Laos

Luang Prabang Parade

We crossed the border from Thailand to Laos painlessly and arrived to find out that it was the start of the annual 3-day festival celebrating the end of the rainy season. Our first day in country we roamed through the streets playing dart games and trying different foods at all the booths lining the streets. Drew won a box of juice for hitting 3 balloons out of 4 and then he tried some BBQ, but couldn't figure out what kind of meat it was. It kind of gave him a scare when Liss reminded him that they eat dog, rat, and many others animals you wouldn't think of eating.

The next day we jumped on a 2-day boat ride to Luang Praban . Our boat was the 'slow boat' and luckily we were going down river. The boat is about 80 ft long and it was packed with tourists. We made the best out of the ride by admiring the natural beauty of riverside villages, lush green mountains, watching the boat races which is part of the festivities. The boat ride stopped in a small town in a steep canyon for the night and we quickly fell asleep despite the continuous firecrackers going through the night. After the second day of sore bums on the boat we finally arrived in Luang Prabang which is a World Heritage Site with strong french influence. We made it just in time for the biggest night of the festival. We watched a parade of people of all ages singing and dancing and carrying bamboo boats glowing with candles. We participated by shooting roman candle fireworks over the parade and then we followed the parade to the temple were all the boats were blessed and then the monks shot off roman candles over the crowd. We also took part of the festival by lighting a floating candle and incense and putting it into the river hoping our wishes will come true. Then we watched all the boats float down river. We barley made it home while kids threw firecrackers at our feet. We then took a windy bus ride through the edgy mountains of Laos, where we realized we had a man guarding the bus with an AK47. We arrived at 1am in Vang Vieng, a very creepy backpacker town where every restaurant plays reruns of Friends or Family Guy. The best part of Vang Vieng was the river tubing. We booked a river tour that took us to a village to see a cave temple and then explore a massive cave. The enterance to the cave was a few small holes where a stream came out of the mountain. We jumped into our tubes and ducked under the rock and emerged into a giant cave with stalagmites everywhere you looked. After the cave tour we headed down to the main river to start floating 5 km back to town. The river is absolutely gorgeous with mountains towering over the river. As we floated down the river there was numerous bars to stop for a drink. The main attraction to the bars was the giant rope swings, water slides, and zip lines. We spent hours on the swings acting like kids at 'Raging Waters'.

Our next stop was the capital of Laos, Vientiane. This city has a strong French influence with many bakeries, french architecture, and a look-alike 'Arc de Triumph'. There was also many beautiful temples, old and new.

We took a night bus to our next stop and this was no ordinary bus. It was a two-story sleeper bus and each bed was the equivalent to a twin but shorter and for two people. It wasn't too bad of a ride and next thing we knew we were in Pakse where we jumped on a van to the 4,000 islands. The 4,000 islands is in the very south of Laos where the Mekong fans out creating many little islands. A short boat ride took us to the island of Don Det that was a beautiful little island with rice fields in the middle and bungalows on the shore. The island was very quiet with many locals busy harvesting rice and fishing in the Mekong. We found the perfect bungalow right on the river that had amazing sunset views, night-time lightning shows, and overlooked Cambodia on the other side of the river. We rented bikes to explore the island to the south which was home to the largest waterfall (by volume) in Southeast Asia. This water streched as far as you could see and massive amounts of water plunged over rocks. At the far end of the island we took a boat to see the fresh water dolphins which are some of the last in the world. We spent a week in the area to take a break from moving around so much and because it was so cheap and the food was so fresh and so good.

We spent our last day in Laos back in Pakse which is a small, bustling town. With not a whole lot to see in town we rented a motor bike to see some of

the local life and that led us to a  national park. We saw some incredible waterfalls and had lunch at a beautiful restraurant uniquely built with local timber.

Laos was filled with natural beauty and friendly people and we highly recommend a visit.  

Peter, the friendly little monkey at our guesthouse who was saved from a Cambodian BBQ.