Now Then, Laos

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Think I've Let this Slide

Now then, its been nearly a month since the last blog, which has flown by so fast I couldnt believe it when I just checked. I left Laos and got to Thailand shortly after my last blog but for the sake of keeping it in a least a little bit of order in this one I'll just recap my adventures in Laos (or what I remember of them as it was a while ago)

Okay, so we arrived in Laos after the horrific bus journey I think I finshed the last blog describing. We spent two days in the "capital city" Vientiene not doing much but recovering and deciding what to do next. This was partly because we needed the rest and partly coz there is literally nothing to do in Vientiene. Although it is the capital city of an entire country it has a population about the same as Warrington and the atmosphere of a small village. We went bowling one night (and were the only people there) and another night a small girl came into our room while we were sleeping after we left the door unlocked. Rick tried to scare her away by roaring like a bear and eventually she walked off - it was pretty weird.

Anyway, after 2 nights we headed north to teh town of Vang Vieng. A famous place on the back packer route as its where just about every traveler in Laos stops for a few days to go tubing. Tubing here basically means a huge pub crawl down the local river. You rent out a big inflated tractor tyre and then float down the river stopping at loads of make shift bars for some beers, lots of free local whiskey and many huge, exciting and certainly dangerous rope swings and zip wires. You had to be a bit careful but it was awesome - floating round in the sun, drinking a few beers and getting thrown into the river from way up in the trees! As I mentioned in my last blog this was the point where I said goodbye to Lisa and Rick, my traveling amigos since we had flown out here, but they needed to push on to save some time. I stayed in Vang Vieng for 6 nights and had a great time before eventually moving on to the next town of Luang Prabang.

Here I met up with a couple of canadian girls I'd met in Vietnam, Peggy and Andrea, and through them met some other people who were doing a similar route to me. I stayed in Luang Prabang for 3 nights which included another trip to the bowling alley (which was the only place in town open after 12, so a lot busier this time) and day trip to the local waterfall which was a beautiful walk and swim as well as home to a bear sanctuary for the endagered Moon Bears which was cool! After this it was time to start heading to towards Thailand, and the cheapest way to do this from Luang Prabang is a 2 day boat trip up the Mekong River. I did this with an English guy I met called Ben and we had 2 very chilled days of floating up the river taking in the scenary, listening to some music and not much else but a stop in a tiny town over night where the power stops at 11pm and you are left boiling in dark trying to fall asleep.

Anyway, at the end of the 2nd day we were dropped off at Huay Xai, the Laos border town into Thailand where we were to stay one night before crossing the river/border and heading to Chaing Mai the next morning. As I said at the start of this blog this all happeneing weeks ago and I do intend to catch up so I'm sure you are all excited to hear that I plan on follwoing this with another update fairly soon.

Till then, thanks so much for reading, be it all or some. I hope you're all well and thanks to all of you who have written to me keeping me up to date with everything!

Speak soon,

Andy! 😊

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Comments

[dharmakaya]

Nicee..
Hey nice writeup there Im keen on doing the same this June. any tips would help, like good places to stay around VV and LP