Laos

It took a while for us to decide whether to come to Laos or not. We have been debating it since Australia – did we have enough time?, what would it be like? Etc etc. We had heard that it’s hard to get into; you have the choice of a 2 day cramped boat, with no shade, a 1 day fast boat which might sink, a 14 hour bus journey from Chiang Mai, or a plane which may or may not be safe. Then we heard: “When you get there don’t walk off the side of roads in case of land mines” and “if you need medical care fly to Thailand”, oh and “sometimes armed robbers get onto tourist buses”. All of this information didn’t fill us with glee! However, we decided to give it a go and I asked my mum to find out from her aviation colleagues which planes met the international safety requirements!

As usual, our preconceptions were proven wrong! We arrived in Luang Prabang last Sunday. It was one of the prettiest towns we have ever seen. A driver was waiting for us at the airport and we were treated to a beautiful journey to our accommodation. There were so many hills, flowers and pretty little lanes. In a bizarre way it looked a bit like France, perhaps due to the French once ruling the country. Everything looked so peaceful and the people seemed so chilled out. We have since discovered that if you ever need a taxi or something you have to wake the driver up, as he tends to be lying on the floor sleeping! It’s not like Thailand where they really want to drive you somewhere.

We spent the next couple of days touring the town. This included visiting some more Wats (temples). We walked along the Mekong river and went to the really nice night market. Then we booked a ‘VIP’ bus to Vang Vieng. Please don’t be fooled by the VIP name! However, it got us there without any armed robberies, for which I was grateful!!! The journey was extremely slow and bendy, but we were given the most breathtaking views. This is one of the most beautiful countries we have visited. Vang Vieng is next to the Nam Song river and surrounded by jagged limestone karsts. The view from our hostel room was stunning.

We hired some bikes and cycled 6km to a huge cave (Tham Phu Kham cave) near the little town and were guided around inside it. It was quite difficult to walk around, being a cave and everything, but it was cool to take a look! The next day we tried to walk to a hill, which apparently has good views of the area, but despite having a ‘map’, we never found the path, so we took a walk along the river instead. On the way we went off track and wandered past some little houses, where tourists clearly don’t go very often. The locals were very intrigued by us and wanted to say hello and try to chat!

Yesterday we took another so-called VIP bus to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. As expected, it is bigger than the other towns we went to. However, it is still really small and quiet (population of approx 200,000). Today we went to the National History Museum, which is quite good and has some information in English. It was good to find out a bit more about this country and also sad. I didn’t realise how much the Vietnam war had affected them.

All in all we have been very pleasantly surprised by Laos. We are going to do a few more temple visits tomorrow and then fly to Vietnam. We just checked and the typhoon hitting the Philippines is, thankfully, not heading to Hanoi!