please excuse the journal title of thailand, this website won't allow me to change it to laos.
So we crossed over the border into laos. this involved getting stamped out of thailand, being packed with a lot of foreigners into a songtail, zooming across the mekong to laos, jumping out and getting stamped into laos. from there we were herded off to the port for our 2 day slow boat to luang prabang. it was the 2 day option or the 1 day twice as expensive, super fast speedboat option. the only other factor being that taking the speed boat is only for those with a deathwish. hooning along at 80+km/hour on those super thin boats with the mekong really low and lots of obstacles in the water didn't sound too appealing, especially after hearing the stories of the boats flipping at high speeds and recent fatalities. so the slow boat was our choice and i should mention it was aptly named. although perhaps it could have been called the slow and crazy packed boat. we were really jammed in there. it was full before our crew of 20 odd people squeesed in, and when the next crew of 20 odd inched their way in it was unbearable. eventually we set off....slowly. the scenery was beautiful although the spasms in my back and legs often kept me from looking outside. after 7 or 8 hours we reached our stop over , a little town that we slept overnight in, this was not a very memorable place except perhaps for the rats. next day we awoke early to try to get a decent spot to sit to find that the other passangers had done the same, another 8 hours of painful cramps and gorgeoous scenery and we arrived in luang prabang.
Luang prabang is a beautiful, sleepy little town on the banks of the mekong. it was a wonderful place. full of yummy retaurants and super frindly people. the laos people are very friendly and a little curious about foreigners. i think an example wouold best illustrate my point. luang prabang is the sort of place where on quite a few occassions cute little lao kids, usually girls, about 8 or 10 year old would approach us in the street and give sheila some wild flowers and run off giggling and smiling. it was a very nice town. we hired a bike, an old school 50s style 2 seater bike with me doing the hard work up front (fortunatlkey the town had one main road and was totally flat) and shei on the back looking cute! as we slowly cruised around town we would smile and wave and the local people and always gave a smile/wave in return. my attempts at speaking lao (and i really sucked) were always met with encouragement and a friendly laugh. as i said the people were quite curious about foreigners and were always kind and helpful. one day we felt like a little bit of culture so we went to the royal theatre of luang prabang and saw some traditional lao dancing. also very nice but not as amazing as the end of the show when the 89 year old leader of the theatre picked up a jar of water that must have weighed at least 30 odd kilos WITH HIS TEETH! and then prceeded to do a funky dance. it was really cool. expecially watching another one of the performers a guy who looked around the same age (or older) dancing around like a whirling dervish and smiling like the happiest man in laos. i reckon he was. we also went off to the kiang si waterfall, something we had seen in photos our friends had taken and were super keen to visit. on the way there we saw a huge tiger. it was in a cage at the end of its large habitat area and was about a foot away from us. we could have reached out to pat it but didn't feel like risking losing an arm so just stood and admired it from the other side of the bars. but i digress... the waterfall was enormous, lots of different levels, we ate lunch at the first level and had a shower there, the water was pounding down hard so we had a nice natural massage. then we heard about an cool little pool a bit higher up so we climbed up to find the coolest natural pool i have seen. it was about 10m by 5m or so. you could jump in from some rocks about 8 feet up. the water was crystal clear. there was a wall of water cascading down about 10 metres away from it as the water from higher waterfalls fell down and the best part was that after jumping in you would swim to the edge of the pool and sit up on it. looking over the edge was a drop of 60 metres to the lower waterfall and then onto a lower water fall and other pools below. there was also lots of forest surrounding the whole place. it was great. jumping in and hanging out in the pool.
back in luang prabang we picked up some weavings to adorn our house from the local market and hung out with a really awesome bunch of people we had met on the boat. 2 days stuffed on the slow boat has forged some really strong friendships. we kept on meeting people from the boat all through our lao adventure.
