Laos - what a place!

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Hi again,

So I think I left off in Chiang Mai and as you can probably guess from the title we are now in Laos. It took us about 3 days to get from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang in Laos. It was pretty horrific and included a 5 hour bus trip to the border, and then a slow boat for 2 days to get into Luang Prabang. The slow boat was by far the most uncomfortable thing in the world! You sit on wooden benches that are so close to each other and can't really move - lovely! Our boat was full of Irish people who on the first day got ridiculously drunk and then behaved like twats climbing onto the roof and just generally being annoying! Luckily though we have found some friends by this point and so we had other people to make fun of the twats with!!!

The boat stopped at a horrible place called Pak Beng where we had been told the locals would try and steal our bags. Of course this meant a lot of running off the boat to try and get our bags before the locals did. Luckily we did manage to although there was a local guy in the process of doing my bag up on his back but I managed to save it (and actually think he wasn't going to steal it just try and carry it for me to get some money). Either way though I was scarred!!

The next day on the boat was much better as the twats were quiet and we were playing games with our new friends (I won the poker game which made it even better!).

Luang Prabang was very nice. I especially liked the fact it had a massive french influence which meant I ate amazing food for the 3 nights we were there! Am getting a bit fed up on Thai food so it was a welcome break. The only thing I remember doing in Luang Prabang was watching the sun set over a hill where there was a temple and loads of Buddhas. It was really nice actually so I'm not really doing it any justice here!

After a few days of hanging out we left and have been in Vang Vieng for a few days. The nightlife here is cool as there are some chilaxing bars where we have been indulging in a few buckets. The only problem is that everywhere shuts at 12 and then you have to go to this really rubbish bar which is just full of drunk Westerners.

Yesterday we did the tubing (which is really the main reason for coming here). It was so much fun! Basically you just sit in a rubber ring and float down the river stopping off at various bars along the way where people do rope swings and stuff into the river (clearly I didn't but Ian did and said it was fun!). I was horribly bad at making it into where you are supposed to stop for the bars and so at 2 stops I had some locals jump in and rescue me! It was very funny and even when Ian tried to help it just made him miss the bars too!! I started to freak out at the end as I had visions of me missing the stop point in the dark so we tried to be sensible and leave just before it got dark. Unfortunately though didn't realise how far away the last point was so we were floating in the river at night. It was very horrible (for me as I'm such a wuss!) but we managed to find the guy with the torch and make it back safely! It's so strange though as no-one really knew where the end was and have heard a few horror stories today from people missing the stop! It's all part of the fun really.

Think we might stay here for one more night then make our way to Vientiane and then further down south before hitting Cambodia.

Hope all is well at home. Oh yeah if people haven't guessed I am going to be writting the blogs and Ian is responsible for taking the photos (which is good as I'm a really bad photographer). If people want to see them he is putting them on Facebook so you will need to be his friend.

StephIan x

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Comments

[mike]

cracking
cracking read.. hope you're both still enjoying yourselves.. catch up soon..