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Published: February 11th 2009
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Laos
A temple in Luang Prabang in Laos. Since leaving Chang Mai, we boarded a mini bus and headed for the Laos border. We arrived early in the evening, had some dinner and a couple beers and went to sleep. Waking in the morning we were taken to the Thai immigration side for the border formalities, then boarded a long boat and were taken across the river to the Laos border. The Immigration into Laos was a long, very frustrating system which included waiting in long lines and a lot of pushing and shoving. At the end we had our Laos visa and were 42 dollars US lighter each ( the most expensive entry cost of any country we ve been to ). We then boarded our boat and spent 2 days cruising down the Mekong on our way to Luang Prabang. We arrived in Luang Prabang and found a nice guesthouse to stay in and set out to explore the city. We quickly started to enjoy the town as a can of beer in a rest. was roughly 1 dollar Canadian, so we enjoyed quite a few of those over the next couple of days. The rest of the time we spent in Luang Prabang was a mix
Laos
Sunset on the Mekong! of shopping at the night market set up on the main street, checking out the many many Wats, and travelling out to the waterfall and calcium pools 35 k out of town. The pools are a smaller version of the pools we saw in Guatemala, look exactly the same. From there we headed to Vang Viang by mini bus. It was a very interesting ride, with the driver seeing how fast he could take corners before slamming on the brakes when he realised it was too fast. Arriving in Vang Vieng we found our guesthouse and decided to get something to eat, walking past every place in town we soon realised that every restaurant was playing either episodes of Friends or Family Guy. The main reason people come to Vang Vieng is to tube down the Nam Son river. You pay roughly 10 dollars to get on a tuk tuk which drives you 3 km to the start of the tubing area. You start tubing down the river and get around 15 feet before you hit one of the make shift bars they have set up on the side of the river. You cant go more than 5 feet on
Laos
Waterfalls and calcium pools in Laos. the river before you hit one of these bars which sell a array of buckets with concoctions of alcohol and beers as well as giving away free shots of thai whiskey. After spending some considerable time at the first couple of bars we moved on to find ourselves working at one of the bars with an Australian couple. Yup, we got jobs in Laos! We were given free booze and all we had to do was pull people in off the river. Pretty easy job. The entire trip without stopping is 2 hours and is about 4 km long, we made it around 1 km on the first day. We were asked to come back the next day and fueled by many free buckets we agreed, but upon waking up the next day we decided we wanted to try and complete the entire journey. Unfortunatly we got stopped at our bar again and worked for another couple of hours, and by the time we left to conquer the river we made it even less then the day before! Having decided that the town was owning us we decided to leave the next day and head to the capital Vientane. We
Laos
A bridge over the nam song river..... we tried twice to float down to this bridge but never made it. arrived there and quickly booked the bust the next day to Bangkok. After booking we had some dinner and were treated to a 15 min firework show for which we had no idea why. It turned out to be for the Chinese New Year. We found ourselves 2 days later in Bangkok for the third and last time. After 2 nights and a wild shopping experience on Kho San road we were off to the islands. Our first stop was Ko Samui and after witnessing a sweet fight between two cab drivers, and Megan getting pushed in the middle. Both drivers wanted our bussiness pretty badly! We made it to Chewang beach. We spent the next 4 days eating, drinking, sunning on the beach and doing a lot of shopping! We moved on to Ko pha Ngan, after a long delay because the cab driver took us to the wrong pier and we had to wait for the 530 boat instead of taking the one at 130. We finally got to the island and found ourselves jammed in to a tuk tuk and on our way to Haad Rin beach. We checked into a hotel that was still doing renovations
Thailand
A monkey meg wanted to take on Ko Samui. and because of that they gave us a really good deal on a room so we decided to stay for 6 nights. The days were spent lying by the pool or on the beach, seems to be a routine for us lately as we are in Phuket now, also spending our days at the beach. Its a rough life but someone has to do it . . . may as well be us.
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Dad
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hard luck life
Chocolate banana pancake... and a beer! Quite the combination! Glad you're enjoying yourselves so much. Sounds like a hard luck life.