Entries Tagged 'Laos' ↓

I found this blog entry unpublished… Not very interesting… seems like ages ago

We finished up our time in Vientiane yesterday by renting and riding bikes around the city… Checked out some temples and did a bit of shopping around. The food in Laos is absolutely amazing… and very spicy! The hotel where we stayed was basically a Bhuddist shrine decorated from head to toe with paintings, wood carvings, reliefs scultptures, etc… It may have been a bit pricey in terms of Laos, but still only $15 a night.

We hopped on a bus this morning en route to Vang Vieng and just arrived here a few hours ago. We’ve already had time to explore most of the city… it’s pretty small. We found a cheap room right on the Nam Xong River and the view is absolutely stunning. The weather has been pretty lousy the past two days… raining like hell. I’ve never seen so much rain, but, it’s not ruining anything for me! Cheers! I’m going to drink a Beer Laos

Well well… so I find myself today in Bangkok. After two really nice days in Vang Vieng, we decided that the best way to get to Cambodia would be to hop a bus to Bangkok and fly into Phnom Penh… sooooo thats where we’re at. We traveled for a mere 15 hours yesterday and will fly to Cambodia on the 10th. I realize that the route I’m taking through Asia is fitful at the very best, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!

I’m pretty bummed that I didn’t get up to Luang Prabang, but I’ll possibly hit that on my way up when Ian takes off on the 19th. Jenn… I tried to visit your favorite place, but Ian really wanted to see Ankgor Wat and if we continued into northern Laos, we wouldn’t have the time.

Vang Vieng was absolutely gorgeous… The view across the river was magnificent, ancient mountains completely covered in jungle (even the seemingly vertical cliffs!), dense puffs floating through the peaks and the river meandering by. The occasional cock-a-doodle from a rooster and thunder roaring in the distance. Really a magical place. We took a small tour by kayak down the river and visited a couple caves and, of course, a bar… right on the river… complete with a massive rope swing/diving platform. What a blast! One of the caves we went to was really great, but rather disapointing at the same time. The river actually runs through the cave and during the dry season, we would have been able to swim into the cave with light helmets and float around on tubes. Since the water is so high, however, we were only able to swim in about 5 meters and look up into the dark… So I couldn’t see much in the way of the cave, but it was really great swimming under water into a cave. The only thing I really didn’t like about Vang Vieng was the amount of young people that were there just to get absolutely wasted… Don’t get me wrong, I definitely took part in my fair share of the fruits, but some people just take it too far… and wind up being entirely disrespectful toward the locals. It probably makes them wonder what the hell kind of youth the west is breeding…

We hopped on a bus yesterday at 1:00 pm and made our way back down to Vientiane. From there, hopped a shuttle to ‘Friendship Bridge,’ which is the border of Laos/Thailand where we went through exit customs and hopped on another bus in order to get off and go through entrance customs into Thailand where we hopped on another bus that took us to Bangkok. We arrived here at 4:30am.

So here I am in another big city and I’m not very impressed so far… only two days here, so whatever. I really wish I was still in Laos… Photos on my Flickr page. The tags are a bit of a mess… I’ll fix them later Cheers.

So we made it into Laos yesterday after a very relaxing flight from KL. The flight was about half empty so I was able to grab an entire row of seats to lay across and sleep the entire way. By far the best plane sleep I’ve ever had… and also the most sparsely peopled plane I’ve ever been on.

My first impression of Laos is ‘laid back.’ Also, the money is pretty confusing… 1 Lao Kip is about 8,700 US Dollars and furthermore the bills all look similar. I’ll get used to it… There is a different pace of life here then anywhere I’ve been thus far and the people are extremely helpful and friendly. Vientiane is pretty nice… right on the Mekong, but the Mekong is super low right now… so there is a vast flood plain reaching way out to the banks of the river… must be a half-mile away. It not at all what I imagined the Mekong looking like.

We’re going to get out and explore on some bikes today, so I’ll have more to say about the area later on.