welcome to the most bombed country on earth…

what we had heard about Laos up until this point was that it was an absolute paradise. we were told the people were much nicer, everyone was friendly, the sun was always shining, and we were less inclined to get ripped off. so when we got to vientiane, laos we had really, really high hopes! we flew to vientiane from siem reap, cambodia and immediately headed into town to look for a tourist agency so we could catch a bus to vang vieng, laos. apparently vientiane isn’t the most fun spot to hang and with less than three months and a budget you can’t really screw around. we found a travel agency, which claims to be the only one around which we later found out was a huge lie, and they said they had a mini van going to vang vieng in 2 hours so we say ‘great!’ pay them and wait. 2 hours pass and a taxi then awaits for us at the tourist agency to take us to the bus station. we head to the bus station only to find the crappiest bus jam packed with boxes and bags of rice and all kinds of other junk and no air conditioning which was promised. we were ripped off. our options then were to go back to the tourist agency and demand our money back, miss the bus, and pay lots of money to spend the night in vientaine (not only is it no fun, it’s also expensive) OR take the bus since everyone said it was the ‘last’ bus of the day. after drew calms me down we get on the bus and set out for vang vieng. oh! there was a guy on our bus with an automatic weapon which we later found out was for our protection. 5+ years ago there used to be rebels in the hills between vientiane, vang vieng, and even more north luang prabang and they would attack buses and rob them. the laos police started putting an armed guy on all buses and set up shop in the woods surrounding the streets. there hasn’t been any problems in the last five years but they keep the guys on the buses for safety.

we arrived late at night so we did what lonely planet said and walked to the river to find a guesthouse. the only good thing about arriving in a town late at night is you can argue the price down quite abit because the chances of them selling the room at all is very slim. we wound up getting a great corner room with multiple fans and tons of windows for pretty darn cheap. when we woke up in morning we opened our door to beautiful karst mountains, lush green trees, and a fantastic river that we couldnt’ see in the dark. this place is certainly somethin’ else!

drew and i like to pick our ’spots’. by this i mean we cruise around, try out a bunch of local bars, and then pick which one suits us best to return to night after night. we stumbled upon a bar called ‘alake bar’ as soon as we got to vang vieng, where we met two boys who became our buds. we forgot the one boy’s name almost immediately (oops) he is 15 years old, and the other, who we spoke with more, was a 19 year old named Psone (pronounced pawn but he didn’t mind being called phone and actually kinda liked it!). anyway, it was at this bar that drew and i sat every evening to watch the sunset over the mountains while laying in hammocks drinking special, yummy cocktails. psone taught me how to speak in his language while i taught him mine. while we were there the whole country of laos was celebrating ‘women’s day’ which is a big to-do there. the whole day consists of the men doing what the women normally do (cook, clean, etc.) that night the 15 year old boy approached me and asked if drew and i would come to dinner. the two owners of the bar, who we never formally met and spoke no english, had made a traditional laos dinner and they wanted us to join them. now, most people know i’m a vegetarian but there were a few dishes i couldn’t pass up because 1) when in rome… and 2) i felt like i would be rude if i didn’t and i wasn’t sure they would understand so i ate some river snails that they had plucked right outta the river and some incredibly spicy fish, you guessed it, right from the river as well. drew seemed to enjoy it a little more than i did but i can’t say it was all that bad…

the main attraction in vang vieng is tubing down the river. kids line up down the street all day waiting to get their tube, dry bag, and hop in the tuk tuk to take them 4km north so they can tube back. drew and i were totally clueless as to what was in store for us. we get dropped off and start tubing only to find it all looks like one big mtv beach party. every few meters there were bars blaring jay-z, serving all kinds of drinks and selling chips, and 9 times outta 10 the bar had a crazy huge zip line you could climb up to, swing down, and jump into the river… it was pretty awesome! we kinda appreciated the fact that most of these things were ‘do at your own risk’. if you’re an idiot, you pay a consequence, if not you have a wonderful time tubing and enjoying yourself like drew and i did. by the time we reached the last bar it was something like 2 hours later and we were bored of tubing so we climbed outta the river and walked down the road until a tuk tuk doing rounds found us and brought us back. i gotta say, i was too scared to climb up to the zip line but fearless drew did it and had a great time!

on our third day in vang vieng we rented mountains bikes and road 7km to a cave and crystal clear lagoon where we went swimming. the bike ride was rough on me because i thought my bike kinda sucked and i had never done mountain biking before so i wasn’t really used to all the rocks and such but the lagoon was sooooo relaxing and nice. that was my first time seeing such clear blue water in nature. there were fun, much smaller, rope swings that we played on and we saw fish all around us. after the 7 km ride in the heat, to jump into the water was so incredibly refreshing.

vang vieng is the first time we really felt relaxed on this trip. all of the places we visited up until laos were full of temples and museums that we wanted to see but now we were able to swim, play cards, lay on hammocks, and take it all in. fortunately for us, most of the people our age who come to vang vieng spend their time on the main drag watching back to back to back episodes of ‘Friends’. i say ‘fortunately for us’ because it meant the bar on the river was empty and anyone who came down to join us was someone we knew we’d wanna talk to. what an amazing place!

Check out our pics of Laos!!