We are currently travelling through Laos and Thailand.
We flew from Bangkok to Luang Prabang where we stayed for four days...chilling by the river and enjoying the very laid back pace of life there. The town has developed a lot over the last few years and there is a much stronger tourist scene, but it still retains its relaxed charm and easy-going pace of life. Getting out of town for a trip up the river was one of the best highlights of our stay.
Then down to Vientiane, the capital, which really has developed a great deal in recent years: it may still not be a teeming metropolis but the pace of development here has been huge. It is no loger oversahdowed by Nong Khai on the Thai side of the Mekong.
On Saturday we crossed the Friendship bridge (although I was nostalgic for the old time boat crossing!) and instead of staying in Nong Khai headed down to a house we had rented called Gecko Villa (http:www.geckovilla.com) in the rice paddy farming land near Udon Thani. This was a real find as Udon town itself is a rice trading town full of merchants without any major redeeming features, but the rural villages around the province capital are still unvisited and the people really friendly, as ever. We might have been tempted to just hole up in the villa and enjoy our private swimming pool (!), or just laid back in the hammock with a good book and enjoyed the rural views, but the host family were so friendly that we ended up having a good time meeting up with the locals and making fools of ourselves as we tried to learn how to plough the paddies and plant the rice seedlings...a backbreaking job but oiled at all times with a copious supply of the local moonshine. Evenings spent in little huts in the fields with a guitar and more rice whisky trying to communicate in our limited Thai and Lao were good fun, and in any case we had the next day to recover, enjoying superb Thai meals that the owners of Gecko Villa prepared for us and splashing in the pool again until it was time to leave back to Bangkok.
The owners drove us to the local train station - a tiny, ancient affair on the tracks between Udon Thani and Khon Kaen, and from here we boarded the "express" train to Bangkok. Beware! Express and Rapid all seem to mean slow here!
We're spening two nights here - enjoying the food and shopping - then head on to Bali. We're thinking of heading up to Ubud to find a place a called Ubud Hanging Gardens that we've heard a lot about, but don't imagine we can afford to say there...we'll find a place in town and report back from there.
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