Vientiane, Laos

We only had one night in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It seemed to be a fairly sleepy city, but we didn't have the chance to explore it thoroughly. 

For dinner, we met up with a mutual friend who has been living in Vientiane for a couple of years now. It seems to be a common story that people move to Laos on a short work contract and find a way to stay. There is a nice close knit community of expats living there. 

The food we ate was delicious. I ordered the fish which I assumed would be a small piece of fish with other sides. False. 

It was a lot of fish! But incredibly tasty.

We spent the following morning at the COPE visitors centre. Laos was heavily bombed during the Vietnam war, and the country is still dealing with the aftermath of all the bombs (many of which went undetonated). COPE helps amputees to get artificial limbs so that the can resume their lives. It was a very sad, but informative exhibition. I would highly recommend it to anyone going through Vientiane.

That afternoon we sadly said goodbye to Anna, who was going to Wellington,

New Zealnd to begin a semester abroad there. 

Goodbye to the trio!

Next stop: Vietnam.

Vang Vieng, Laos

After our time in the elegant and charming Luang Prabang, we headed south for a completely different experience in Vang Vieng. VV rose to notoriety through its popular tubing activity. Essentially, one would rent a tube for a day and then float down the river passing numerous bars and swing ropes. The Laos government cracked down on the tubing industry after many tourist deaths (heavy drinking and watersports don't usually mix well). There are still remnants of this industry dictating the atmosphere in Vang vieng, but apparently nothing compared to what it was a few years ago. As sane individuals and recovering lifeguards, everything about tubing sounded abhorrent. We were reluctant to even go to VV, but long buses are never fun and it was a good way to break up the trip to Vientiane.

One of the two streets in Vang Vieng.

We stayed for two nights in VV. On the first night we partook in another VV staple, the "TV bar." Aka 70% of the bars and restaurants there have large televisions that constantly play reruns of friends, family guy, or how I met your mother. The bars were spacious with lots of room to lay about like you were on your couch back home. Although fun at first, after two episodes of friends we felt like our brains were turning to mush. We retreated to the back of the bar where we could look out at the beautiful scenery not the tv screen. 

View from the restaurant.

Needless to say, the food at restaurants famous for friend's reruns left much to be desired. 

Anna's pumpkin soup... I don't even know how they managed to produce such an unappetizing colour. 

She didn't really enjoy the meal...

However, VV isn't all tubing and tv. It's located in a truly beautiful area. There are many caves and hikes nearby to enjoy. We didn't have enough time to do anything too substantial, but we did enjoy a short meander outside the city boundaries.

 

Walking through the woods around VV.

Jasmine on a one of the sturdier bridges we have hiked across.

En route to the closest cave to VV!

I think we made the most of an unusual place, but we were glad to depart to Vientiane at the end of it.

Luang Prabang, Laos

After the slow boat, we had five nights in Luang Prabang. Our longest stop of the trip so far.

Luang Prabang is a pretty small city. It is located on a peninsula between the Mekong River and the Nam Khan river. It is quite a religious city, with numerous beautiful temples to see. Monks with black umbrellas wandered the city in droves. (Including one who photographed Anna and I. I guess it's a fair comeback as he and his brethren have probably been in countless tourist photos). The French influence is still felt especially in the restaurant options available (aka we got to have real coffee and baguettes! You've never seen three girls so happy to be reunited with bread!)

Laos fondue

We had some really good meals and some really bad meals in LP. Some of the highlights were "Laos fondue" which is better understood as cook your own soup, baguettes, tartines (we had cheese!), meat on a stick from the market (jasmine found a better type of bacon, while Anna and I had chicken), buffalo meat wrapped in lettuce (the best thing we've eaten in SE Asia!), and fish steamed in banana leaf.

Unfortunately, we were also left feeling less than a 100% for some of our meals. Everything was more expensive than other places we had visited, and sormtimes we would have a green curry with too much coconut milk and be forced to lay about groaning for the rest of the evening. 

One day, Anna and I rented bicycles and explored the city that way.

