7th July - 19th July
Vientiane
After expecting the worst of the 24 hr bus ride, we were pleasantly surprised and arrived in Vientiane feeling refreshed and excited to explore Laos. The scenery since crossing the border was breath-taking – large green mountains rising out of the jungle, a bit like Halong Bay except on land.
Although very brief, Vientiane was an absolute pleasure. It felt like the streets were on mute – no hooting or chaos, French bakeries and orange-robed monks. Our first stop, a French bakery, sent Gayle to heaven. We awoke at the crack of dawn to watch the monks receiving alms, but sadly the streets were pretty much deserted. We did however see two monks receiving alms from a couple who, after offering sticky rice and Coke, promptly jumped into their Beamer and sped off. Not quite satisfied with our religious sightings we snuck into a Wat to witness the early morning routine and chanting. We were soon discovered by a monk who was very happy to educate us on monkhood. The LP had advised to avoid any eye contact with monks which made for an awkward conversation for us, but he didn’t seem to mind. Feeling inspired, we headed to the Wat Sisaket which remains one of our favourites.
We had a fabulous Laos dinner, ranking on the top 5 so far, including banana flower salad, sticky rice and spicy dips and fish coconut curry. We are already planning our visit to the sister restaurant in Phnom Phen.
Vang Vieng
Vang Vieng, aka Gap student paradise, filled us with a mixture of excitement and terror. On good advise from Helene, we wisely chose to stay on the ‘mature’ side of the river. But don’t worry, we did have every intention of experiencing the hedonistic river tubing, Vang Vieng’s claim to fame. Sadly we do not have any pictures to prove the extreme bizarreness of this place. Imagine an amazingly beautiful, tranquil setting with hundreds of drunk travellers downing buckets of ‘Laos Surprise’, swinging from high platforms into the river and mud resettling. We boarded our tubes about 3 kms upstream and stopped at numerous bars along the way and once we had found the courage to take the first leap into the river there was no stopping us.
VV is actually much more than tubing. We cycled to a cave with a beautiful stream (on the way rescuing a little girl who’s chain had fallen off her bike and a Vietnamese family who’s vehicle got stuck trying to cross a river) and risked our lives trying to reach an amazing viewpoint. We could have kept ourselves entertained for days, but time was running out so we boarded yet another bus and continued our journey North.
Luang Prabang
Beautiful Luang Prabang. Rated top of the pops for city experience by Wunderlust and unanimous agreement from us. The city is a mix of Chinese, French and Thai architecture with lush vegetation and very chilled atmosphere. There are beautiful Wats, a great night market and some awesome restaurants. The surrounds are also overflowing with things to do. We spent a day kayaking where Kerry and Gayle, the ‘expert’ kayakers, were defeated by a very mild, grade-2 rapid. We had a picnic on the side of the river, eating sticky rice off banana leaves and visited a very genuine Hmong village. We took a 40 min tuktuk ride to an extremely impressive waterfall. We had lots of fun swinging into the turquoise, tiered pools and climbed to a ‘mid-tier’ and swam in a gorgeous, natural infinity pool and watched the water cascading into the pools way below. There were also entertained by Black Asian bears (in an enclosure).
The highlight of Luang Prabang was Sally’s big 3-0! While Sally attended a cooking class, Gayle and Kerry secretively planned for the impending celebration...
