Christmas time in Laos!

Vang Vieng. A must see for backpackers in Laos, famous for its tubing down the Nam Song river, restaurants that continually play Friends episodes, and its beautiful limestone mountains surrounding the river. We had met so many people that were heading to Vang Vieng for Christmas, to simply relax and spend the holiday floating down the river. We did not arrive until late afternoon on Sunday, and with Talita (Holland), we found a cheap and cheerful guesthouse and then got sucked into watching Friends while eating pizza and the amazing fruit shakes!

Monday morning, we headed out in a Tuktuk to 4 of the nearby limestone caves. The caves were cool, not as impressive as some that we saw in Central America, but interesting none the less.
These caves were used as hide outs for the locals during the Secret War in Laos. In the 60s and 70s, unknowingly to most, the US bombed Laos (which was also being taken over by a communist regime) and caused loads of damage to the land and people. The caves each had in them Buddhas for the people to perform their prayers during the bombings.

We thought the safety was bad in Central America, but we soon discovered that it can still be worse! At least we got helmets in Belize and Nicaragua! I greatly appreciated those helmets after slipping in the mud in one cave and hitting my head on a stalactite! It hurt (I am totally fine!) and I bled all over my face in front of lots of people! Super embarrassing!

After caving, we arrived back 1 1/2 later than planned (typical Laos style!), so we decided to save tubing for the next day! We watched some more Friends, met some real friends at dinner, and generally enjoyed the Laos backpackers scene for the evening! This city is certainly not where you encounter the most authentic Laotian culture, but it is fun to be around lots of travelers so near to Christmas! We have been debating since we arrived where to spend Christmas, in Vang Vieng or north in Luang Probang.


Tuesday we had breakfast with Talita, Bailey (UK) and Andy (Australia) at a great organic restaurant! I had a the most amazing mulberry pancakes with lime and honey! After breakfast, we hired some tubes, caught a tuktuk and headed to the start of the tubing! After having a fresh Mojitio at another organic farm near the start, we hit the river! We knew the tubing wasn't far, but we realized it was actually a really short distance, but with lots of places to stop along the river! The river banks are lined with wood platforms full of people hanging out. Each 'stop' has its own form of fairly unsafe entertainment, like huge Tarzan swings, slides, mud pits, bon fires. So, although the tubing part was fairly lame, but the view was great and the swings/slides were really fun!

Because we had done what we came here to do, tubing and caving, and because there is not a lot to do in the evenings except watch Friends :), we decided to hit the road and head north. We found only 1 company in town that offered an overnight bus to Luang Probang, which we though was really strange, but we decided to try it out. It turns out our instincts were right, and we had gotten totally scammed. We walked onto a bus full of people that looked as if they had been on the bus, every seat was filled and the isles were filled with people sitting on stools, huge boxes, and tires. We were totally in shock and before we knew it the bus was already rolling. They eventually found us seats, however, I shared 2 seats with a woman and her 6 year old son, a tire next to me, and boxes at my feet. Toriann sat with a Lao woman who very much thought Toriann didnt mind sharing her seat with her, and also woke up at 6am to put on makeup and listen to music on her cellphone REALLY loud. Ahh, good old night buses! But, on the positive, we made it safe and sound to Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is an old French colonial town, now an UNESCO World Heritage site. It is filled with loads of Wats (temples). It is very quaint and the most 'Christmasy' place we had been in all of Asia yet! The overnight bus dropped us off around 5am, so we wandered the streets for a while waiting for town to open. While we were waiting, we got to see the monks procession down the main street of LP. Every morning at sunrise all of the monks in the city walk down the street and people come to the streets to give them breakfast. It was a very peaceful sight and a great way to pass the morning while we waited to find a guesthouse.

We were happy with our decision to move to LP for Christmas and spent Christmas eve in the beautiful night market Christmas shopping. The market is brilliant, filled with silk blankets, scarves, silver jewelry, and other handicrafts. It is the best market we have been to around the world for sure. On Christmas day, we decided to take a day trip to a nearby waterfall. We met Sam (Colorado) the night before, so we met him for breakfast and then set off to find a tuktuk. On the way, we met 2 other guys from the US and shared a tuktuk to Kuang Si waterfall outside of town. The waterfall park included a bear rescue facility, random, but the bears were super cute! We hiked to the top of the waterfall, enjoyed the view, then hiked back down where Toriann and Talita dared to swim in the frigid water while I stayed out and guarded our stuff.
After the swim, we headed back to town to hit the Internet cafe and make some calls home. We were so blessed to get to call friends and family and get to hear (and see!) loved ones! It was definitely the highlight of Christmas day in Asia. It was so different to be celebrating Christmas in a non Christmas celebrating country. For Christmas dinner, Toriann, Talita, myself, and another friend we had met on a bus in southern Laos, Lisa (Holland) had Asian food at a packed restaurant full of foreigners. It turned out to be good food and good company, so although not a normal Christmas, it was not so bad!

So, Christmas being technically over, it was time to hit to road to head to Thailand to meet my family. We spent one last day in Luang Prabang, seeing some more of sights including, the Royal Palace, the banks of the Mekong river and other famous Wats. Unfortunately it rained all afternoon, but that made it easy to hop on overnight bus #3 for Laos and head south to Viene Tiene.

We arrived in Viene Tiene early, by this time we were experts at arriving into town before the sunrise, and we headed to the street of a guesthouse that we knew we could buy train tickets to Bangkok. We found a cafe nearby that was open, had breakfast, and then went back to the guesthouse and purchased train tickets. The guesthouse was super nice and let us shower and store our stuff for the day! It is definitely people like that you come to very much appreciate when you are traveling! That left us with the afternoon to kill, and we headed to a Buddha sculpture park. It was both Buddhist and Hindu sculptures collected by a man that donated it to the park. On the way there we had a small tuktuk verses truck accident, but luckily, no one was hurt and only the tuktuk had a small scratch!

