Vientiane – Tuesday 12th July

Today really began at 3am when Andy woke up and couldn’t figure out why he was sleeping in my bed (which was now very wet) and not his own. Cindy had brought us up some fries and pizza the evening before (when the other two were still passed out)… we dragged those out and sat on the beds, eating cold food, whilst I filled everyone in on the events of the previous day!

Andy went back to his own room after that, Kelly and I went back to sleep until 7am. Ouchy muscles this morning. Breakfast and then off into the bus for a four hour trip to Vientiane. Not much to say about this trip – the seats were comfy, the air conditioning was good – everyone listened to music or told each other about all the horribly dangerous things they’d witnessed at tubing the day before, including more people being carted off to hospital. Interesting stories indeed.

We arrived at around 12ish – this hotel is nice, the air conditioning actually works and the lobby is full of inviting comfy chairs. We dumped our bags in our rooms and then headed out to see the city. We only have an afternoon and a morning so we wanted to see as much as we could – turned out we really didn’t need to be so enthusiastic.

Lunch at a local place – I didn’t like mine, couldn’t figure out whether my noodles were undercooked, overcooked or meant to actually be like that. Eh, I didn’t each much. After that we basically just wandered around the town in the heat… there were some temples, some statues, some antiques and the National Museum, none of which really stood out or held my interests very long.

It is certainly a very sleep capital city, by South East Asian standards at least. Not much really to do, more of a stop over point (also the reason why Vang Vieng is so crazy – such a contrast to everywhere else). We were back at the hotel again by three. Hmmm. Time for some relaxing in the air conditioned room.

At 4.30pm six of us met up again – hmm what to do? In the end we decided to go to the place we had booked for dinner. Sure we weren’t meant to be there until 7pm, but that didn’t matter. We sat around for the two and bit hours before the others arrived, just drinking and chatting. Our first beer tower made an appearance – I just drank wine, but the tower was certainly amusing!

At 7pm everybody else arrived for dinner. I had roast pork dipped in honey – yummy! More drinking and chatting for another two hours – it has actually been really nice to have a day to relax after the craziness of yesterday. It also makes it hit home that we are leaving this group in three nights -  it has been such a lovely fun group and I’ve become very attached to it, a couple of people in particular! It is odd to think that our little group will never be together again.

At 9pm, everyone wanted to go back to the hotel, including Kelly. Paul and Andy went out for another drink, I tried to rustle up a game of cards, but no, people wanted to sleep, so I am spending the rest of the evening typing this and relaxing in my room.

New country tomorrow!

Kayaking, tubing and then… – Monday 11th July

Today was one of the craziest days of my life.

As I mentioned yesterday, some of us had chosen to try and fit a bit of everything in today, whilst others had opted to spend a full day tubing. I got up at 8am whilst Kelly slept blissfully in bed. It had been pouring with rain since around 5am so we weren’t actually sure if our planned activities were even going to go ahead – luckily everything cleared up in time.

Five of us had opted for a day of kayaking, tubing and trekking. We got picked up at 9am – after breakfast that wasn’t eggs, yay! – and were driven to our kayaks. We started with 4km trip down the river. This was really funny. Being a beginner, I had paired with Paul who said he had had some experience. We did ok for most of it, until we had to stop on the right side of the river. We had a lot of trouble getting over there in time and manage to sail right past the stopping point. People were screaming at us “paddle left, paddle left!” and in the end one of the guides dived into the river to save us and pull us over to the side. Lots of adrenalin at this point!

After getting out of our kayaks we trekked to the ‘water cave’ for around 20 minutes. The newly purchased thongs came off pretty quickly, in favour of just sinking bare foot into the mud.

We had been told we were going to go tubing through the caves – I think we had all envisioned some leisurely float through high roofed caves –  not so. We all got into our tubes and had to squeeze through a tiny opening in the rock face. After getting through that, we pulled ourselves along with a rope – in pitch black darkness by the way, we all had our own headlamps (mine kept flickering off). There was barely any room at all, and we kept hitting our heads.

Eventually we stopped and got out of our tubes. What next? Oh, only army crawling through another crack in a rock. This was crazy – such a tight space, not enough room to crawl on all fours. A claustrophobic nightmare – and I still have the sand burns on my knees and elbows.  After crawling we walked for a bit, waist deep in water and over very rocky ground before we couldn’t go any further (the water was too high).

