Sabaidee from the Lao PDR

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Dear Blog followers,

Another month has passed without contact from yours truly, and we can only apologise. The Laos PDR doesn't have the fastest and cheapest of internet services, hence our lack of contact. The rainy season has well and truly started here now and the storms are fantastic. The limestone mountains covered with lush green vegetation, synonymous with brochure scenes of South East Asia are the perfect back drop for fast moving dramatic electrical storms.  The rain, I have to say is a welcome reprieve. It has been very hot here and continues to be, but the rain brings coolness and breeze.

When we last wrote we were still in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. We hot-footed out of Thailand on overnight bus to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. There isn't much to be said for Vientiane, apart from that it has an Indian Embassy where we applied for our visa. We wanted 12 months, rather than the usual 6, and therefore had to wait for 2 weeks at least for it to come through. This was our cue to leave! We headed north on the local bus to Vang Vieng - the headonist capital of Laos!  Needless to say we fitted in well! After a few weeks of the massage course and visa applications in Vientiane we were ready to party and relax!

Vang Vieng is situated on the meeting of two rivers and is famous for 'tubing'. You rent a huge inner tube, get dropped off by a tuk tuk 4 km up river and make your way, via lots of bars with huge swings and water slides, down the river. It is a real laugh. Once we had got over our substantial age difference from the majority of people here and met a couple, Pete and Born who were around our age we went tubing but without the tubes! We decided to do the bars and swim between each one - we only made it around half a kilometer down the river, by which time it was dark and we got a tuk tuk home. Our friend Quest whom we met in Chiang Mai came with us and being young and fit managed to do acrobatics on the swings into the water.

We stayed in a guest house right opposite all the action. We didn't actually realise until later that night that we were opposite bars that stay open until 5am! Still, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!! On a more serious and cultured note, the scenery is stunning and we had a river view.

From Vang Vieng we headed north to Louang Prabang, a town that has been preserved as a world heritage sight. It is a rather lovely place, popular with normal tourists as well as travellers. A hangover from French colonialism, the town is situated on a peninsular between the Mekong and Ou rivers. You could spend days there just wandering around looking at the buildings and shops. It also has many French restaurants and wine bars. I had my first glass of white wine for 10 months!!

We tried to get a boat from Louang Prabang to Nong Kiew which takes around 6 hours up the Nam Ou, but being low season there weren't enough of us. We met another couple from London, Paul and Nadia who were going the same way as us and trekked off together in search of a bus. Nong Kiew and this area of Northern Laos has stunning scenery; sheer limestone cliffs and green, green vegetation. We stopped there for two days before heading to Muang Noi. We got our boat journey as it can only be accessed by river. Another two days there admiring the scenery and we were ready to head south. We'd heard from the Indian Embassy that our visa application had been accepted (yipee) and we needed to pick up our passports.

To break up the journey we stopped again in Vang Vieng and will head to Vientiane tomorrow. After that it's Cambodia where we'll have two weeks until we fly to India on 21 June. We'll update on you that on our next blog entry, but for now, that's all folks!!

Lots of love, Jo and Mark x