luang Prabang to Hua Xiay (Thai border)

There are a few options to get into Thailand from Luang Prabang, one is to fly from Luang Prabang to Thailand, there is a 16 hour bus journey, a speed boat to the border, or a slow boat.

The 'slow boat'. It was not really as slow as we thought it might be.

We took the latter after being put off by the windy roads in Laos and so many people, even the lonely planet doesn't recommend the speed boat as its dangerous and uncomfortable with casualties or worse almost weekly!

Travelling monks

The inside of the boat - they do tend to pack em up before they leave port! But it was not too bad this time, it could be alot worse!

So the slow boat it was, after getting quotes, we found the cheapest option was to head for the pier at 7.30 in the morning and buy the ticket there and then. We did this and managed to get some good seats too, otherwise we would have to sit on a wooden bench for 10 hours.

The plastic seats didn't topple over - but not sure how comfy they must have been for these guys!

The trip to Thailand would involve two days on the boat, one night stay in a place called Pak Beng and a night in Hua Xiay. The Boat would go upstream on the Mekong river, which would provide us with great views for the two days on the boat.

Some amazing sunsets on the Mighty Mekong River

The journey was great with some stunning scenery, friendly people and the chance to view some villages where people still live off what they grow or catch in the river.


After the first day we arrived at Pak Beng, so the hunt was on for a guest house, after viewing a few bomb sites we found one that was reasonably priced and acceptable.

That night we went out for dinner, even here we found an Indian restaurant, the food was great but the service non existent! We were warned about the shortage of electricity, so woke up at 6am to find that there was no light, so we had to get ready using candle light.

What is that tall white structure at the top of the big mountain?! A stupa maybe?

For breakfast we arranged some takeaway aloo paratas and tea to be eaten while cruising in the boat. That was such a good idea and they went down really well in the cold of the early morning. Yes, folks! Aloo Paratha...from a village in the middle of nowhere! it was such a weird feeling to be eating a typical Indian breakfast in an obscure village in the middle of nowhere!

That, folks, is tea! Tea in a bag! In a plastic bag. And it was HOT tea! Not sure what the bags are made of they looked pretty normal to me.

On the way to Hua Xiay on the boat we started talking to an Austrian couple, Marc the tattooist and Katie, they are a really nice couple we are still with in chiang mai.

Marc, Kati, Gurcharan and Preet. We're sitting in Laos - but way over there beyond the Mekong River is Thailand. The sun was setting and the colours over the river were GORGEOUS!

On arriving at Huay Xia we could have crossed the border to Chaing Kong in Thailand and borded a bus to Chiang mai, after 10 hours on the boat we didn't decide on that so stayed in Huay Xia.That over there is Thailand - where im standing taking the photo is Laos!

Luang Prabang 2

smile!
Pose!

Luang Prabang sometimes looks really European, with the French influence and the cosmopolitan atmosphere it would feel like we are sitting in a European city in the summer, as preet sipped on her cappuccino and i a papaya smoothie (for my tummy!).

After asking around and going on recommendations we thought that we would check out the even more impressive larger waterfall, about an hour from the center of town.

hmmnnn...its high up here!

So we joined a group already going which worked good for us as it was cheap!

This is on a bridge at the foot of the waterfall.

The view from the top of the waterfall

At the waterfall there was a bear sanctuary and rescued tiger named Phet, there is some good work going on there as the bears were rescued from being used as street performance animals or in bile farms where bile would be extracted from the bears through open wounds and the tiger would have been used for ingredients in Chinese medicine.
But thankfully the animals were doing great when we saw them, not sure about the tiger is she was apparently 'sleeping'.

Phet the little (well, she's very big now)

A short walk and were at the foot of the waterfall, a great cascading waterfall which fell into the bluest of pools, which fell into a another pool which went into another and another....

The view from the top of the waterfall

Seeing that there was people really high up the fall, we decided that we had to go and join in the fun so we trekked up the mountain about half way up the fall, after taking in the views we saw that there were people swimming even higher so Preet decided for us to trek up there too, what a trek it was, going through the jungle, over slippery rocks, through rivers and over felled trees, but the views were worth it.

But, the big But... we over shot where people were swimming so decided to come down the other side, so we came down slowly keeping an eye out for the access to the pool, but we never found it so sadly we came all the way down without finding the access. Oh well!

Some gorgeous flowers at the waterfall park.

Our German Parents...