And then tubing back out again. It was such an intense trip overall – certainly an experience. After the tubing we ate lunch and trekked back to the ‘Elephant Cave” – this wasn’t too exciting. There was a rock that was sort of shaped like an elephant and the usual amount of Buddhas. Also a tour guide giving the usual broken English history, which I tuned out of pretty quickly.

And then back to the kayaking to find that Paul and I had been demoted! Paul was placed in front of another guy, I was to ride with one of the tour guides. To be honest, this did not bother me in the least! Kayaking for the second half of the trip was so different to the first half! My guide was perfectly capable of manning the kayak on his own – leaving me to occasionally do weak, women’s pathetic paddling which actually does nothing. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were lots of moments where I thought…”oh look, we’re heading to a tree, we’re getting closer…and closer…I’m sure we’re going to turn soon”…and then eventually we’d turn and be all safe. Brilliant. The rapids were fun and the scenery was beautiful.

We stopped at one of the tubing bars at one point – two strawberry vodka shakes were consumed – yay for tipsy kayaking. A bit longer and then back at the hotel around 4pm.

After this Andy and I decided to go down to the tubing bars again with two people we’d met on the kayaking trip – the place to be of course. We had a really great time here – buckets of whisky, red bull and lemonade were approx $1.50 with stupid amounts of liquor in them.  We got really excited when we were joined by the people who had opted to do a cycling tour… almost everyone was there!

This place continued to be crazy – so many drunken young people, plus a couple that had their hands completely down each others pants at one point. In fact, the girl almost took off her pants completely – the Belgians took lots of photos. Certainly an interesting show!

After drinking at the first bar we decided to move on by foot – we had decided that tubing down the river was both expensive and dangerous, so across the rice paddies instead! This is where things began to get interesting. We found Tommy, Katrina and Alison…but no Kelly. Apparently she was at a bar over the river – they had tried really really hard to get her to come, but she didn’t want to leave where she was.

Of course, I wanted to go get Kelly straight away, but the bridges across the river were closed. It was getting dark so all of us had no choice but to take a tuk tuk back to the hotel, without Kelly. I was getting very worried at this point, not knowing where Kelly was was bad.

I got back to the hotel and heard the Kelly had been found – she was in the hospital! I had a very drunken Andy with me at this point so I took him up to our room and made him go to sleep in my bed. Then off to get Kelly!  She had a really bad cut in her upper thigh and had had to have stitches. I was just really glad to have found her – she was still very drunk but alive and with me! I had had to pay 600,000 kip to get her out of the place, and our tour guide payed an extra 137,000 kip as well.

Eventually back to the hotel to give Kelly her medicine and put her to bed. I snuck out quickly to get take away fried rice for dinner – I brought it back to the room to eat it next to two very passed out people. As I write this they are both still in their same positions – I am on the third reject bed in the corner. 

It has been such a crazy day but I am just very glad that everyone is safe and alive!

(P.S. No photos today, camera stayed at home cause I didn’t want it to get wet)

Vang Vieng – Sunday 10th July

Vang Vieng. Where safety comes to die. More on that later.

6.30am start. Again, getting more painful everyday. We all packed our bags and were in the bus at 7.30am for our long trip to the next place. Seven and a half hours in a bus, basically.

The fist half was a really miserable trip. The road was so windy and in really bad condition – potholes, cows, even landslides blocking the way. The green mountains and scenery were lovely but most of us just glanced briefly at them before retuning to our internal battles with our stomachs.The roads meant reading, sleeping or writing on laptops were near impossible. Car sickness at its worse. 

Lunch was a much welcomed break – food on top of a mountain with a lovely view. I didn’t really like my sweet and sour chicken but managed to scavenge enough of other people’s meals to be nice and satisfied. The toilet also made everything better.Three things that are amazing in Asia: 1. a refreshing shower 2. air conditioning 3. toilets that aren’t holes in the ground.

The second half of the trip was much more pleasant. I even enjoyed the scenery a little bit and managed somehow to sleep. At around 3pm we arrived in Vang Vieng.

This place fascinates me. Laos is such a sleepy cultured country, yet this place is a backpacker haven (I have seen way more white people than Asians here). All the guide books ask you to dress respectfully (i.e shoulders and knees covered), but yet throngs of tourists walk around in just bikinis. There is only one reason for this – tubing.

