We love Laos

Greetings from Laos! As we are sitting here on our last day in Luang Prabang before flying to Vietnam, we are so sad to be leaving this glorious country and have more to blog about than the our extremely slow internet connection will allow. We have had a fabulous weeks worth of activities since our last post. Tubing in Vang Vieng was an adventure that left us bruise and battered to this day, but also gave us some friends and fun stories. The whiskey buckets were potent, the rope swings and ziplines were deadly but delightful and the slide was terrifying and terrific at the same time. The evening after was well spent cozied up in a local restaurant watching Friends DVDs and sipping on some much needed water. Our time in Vang Vieng was quite enjoyable, however, 2 days was sufficient and we were quite excited to head to Luang Prabang.

The 6 hour drive to Luang Prabang is worth coming to Laos for in itself. We need to come back so we can do it on a motorbike and not crammed in the back of a minibus with a large Japanese fellow who took sleeping pills and was bobble heading into Trish's shoulder the whole ride. We wish we could have taken 1000s of photos from the drive, but our attempts to take pictures while zipping around the hairpin turns was futile. Take our word for it, it was beautiful. Better yet, come to Laos and experience it for yourselves, you won't regret it.

Luang Prabang is the most charming and lovely town we have encountered yet on our journey. Thankfully, it is a UNESCO World Herritage site, so it should stay this pleasant for a long time. The people, the food, the ambiance, the scenery...all divine. This city is a little slice of heaven and perfect for lathargic afternoons spent wandering the low key markets, stalking monks and playing cards while feasting on baguettes and Beer Lao. We really tried to do a litle bit of it all in LP since it is such a culturally rich city so we toured some temples and even got up at sunrise to give food to the monks, even though the experience left us $20 poorer after being swindled by a lovely Lao lady who sold us the sticky rice and bananas to hand out, it was still worth it. We bumped into a few other travelers we have met along the way and we all took a tuk tuk to a large waterfall 30km outside of town to frolic in the pools and watch large Frenchmen do belly flops, it was delightful. We wanted to go to the other waterfall that we had seen pictures of and looked like heaven, but we were told there was no water and when we did get there at the end of our 2 day trek, we saw that they werent lying, it was only a trickle. Just another reason to come back to Laos!

We spent 2 days trekking through the Laos mountainside and jungle with an intrepid and joyous Lao guide named Kai (pronounced "Guy"). He was charismatic, knowledgable, funny and spoke amazing English due to the fact that he is in his 3rd year of university studying to become an English teacher - adorable! We both had crushes, but Trish was tempted to get native, unfortunately he had to go to class when we got back to town and he counldn't go out to dinner with us. The trek took us through several villages and we got to see how the majority of Laos people live which was really facinating. The villages are extremely rural, only reachable by foot or driving for an hour on dirt roads. The villagers were beyond friendly and the kids couldn't have been cuter. We were able to communicate with them without knowing the language because they just wanted to play around like any other children. Things got real when we came upon a blazing fire set by villagers to get the land ready for planting that totally blocked our path. We were stuck for an hour on a mountainside path no wider than a foot across watching the fire spread towards us and being told that it was "under control" even though we counld not figure out how that was possible. Once Kai deemed it safe for us to continue, we found ourselves walking over smoldering ashes and Kai even had to spit water on some leftover flames, what a fearless leader! When we asked what would have happened if we had been closer when they set the fire, he just laughed - this is Laos. By the time we got to the final village of the day we were beyond exhausted and dirtier than we've been all trip. We went over rivers, through the jungle, over mountains and through fire so you can imagine how good we smelled and looked. We spent the night in the village, sleeping on mats in our own little hut. The villagers were again very welcoming and fun to interact with. We watched the kids play a vicious flip flop hurling version of bocce and shared books that we brought from an amazing Laos run organization called Big Brother Mouse, look out for a fundraiser for them when we get home! The second day we set out sans shower or clean clothes (we packed really light for the trek) and ventured off to 2 more villages and then took a boat ride to the waterless waterfall. All in all, our 2 day trek was an amazing experience and we are so glad we got to see that part of Laos and learn so much from our swoon worthy guide, Kai. He has an aunt in San Francisco so even though he has never left Luang Prabang, we are hoping to get him over for a visit.

We are flying to Hanoi in a couple of hours (Vietnam Airlines, not Laos Airlines so Trish wont die of an anxiety attack) and are excited for Vietnam and meeting up with Caitlin, but sad to be leaving this wonderful country. There is so much more to see here, we hope to get back again soon. We will blog again from Vietnam, let us know if you have any tips for while we are there. We are also looking for some new card games to play so send any of those suggestions along as well.

xoxo,
T&L