Laos - we had a rocky start, but all is forgiven, and we are in love!

On Tuesday morning we crossed the Mekong River from Chiang Khong in Thailand, the trip took all of 5 minutes, and just like that we were in a new country - Laos. Along with the couple of hundred others who arrived in Huay Xai that morning we battled our way through the lines at immigration, first to get the paperwork, then to hand in the paper work, then to get stamped into the country and then to exchange our thai baht into kip (10,000 kip is about $1.30au so we are basically millionaires here). After all that we were able to purchase our slowboat tickets - 2 days on the mekong to get to Luang Prabang. This is where things began to get confusing. Once we had the tickets we were told to wait for a van to take us to the dock and while we waited we had a guy come over and tell us that the river was to low for the boat and we wouldn't make it to Pakbeng (the half way point where we had booked accomodation) and that we could swap our boat tickets for a 12 hour bus ride to Luang Prabang. Coming from Thailand we were used to being on guard against people trying to scam us into whatever they are touting so we immediatly thought "nice try buddy but we'll take our chances with the boat". Turns out we probably should have listened to him.

A slow boat similar to the one we travelled on.

Our 5 star cabin on the boat

After a pleasant enough journey on the floor of ther engine room of the crowded slowboat we stopped in what (judging by the total lack of civilisation) clearly wasn't Pakbeng. Eventually we realised we all had to leave the boat with our bags and after a confusing half hour or so on a deserted river bank wondering whether we'd be sleeping on the sand and if not, how a hundred+ people were going to sleep in the rickety wooden boat with one squat toilet to share (but with plenty of Beer Laos). Instead we followed the Lao guy who seemed to speak the best english up into the hills. After an hours trek with all our gear and through a small village lined with locals staring at the confused and sweaty foriengers traipsing through their village we descended onto another river bank lined with slow boats and enterprising locals setting up stalls. Food, drink and accomodation for all! It ended up being a pretty fun night, there were bon fires lit plenty of food and alcohol and the local village kids even came down to join in. It had been evident as we treked alongside the river that that particular section was much to low to cross and as the sun was setting anyway with no lights the boats really were going nowhere. After a terrible sleep on a boat with no blankets and loud banging noises all night we set off to Luang Prabang the next morning and arrived ten and a half hours later - to pretty much paradise.

The trek past the low part of the river

You can see how low the river is in this photo

Our camp being set up for the night

Finally arriving in Luang Prabang just before sunset

Luang Prabang is a world heritage site and it is a beautiful, friendly city surrounded by jungle covered mountains. The French colonised Laos some time in the 18th century and were kicked out by 1975 and what that means for us is that we were able to eat the cheapest French meal of our life, wine included (the first glass in two weeks) in Luang Prabang. We also splashed out on a $40 hotel room with cable TV in english the best shower in the world and the comfiest bed we have slept in in SEA. So yeah it's pretty much paradise. Our first day here we hired bikes and rode out to Kuang Si waterfall, a journey Lonely Planet describes as "a gentally undulating 35km through rice paddy". I don't know where they got their definition for gently undulating but gentally undulating it was not. More like steep as hell and really freak'n hard. Especially on cheap bikes with no gears. We almost turned around but a combination of pride, stupidity and the thought of the waterfall at the end kept us going and it was worth it once we finally arrived, half dead, 3 hours later. Beautiful cascading falls, pristine turquoise swimming holes and a rope swing! what more could you ask for? The icing on the cake was that when we finally got out there it was so late in the day it was virtually deserted.

There was no way we were going to bike back from the waterfall

On our second day here we went on a one day trek into the surrounding mountains and visted hill tribe villages. It wqas pretty amazing how some of the villagers lived, in bamboo huts with mud floors and no electricity, they were pretty much self sufficient. The young kids running around were really cute, they called out "farang" as we walked in the village, which apparently means white skin, big belly and long nose (we took some offense to that). They were too shy to come near us until I showed them pictures of themselves on the back of our camera and they fell over themselves laughing trying to get me to take more photos of them. I wanted to steal them all and take them home with me along with all the puppies and chicks and piglets running around everywhere in the villages but I think I'd have a fair bit of explaining to do going through customs.

Mike and our guide Mee taking a break from trekking for lychees and mini bananas

As well as all that treking and biking we've done a lot of walking through town and visiting temples, some perched on top of hills that you have to scale hudreds of steps to reach, so to counter balance that out-of-character exercise and adventure we have been spending plenty of time in returants eating as much as we can afford to. It's a pretty good life here in Luang Prabang and we have already stayed a day longer than we planned to, but we have to move on eventually and find out what the rest of Laos has to offer - we're hoping for more cheap french food and water falls with rope swings!