My friend Seanin (who kindly let me stay with him in Hong Kong) told me Laos is lovely. And he was right, it really is. Very chilled out here. No big long list of things to do which is a nice break after a 21 hour journey here!!! (More boarder crossings and train delays – Siobhan there was a dead cow on the track……I’m not joking… but had to laugh thinking of your Cork/Dublin journey)

So we arrived in Vientiane and have been relaxing since we got here. Did go to see a Temple  and you won’t believe it but it’s the first temple I’ve actually liked – not too full of gold stuff 🙂 Guess what though…..we weren’t allowed to take photos in there – typical!! We also took a Tuk-Tuk ride around town. It rained solidly on our second day here so we left that as our cultural intake for the day. We did pass by this monument, which mirrors L’Arc de Triomphe. There’s a funny story behind it though. The American gave Laos concrete to build a runway and instead they decided to build this. Excellent!!!

Basically just chillaxed for the rest of the day and then got a great massage which actually even chilled me out for a while and that’s no mean feat!!!!!

We moved onto Van Vien after this, arrived after a bus journey into the mountains to more rain which didn’t bode well for our long planned tubing event!! Tubing is basically sitting on a rubber ring, floating down a river and being pulled into bars for drinks!! Would have been so much fun. Anyway we went on a bike ride to see some caves instead. The Lao people have a different idea of “seeing caves” though – we actually ended up on our bellies crawling through some very small, mucky caves and ended up looking like this……..

 

Had to clean up in the river afterwards which was lots of fun.

One of the girls on tour, Fiona, had her birthday in Van Vien too so we celebrated in style. Loads of fun that night, even demonstated a little Irish dancing!! Van Vien is very, very chilled and would have loved a couple more days there.

Horribly hungover, we left for Loang Prabang the following day. We had a nightmare of a bus journey (complete with mental bus driver) back down the windy mountain road!!! The driver was a lunatic and only calmed down slightly when the back door opened and a couple of our rucksacks fell out!! Loang Prabang is great too and the sun was out to greet us after the dreadful journey. We weren’t fit for much afterwards – I’ll tell you that. The following day a few of us decided not to join the group (to see more caves – think we’d served our time!!) and had a lie in followed by a leisurely breakfast. Then we went to see this amazing Waterfall and had a swim in the Lagoon which was just fantastic. Was feeling brave that day so I jumped into the water from this tree…..

 

….it was only about 4 metres above the water but it was enough. Was also going to jump from here…..

 

…..but I totally lost my nerve and afterwards I found out a guy did it and dislocated his shoulder so I was kinda glad I choked!

And so the eve of our speed canoe journey was upon us and lots of us were feeling kinda nervous to be honest. All the guidebooks recommend to make alternative travel plans as the canoes have been known to flip and 4 of the girls decided to fly. I kinda wanted to prove to myself I could do it and thought it might be fun actually. If I survive I’ll let you know how it goes……