Laos

I've been back from Laos for over a week... so it's definitely time to post some pictures! We had a great time, and Laos is a beautiful country. I've been reassuring the Cambodian staff, however, that as much as I enjoyed Laos, Cambodia is home and I love it here. I also love Cambodia because I don't take 10 hour bus rides that make me nauseous. But that's a story for later.

At the airport. With our backpacks we kept wondering if we could pass for typical "backpacking" types.

We couldn't.

We flew into Vientiane on Christmas Day and proceeded to have a very confusing conversation with the taxi driver we hired at the airport. For this vacation to make sense, you have to understand that it all started about 3 weeks before Christmas, when my friend (Serena) and I agreed that, having nothing better to do with ourselves over the holiday, we should go to Laos. Finding the tickets and making a rough plan (i.e. what part of Laos should we visit?) took place another week later, and I picked up the tickets the Friday before Christmas. So, if you're following this train of thought, you know that we hadn't planned this trip carefully.

In any case, the confusing taxi driver conversation was quite fortuitous because we ended up at the bus station and decided to purchase a ticket for the overnight bus to Luang Prabang (we initially thought we'd have to go the next day). Since it is a 10 hour bus ride, doing it overnight meant we'd have an extra day to enjoy. It also saved us money and the trouble of finding a guesthouse in Vientiane that night. After a quick dinner of fried rice at a restaurant where no one spoke any English and we did a lot of pointing at the menu (and nearly placed bets on what we would actually be served), the bus left for Luang Prabang, with us somewhere near the back. It wasn't until later that I realized the man across from me kept getting on and off the bus at the stops with a huge rifle slung over his shoulder. Yikes.

No one got shot, and we arrived at 5:30 a.m. in (very) chilly Luang Prabang. We picked a guesthouse at random from the trusty Lonely Planet and hitched a ride on a tuk tuk to the place. Turns out that the guesthouses aren't open at 5:30 and most of them were full. We settled onto the sidewalk to watch the morning processional of the monks (which was a highly recommended toursit activity). As an aside, I have since decided that the way that the monks in Cambodia and Laos receive their "alms," or food offerings in the morning (always morning, never afternoon) is an interesting commentary on the governmental and economic structure of the respective countries. In Cambodia, the monks set out in groups of 2 or 3 and make the rounds, often stopping at homes and businesses to receive the food. In Laos, they lined up and all walked in (20-30 at a time) from the pagodas in the area. People sat along the street and waited for them. The Cambodian way seems to reflect an attitude of free enterprise and a tendency to survival, while the Laotian monks reflect a bit more of the governmental structure we glimpsed there. Anyway, we watched the monks, which was not such a thrill for us (beyond the interesting observation) because, with the Cambodian system, we see them pretty much every day. Instead of gaping with the other tourists, we found a guesthouse and hunted down some coffee.

Luang Prabang is a really cute, French colonial town built on the Mekong River. We had a great time walking through the city and looking in the shops. It's much quieter than Phnom Penh, and was crawling with tourists, which was a little strange for us. I spend a lot of time in Phnom Penh trying to prove that I'm not a tourist, so it was odd to relax a bit, take photos, and be okay with not fitting in at all. One thing we really enjoyed was the night market, which had a lot of what we're used to seeing here, but some other unusual stuff, and certain fabric patterns which are more "Laos" than "Cambodian." Also, it was at night, which makes almost anything cooler.

Our third day in Laos was the big day. We had entered Laos with a single purpose: to ride an elephant. We joined a tour group (2 Brits, 2 other expat Americans, and a Canadian living in Hong Kong) for our elephant trek, accompanied by afternoon kayaking. If you were unaware, elephants have prickly skin, and are very tall. I almost fell off the elephant, as going downhill while sitting on a park bench on top of an elephant is not the easiest way to keep your balance. We all, however, survived, with lots of fun and joking. Our elephant was a bit stubborn and kept trying to stop. The man in charge of our elephant preferred to sing to us rather than help. Still, it was pretty fun.

However, the real "fun" was the kayaking element. We thought it would be more fun to leisurely float down a river than to do a 4 mile trek through the jungle. It's not that the decision was a bad one, it was just made on mistaken ideas. There was nothing "leisurely" about our "float." In fact, we paddled for four hours straight... all the way back to Luang Prabang (and we'd taken a half hour's truck ride out of the city that morning). Our boat, of course, was the first to capsize, as we went through some really nasty rapids (okay, maybe it was just one or two rocks) and flipped onto the side. Luckily, the boat and Serena's camera were caught by the rest of the group and we waded downstream to join them. Another boat (the British couple) managed to take on excess water and sink, forcing us to stop our (admittedly slow) progress down the river. The guide tried to be encouraging at that point, telling us it was only "2 more hours" to the end. The guide was our biggest cheerleader (and our greatest enemy) as he kept telling us, "20 more minutes" (more like 45... and then some) or "just around this bend" (or maybe the one after that?). We finally made it to the end of the river just as the sun was setting.

And for now... that's all you get. We did other stuff, like hike up to the top of a beautiful waterfall, and encountered an old man with a gun (he was hunting birds, we think. We only heard him fire one shot). I got really sick, which results in an embarrasing story I'm not posting (sorry!). We took the nauseating bus ride down the mountain (accompanied by another man with a rifle). We hung out in Vientiane, which is practically empty compared to Phnom Penh. We visited a history museum to learn about those nasty French colonialists and American imperialists (I was Canadian for a few hours... don't tell). And we made it home safely, where we ate ice cream at the airport (they have a Dairy Queen! Serena ate her very first Blizzard). All these memories have been photographed, and you can view pictures of beautiful Laos here.