The night market in Luang Prabang was the best I saw in Laos, it was much bigger and people actually haggled! Which of course is part of the fun of market shopping in south east Asia! The nightlife was pretty much non-existent in Luang Prabang and I put that mainly down to the fact it is a world heritage site so the last thing they need is a load of drunk tourists tearing up the place after dark. Backpackers tend to head to a bar called Utopia which is a really cool little place along the river front that has beanbags/floor cushions and is always packed. However at 11:30pm sharp, everyone is kicked out and the bar is closed. Then there are three options; go to bed, buy some drinks from a shop (if you can find one that's still open) or as most people do go to the bowling alley! Until now I'd never really thought of a bowling alley as a late night drinking place!

Laos food as a whole wasn't too much to rave about; the beef noodles they do are pretty nice but there are only so many times you can eat beef noodles (this trend extended into Vietnam too!). I also tried something called Laap which is meat but I'm not exactly sure what or how its cooked, it was delicious though! One night I also picked something random of a menu which ending up being a fish from the Mekong River cooked in a banana leaf. I was bit apprehensive due to the banana phobia about it being in a banana leaf but luckily it didn't taste of banana!!

Our original plan for travelling to Vietnam from Laos was to stop in Dien Bien Phu which was just over the border in order to break up the journey. We had read horrendous things about the 25 hour bus journey from Luang Prabang to Hanoi so we initially wanted to avoid such a long bus ride. However, when we went to book the bus we found that people obviously had the same idea as us and it was completely full. Since we had to meet our other friend in Hanoi on a particular date, we had to suck it up and thus we began our 25 hour bus journey to Vietnam........

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