We arrived at our hotel, settled in and then decided to check out these tubing bars. To explain tubing: basically there are around ten to twelve bars positioned along the Song river. You get into a tube, float down the river, signal to the bars and they pull you in for a drink. The energy in this place is nuts. Sooo many drunken young people, mud wrestling, playing soccer, drinking buckets of alcohol, dancing, jumping off trees into the river, tubing down the river with five or more people to a tube meant for one…. party central in a way I’ve never seen before.

There is a controversy around this attraction… most of the locals warn against it, Gap tours refuse to recommend it and the government recently got rid of some of their rope swings after three people died last month. There is no wonder why it is considered dangerous – tubing + watersports = recipe for disaster. We saw a couple of people decide to swim down the river instead of use a tube, as well as some very passed out looking people floating aimlessly along. That being said, this is THE reason people come to this city.

There was much debate amongst us all whether we would do it or not. In the end, five people are spending the day tubing tomorrow. I’m part of the group trying to fit in a couple of activities first before heading down to the river.

After checking out the crazy tubing scene we all headed out for dinner in a nice air conditioned restaurant. After dinner everybody went home, except for Andy, Paul, Kelly and I as usual. We headed to a place called the Q bar, again backpacker central. This was a pretty cool place, with black lights and everybody painting each other with fluorescent paint. I managed to get a blob on my forehead. I also managed to buy a whole bucket of gin and tonic. Wow did that make me tipsy.

We were right next to a place that sold ‘super high pizzas extra strong’. The “magic menus” are pretty common here, as is robbery and all kinds of things. Did I mention crazy place? I chatted to a guy at the club who quite happily told me about the the magic mushroom pizza he’d recently consumed, hmmm.

At around 10pm we DID think about going to one of the TV bars here. They are so funny – just tables and couches set up around television. You have two choices – a Family Guy bar or a Friends bar. The bars are all really full – I guess its the other thing to do besides drinking and tubing. But no, we headed home for a relatively early night. Big day tomorrow!

Lap, Curry and Pizza - Saturday 9th July

Today was our sleep in day – no tour activities were planned for the morning so a group of us has had decided to meet at 10am. After getting up at 8am to write a blog and having a late one the night before… well, didn’t seem so much like sleep in.

This morning was a time for catching up on the things we hadn’t seen yet. First this meant a visit to the Royal palace, with a very shiny throne room and a museum with rooms set up just how the palace used to look. I love these sort of things, bit of a trip back in time. What was surprising about this place was how bland and simple the Royal bedrooms and dining rooms actually were – nothing like the shiny grandeur of the public rooms.

I also enjoyed looking at the blue tiled people all over the walls (I couldn’t take photos). They look pretty and happy until you realise half of them have had their heads chopped off.

After the palace we walked down to Wat Xiang Thong, which was meant to be the best temple to see here. It took a long time to walk to and really wasn’t very impressive in the end, although, to be fair, we are all templed out and it takes a lot to impress us now!

A tuk tuk back to the hotel – Kelly, Kersten and I had all signed up for a three hour Lao cooking course (a little steep at 200,000 Kip but how many chances do you get to cook Lao cuisine??). We had to go sign in with a mean fat Australian lady with short hair, hmmm.

The cooking class was really good! We watched two men make five dishes, then we got to choose which three we wanted to make. The men didn’t say much, except name the ingredients, and it was all a bit too soon that we were sent to our tables to cook! We were allocated two to a wok, grabbed our ingredients, read our recipes and off we went. Kelly and I decided to make Chicken Lap, Fried Eggplant with Pork and Red Chicken Curry.

 

Somehow we actually did ok. There was only one mishap with curdled coconut mil that sent us running to the chefs. I was really surprised when what we made actually tasted like Lao food, even with my bad chopping skills - including having no idea how to attack lemongrass. We were given recipe books – some of the dishes are really easy and don’t use crazy ingredients…may have to try them at home!

A quick freshen up at the hotel afterwards and then off to climb Phou Si, the main hill in the middle of the city (including a temple on top of course). It is the touristy place to go watch the sunset. Our sunset wasn’t that great but the view from the top was beautiful.

 

For dinner we had pizza – general group craving. I didn’t have very much due to consuming our cooking creations earlier but I did enjoy a glass of Chilean white wine. And then back to the night markets – again, so much I could have bought. In the end I purchased a couple of little gifts… as well as two embroidered puppets. I tried to convince myself I’ll use them in therapy, but I just really wanted them because they were cute. I spent 166,000 Kip which seems excessive here but was really only…$19? Splashed out.

Back to the hotel afterwards to write a blog, pack our bags and go to sleep. Vang Vieng tomorrow!

