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Published: February 4th 2007
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the boat posse
this was us... for basically 2 days straight So... the last week has been pretty busy by travelling standards... we spent 3 nights in Luang Prabang, which is such a beautiful city - it's world heritage listed and has all these amazing French buildings going on - oh and an amazing night market. Which we managed to go to on every night - and buy something, every night! So, we also managed to send our first package home, as yep, inevitably we have bought a few too many tshirts, scarves and bags... woops! Then, as soon as we had sent off the 2kilos, we managed to buy a doona cover, that weighs about 3kg and takes up quite a bit of room. They are nice doona covers though, hmmm....
On the second day in Luang Prabang we headed out to the most beautiful waterfalls - just stunning hey - dont worry, we took lots of photos for you. We randomly bumped into Jess and Simo, this Aussie couple who we had met in Vientiane - so things changed from this point on as we started travelling with them... went to these caves by boat, a tad unimpressive - after like a 2hr boat ride - it was this 10metre
back in posing action
such a nice waterfall pit of darkness... no probs though, because we stopped at a lao lao village - lao lao is potent local whisky, which they put snakes, geckos, centipedes in... yum!
The next couple of days we spent on the floor of a wooden boat as we made the trip from Luang Prabang to Thailand. Armed with 2 bottles of $3 'Red Lady' whisky, that was "bottled and produced by an expert from Australia"... now what makes someone as expert in bottling whisky, and from Australia?! And a stack of snacks, our posse (which now consisted of Us, the Aussie couple, An American guy and a Canadian chap) drank, sang and played about a million games of 'shithead' for a good 18 hours. We actually had a blast and didnt even notice that we were at the back of the boat on the wooden floor, next to the engine. When we finally got to the border, hopped off the bus to catch our overnight bus to Thailand, which we were assured would wait and take us to immigration, to find out that nope, immigration closed - you have to stay here - i have guesthouse though, very good - this was actually
kind of annoying as we just lost a whole day in Thailand - but the night ended up being one of the most memorable ones of the trip... trying to find somewhere to stay with your 7 new friends though proved to be difficult - so we decided to stay with our new local friend in his bare house... Our local friend then took us to a 'temple party' for the full moon celebration thing. It ended up being what we would call a 'fair' or a 'show'. And yes, we were the only white faces in the whole place. And one of the American boys we're travelling with is about 7 foot tall (ie a giant in Laos standards) so we really stood out. We had a few games of popping balloons with darts, dancing the local way (which involves going around with a partner in a circle and only really using your hands to dance the night away) - we must have looked pretty funny because all the locals were taking photos of us for a change... then the night hit a downward spiral - in short, after being on the boat for 2 days and realising sleeping
beautiful
(Darcie likes taking photos of kids and old women, can you tell?!) on cold tiles was in the cards. A few of the people we were with had drunk a bottle of lao lao too (the most potently alcoholic spirit you can imagine) - Jess, Simo and Jess and I (who were actually starting to sober up) checked into a hotel at midnight - such a good idea! So, the next day we jumped on a boat across the river to Thailand and then caught a bus to Chiang Mai... In Chiang Mai now, its really different from Laos and Cambodia, bit of a culture shock but its still a really beautiful city. Still travelling with our same group minus the aussie couple and all heading up to Pai tomorrow, a smaller town to chill in for a few days and hopefully do a treck from. We're suddenly really busy now, with only a week till we split and our travels together are over! No really - we're actually disspointed! We both had assumed by now we might be annoying each other but think it might be a little sad saying goodbye!
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ian
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fang!
hey! changmai..was there early 70's..interesting place..we drove a hire car up from bangers..drove north to Fang..not sure why, and no clear memory of what we saw or did..just a great name...