Laos: land of good beer and great friends

So after leaving lovely Don Det, we parted with our English duo and headed back to Vientiane on yet another overnight bus. The aircon must have been broken, because we shivered all night in the winter wonderland, and tried to sleep with our heads covered and bundled together. The only time I uncovered was when a guard was wondering through the bus and so I took off my sleeping mask to ID myself...they actually took someone off too...very strange. Apparently Laos and Thailand around the border are doing random drug searches of buses to stop the trafficking, mostly of locals tho.

Anyhow, we made it to Vieng Vienne in one piece and enjoyed some 'Friends' at the restaurant, and went tubing the next morning. Now this is really the reason that people come to Laos, for tubing in Vieng Vienne. So what it was was Carla and I paying a few bucks to rent a tube and a tuk tuk drops you at a slow point in the river (which speed up in places by the way), and you pretty much just drift down. Oh ya, and well, the bars pull you in with bamboo poles for cheap Beer Lao, ands Tarzan ropes, and a zip line, so fun. We got smashed met tons of fellow drifters, and managed to survive dunking our heads in the Mekong. We managed to avoid this for over two months, for fear of illness, but who can pass up a rickety bamboo tarzan rope! so F'n high by the way!

The day was great, and that was enough of Vieng Vienne, so we hopped on a day bus the next morning...crammed in as usual on the winding mountain pass. Gorgeous scenery. There are all these tiny houses perched on the mountain side the front on the highway, the back on stilts off the hill. Impressive. The best was passing a small boy selling rats, I am assuming to eat. Held by their tails in the air and yelling to the passing trucks. Better than the women selling beetles on sticks on the buses in Laos. yuck!

So Luang Prabang ended up being great. We spent 3 hours on a slow boat on the Mekong the next morning to see a cave filled with Buddha statues. Pretty cool, but not worth the three hours. We arrived back in the city dehydrated and exhausted, and not very interested to get on with the tour package we bought to see the elephant waterfalls in the afternoon. But when we got there we were impressed! It was gorgeous with multiple levels of swimming pools with small waterfalls in between, and crystal clear, freezing cold water. You could jump off the waterfalls and stand behind them. It was perfect. So nice to swim in a waterfall that isn't brown of from the Mekong. We wanted to go back again the next day, but alas the rain came, and we followed a sign down Chicken Alley to a movie place instead. his was a great idea, where you pay two dollars, and get your own living room to watch a video on the big screen. Awesome.

So that was Laos, home of gorgeous mountains, and beautiful sunsets, and great people...oh ya and wicked cheap beer. Back to Thailand we went. We took a speed boat 6 hours down the Mekong to the Laos border. This was not a great day to say the least, it seemed like a good idea at first, as opposed to the two day journey by slow boat. We ended up leaving 3 hours late, with all locals, the two of us shoved into a 1 meter by 1/2 meter box with a tiny cushion and our day packs. The first half of the journey was far from comfortable, but we managed to have only three of us in the boat, so Carla and I stretched our legs over the seat in front. Although when we stopped half way to load up with more people and have lunch, as we set off again, with nine people in an 8 person max boat, they refused us life jackets and helmets, as we had before, yet suited up the locals with jackets. Well, don't worry mum, because I put up a fight and got some jackets, not that they did up, but atleast we had something. It rained, and we stopped a million times on the way, everyone ignoring our questions, and our presence really. Oh ya, and this whole time we were trying to catch a 6pm bus to Chang Mai on the Thailand side. We should have had three hours to spare, but with all the meandering, we missed the border by 3 minutes, and the f*ckers wouldn't stamp our exit cards!, so we had to stay overnight. Carla felt there may have been some conspiring going on to keep us there, but who knows.

Anyhow we managed to get on a bus at 11am the next day, and into Chang Mai half in the back of a comfy mini bus and the other half the two of us i the back of a jeep. The driver was a young guy playing 90's love ballads on the stereo, trying hard not to sing. He was so happy when we asked him to turn it up and we all sang our hearts out the rest of the journey.

We got into Chang Mai at 3, and decided the big city looked too overwhelming, so immediately grabbed the last mini bus up to the remote town of Pai further north, and what a great decision that was...