After our park adventure, we boarded a bus, crossed the border to Thailand, and found our seats on the overnight train. The train was deluxe, at least compared the buses we had been taking, with our own beds and everything! It was really fun because we ran into a lot of people that we had met in Vang Vieng, so we got to hang out and play card until we were told to 'go to bed now!' by the train man. After a few hours sleep, the train man came around again, 'time to wake up, get down now!'
So, that was the rest of our time in Laos, we have now arrived in Bangkok to meet up with the Buchans!

The never ending travel day...

32 hours later and we finally arrived here in Vang Vieng. Yesterday morning we left Don Dhet island at 5:30 am on a little canoe motor boat where I proceeded to slip and rammed my leg into the boat as I tried to get in. With my bruised shin we boated over to the main land, where we hoped on a local min bus (a truck with benches in the back-all natural air con!) and drove to Ban Lak 30 where they dropped us off. Expecting to find lots of tuk tuks to take us to Ban Muang, where we told to catch the ferry boat to Champasak, we only found a truck which drove us down to the water. From here we got aboard a SE Asian style ferry boat (two canoes with wooden boards lade on top) and cruised over to Champasak. There is not much to do here, but visit the famous Wat Phu ruins which are spoken very highly of. The Wat Phu ruins are about 8km outside of Champasak so we were in desperate need of finding a tuk tuk that would drive us out there and watch our stuff while we visited the ruins. Within a few minutes we found a tuk tuk and arrived at Vat Phou. Vat Phou literally means mountain temple. It's divided into two parts with a steep stone stairway connecting the lower part to the upper part. As we climbed up the steep staircase we saw the beautiful view of the Mekong Valley. The upper section is the temple sanctuary itself which was originally built by Hindus in the 6th century but was later converted into a Buddhist temple during the Angkor period of the 9th and 13 century. Just outside the temple, we saw the elephant stone and the crocodile stone- both very cool to see. After our visit we decided to make the steep climb down the stairs and of course I slipped and fell down the last four or five steps (fall #2 for the day!). Laughing and bent over from falling, all the locals came over with there concerned words and looks and helped me up. With just a minor scratch on my foot we thought it was time to head back and figure out how to get to Pakse. Upon boarding the ferry boat which was much bigger then the first one, we found a local bus that was heading to Pakse. We asked the driver if we could join...he pointed in the direction of Pakse laughed and said yes. So we threw our bags on top and climbed in the back... realizing shortly after that we may have imposed ourselves onto an eighth grade class excursion (since everyone was about 13 years old except for two male teachers and ourselves). With several giggles and stares, an hour and half later we were kicked off the bus and handed over to a tuk tuk that drove us the rest of the way into Pakse and dropped us off at a VIP bus station. Pumped to finally take the "famous" overnight bed bus that we had heard about we booked our tickets to Vientiane. With a few hours to kill before the bus left we headed into town and had lunch/dinner, visited a small Catholic church, tried Laos coffee, and walked through Wat Luang. Our few hours flew by and before we knew it we were settling into our VERY small narrow beds for the night. The bus is stacked with bunk beds and two people sleep parallel to each other on top as well as on the bottom...there is no room for personal space. Both Heather and I were feeling thankful we had each other because we would not want to be sleeping on this bus next to a stranger. After a rough night sleep we arrived in Vientiane homeless, tired and hungry. We, along with a few other travels whom we had met, roamed the streets in search of a hostel, but no where were there vacancies. Frustrated and impatient both Heather and I decided to just keep going and catch a bus to Vang Vieng. After we booked our ticket we settled ourselves down for a relaxing breakfast and just waited for the bus to pick us up. Roughly three hours later we made it to Vang Vieng and that completed our 32 hour travel day (days).

4K Islands..Welcome to Laos!

After heading up north through Cambodia with an overnight stop in quiet Stung Treng, we crossed the border into Laos. We went through the border, got a stamp, got dropped off and then picked up in another van. That van proceded to fill up with people heading back to Cambodia, but we were reassured that we were on the right bus. So, we drove back to the border, dropped the crowd of people off going south, turned around again, and were on our way again into Laos. Our first stop in Laos was 4 Thousand Islands, on the island of Don Dhet. Don Dhet has 2 main streets, Sunrise and Sunset. We settled into a (very) small bungalow on Sunset blvd, complete with hammocks and an amazing view . Don Dhet is connected to the island just south, Don Khon, where you can catch a boat to view the rare river dolphins. We rented bikes and biked the dusty, bumpy road down to the other island, hired a boat, and floated out to somewhere on the water between Laos and Cambodia. Our driver spoke no English, but he was able to point out quite a few of the dolphins. Unfortantely they were fairly far away, and when we asked to go closer, he said, 'no, Cambodia!'. We stayed on the water till just before sunset, then came back and rushed to a nearby beach to watch the beautiful sunset. Riding back it got a little dark, but we made it back, had some dinner with Cav (from Denver, yah!) and Susie (Germany).
The next day we rented bikes again and continued exploring the islands. We rode to a small waterfall, lots of beautiful scenery, and a fabulous bakery!! We made sure to be back at our bungalow to watch the sunset from our hammocks which was amazing! Laos is definitely beautiful and I cant wait to see more!
PS We should have pictures up soon for Cambodia and Laos!!