eventually we decided to move on and head to the also aptly named plain of jars just outside of the extremely boring town on phonsavan. the new road to this town had only just been completed in febuary - i reckon they should have kept it closed for a bit longer to keep working on it because it was the most bone-jarring body-shaking bus trip i have been on. the first part was fine 'cause we were on lao's main highway but then we turned off to the side and it just become a disaster road. i was pleasantly surprised the the rickety old bus made it in one piece, miracles do happen. at least our bus ride there and away was on buses that had only 6 or so seats out of 30 something taken. i think the lao folk knew about the condition of the road! on the way back we were bumping along, being launched into the air and then smashing back to earth when we reached a bit that was even worse than the rest. so we waited around for the heavy earth-moving equipment to rock up and then work on the road for a while. eventually we made it through. i have some strong memories of the bus ride, we went past a little school as school time finished and the doors burst open and lots of beaming lao kids flooded the dusty street. on the way back we saw similarly aged kids working their arses off, out in the fields, herding animals, carrying buckets of food on their backs, cutting wood and during the entire time they were caring for their younger sibblings. these kids are about 6-8 years old. phonsavan was extremely boring, although the cooked rats, bats and squirells in the local market looked tasty. i couldn't quite work up the courage to tuck into them but i did try some lao porcupine - it was.....tangy. our guesthouse was really fun. lao's unfotunate claim to fame is the world's most bombed country and htis part of lao took some of the worst punishment. for 8 years, there were 250 flights every single day dropping lots of nasty stuff on the lao people. all the paraphalia of war (giant bomb casing etc) is all aorund and has often been recycled by the laos people (e.g. used as stilts to hold up their houses) our guide told us a lot of really interesting things about the wars that ravaged this country. i also skimmed thru a couple of interesting books while we were in phonsavan "the ravens" and "the secret war in laos", check them out for this sort of info. anyway we went off and saw the plain of jars just out of town. surrounded by rolling hills is a plain that is covered in , you guessed it, jars. but these things are huge. some weigh up to 6 tonnes, a couple of metres high and equally as round. they had been carefully hollowed out and it is thought they were used to contain something, although the truth is noone really has any idea what they were used for. some are up to 2500 years old. they are really spectacular. well at least as a plain of jars can be. i was very impressed. even more so by the fact that the stone they are made off is only found nearly 200km away and there are huge cliffs and rugged mountains separating the two places. and there is no river to float them down on either. it was very cool.
after another bumpy journey we arrived in vang vieng. it's pretty much a travellers town, not that much to do, although it did have some great food. we went tubing in the river, basically just floating along very slowly in an inner tube. it was fun, but not very exciting, in fact the river was so tame in some parts that with the wind blowing against us sometimes we were were floating up, not down, the river. so we hung out, watched some movies , ate some yuummy food. we also went out for a swim in the river and were quickly surrounded by lots of playful young kids. it was great fun playing with them, throwing them off our shoulders and skimming down the small rapids with them. at one time i was surrounded by about 7 of them who were using me as some sort of human raft to float on down the rapids. lots of fun. sometimes language isn't needed to communicate.
then we headed off to the capital vientiene. unfortunately this place is pretty damn boring, not a lot to do at all. we have been hanging out with a great bunch of people (many of whom we met on the infamous slow boat). we arrived on a saturday and of course the embassies are all closed (since we have been travelling we never have any idea what day it is- everyday feels like saturday!) so we have to wait till monday to apply for our vietnamese visas. duh! alas the process takes 4 days! double duh! so we think that we might start the application and head back to vang vieng to relax in a cruisy environment and then come back to vientiene to pick up our visas and take the fun-sounding 24 hour bus ride to hanoi. after a couple of days in vientiene i think that we would go crazy if we had to stay another 4 days. it really does not feel like a capital city. today we were pretty bored and it was so hot, so we bit the bullet and shelled out US$4 each (probably doesn't sound like a lot to you guys but it is definitely a lot to us on our meagre budget) and went and hung out in the swimming pool of one of the 5 star resorts here. it was sooooooooo worth it. we went with a couple of good mates Natalie and Tim after having said goodbye to another good friend Jenny. Sooooooo relaxing in the pool, utter pleasure. Tomorrow we start the visa application and head back to vang viang. hope you are all well, send us an e-mail to write in our guestbook so we know how you are! all our love sasha and sheila
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