traveling beans - part 3 - Laos

On our way to the boat stop, we visited the White Temple, another lavish Thai Temple (how these people afford this shit I don't know). It was rather magnificent and had ever such nice toilets, which suited my erratic bowel movements on that day just fine.








The boat we took to Laos was long, thin, wooden and had a chug chug motor. It would take two days to get to Luang Prabang. Wooden benches, that used to be the seating on the boat, had been replaced with car seats, so the ride was relatively comfortable. Time was killed reading and snacking and it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. We stopped overnight and stayed in a comfy room with a great balcony overlooking the river, where we had breakfast.









Luang Prabang is a sweet little town with French colonial buildings and a vast cultural mix. It had a good vibe. The town had a brilliant night market - a typical Asian vision – bright colours, beautiful fabrics and carved wooden goods. They also sold whiskey with snakes, spiders and mice in the bottles. It’s supposed to give you strength to drink from a whisky bottle that contains one of these animals (not sure how strong a mouse is supposed to be though).







We were told by a couple we met on the train (code named: big boobied Italian and knaggy toothy Brit) that Blue Lagoon was a must see. It was really beautiful - a clear, blue, fresh water lagoon with a rope to swing into the water and a bridge above it. Neighbouring the lagoon was a huge cave that housed a sleeping Buddah.









We visited a local community and it was like visiting the 'museum of cute children' - man if I am ever infertile I would be happy to scoop up one of these little ones. Asia definitely wins the award for birthing the cutest kids!











After Luang Prabang, we trekked on to Vang Vieng - where all the action takes place. We went out to a popular bar in the area where whip-its and any other drug you could think of seemed to be easy to get straight from the bar. I wish I had an exciting drug related story for you, but I am a woos when it comes to taking drugs in a foreign country so nothing to report there.  Laos had loads of really cool open restaurants and all of them were either playing 'Friends' or 'Family Guy'. They were always packed with tourists chilling and watching some Western telly.







We signed up to Kayak from Vang Vieng to Vientiane. We had a great tour guide and made the 1-hour bus, 1-hour kayak to the capital of Laos. We stopped half way for a lunch, cooked especially for us on a little hand made fire on the rocks. Another amazing meal whipped up under simple circumstances.









We wished we had more time in Laos but were glad to have seen it at all. After a night mission looking for a dog dinner (not for me I might add) we caught our plane to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Beany saying number 104: "and then some!"