While out having dinner we met a nice German couple and got chatting, as we wanted to change guest houses they recommended the one where they were staying, so we walked with them to have a look. Klaus and Dorris, were staying just out of the main area in a quiet guest house for $15 a night in a room which had Ac, Cable tv and was quiet and big so we checked in the next day. We told them about an indian restaurant in town so went there for dinner for one night too, where we learnt a little about Jehovah's witnesses and Dorris's hate for cats!

Luang Prabang

The view from top of the hill looking over Luang Prabang

As some of you may have figured we are doing the Vientiene to Hua Xia trek, Luang Prabang is the very old capital of Laos. We got here by a long but scenic bus journey through some mountains, which took about 6/7 hours. The bus was sold to everyone on board as a VIP bus, but that asks the question what defines a VIP bus?? In this case its the lack of Air conditioning, broken seats, crazy driving, lack of storage and overall a pretty shoddy bus which required a water top at every stop! But still it got us there, just!

On arrival we set about looking for a decent guest house, we were met by guest house touts at the bus station so a few of us went with one of them to check out the rooms. The rooms were nice, but a little noisy and a bit far from the center of town, which consisted of one road!

Luang Prabang is a peninsular set in between the joining Nam Khan and Mekong rivers. this makes it potentially one if the most beautiful place to visit. We went for a few walks on the river front which was really nice, but coming from Vang Vieng where the we spent so much time on the river, here it didnt seem all that.

These looked like poppadoms drying in the heat, i think they might have been.

On one of the days when we were feeling a bit better we scaled a large hill that over looked the city to catch the sunset. this was far from the beutiful serene sunset we had expected, as you can see in the picture below there were hundreds of other tourists who had the same idea as us. But the other side was a lot nicer. On the way down preet was swarmed by a gruop of kids selling things, each one claiming that she had prmised to buy something off them, they were quite funny so we did buy a few dollies.

a Stunning sunset over Luang Prabang

what we really saw, never mind the tourists eh?

Preet doing the deal, or getting ripped off, who knows.. who knows!

Tummy bug!

Yup, i felt as bad as I looked, but the Papaya smoothie really helped!

Our plan was to spend one or two nights here, but had to stay a few more as me and Preet got a tummy bug on the second night so had to spend a few days recovering. The worst thing was that we had checked into a teak wood guest house, which looks nice but you could hear your neighbours through the wooden walls, which meant they could here us with our tummy problems! But we recovered and were soon in action again.

Tad Sae waterfall and Elephants,

The waterfalls, the water was soooooo cold though.

Yipee i feel better! Good enough to be on the fried rice and sprite!

We decided that we were feeling good enough to head out on tuk tuk to go see the small waterfall, which wasnt too far out of town. So getting down to the river bank we chartered a small boat to the waterfall and elephant sanctury.

The elephants needed no encouragemwnt to pose, naturals!

the waterfall was great with large pools which cascaded into one another, the water was a cool blue, almost good enough to drink, except that the elephants bathed in it and you would probably be really ill if you drank it, not something we would risk in our condition at the time!

Vang Vieng 3

After rock climbing, Adam took us to the 'Blue Lagoon' to cool off.
As you can see the boys couldn't wait to strip off and splash around in the lagoon!
Just so you know - there has been no photoshopping on this pic - the water is really that blue! This place was quite literally in the middle of loads of rice paddies! mad!

Here we have a beautiful room complete with fake flower on towels being advertised by the lovely Mr Durhailay.

Ummm...no matter where in the world you are, nothing beats an aloo paratha for breakfast! Hehe - they gave us a knife and fork to eat it with! our brown skin didn't fool them!

Gurch chillin on a hammock by the river - Laos is the most relaxed place we've been to so far! They say Laos PDR may stand for Laos Peoples Democratic Republic...but really it stands for Laos Please Dont Rush! heheheehehee!

One of the reasons I LOOOOVE TRAVELLING! You get to meet sooooo many wonderful people. Here we're having dinner with:
Patrick from Quebec,
Ali from Iran (but lives and was born in France),
Osho from Holland,
Greg from Hawaii
and I just cant remeber the name of the guy from Argentina!
We took them all out to dinner at this Indian restaurant we found - needless to say they were very happy by the end of a wonderful meal! They wanted Gurch to teach them how to order good Indian dishes!

Vang Vieng 2

Gurcharan looking handsome in his climbing gear! Just making sure its comfy in the places that matter!

After enquiring at a few place there looked there is lots for us to do in VV, so on our third day there we went Rock Climbing, as it was something we both wanted to do but didnt have the time in Thailand's Krabi, it was very cheap here too in comparison!

