sabai dee from just out of laos:-)

Sophie came into the room our first night in Laos. "I have seen . . . " she paused, searching for the word in English. "Something terrible."

I was urged to go downstairs to be her witness. Sure enough, the kind-faced Laotian woman running our guesthouse in Pat Beng was happy to show me her catches-- two plump, scuttling cockroaches held captive in a tupperware, each roughly the size (including height) of a small mouse. "These are the best Lao cuisine!" she told me happily, and explained that she planned to cook them with honey for breakfast. Such began our stay in Laos.

People often recommend at least 10 days for Laos, supposedly because it's a country where it's best to relax and ease into the slow lifestyle. I'm sure this is true; however, it's also because overland travel takes FOREVER. Sophie and I had 8 days until we needed to be back in Bangkok, and we spent about 5 of them in transit: One day to the border at Chiang Khong. Two days on the slow boat to Luang Prabang with an overnight in Pat Bang, a small town where most residents have never heard of WiFi. (There's a fast boat, incidentally, but it's said to be quite dangerous). An evening, a full day, a morning in Luang Prabang. 7 hours to Vang Vieng. One day, then one morning in Vang Vieng. And then an afternoon/night bus back to BKK. And this was just to visit two main tourist towns with a paved road between them. Thankfully, the transit time was easily passed with spectacular scenery, books, travelers swapping stories, naps, and my own personal French tutor.

We finally made it to Luang Prabang, where we were recruited to take a look at the SpicyLaos backpackers hostel. I'm so glad we went, because it turned out to be fabulous, and we were welcomed right in to a room full of friendly backpackers. Sophie and I celebrated our successful arrival by dining in style at L'Elephant, a Casablanca-style French restaurant which David in Chiang Mai had said was his favorite place to eat in all of south-east Asia. Our meals, local fish with a creamy sauce and veggies and a shared tiramisu for dessert, cost $15 each-- 5 times the cost of our dorm beds! Though I'm definitely not spending that kind of money every night here, it was a pretty delicious treat. Although I can't say for sure whether it was as good as those breakfast cockroaches were said to be. (As one traveler commented, "Well, maybe they know something we don't!")

The next day, we took a tuk-tuk (with a new friend, Cornelia from Romania who lives in London) to the local waterfall. Once there, we heard about a hike, and decided to check it out. It was a steep, muddy climb to the top of the fall, where we could walk ankle-deep in rushing water and just past our ankles, water would spill hundreds of feet to the bottom where you'd started-- we were standing in an infinity pool, and it felt like conquering the world. (There was a quite firm guard rail, for the record.)


(Sophie is the one with the friendly butterfly on her bag, and Cornelia is the redhead:-) )















After the waterfall, we returned to the hostel for a nap, and met up with Megan from Los Angeles (yaaay LA) for another climb, up the hill in Luang Prabang for the view at sunset. (Megan was taking a course during the day to learn how to make a silk scarf on a loom-- I got to visit the next day, and it was pretty cool.) While the climb had a beautiful view of the town and the rivers, there wasn't so much a sunset-- for reasons I'm not sure of, we don't really seem to be getting any colorful sunsets here (perhaps the time of year?) and Laos was quite cloudy and rainy the entire week, possibly in relation to the typhoon in China. So, oh well. Still pretty, and in the evening we found cheap street food for dinner, wandered the night market, and finally settled down for drinks at a place called Utopia that fully lived up to its name. It was pretty much a paradise; a cafe made of bamboo on stilts with cushiony mats and candles, and something about the set-up and the warm weather and the night skies and the palm trees made it seem like the most peaceful place that could possibly exist in the world.

The next day, Tuesday, we made our way to Vang Vieng, a town known for its tubing, caves, and the fact that every restaurant and bar in town played re-runs of Friends or Family Guy all day long (one also plays The Simpsons). The road there was something incredible. On a map, it looks as though it is a relatively straight line that should take perhaps two hours. In practice, it is a six-hour tilt-a-whirl ride through a kindergartner's craziest scribble, full of hairpin turns and loops around mountains and chickens and children running in the street and a mini-bus driver that seems overly enthusiastic about the possibility of running them over.

In the midst of this, though, it is beautiful. We were just so small on this little mini-bus while the mountainside erupted around us, at times at such steep angles that the mountain wall was actually concave, textured by a thousand shades of jungle green save for the bits of sheer cliffside that looked as though they'd been streaked by hand with beige and black pastels. I kept finding myself thinking, "I just didn't know there were mountains like this." As though it was blasphemous that I hadn't known, and as though it seemed be urgent to apologize to the Creator for not having realized sooner. (My pictures don't do this any justice, by the way-- it was quite a bumpy ride, and difficult to even get any shots that weren't just of jungle brush.)



Finally, we made it to Vang Vieng. This entry is getting quite long, so suffice it to say that tubing was quite an experience. It's something like spring break Florida-style meets Hurricane Harbor meets the monsoon season with south-east Asia safety standards, and I'm really glad that we listened to the guidebook and took lifejackets. It was really fun, though, and relaxing once we got the hang of not crashing into the brush along the riverside.

So now, we're back in Bangkok (though Sophie is probably on a plane to one of the islands by now) and in a few hours I'm meeting up with Punky for a weekend trip to Phuket. Yay!

Until next time, much love,
Sara