Chilled Laos, Luang Prubang and the slow boat along the Mekong River

So sorry you have been blogless for a couple of weeks...Laos works alittle different to the other asian countries we have visited and is certainly not as blog friendly, no internet on every corner nor is there anyway near as much noise pollution. Its beautiful here very, very relaxing.

We spent 2 days travelling to the country from Chang Mai, Thailand on a Slow Boat along the Mekong River. It took 6 hours on a long boat with only hard seats to a town on the edge of the river named Pak Beng. This was out first experience of Laos...Muddy, Hot and no pressure.

Now what i mean by no pressure is that we didnt get a thousand tuk tuk drivers and guesthouse owners in our faces which we are now accostumed too. We paid for a room (very expensive for Laos 400 Baht (6 pound) whereas others were paying 50 Baht a night) and learnt that they only have electricity from 5pm to 10pm everynight and everyone goes to bed at 10pm!! Very strange, especially for the meat eaters (how do they refridgerate the meat during the hot days...very glad we are veggies!)




The next day was spent again on the boat, absolutely stunning scenery, very mountainous and green. There were many children fishing and people waving. Amongst these people was our first sighting of an AK47 gun! People seem to have these like mobile phones in England, they are scarily everywhere!

After a day of floating we arrived at Laung Prabang, we booked into a 6 dollar a night guesthouse with shared bathroom...first and only time we will do this as its not nice having a shower after someone else has been in there! Never again! We took a day trip out to this incredible turquoise waterfall. We swam in it and it was just like paradise. We ate that night from a street seller for 25p all you can eat!

We decided to leave Laung Prabang as there was not that much else to see and travelled by bus to Vang Vieng. The bus journey was the worst ever as it was constantly twisting and turning so was glad to get off in the town. We met this lovely Canadian couple, Jim and Janie and ended up spending 9 days in this town with them. We couldnt leave!






















We went Tubing which consists of 3 things; 1) Mekong River 2) A big rubber ring 3) Alcohol, it was so much fun. You would drift along the river and then get pulled into the bars by rope and then just dance the day away. We ended up doing this twice! The first time everyone got so drunk that they refused to pay 10,000 Kip (1 dollar) each for the tuk tuk and we all ended up walking throughout the Laos jungle with no idea where we were!! Our evenings were spent in a bar named Sakura where you could watch movies on their projector screen, all the new ones. We hired Peds too and went to the local caves, (which terry thought were incredible, i stayed behind scared of getting stuck!) and went to the famous Blue Lagoon. We could have spent a life time here exploring but then came the food poisioning! Our first experience of it so far...we had done soo well...3 months without it and then it hit like a giant sand storm. We were sick all of one night and the next day decided to upgrade our room to a room with a balcony, Sky TV and a bath, it was luxury and only 5 pound a night!

Then it was time to leave and now we are in the capital, Vientiane. It took us all night to find accomodation as all the guesthouses were full or overcharging. Today we are just chilling out on the net and are going to get massages this afternoon. We are thinking about heading down to Indonesia for a few weeks until our Vietnam visa starts. Love you all!