Luang Prabang & Vang Vieng, Lao

Before I fill you in on my current Lao adventure there are a few landmarks I wish to note:

Number of Countries Visited: 8
Number of Books Read: 9
Number of Entries Written: 16
Distance Traveled: ???
Friends Met: Many
Beds Slept In: A Lot
Time Spent Abroad: 10 Weeks

So that was less successful as I imagined before writing but you get the gist (I hope). Anywho, I'm having a fantastic time at about the halfway point to my Eastern Europe and Asia travels and am looking forward to many more exciting times in the second half. If you can be bothered to read up on my last few days in Laos then by all means. If not you may find I've blocked your IP - if only that was possible.

Laos

So after a gruelling, sweaty, spitty (still can't get over how much the Chinese HAVE to spit constantly), long, and boring "sleeper" bus ride from Kunming, we finally arrived in Luang Prabang. We had a bit of a scare getting to the border as we realised that none of us had any money and it costs US$35 (or at least that's what the Lonely Planet told us). Between us we scraped $103 and 490 Yuan, which we managed to change into dollars for a decent exchange rate in Mohan (the border). We got across the border no problems at all, leaving us with $20 dollars to spare, whew! I thank Mama Naxi, who gave us those good luck, tea smelling, necklace things!

So Luang Prabang, as hard as it is to write and say, is a very pretty town and possibly the smallest place we've stopped in on our travels, despite being the provincial capital. We arrived late in the afternoon and struggled to find a place with dorms and settled for 2 double rooms (we wouldn't be sharing a double bed on this occasion though!). The room was one of the best we'd stayed in and at just 50,000 Kip (about 3 pounds) a night we got air con, free coffee, our own shower, some gecko's, the works! We went for a traditional Lao BBQ. It's a bit of a DIY jobbie, like that hot pot in Qingdao (Christ, that seems like a LONG time ago!) where you cook the veg in the soup stuff around the outside and fry the meat on the top bit. No crazy cray fish looking things though. After eats, we got ourselves some free Lao Lao Cocktails from the bar and proceeded to drink the bar dry. It happened to be the final games of the Premier League season and I watched the last 20 minutes of the Hull, Man U game with a Geordie fan. I felt a bit sorry for him, but it was funny.

I surprisingly remember a good majority of the night. Laos has a 12pm curfew for all foreign nationals in the country so at half 11 most bars had stopped serving. Except apparently the bar at a bowling alley! So bowling we went. It was a bizarre experience and my score went something like this: 7/1, 5/2, 0/1, 0/0, 0/0, 0/0, STRIKE, 0/0, 0/0...

Other than that its pretty much a haze of taking millions of pictures with our new friends Emily, Philip, Troy, Sam... and many more I have forgotten. The next day was mostly a write off but I managed to exchange a couple of my books and have a walk around town in the mid afternoon, 40 degree heat! It was awesome as well watching the locals setting up the night market too. It's the best night market I've been to so far. I found I couldn't stop buying stuff to fill the last recesses of my bag with, thus making it even heavier. But everything was so cheap! We apparently arranged to meet some people from the night before at the Lao Bar opposite our guest house - this we'd find out tomorrow!

So onto tomorrow and an amazingly fantastic day out! We arranged to meet up with Emily and Philip and head out to the Kuang Xi waterfall. We had read in the LP that it was very impressive, and so it was. Not only that but it was also a bear rescue center and a good one too. We arrived at the perfect time. There weren't many people there (it got busy later in the afternoon) and managed to spend our time in secluded waterfall pools swinging out on monkey ropes! It was something I had on my list of "Things I simply must do when I am away traveling and would be absolutely gutted to miss", this list is in my head, honest. After our swim in the brilliantly turquoise swimming pool, that looked so amazing there were times I thought I was either still drunk or it was fake, we walked to the top of the waterfall. It was a hard climb but so definitely worth it! We met a guy called Oz who was frantically trying to find this mystery hidden pool he'd heard about near the top of the waterfall. This pool it turned out was down a very difficult climb into a huge opening where the waterfall above crashed down onto rocks from 100' above and then into a pool that looked over the rest of the level of the waterfall.

I have done some pretty cool things on my travels so far, but diving into this pool is right up there with the best of them. We spent another couple of hours at the pool with the monkey rope but by this time it was busy and full of Falang (Westerners), which sort of took the edge off of how we saw it in the morning.

We met up with the people we were supposed to meet up with previously in the Lao Bar and accidentally ended back at the bowling alley! Whoops! We got some take away beers and took everyone back to our rooms where we eventually pissed off the owners who kicked everyone out at some time early morning. The next day we awoke and had some breakfast before heading to Vang Vieng. The journey took about 6/7 hours where we drove around mountains and some stunning scenery, watching the sun go down as we circled, climbed, and dropped on Rte 13 through Laos.

Vang Vieng is described in LP as "Love it or hate it" my first impression of Vang Vieng was actually the latter. After being here a couple of days I have changed this opinion to 'Love it and hate it'. It is full of stunning girls and massive muscly guys who are all out on the piss. Constantly. I barely saw any English people in the first 2 months of traveling and now I've seen more than there are in England. All shouting and being annoying, it's the kind of atmosphere I wanted to get away from. It was like being at the Union in Reading. I especially didn't want to spend all my money on alcohol since we have a budget to get to see as much as possible and not to ruin it by being hung over all the time. That and the fact that we got drunk twice in Luang Prabang.

Yesterday however, we embarked on a day at the river Song. This involved getting huge rubber rings - or tubes as they are otherwise called - and getting a tuk tuk to a part of the river filled with loud music, bars, alcohol, swings, more bars, and some more bars. As much as I didn't want to be a part of the party life of Corfu... sorry, Vang Vieng... this was brilliant fun. The laziness of it all was something I haven't done so far and blissfully gliding down a river to be pulled into shore for a free shot and some beer was a good laugh. The last km of the trip it was starting to get dark and I decided to head on by myself to enjoy a bit of peacefulness floating down stream.

It was a fun day, but I made a conscious decision that I wouldn't be spending all my money on boozing and cruising... after all, what the hell is the point in that when you can visit remote villages, learn new ways of life, meet locals, and all the other things I have enjoyed so much more on my travels. The food in Laos is really good and although I never got bored of Chinese food, it's great to try something a bit different.

Here's to the next two months of my trip, I hope it's as enjoyable as the first two! On another note - a huge happy 3rd birthday to Grace, I hope you enjoyed your present.