Swimming and Lemongrass – Friday 8th July

Ok, so mornings are getting harder. I guess my body clock is adjusting to the time zone here. Damn, I was enjoying my energetic beginnings to the day.

7am start this morning, for the usual eggs + fruit + bread breakfast. It was really hot already which was a bad sign – heat + humidity can be really hard work here. We all headed off to the Arts and Ethnology museum, which had tribal stuff, clothes, artefacts – not very much though and we moved through it all very quickly… everyone was very tired, hot and quiet and perhaps not in the mood for history at 8am in the morning.

Then a walk through the markets again, full of lots of food and lots of flies. Again lots of weird things, like live frogs, fish being gutted on the side of the pavement, whole dead chickens….

At about 11am we all took a big tuk tuk thing an hour up to the Kuang Si waterfalls. We didn’t really know what to expect and kept thinking each waterfall we came across was the ‘main’ waterfall and being unimpressed. Turns out the main waterfall actually was pretty impressive – no Niagra falls, but there was a helluva lotta water coming down there. There had actually been a flood around 4 days ago and a lot of the viewing bridges had been completely washed away so we couldn’t climb to the top – not sure we would have anyway though!

And then we went swimming! This was fun! The water was cold but nothing compared to say, the Tablelands in Queensland last year. It was also brown (of course) and we had no idea what was on the bottom – as a result getting in was a rather slow, careful affair. The best bit was all of us trying to swim against the current to get into the middle – funny. 

After swimming, Kelly and I felt like we’d just been to the beach and a result ordered hot chips for lunch, tsk tsk (we did order noodles as well but they remained mostly untouched).

Around 2pm we took a taxi back to town – in the pouring rain. Weeeee, this was fun too, and the rain finally cooled the city down.

Kelly and I were really tired at this point and wanted to back to the hotel and nap – instead we opted for going to get an hour long Laos massage. I was a little worried I was going to go to sleep on the table, but I forget that these things aren’t always as gentle as I think they will be. The lady was therapeutically punching my head at one point. That said, it WAS relaxing and I had a bit of a ‘wow, I’m in Laos needing to nothing but sit here and be massaged’ moment.

Back through the markets, back to the hotel and off to dinner at a local family’s house. I didn’t know what to expect by this but it was really lovely. We all sat around on the floor and the family gave us a traditional welcome – we had to touch the plate in the middle of the circle whilst they said a prayer. Then each lady came and tied a piece of string around both our wrists (four on each wrist) for a blessing. Food was really yummy again – spring rolls, fried chicken, pork lap, green curry, fried eggplant…

Back through the markets again afterwards. I can’t really explain how much I love these markets – all the textiles are amazing, so many colours – I want to buy everything even though I’d never use it at home. I have bought a little patterned bag – we will see how much of my money the market takes tomorrow.

Time to go out afterwards – our guides had talked about a retro bar where they played 80s music so we headed there. It was the most bizzare experience – 80s decor in a club at the back of some random, quiet looking hotel (including the obligatory Merry Christmas and Happy New Year signs you find everywhere here). The band just kept playing slow Laos ballads whilst people danced in circle motions around the floor. The most exciting things were the gin and tonics Kelly and I bought that glowed under the black lights.

We abandoned the retro bar pretty quickly… and THEN. This is a funny town as all the bars close at 11pm.There is only one place to go after this… bowling! Everybody goes to a western style bowling alley out in the countryside… getting there in a tuk tuk was a bit nerve wracking as it looked like our driver was taking us deep into the unknown. But we got there and bowled three games until 1am in the morning. Such a weird experience. Our bowling (particularly mine) got steadily worse as we became more tired and more drunk.

Back to the hotel around 2am for sleep.

Back along the Mekong – Thursday 7th July

6am start. Kelly and I slept pretty well last night in spite of the heat. Breakfast was next to the Mekong again – there was still a lot of fog about and it was very cool and lovely.

At 7am we were back on the boat – I had absolutely no problem with this… the sun was rising over the mountains, the river breeze was refreshing and we could all get back to relaxing!  There were similar activities to yesterday – chatting, reading, sleeping…

About two hours into the trip we stopped off at a small ‘willage’ of a Hmong people tribe. They are spirit worshippers that make their living from working on rice fields at the top of the mountains. Their village was full of children as the adults were all out working – they had lots of things to sell and were very entertained by our cameras and video. Tommy taught them how to do a thumbs up, whilst JD showed off his juggling skills. It was a very interesting little experience.