We spent one excellent day kayaking from the Nam Ou river to where it intersects with the Mekong. 

View from the front of the kayak. We kayaked for a couple hours in the morning. 

Jasmine felt the least comfortable in the boat so she went with the guide while Anna sterned out boat. We followed the guides direction until we reached the first rapid (more accurately a swifty). He switched direction suddenly and when Anna and I tried to follow him when ended up drifting sideways down the river and beaching in some shallow water. After some maneuvering outside the boat, I freed us and we could keep going. We decided to chart our own course after that with much more success. I think we inadvertently put the two people with the least experience in the same boat. We were much faster than the guide's boat, so when ever he got close enough you could hear shouts of "Anna, Anna wait!"

Lunch time!

The meal looks a little unappetizing but it was really great. You ball up sticky rice to dip into the various dishes displayed. We are always pleased with the amount of fresh vegetables you are given at any Laos meal. The ratio is way better than in Canada. Over lunch we got lots of dating advice for Laos, in case we ever decide to stay permanently! 

We had lunch on a nice beach and went for a swim in the Nam Ou.

We all kept sinking knee deep or higher into the mud. Jasmine is the unfortunate mud victim in this photo.

We saw some cool cliffs (up close shot) and a couple snakes on said cliffs.

We paddled through an elephant camp. Here is a baby elephant in the distance. 

We explored the Buddha caves, where a former king of Laos hid many Buddha images to protect them from the Chinese. This is the view from the entrance.

Anna relaxing while we wait for jaz and the guide to catch up.

That time when jasmine almost got run over by a slow boat...

Portaging the boat over a bamboo bridge. The guide and the driver took one, while Anna and I carted the other. 

The portage took us over the bridge, up lots of steps, through a market, and finally into a temple complex:

On our final day in Luang Prabang, we had planned to bike to the waterfall. We changed our minds on the whole biking idea when we heard it was 32km all uphill on bikes with no gears. We made the wise decision to tuk tuk. 

We took advantage of the great French cafe Le Banneton to have a picnic. Who needs to go to France?

The waterfall was really beautiful:

The lowest pool of water was a lovely natural swimming pool. There were steps up to a base a tree where lots of tourists were jumping from. Anna and I tried the jump:

(I am the one clinging for dear life to the tree)

And the inevitable shot of Katie chickening out... 

There were these two Russian women who were having a grand time posing in about 1 million bizarre shots. I snuck into one of them:

After our swim!

We have left LP by bus for Vang Vieng, a pit stop on the way to Vientiane our final stop in Laos.

The Mekong River, Laos

After the excitement (and strenuous uphill) of the Gibbon Experience, the trio totally shifted gears for two days to take a slow boat (emphasis on the slow) down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. It's a full two day venture with one night spent at Pak Beng, a small town that seemed entirely comprised of guesthouses and restaurants to serve the constant stream of tourists coming down the river. 

The docks in Houyxay. The slow boats lined up. 

Our boat

We were some of the first arrivals at the docks and boarded our boat around 9:30am. The boat quickly filled up and it seemed departure was eminent. Unfortunately, we accidentally managed to get ourselves aboard the slowest of the slow boats. We enviously watched other boats that were loaded after us depart before us. At about 12:30 we finally departed. We were antsy but glad we hadn't chosen to take a speed boat which the guide book described as "hitting rocks with alarming frequency." We saw a few speed boaters passing us. They weren't wearing life jackets, but they were wearing helmets. Perhaps Laos is at the cutting edge of water safety...

The seats themselves were quite comfortable. They all seemed to be scavanged from old vans, but they were only tentatively connected to the boat. Any sudden movement could send one or more of the passengers sprawling. Also, I'm pretty convinced the seat numbers were written in blood.  

Jasmine originally had the window seat in the row in front of Anna and I, until she was tricked out of her seat by this man:

Poor girl was stuck in the middle for the whole journey. Good thing she was reading a fantastic novel. We kept running into this fellow in Pak Beng and he would just start laughing (I assume at our expense).

