Laos and back in Bangkok

On Thursday 24th of November we went from Chang Mai in a mini-van to Chang Kong. In the mini-van was a group from Canada (Dennis, his thai-wife Nut, her mom, Steve and Lauren) and a couple from NL, Lisa and Cedric. The drive took 5 hours, and we had a really nice time chatting to the others.
The day after we left Thailand at the border and then crossed the Mekong-river to get in to Laos. Lisa and Cedric was daring enough to take the speed-boat to Luang Prabang (took 6 hours) but I rather did the 2 day slower trip. 🙂
I got taught they way to say thank you in lao – Khawp jai, which is very handy. Also learned hello which is Sa-baaj-dii.
After this we had to wait for a while before walking to the slow-boat. Finally on the boat we had to wait even more before leaving the harbour. Mañana Mañana. 🙂

The boat took about 100-130 people and when the hard wooden seats were all full they brought in plastic chairs and put in the back. 🙂
We met Simon, a English guy, that is traveling by himself for some time.
The first day we spent about 7 hours on the river before arriving to Pak Beng, a small village by the river. We already booked accomodation at the Laos border and got shown to the guesthouse. It was very basic, but I didn’t expect too much. At least I didn’t have any rats or mice in my room. I heard that many others had that in Pak Beng…
Tobbe and me had dinner and then walked around in the village. We found the canadians and sat with them until it was time to go to bed.

The day after it was another 6-7 hours in the boat and it was starting to get really boring. :p
I did meet 2 girls from Boras, Sweden on the boat that I also met in a mini-van on the way down to Kuala Lumpur in March. They have been home and are on their second trip while I am still on my first. It’s a small world.

Finally we arrived in Luang Prabang and found a nice guesthouse for us, the Canadians and SImon. When standing in the reception I heard my name and up on the second floor was Lisa and Cedric. They also lived at the guesthouse and had survived their fastboat-trip. 🙂
That evening we all had dinner and then got to see the night-market. Lots of nice stuff to buy of course, but I restrained myself! Good girl. 😉
On Sunday we walked around in the town and it’s a very relaxed place with lots of temples and french-inspired buildings.
There is a Scandinavian bakery and they sold ”Dammsugare”! It’s a special type of cookie that we have in Sweden. It didn’t taste like home but that wasn’t really the point. 🙂
http://www.abergsbageri.se/Bilder/Bakta%20produkter/Dammsugare.jpg
They day went by with a visit at a temple and then in the evening we bought food from a food-stall. It cost us 5000 kip each (local currency) which is 4 Sek. We could take as much as we wanted on one plate for that price and the food was great!

On Monday Tobbe, Cedric and me went to a waterfall 40 minutes outside of Luang Prabang and it was definitely Top 5 on my waterfall-list.
We even got to walk in a part of the waterfall. At the waterfall was a group of Black Asian Bears and also a tiger. I can’t say that they had much room to move on and it breaks my heart every time I see animals here not having a good life…
We also visited a vilalge on the way back, with lots of children trying to sell us stuff.

The day after we said goodbye to our friends and went to Vang Vien. It was a 5-6 hour ride in a mini-van and we got to see some beautiful nature on the way. When arriving to Vang Vien I really didn’t see what people had been so excited about, but after we checked in and went out walking we came down to the river. There are some amazing lime-stone mountains (much like Ha Long Bay in Vietnam) and a clear river. It looked like a nice place to soak some sun and that was exactly what I did all day Tuesday.
I read a book, listened to my Ipod and was lazy all day. Tobbe went ”Tubing” on the Nam Song-river. It’s a 3 km float in a tractor-tube down the river. It took him 3 hours. 😀
Vang Vien is filled with restaurants that show movies, tv-series (Friends) and they all serve about the same food so it’s all about what they are showing. 🙂
When eating dinner that night we met up with Simon, Lisa and Cedric again.

The day after we all met up for breakfast and then went on a walk to one of the caves. Lusi Cave was the name of it and it took about 40 minutes just to get there. We got a guide and two flashlights and then entered the cave. It was untouched (no steps or anything carved in it), very slippery and hard to walk in every now and then. Our guide told us the whole time to ’be carefull” ”slowly” ”number 1” ”beerlao”. That was about what he said for the following two hours. Funny guy though. 😀
It was quite an adventure to walk in the cave and see all the natural formations the water has made. We came back two hours later, dirty, sweating and quite tired. We went to the river and relaxed for the rest of the day.

After dinner in the evening we had to say goodbye to the friends again and the next day we took a mini-van to Vientiane. After a 3 hour ride we arrived and found another Scandinavian bakery where we had lunch. We checked in at a guesthouse not far from there and then went exploring in the capital of Laos.
It’s quite a difference from Bangkok since Vientiane only have 200 000 citizens. You can really call it laid-back, well really like the rest of Laos we saw. 🙂
Tobbe and I walked around in the city and came to Wat Si Saket, which is the oldest Wat in the city. It was built in 1818 and it’s surrounded by thousands of Buddha-statues in many shapes and sizes.
We also walked to the victory monument, Patuxai, which resembles of the The Arch of Triumph in Paris. When coming closer we saw the Asian temple-style of the ornaments. It was surrounded by a nice park with lots of flowers, palm-trees and some water-fountains. I found Vientiane to be rather clean for being such a big city. At least on the big main streets.

On Saturday we went to the morning-market and after that we visited That Luang which was built in 1566 and restored in 1935. It is all gold-plated and very impressive. When coming back we met Lisa and Cedric, that just arrived in Vientiane. Had a quick chat with them and then we took the mini-van to the border to go to Bangkok again.
It was a 12 hour trip with VIP-bus and I slept rather good on it. 🙂
We arrived at Khao San 5 in the morning and went straight to Rambuttri Village Inn. It was full and so were the rest of the guesthouses around. We decided to wait for rooms at Rambuttri and sat down. It only took about 1,5 hour to get our rooms and then it was a shower and then sleep.

Sunday-evening A-M came to Bangkok and since it was still full at Rambuttri we shared my single-room. Was great meeting her again, though we have only been apart 3 weeks. :p
Tobbe left for Malaysia again on Monday (thanks for the company, Tubs) and I spent the day getting some sun on the roof at the swimming-pool.
Tonight my parents fly from Copenhagen Airport to come down to visit me. It has been almost 9 months (minus 3 days) since I saw them and am really looking forward to this. 🙂
We will spend time until the 25th of Dec traveling in Cambodia and Vietnam. First of all I will show them a bit of Bangkok before we fly to Phnom Phen the 10th, early in the morning.
We will visit Angkor Wat before heading in to Vietnam. I will probably not write many diaries during this time, but I will try to upload the pictures from Laos at least.

Hugs to you all!