Beautiful Laos

Hello Everyone,

I hope that you’re all fine and not to stressed about buying Christmas presents.
It’s strange to be here for Christmas especially because the Laos people don’t really celebrate Christmas.
Yes we arrived in Laos about a week ago!!
I’ll try to give you a global update of our last 3 weeks......

As told in our previous story we were about to go on our 3 day trekking tour through Northern Thailand.
The first day we drove to the mountains with a group of 12 persons and first stopped at the local market to buy some food for the coming days. This was a ‘real’ local market with everything you could ask for; grasshoppers, snakes, living fish still trying to swim without water, chicken feet... and a lot of other living insects.
Luckily our guide just bought chicken and vegetables :)

After the market we drove into the mountains where elephants were waiting for us, the plan was to ride one hour on them to go to our next destination.
The elephants are crazy about bananas and eating in general, so the big guy was constantly asking us for bananas with his big slurf (is this right in English???) and making us wet and dirty. It was fun though. What wasn’t so funny is that that the elephant trainers were not very nice to the elephants. They shoot stones at them and hit them. So we both decided that this was the first and the last time to ride an elephant.

After the elephant ride we had to walk for 3 hours (uphill...) but with a great view. Finally we saw some great nature of Thailand, in the way of green forest and hills.
When we arrived at the top a family was waiting for us and showed us our ‘house’ for the coming night. This was just a hut made out of bamboo with 12 pillows and 12 blankets.... so the idea was to sleep on the floor all together. There was a big balcony in front of the hut with an amazing view over a valley and here we watched the sunset with a beer.
After the sunset dinner was ready!!! Pumpkin curry with rice and chicken soup with noodles, very tasteful and delicious.
It was getting quiet cold so the sweater came out but also the Thai rice wine, oh dear...

This is a very strong rice wine with sometimes up to 75% of alcohol....aaaaahhhh
But you can’t refuse a drink offered by the man of the house so we had to try...
Not really my taste bllgghhh, but Vincent seemed to enjoy and that wasn’t a very good idea being on antibiotics.... I leave it to your imaginations what happened that night...

We had a very cold night with maybe 2 hours of sleep before heading of for day number 2. A bit of walking again and visiting some local villages. Than of to a freezing waterfall to have a shower. We ended in a different village at night with a nice campfire and again great food. The last day was the wild water rafting day!!!!
We were a bit excited because this was our first time.... after some instructions we where on our way. Unfortunately the river was not very high so the rapids were not very adventurous, but we had a great time.

Back in Chiang Mai after the tour and back to our lovely guesthouse. We decided to go to Pai, a village North West of Chiang Mai to have our last couple of days in Thailand before heading of to Laos. Pai is a small village what seems to attract hippies and relaxing people. The village itself is located in a gorgeous valley with a beautiful river running through it. We stayed in a bamboo hut with a view of cows and hills in front of us, great!
In the daytime we drove around on our motorbike to view the beautiful scenery’s, visit a waterfall and enjoy some natural hot springs.
At night it was great because in about every cafe, travelers were playing live music. So we went from cafe to cafe to see other travelers play and having a good time.

In Pai we met up with June, the Thai wife of one of our friends Arjen from back home. She was in pai to see if she could start a business there so we spend some days together with her. We had a good time and she showed us some places (she brought her own car so that was handy) and she told us more about the Thai people.

We had to leave the country in 2 days because of our Visa so we decided to plan our trip to Laos. The best way to get there was to take a bus from Pai to Chiang Kong (the border of Thailand with laos) for 8 hours and than the slowboat into Laos for 2 days.....
A big journey and all this on my birthday!!!! The bus journey was ok, because we where travelling at night.
At 12 o clock it was my birthday so Vincent and a German couple (where we were traveling with) sang a song for me and they even had small present for me, yeah!!!

Than at the borders early morning we had to cross the river by boat for 5 minutes to arrive in Laos!
Because the roads are quiet bad in Laos many travel ways are by boat. So to get to our first destination in we had to travel 2 days on this slow boat.
The boats are from wood and you sit on a wooden bench, I think there are about 120 persons on one boat. The first boat trip took us about 7-8 hours, the scenery was gorgeous!
You can imagine that a birthday like this is something never to forget.

It was amazing to see this beautiful river (the Mekong) and the mountains around. People washing in the river and kids waving to us. Straight away we had a different feeling about Laos and where impressed by the nature.

We had to sleep in a little village to wait for the 2nd boat the next morning. This village was tiny and only made for a stopover.
Very friendly people and a lovely guesthouse where we learned our first Laos words and I tried the first sip of Laos Laos, the Laos rice wine.... wow this was strong..... it’s getting more evil the more we try rice wine!!!

The 2nd day of our boat journey went smooth.... we had a better seat and again the scenery was great. We arrived 6 hours later in Luam Prabang our final destination.
Luam Prabang is fantastic, especially because it has a strong French influence, so there is wine (good wine) and there is cheese and there are baguettes mmmmmm.
We already love Laos!!!! So we had our baguettes with brie and we had our wine, Vincent and Desire where satisfied!!!

Because of this lovely town we decided to celebrate Christmas here, but there was still a week to go....
Reading our Lonely plant from A-Z we found a lovely written place somewhere in the North. Muang Nuang Neua.
4 hours by bus and one hour by boat to reach this village where no cars are driven and where only 420 people are living. There is only electricity from 6 to 9 pm and it does feel like you go back in time many many years.
The villagers income is mainly from guesthouses and their restaurants and it feels weird to intrude their lives. But the people from the village don’t seem to mind they love to speak to the tourist and improve their English. And we have to say the Laos people are so much better in speaking English than the Thai people, what surprised us looking at the more Western civilization in Thailand.

From the village out you could do a walk on your own to some caves and other small villages. The walk was Super!!! The landscape was gorgeous and on the way we met some buffaloes walking around us. The path lead us to a small village where we ended to have a drink. A beautiful village with people living as they did 100 years ago....
Happy people living from nature, what else do you need.
The kids where great, they wanted to pose for our camera all the time to see the result afterwards and cheer out loud. Great to see them so happy by only making a picture from them.

The last day in the village there was a funeral party and everybody could join.
The person died 4 months ago and there was a party for almost 24 hours around his ashes to bring him the next day to the temple to go to heaven... There was music and dancing and a lot of Lao Lao whiskey drinking during these 24 hours.
The day started with making a bamboo house and raising money and food to attach to the house. The whole village was involved and it was interesting to see this different way of bringing someone to his last place..

We planned to stay in Muang Nuang Neua for 4 nights but after 3 nights we decided to leave because it was so cold at night!!! At day time it was around 25 degrees but in the evenings and nights the temperature dropped to plus minus 10 degrees.....
I know we shouldn’t complain thinking about you guys, but we have no jackets!!!

Being back in Luam Prabang the first thing we did was buying a jacket and a scarf!
It’s great to be back in civilization......
Monday it’s Christmas and we will have dinner with some travellers to leave the next day to Van Vieng more south in Laos.

We want to wish everyone a lovely Christmas with a lot of love, joy and presents ofcourse!!!
Let 2007 be the year for everyone around us with good luck and health.

Thanks for everyone who smsed me on my birthday, unfortunately I didn’t receive them all but the thought is great!
We have a new number for the ones interested but sms is again difficult;
00856 202131783.

For the ones requested more pictures.... you can give us some more photo space as a present so that we can upload more pictures. See website for information.;)

I hope you’re all still awake after this story and leave us some scraps.

Cheers everyone on the new year!!!

Vincent and Desire

PS Sorry guys my English is shit!!!! Must be the wine last night....:)