Back on to the boat. Lunch was a bit of a banquet cooked by the family that lived on our boat – it was all very yummy although I’m not sure what all of it was. There was definitely pork and noodles and bamboo shoots – and fried chicken drumsticks. Then amazingly juicy pineapple for dessert.

After another 3 hours on the boat we arrived at the Pak Ou caves. with apparently 4,000 images of Buddha. They were basically some small caves that everybody had put lots of mini Buddha statues in. Not too impressive really, but it was interesting hearing about all the different positions of Buddha – Buddhism really is a beautiful and intricate religion when you begin to learn about it.

We all bundled back onto the boat, almost drowning in our own sweat after climbing all the way up to the upper caves. Another pleasant hour and half boat ride and then goodbye boat :(

Now we are in Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos and a world heritage listed town. We took a quick little tuk tuk to our hotel. We are here for 3 nights – yay for air conditioning, proper showers and not having to go searching for toilet paper!

An hour or so to chill in the hotel, then out to see the town a little. This town is quite small but very quaint and charming. The night markets are lovely – quite high quality goods and well organised – nothing like other markets we have seen so far. Lots of food too, including the weird Asian things like chicken heads and whole fish on a stick. We grabbed a mango and pineapple fruit smoothie, mmm.

 

Dinner was Luang Prabang sausages + crispy pork with some cabbagy thing. All yummy. And then we all went out to a bar afterwards – thats right, all thirteen of us… first time this has happened this tour! It was great fun – they had a two for one cocktail special on, so I had two pinacoladas for $5, and we all played a game of ‘celebrity’, a mixture of taboo and charades (those that know me well know my attachment to games such as these!). We got kicked a bit after 11… that’s when bars close here.

Back to the hotel for sleep.

Rolling down a river – Wednesday 6th July

I think I spoke to soon about being fabulous with early mornings. This morning’s wake up call was hard – I didn’t sleep so well with my rock for a pillow and we had no sunlight streaming in our windows.

Breakfast at 6.45am – this was lovely, right next to the Mekong river as the sun rose. And then off to the Thai border. There were some issues with my passport, which was not fun, but it was sorted quickly enough (105 baht later). Then across the river into Laos!

The biggest immediate difference in country was that people drive on the opposite side of the road here! Funny that that changes just by crossing a river. I think the writing is different too – more squiggles. And of course the currency change – lots more zeros on the notes now!

What ensued next was a long couple of hours of Laos Visa applications/purchases and four different passport checkpoints. Then we finally got on our boat.

Everyone was very pleasantly surprised with the boat. The seats were comfy, there was a nice little wooden table with flowers to sit at and it was not all together a bad place to spend the next nine hours! 

There is not a huge lot to say about the boat ride – we basically just slowly cruised down a river all day. The day’s activities included reading my book, eating lunch at the table up the back of boat, sleeping for a few hours up the front on the deck chairs, with the river breeze and water lapping at the sides…and also just sitting and chatting with Kelly and the two boys with Bob Marley on in the background..

The scenery slowly changed from flat and very green to hilly and very green. And it stayed very hot

In the end the boat ride only took us six hours – guess the water must have been flowing extra fast? Ironically nobody really wanted to get off the boat, even after the long time – we were all relaxing and the breeze was nice and cooling. But no, off into the hot sun again about 4pm in the afternoon.

We are in a little town called Pak Beng, right near the river – it is really small, with nothing but a couple of restaurants and a bar. It is just our stopover before we continue on tomorrow morning. Our hotel is really quaint and I am quite fond of it… except for the fact there is no air conditioning (they get power from generators here). 

We had three hours to kill before dinner – everyone basically had cold showers and sat under the fans, before heading into the town to grab a lemonade. Laos food for dinner – I had a Buffalo Lap, which tasted likes lots of coriander, lime juice and spring onions and not so much of Buffalo. Plenty more opportunity to eat Buffalo here though, its one of the signature Lao dishes.

After dinner we headed to the one bar in town for one drink – this bar was very empty and quiet, excepting two drunken Irish lads serenading each other with With or Without You. Then they started dancing like robots and broke a pot plant, while we all just sat and watched. I ordered a Beerlaos – it is not as strong as Chang and easier to drink. Still, I think one obligatory local beer is enough for this country!

Off to bed afterwards, a relatively early evening at 10pm.

(P.S. If you haven’t noticed yet, there are some links at the top right of this page that links to the rest of my travel photos)