First week in Laos

We crossed the Thai-Laos border with ease, starting with a small power boat across the river. The change of pace of life in Laos compared with Thailand was evident from the start! We stayed one night in small village, Huay Xai, before catching the first leg of the slow boat to Luang Prabang the following day. The first day journey along the Mekong took about 6 hours and the boat/seats were suprisingly comfortable! The scenery was magical with surroundings of green hills, jungle, rice fields, small villages with fishermen at work. We stayed overnight in a very small village, Pak Beng, where after dinner we joined some others from the boat (some Brits, Americans and lots of Germans!) for a drink or 3! Loving the cheap Beerlao - a big bottle goes down very easily! The next day we got on another slow boat, which as the name indicates, was very slow - about 7 and a half hours until we arrived in Luang Prabang (LP).

We decided to stay in LP for about a week as it´s a pretty french influenced town with a good atmosphere, starting with a relaxed weekend mostly watching rugby. On the Monday we hired a motorbike to visit one of the local waterfalls which was a bit disappointing as it was too flooded so not very pretty! The journey to get there ended up being more fun, especially as we encountered some horrible spiders - one of which was the biggest we had ever seen, about the size of my hand I´m sure. Thankfully it was across the other side of the road at the top of a hedge so not too close!

The next day we took a tuk-tuk to visit some caves which weren´t particularly impressive and the journey to get there was again more fun - small vehicle driving along 11k of muddy dirt road - interesting!

On Wednesday we arranged a day trip of half cycling, half kayaking. The cycling was nice, if a bit short and then after a scary upstream, against strong current motor boat ride with bits of floating tree in the river (we thought we may capsize at some point, with no life jacket!) we visited the second local waterfall which was much more impressive and not flooded and also had a swimming area. After lunch, we stared a 2 hours downstream kayak which we took as more of a sunbathing opportunity rather than hard work as the weather was so sunny! Overall a really good day.

Now we are on our final day in relaxing LP and tomorrow we have an (at least) 9 hour bus ride up north to Luang Nam Tha to look forward to!

Nicola

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