BOAT TRIP!!

Welcome back.  Here’s just a little update on what we have been up to and where we are heading…

We took a 7 hour bus trip from Vientiane to Vang Vieng in Northern Laos.  We new it was going to be a bit touristy, which isn’t our thing so much, but you pretty much have to pass through there via Rt. 13 if you plan on travelling North at all.  Anyway, we had a killer time, but it was pretty much an amusement park for young adults.  There wasn’t much culture left and it didn’t even feel like a Laos town at all.  Hotels, guesthouses, pizza places, beer gardens, clubs, and more white people than Ohio.  Weird.  The big thing to do there is rent a tube and float down he Mekong, so we did that.  But, it was a circus.  Literally bars ON the river as far as the eye can see with thousands of Falang getting wasted, swinging off a zip line in to the water, and nearly drowning.  The entire village has turned in to a typical college town the weekend after finals.  We had some fun, checked out some of the clubs, and enjoyed the river, but overall it wasn’t our cup of tea so we moved on.

We grabbed another bus farther North to Luang Prabang, also another major stop on the tourist trail in Northern Laos.  We knew there were going to be a lot of Falang here too, but again we weren’t expecting the intensity.  It’s a beautiful village up here in the mountains, but the local culture has given way to rich Ausies, Brits, and Americans:  Guesthouse after guesthouse and french bistro after french bistro.  Everything is pretty expensive, and it’s not too easy to find a real old school Lao meal at a reasonable price.  Again, not much our cup of tea so we are going to take off.  First though we are waiting to receive our land visas for Vietnam.  There is a consulate here but nothing farther North, so if we don’t get our visas now we won’t be going to Vietnam.

We are going to put in a bit extra effort to get off the tourist trail in the coming days.  We are chartering a boat (yes yes yes!) to take is up the Nam Ou towards Phongsali, which is a village perched way up on this mountain called Phou Fa.  It’s really close to both China and Vietnam and it’s really remote so supposedly it has an interesting blend of cultures.  It should take a few days to get there up there by the river so we are going to stop at some villages along the way.  That said, once we are up in the Northern Province it might not be so easy to stay connected via the interwebs, so we might be MIA for a little while until we leave Phongsali and head over to the Vietnam border.   We’ll try to keep you posted, and we will be here in Luang Prabang for another few days so we will try to contact you before we leave

Camera Disaster House Part 6:  We left our camera battery charger in Vientiane (along with David’s jeans and Kevin’s only decent shirt) so we haven’t been able to take pictures.  We did find one store in the village here that sells a charger that will work, but the woman who owns it is trekking to Thailand to get supplies for her store.  She should be back in a couple of days, we are told, and so we should be up and running again before we take off on the BOAT TRIP.

Much Love,
Kevin and David