This, boys and girls, it the Lao version of a taxi! Yes, this is the crazy contraption that transported us to the mountains! As you can see, it can even manouver through the river...upstream!

Our guide was an young man named Adam, who turned out to be an experienced climber and a great teacher.

Adam bilaying for Patrick and also showing off his tattoo - which is the name of his girlfriend! For his sake - I hope he marries her and stays with her forever!

After being taught the basics of the 8 knot and bilaying we were one by one told to climb a 18m limestone rockface, which at first seemed daunting, but was a really nice climb to get used to the feel of climbing.

oooh I dunno it looks a bit shakey...

The climbing shoes on the other hand, were horrible and tight, but thats the way they are meant to be!

Preet showing that girls can be good at this too! :o)

By the end of the day we could all bilay, tie our safety ropes to the harness, and climb some mildly difficult climbs involving overhangs.

What's your opinion of rock climbing Gurcharan...?!

Vang Vieng

From what we had read this little own was going to be quick stop to move on to Luang Prabang, but for some reason we were captivated by the place.

We had read that people sit at tv bars all day watching friends, and they really do! the town is one main street connected from one end to the other by restaurants, bars, tour operators and guesthouses.

Sunset from the balcony of our room.

The town is on the bank of the Nam Song River, so sunsets over the river and karst mountains were stunning everyday, and made even more enjoyable kicking back in a hammock overlooking the river sipping a nice cold drink and listening to some chilled out music!

This place was sooo laid back! so cool that we stayed fr 6 nights not the 2 like we first thought.

Everyone who comes to VV goes tubing, which involves lying in a tube and letting the river sloooowly take you from the start to the end which is 4km away but takes over 3 hours.

You just lie in the tube and let the river take you! Bum gets a little bit cold though! ;o)

The experience, as silly as it sounds was great, the scenery was amazing, it was quiet funny to see people swinging over the water and diving in at the many waterside bars, a little too many for us, but after 2km there were none and only peace and quiet to accompany you to the end of the tube!

Ok - so this is how they ram the tubes onto the tuk tuk and if you notice the tourists spill out from the back bearly able to sit straight!

After one night at an expensive guesthouse we moved to a fantastic place which was newly built, so was clean and fresh and had a really comfy bed and a funky sink in the bathroom, all this for 3 pounds a night, nice! the place was called New Nana Guesthouse for those who care to know.

Gorgeous Gurch showing off the room!

Pancakes, both Preet and I dont eat eggs so we dont eat pancakes, but here they make pancakes which are like a dish we ate in Malaysia called Roti Chennai, which is dough folded many times and heated on a pan to make a flaky flat bread, except here they made them as deserts with chocolate, bananas, fruit, peanuts etc etc.

This turned out to be our staple on most days, we needed it with all the activities we were doing (Yeah right, fat boy!)!!

Gurcharan and I went for kayaking which was FANTASTIC fun! Alot quicker than tubing!

Laos - Vientiene

Sunset in Vientiene
One of the many temples (Wats) - this particular one has a large collection of budhas.

So we arrived in Vientiene the capital city, not knowing what to expect from Laos at all. Coming early morning from a hot and humid Kuala Lumpur we landed and the first thing that we noticed was that it was really cool, almost cold enough to put a jacket on, which was a pleasent surprise. Thinking that i was going to get a hard time by immigration because i look like a terrorist mass bomber to a lot of the immigration people at airports around the world, i was again surprised at the lack of hassle, especially considering that the people here have probably never seen a Sikh before.

Vientiene..

We collected our luggage, changed some money for Kip, the local currency and got in a taxi to our guest house. The streets were free from traffic and congestion, especially considering this is the capital city, the centre of town was really clean and quite European looking, all nice surprises.
This is the Laos equivalent of the Arc de Triomph. A lot of French architecture can still be seen in Laos.

I was so impressed with the wide clean streets lines with flowers.

The black stupa

The guest house we stayed in was really nice, it was called Mali Namphu and was centrally located and clean and quiet.

This is a shot of the breakfast area from the balcony. Fantastic guest house at 9 pounds a night with breakfast.

On going out and exploring we found Vientiene to be charming, with a great mix of people, restaurants and places to go, there some fantastic sunsets to be had over looking the Mekong. Sunset and the Mekond river - because of the dry season it was very spindly.

Shopping was great in the day market and the variety of vegetarian food was good for us too!

Overall, Vientiene has to be my number one city, simply because its so unlike a city, the place and the people make this a true gem in the South East!

Gurcharan bought some Birkenstocks - fake ones. Very cheap.