We didn't publish a single blog from our 20 days in Laos... oops! Alright, let's start with Vientiane - beautiful, calm, not much going on city. From there we headed North to Vang Vieng and hung out there for a few days. It's a tiny town set right on a river where it's popular to go toobing (although they spelled it this weird "tubing" way???) and caving. Seeings how we live in Central Texas, we opted out of toobing and rented a motorbike to explore the country side and find ourselves some caves. We had a blast scooting around the muddy back country roads in the rain looking for caves before we finally found ourselves at Tham Phu Kham cave. We love the caves here because, unlike in the US, you can hire a guide if you like - or you can just rent a head lamp and go explore and try your best not to get lost. Inside we found a prone Buddha statue (Nirvana) and lots of little "ponds" at the back of the cave - it was really a site and we enjoyed getting to explore it alone. Afterwards, we sat on a small open hut on the nearby river and had a few of our favorite, beerlao (creative naming at its finest.)
Funny story - Mo wanted very badly to get in the river even though it was flowing pretty hard... well, since it had been raining so much our feet were very muddy so she stepped in to wash her feet off. When she did, Richard gave her 3:1 odds she would fall in. She scoffed and didn't take the bet, "I'm a Russell!" First time, no problem, feet cleaned. Second time, she wants to feed the fish with some rice some monks gave us so she stepped in just up to her ankles again no problem. Third time she decides to clean her feet again from walking around in the mud and who can guess what happened? Fell right in up to her chest... jeans, shirt, everything soaked. :) We had a good laugh and it only took her one extra beerlao to dry off.
From Vang Vieng we hopped on a mini bus and had a gorgeous, but somewhat scary, 8 hour ride through the mountains to Luang Prabang. Scary as the drivers here have no issue with passing an 18 wheeler on a blind corner while going up a large slope. There had also been a recent mud slide that we got to try and slide our way past, tires gripping for tracking on the wet mud, all while less than 4 feet from a huge cliff. There is a video that should be uploading into Travel Gumbo 3 album in the next few days (what can we say, internet here kind of stinks!)
Luang Prabang is a gorgeous old town with lots of French architecture and old wats set at the intersection of the Mekong and the Nam Ou rivers. While the city itself was very nice, it also has an international airport (this turned out to be a great thing... you'll find out in a later blog why) but that did make it VERY touristy... not exactly our cup of tea but nice none the less.
