Day 26-31 Laos!

"If it's good it's great, if it's bad it's an experience." Jack Smith 19.03.14

Luang Prabang

For our first full day in Luang Pabang, we definitely made up for our hellish journey to get here.

We got taxis to Kuang Si waterfalls.. which were amazing !!!

How does water even get that beautiful?!

There were some bears there too, which we weren't even expecting.

We spent the afternoon at Utopia.. which is aparantly 'zen' by day and 'groovy' by night..

We ate a beautiful buffet in the night markets. It was 10,000 kip (76p) to fill your plate.

We returned to Utopia for our groovy fix in the evening, then all the bars shut at 11.30pm, so everyone gets tuk tuks to a bowling alley (Marie, Jack and a few of our other crazy friends climbed on top of the tuk tuk for some of the journey)

The girls won by a mile (duhh).

Vang Vieng

The next day, we payed 115,000 kip (about £8) for a minibus to Vang Vieng. We were expecting a full bus but there was only us three and our friends Ben and Elena.

The journey took around 6 hours. It was mega bumpy and quite interesting, as we got to drive through little remote villages in Laos.

When you're driving from place to place in Laos, you often see young kids cycling, walking, running alone or in groups, carrying heavy things and often babies - down roads that seem to go on and on for ages before you get to anything else.

Of course there are lots of adults and teenagers that you see walking too, it just puts things in perspective and makes you more wary next time you want to moan for the 'long' walk you have to make somewhere.

In Vang Vieng, there's not loads going on. It's seen as more of the party place really.

Loads of hostels play Friends on loop, so people can just chill all day watching it.

Bars often offer a 'happy menu' as well as the normal one. We asked one of them to tell us what was on it out of curiosity and she just casually said; "Bag of Marijuana,Weed shake, Weed pizza, Opium seeds, Opium joint, Mushroom shake, Mushroom pizza, Bag of mushrooms...etc"

We did get a rikkety tuk tuk to the Blue Lagoon and Caves one day, which were fun and pretty crazy! 

It's literally a huge cave that, in any other country you'd most likely have a guide with you. In this case, you're left to just route around and hopefully miss the massive drops down and make hope you don't get stuck down any tiny gaps.

Of course we forgot the head torches that those of us had actually brought and didn't want to pay 10,000kip to lend one. When we were in their, we realised phone light isn't all that bright in the pitch black. 

There was a group of 8 of us though, so we all stuck together and helped each other out.

Jack and Ben went on with some fearless and enthusiastic guys whilst a group of girls stayed back for one part of it. 

They came back looking a bit pale and described parts of it as life and death, having to cross little ledges over sheer drops.

But we all survived.. yay!

Some of them jumped in the water, whilst Ben played football and we got bullied by these cute cheeky local lads.

We went tubing, which is basically where you go on a dingy type thing along a river, then people throw rope out to you and pull you in to bars along the way. 

I was very sceptical about it (i was convinced i was going to drown and if not drown, get an infected wound and die etc) but was assured it's only dangerous if you drink way too much.

It was really good fun. And it turns out, that water in the low season would be virtually impossible to drown in.

We all ate a bit of centipede whilst on the river too, which had been sitting at the bottom of a bottle of spirit for god knowd how long. It was GROSS! 

We went out for St Patricks Day which was good fun.

  

Then on our last day we just chilled out and watched the sunset at 'Smile Beach.'

We all agreed that Laos is probably our least favourite place so far, in terms of things to do, food, scenery.. and getting scammed. But regardless of that, we've still had a great week.

Next stop... North Vietnam!