Laos

To quote a fellow traveler, Laos keeps surprising us. Laos is home to European style cities like Luang Prabang where wine bars and baguettes dominate the streets. Not far away are towns like Vang Vieng that are almost entirely made up of partying tourists attracted by the extreme tubing, or chilling in one of the many restaurants that shows reruns of Friends or Family Guy on endless loops. Tubing down the river only takes one hour if you don’t stop anywhere, but with bars lining almost every foot of river edge, each providing free shots of Laolao (the nastiest liquor known to man) and terrifyingly high rope swings (more like trapezes) and zip lines, we had to rush to make it back in 6 hours. Regretfully, we didn’t bring the camera on the tubing trip, figuring the risk of losing or ruining our camera was too high.

It’s also very easy to find more “rustic” surroundings.  We took a two day boat ride down the Mekong and spent our first night in Pakbeng, a town with no electricity but plenty of restaurants and guest houses operating on generators until nighttime.  Our boat stopped along the river at one point and dozens of huge bags of rice were loaded into the aisle of the boat, bags full of coconuts onto the roof, and even a bag full (yes, a bag full) of baby pigs kept up front.  We spent some time in Na Hin, a remote town on a road leading to Vietnam.  We were horrified to see several huge truckloads every day carrying hundreds of dogs in tiny cramped cages in the direction of Vietnam, presumably to end up as someone’s dinner.  We also drove a motorbike from Na Hin to a river that flows through a 7km long cave.  Two men from the nearby village zoomed through the cave in a small canoe like boat powered by an adapted lawnmower engine.

And we continue to be surprised.  The other day we rented a motorbike again to explore some of the caves outside the town of Tha Khaek.  We were having a difficult time finding one of the caves that we thought was a 400 meter walk off the side of the road.  A young boy came over and told us that we needed to take a motorboat up the nearby river in order to see the cave.  After we were unable to find any trail, we agreed to pay the requested $1 for the boat ride.  We followed the boy to the river and assumed that he was taking us to an adult who would be driving the boat.  We were surprised when another boy paddled a small boat over to us.  Apparently we had hired two eight-year olds to transport us in a “motorboat” that was actually powered by their pretty ineffective paddling.  Neither boy spoke much English (beyond saying motorboat) but they kept us entertained by catching a nasty huge beetle which also distracted them even more from their paddling.  By the time we returned from the cave, the boys were busy pushing each other in the water while John ended up paddling

Overall, Laos is probably the most beautiful country that we have visited so far.  Our pictures won’t do it justice, particularly since many of them are taken from the back of a moving motorbike.  New pics are being uploaded slowly but surely.  Now it’s back to Thailand to meet up with our favorite honeymooners (and our prom dates), Hannah and Pat!

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