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Published: July 12th 2007
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Ok well I so totally loved visiting Laos. It was absolutely amazing although some places were pretty basic accommodation wise. After Luang Prabang we caught a bus (bloody awful bus too i might add) to Viang Vien. The scenery was absolutely amazingly beautiful (there just aren't enough adjectives to do it justice), Laos is very hilly so we were up and down on curvy windy roads and the roads were pretty interesting as well.
Vang Vien is a small place set next to a river at the bottom of these awesome limestone cliffs / mountains - so amazing. The whole town is a backpackers place and it was pretty funny cos most of the restaurants on the main street had Friends episodes going, over and over all day - kind of strange when you consider it really - like this must be their view of westerners - friends episodes and food *grin* For some strange reason I was awake at like 7.30 one morning and ended up going for a walk and the Friends was already playing. The people who work there must get SO sick of watching or listening to friends all day.
In Vang Vien we
went tubing one afternoon which was great fun. It was literally a big tube and they take you down about 5k's down the river and drop you off and then you float back down. The interesting thing is that you float about 200m down and there are little stops from there on where you can pull over to the side and they sell beer and drinks and stuff! just in case that 200m was a thirsty one of course! They also have really bad western music blaring obviously trying to attract people to come in and have a beer as well as flying fox, ropes, trapeze and all this stuff that you can do over the water and then jump in. Such a fun afternoon although since i'm not really a swimmer i thort probably not a good idea to drink and then play in the river all afternoon (aren't u proud dad - i'm so the sensible one in the family!)
After Vang Vien we went to the capital of Laos which is Vientianne (btw my spelling of names and everything is probably atrocious but ya get that - if u really want to know - check the
atlas). We stayed at a pretty nice spot here and yay we had an airconditioner which was sooo appreciated by now. The central city bit area wasn't really very big and it had a LOT of roadwork and things going on which made it a little bit difficult. I was so stoked tho' I went and had my hair done and a manicure and pedicure all of which code $8 USD. So cheapand i was there for a few hours - i felt so bad so the next day i went back and took 3 of the girls and we all got massages and stuff. I am so a massage addict by now.
Our second day in Vientianne, Tui got us a big van thing and took us around to some temples which are apparently a must as well as this big thing which is on all the Laos money (can't remember the name right now but i have written it down somewhere) its all really pretty and stuff. We also went to Buddha park which I thort was pretty fabulous. It was obviously a park and had all statues and buddha's and stuff - it was really nice
to wander through and have a look at all of it. I have attached some pics of it for ya, really pretty anyways.
From Vientianne, we went to the border for our last night in Laos and our bus (we all chose to upgrade from the chicken bus and paid for a private mini bus with air conditioning and 30 minutes out of the city it broke down because the air conditioning was on too high ... what a crack up altho' so not funny at the time it took about an hour for our new bus to arrive and it was pretty hot whilst waiting. The border town we stayed at was pretty bad, kinda expensive and dinner at "Only One Restaurant" was absolutely terrible! In any other place u could have gone to the servo and got a much better meal. Anyways we lived - with a hell of a lot of complaining from a lot of people - i so tried to be positive about everything but i just wished everyone would shut up because if everyone complains it just drags everyone else down - everyone went and had beer to fill up after their crappy
dinner so the mood lifted after that anyways.
Ok so we left Laos to head into Vietnam. Said goodbye to our group leader Tui who I thort did a great job leading us around the country and all that. Laos was absolutely amazing and I would recommend it to everyone (except my mum who would hate it and Soffy who would drive all the poor little Lao people into tears with her bargaining skills:-) Just incredible. When i get somewhere with decent internet I will put some more photos up on bebo or facebook or something because everything in Laos was just sooo beautiful - except the bathrooms of course *grin*.
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Sally
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AWESOME