Luang Prabang, LAOS!

After about 2 and a half days of transit on boats, overnight buses, creepy riverside village motels, we arrived at the port in Luang Prabang, Laos and set out to find the cleanest sounding hostel we had looked up in Lonely Planet. The only problem was that when we took a tuk-tuk (ha!) across town to the address, and roamed down an alley with our big bags, we stumbled upon a construction site instead of a cool comfy hostel. We were exhausted and pretty annoyed to do some back tracking to find another place, but we ended up on a strip with a bunch of the people who had been on our boat. The place was nice and clean with a balcony.

Luang Prabang was a very interesting place. You could really feel the French colonial history of the place, with old french signs, colonial architecture, and CREPES AND BAGUETTES from street vendors (notice how tiny alllllll of the stools are here). The weird part was seeing giant colorful Buddhist Temples in the middle of an old French promenade. We had a great time exploring, and the first night we went to the local night market to see what small variation the Lao people would put on their tourist beer t-shirts. We didn't have huge expectations for it, but the market ended up being pretty impressive. Clothes and handicrafts as well as opium pipes, old daggers and some ancient money. It was a good way to close the night out, and we were ready for our first legitimate night rest in a few days.

The next day we decided to head out to see some of the local waterfalls. We had heard that the best/cheapest way to do this was to hire a tuk tuk driver for the day. We met a couple of French girls who were also hoping to see the falls and a driver cut us a good deal since there were 4 of us. The drive was really cool, and it took us through a bunch of the local villages where we could see some farming and lots of woodworking and bamboo hut construction.  He took us to the first big set of waterfalls which were really big and impressive and we did some hiking around, but unfortunately no swimming there. Then back into the tuk tuk and off to the second falls. We didn't realize there would be so much time in the back of the tuk tuk, and we got absolutely soaked en route to the second falls which was a pain.  The driver dropped us off at a river and told us we were going to have to catch a little canoe upriver to the falls.

The boat ride was cool and I got one of my favorite pics so far from the trip, as a monk roamed out his farm on the riverside. They were a bit smaller, but they were about 100 meters wide and seemed to roll over these terraces and mangroves. Unlike any falls I had ever seen, and the best part was the swimming. There was a rope swing, and it was also in a more secluded place with a series of little bamboo bridges set up all over the falls.  We hung out there for a while and then went back into town and out for a few drinks with the French girls. A great day all in all, even though it was more driving than we had hoped for.

For dinner we went to the night food market, which was situated in a little dark alleyway, with stall upon stall of food. You could get a big pile the food on as high you wanted for 1 dollar. It ended up being pretty overwhelming since every single dish on the table was fried in one way or another. Even the bread that I picked up ended up being deep fried.

The next day we had to do some serious planning for the second leg our trip. Since we had come to Thailand with one-way flights, we had to buy another cheap flight out of Thailand within 30 days as our proof of onward travel (they do this so that you cant stay forever without appropriate visas). We decided to buy a flight from Bangkok to Phom Penh, Cambodia, back in August before our actual flight. We were kinda prepared not to take the flights if we werent back in Thailand but the date of the flight was getting closer and closer, so we had to figure out how to get back down to Bangkok from Laos to catch the flights. We had originally planned to travel south through Laos to hit a tourist hotspot called Veng Viane where you can drink alot and go tubing down a river. Then we were going to go on to the capital called Vietiane.  And then onto a train that would take us to Bangkok to catch our flights.

After asking around and talking to people who had done a similar itinerary, we decided against seeing those two cities, since the routes by bus had been severely slowed by mudslides. A trip of less than 400 km, from where we were staying, to the capital, took one lady 30 hours on a miserable uncomfortable bus. We also had heard that the capital was pretty unexciting and that the tubing was overrated. We liked Luang Prabang so much that we decided to hang out there for a few more days instead. We also opted to do a two day mountain bike/kayak trek out into the countryside instead of going tubing.  We then booked a flight from Luang Prabang to Bangkok to make our connection. It ended up being a roundabout way of getting out of Laos, but we chose to really soak in the feel of one place that we liked alot, instead of doing a few days on buses to see a couple different places that didn't appeal to us that much.

After all this deliberation, we hung out in town and rented bikes to cover some more ground. We stumbled upon a hilarious, drunk old man down by the river who sold his homemade moonshine/snake whiskey out of tent. You can get homamade whiskey anywhere in Laos. A couple places give it out for free, as some sort of sick/twisted perk at their retaurants, but this stuff was on another level... Affectionately called Laolao.  We had heard that you can occasionally find this guy selling his whiskey different places in town, so I figured I had to give it a shot, or have him give me a shot ;)  His big vat of whiskey had all different types of snakes and lizards and crickets and cockroaches in it, and the man himself didn't exactly make it any more appealing. He was snot-rocketing in the tent and drooling, and reeeeeeeally drunk for 3PM, but I couldn't turn back. He poured me out a handsome triple shot, into the grittiest little glass he could find, and you can see the rest for yourself in the vid... I tried to upload a video but it was being glitchy, so itll have to wait for now.

It was pretty gross but I couldn't leave Luang Prabang without doing it. Meliss even took a sip against her own will.  Later on we climbed up the mountain right in the middle of town, which has a temple at the top with great sunsets and a view over the whole little city. There were a couple hundred stairs and we were worried that we were going to miss the sunset so we had to jog up to the top to catch it. Bad idea on the ever present belly full of fried food.  The sunset was cool, but the hordes of tourists at the top jockeying for the best position, were not.  We made our way back down and went through the market again. At the bottom of all the stairs there were packs of little girls selling bracelets out of cardboard boxes. Cute at first, but they start to feel like little mosquitos hovering around and pulling on the seam of your shirt after a while. Meliss tends to get stuck since she's always up for a chat with little kids. Here she is fending off 4 of them.  Once we shook the girls off we went and booked our trek for the following day.  Later we met up with the crew from the boat for a bit of a last hurrah at one of the clubs (which was owned by a Quebecker!).  We had a good night out and came back and packed our stuff up for the trip out of town.