Like I said in a previous post, in July I was one lucky lady and received a big fat tax rebate which enabled me to make the pretty easy decision to finish work and go travelling. So my August plan was now to visit Laos and Cambodia before heading back to Saigon to meet my parents in early September.
My first stop was Vientiane in Laos, where I met up with Lance who I had met whilst travelling Thailand with Breege. Deciding to travel Laos together after knowing each other for approximately four days could probably be seen as a bit weird (stranger danger). But travelling around you soon realise how easy going everyone is, so planning something with someone you've known only a couple of days doesn't seem too much of a big deal.
We spent a couple of nights and one full day in Vientiane, and to be honest we soon realised there wasn't much going on there. For that day we rented a motorbike and had a wonder round. We saw some cool temples, which I'm now realising my whole camera is just going to be full of similar cool looking temples. For me, I think once you've see one...you've seen them all.
Our next place to visit was Vang Vieng - the home of tubing. We took the sketchiest bus ride (with a semi-hangover) up a load of mountains and along the bumpiest roads. We were pretty excited to get here and booked on for some tubing. However, being rainy season the rivers were high and tubing kept being cancelled, which was gutting. We spent the rest of our time here visiting waterfalls and the blue lagoon.
As we kept being told tubing was cancelled, we decided to head 8 hours north to Luang Prabang, along with some dreadlocked guy who we named Graeme. We arrived and in the town after another sketchy bus ride up some more mountains, but the views were unreal! Laos seems pretty rural compared to the other places I've been in Asia, and it's definitely one of the prettiest too.
The first night in Luang Prabang we went out for a meal, which turned out to be fucking weird. I took a quick trip for a wee, and came out to a naked Asian granny in a towel screaming something at me in Lao! She was fuming that I'd forgotten to put the toilet toll in the bin rather than down the hole (bloody Asia) and was trying to make me fish it out. It was a weird experience and would have made for a great snapchat.
Of course this same restaurant also gave both Lance and I a bit of a funny stomach. It's safe to say within the first week we crossed way too many friendship barriers and had way way too much poo talk.
In Luang Prabang, we decided to climb some hill to see the sunset, which was apparently called Pussy Mountain... But anyway we climbed it to find the sunset behind a bunch of clouds, though it was still an amazing view. I also made mates with a cat.
Our last day here we went to some beeautiful waterfalls. We had a swim in the water, but whatever nipping creatures that were in there made sure this was just a quick one.
Instead of carrying more north, as we were told there wasn't much more there, we went back down to Vang Vieng to have another shot at tubing. Again it was cancelled, so we decided to do caving and canoeing instead. We both thought caving was something to do with having a nice, chilled swim in some caves. Oh my god no it wasn't. It was a muddy trek through the jungle to some caves. Wearing flip flops, having had no breakfast and feeling the effects of the 8 rum and cokes I'd had the night before, it's safe to say this was no hangover cure for me.
The canoeing on the other hand so was and it was a lot of fun! We stopped off at a bar along the way and the views we had were amazing. It looked a bit like Jurassic park.
The next day we hired a bike which broke down in the middle of nowhere in the monsoon. Luckily a
near by petrol station took pity on us and helped us contact the motorbike people. They were bloody cute and couldn't get over how hairy and blonde mine and Lances arms were.
near by petrol station took pity on us and helped us contact the motorbike people. They were bloody cute and couldn't get over how hairy and blonde mine and Lances arms were.
My last day in Laos we hired a buggy for a couple of hours. We explored some roads we hadn't been down and then basically spent 40 minutes getting muddy and doing shit loads of donuts.
The best thing about travelling is that you meet people who you may never probably see or speak to on a daily basis. But the problem with this, and also with living abroad, is that you have so many goodbyes to do. I've had way too many in the past couple of months. It's rubbish. However, I reckon with these people you meet, at some point in time your paths will always cross again.
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