Despite all my complaints, we were spoiled by the beautiful scenery. It was a very peaceful journey. Plus we only had to endure one drunk Canadian yelling about rob ford. None of my photos capture the view at all well. It's very jagged and mountainous and the trees looked like something out of a Dr Seuss book. 

Nam Ha National Park, Laos

First things first, despite all of my fears and misgivings, we survived the Laotian jungle! Although with no animal spottings sadly.

On Sunday, we ventured out of Thailand across the border into a tiny town known as all of the following: Houayxaiy, Houyxay, houexai, houysuia, etc.  I have no idea how to either spell or say it at this point despite having slept there for two nights now. It is in the town that the Gibbon Experience office is located. With the GE, we ventured into the Nam Ha national park to search for Gibbons and other wildlife while also getting to hike, zip line, and sleep in tree houses. Although, I was the one who initially encouraged us to do this trip, I didn't use my full brain power to figure out that an airborn jungle experience might not be ideal for some one with a neurotic fear of heights. Also after a little research it's easy to find more than one horror story about GE as it is not the most safety conscious organization. However, it is unfair to expect Western-level safety equipment when travelling through a developing country. My fears were not elided when at 8:30am right before the safety video we were all handed a can of beer Laos. The video helpfully informed us that if we had trouble understanding the guides safety instructions we should try to teach them English! At this point I'm convinced that I will tumble head first into the jungle from great heights.

But Jasmine and Anna frogmarched me into the tuk tuk (imagine a pick up truck with a metal wire frame pretending to be a cab) and we were off to the jungle. And man, am I so thankful that we had the opportunity to do this. It was absolutely stunning. I can't do justice to our experience with words. Even the pictures don't really come close to capturing all we saw, but I hope you can sort of fathom our experience after this.

I made the girls take a before picture as I thought we'd be broken and bloodied by the end. Whoops! We had to hike with our harnesses on.

The trip started with a long hike

First past fields of these guys.

Over lots of rickety bamboo bridges

Up lots of very steep hills. It was a serious workout. Uphill both ways!

Until we finally reached the zip lines. Only I could really figure it out at first

Anna's legs were too long. 

Jasmine ziplined into a lake. (Video to come). 

I, however, managed it panic-free. (Ziplining into tree house).

Sometimes we couldn't make it all the way to the end. We wouldn't make the running leaps and body contortions our guides did to accomplish this feat. Our arms are a little sore from all the repelling. 

But eventually Jasmine and Anna got the hang of it too!

The treehouses we stayed in were awesome!! The food was great. Really fresh with lots of vegetables. And the guides would zip over every morning and evening with a kettle of boiling water to make us tea and coffee. Plus I mean you really can't beat the view. Even the bathroom was awesome:

You did have to be careful when timing your showers. As people could zip right passed the open concept design.

When night came we had lots of amusement. Playing Chinese checkers in our tree fort!

On the second night, Anna and Jasmine were kept up by animals that had infiltrated the tree house. 

Due to this sign, I can only assume that they were tree rats who had come to accuse us of lying....

One of the other girls on our trip was a yoga instructor. So after two days of intense hiking she kindly led us through a restorative yoga class. There wasn't that much space in the house so we arranged ourselves around the zip line entrance. When the two Laos guides showed up with dinner, one shouted from midzip, "WHAT are you girls doing!?" Clearly thought we were crazy white girls as we all did the downward dog. 

On the second day, jasmine stayed behind in the afternoon while the rest of the group went zipping. (She is midway through a truly excellent book called The Luminaries. It's hard to do anything else when you could be reading it). Anyways she thought she discovered a new kind of pink gibbon in the woods!

But after zooming in with the camera, it turned out to be just Anna

Anyways we had a wonderful time. I have far too many pictures of the experience but below are some more gems for you to peruse. We are now off to Luang Prabang! 

Our view

Inside the tree house

Zipping with the tree house in the background.

Anna zipping (even if it looks like she is just laying ontop of the forest)