Laos

Our 9 days in Laos began in the enchanting UNESCO protected heritage city of Luang Prabang. The city lies between the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers and is home to Lao’s Royal Palace and many golden temples (wats). It has orange robbed monks wondering the streets and awesome food found in the many French influenced bistro’s – Luang Prabang is a perfect spot to explore for a few days.

As we arrived we again met up with Lara, Liese and Clydo and soon found ourselves at a place called Utopia where we had an awesome lunch and our introduction to beer Lao overlooking the Nam Khan river. Lunch was followed by a gruelling 5 hr, 5 set match of beach volley ball which was keenly contested by everyone. Well done to those who prevailed (the “Gangs” and Al).

Feeling a bit stiff and wearing a few war wounds from the previous evening we explored the old quarter of Luang Prabang and visited many of the temples and attractions. For me the treasure of the city lies in the peacefulness with the hundreds of orange robed monks wondering the streets, delivering offerings to the Gods.....

The cities peacefulness is also maintained due to it being a UNESCO World Heritage city and therefore there is a ban on all trucks, buses and all major transport routes give the city a wide berth and mostly because there is a 11:30pm curfew on the bars and restaurants. Except it seems for the late night ten pin bowling which only opens at 10pm and closes at 3am. Once again, there was a keenly fought contest.
Our last day in Luang Prabang was spent at the beautiful multi-tiered Tat Kuang Si waterfalls where we also visited the bear Sanctuary.
It was then time to make our way down to Vang Vien where we met up with Craig, Sash, Kath and Shev and Jeff again to celebrate Sash’s 30th birthday. Happy Birthday Sash. Vang Vien should be a sleepy, beautiful little village alongside the Nam Song River with jagged limestone karsts all around but for those of you that have been will know that it is far from sleepy! There are plenty of travellers enjoying the many outdoor activities and cheap beer Laos has on offer. Our days were spent visiting beautiful lagoons on motorbikes or tubing down the Nam Song for which the village is world famous.
This consists of being taken approximately 4km up river by tuk tuk with a tractor inner tube in hand where you are left to navigate the 4km stretch along the river back to town on your own. Fortunately there are many travellers to help you navigate your way and there are ample watering holes to ensure you are well hydrated. The journey can take anywhere between 2hrs to....well that all depends on how much you are enjoying the big swings, zip lines or water slides into the river and how well you can handle the free shots of local Tiger whiskey.
Well I’m glad to say that we made it out of Vang Vieng in one piece bar a few stiff backs and a couple of bruises. From there we went down to Vientiane and now it’s time to move on to Cambodia.

So as you can tell Laos tested our youth and put us through our paces, we think we stood up to the test pretty well!

Happy Birthday to Gary for yesterday!!!!