I have "Laos" to tell you...

Bad pun, agreed, but not entirely inaccurate either. Now in Cambodia after a relaxing 10 days in Laos. Don't get me wrong though, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, but it was a completely different experience than the rush of Vietnam.

As I mentioned in my last post, we arrived in Luang Prabang on July 17th. Luckily for Hannah, we had lucked out and booked one of our nicest accommodations thus far..I say luckily because the poor girl was ill after eating at a veggie restaurant in Hanoi the night before--see meat is the way to go. We ended up having dinner with the English couple, Oli and Cassie, that we met on our tour of Halong Bay. I am jealous, they had been traveling for 10 months all over the world and were headed to India next on the last leg of their trip.

Anyway, Hannah was ill because she ate healthy vegetables, it is the only reasonable explanation. I'm sticking to street vendors for the rest of the trip...mostly. Despite her fragile state, we all managed to visit our share of wats, or buddhist monasteries. The young buddhist monks in orange are a frequent sight throughout Loas as apparently it is fairly common for most men to spend at least a few months as a monk. The wats were impressive and like churches in Europe, everywhere you turn your head. We also visited a cave where people have been coming for centuries to pray and make offerings of buddhas.







After deciding to linger in Luang Prabang a day longer than planned, we boarded a "mini-bus" (which apparently is code for mini-van with extra row of seats and no leg room to compensate)and headed north to Vang Vieng. The drive was stunning through the mountains but you could see where parts of the road had been washed out days before from landslides resulting from heavy rain.

We arrived in Vang Vieng in mid afternoon and tried to take in the strangeness of this place. It literally feels like it is in the middle of no-where, along the Nam Song River. Its claim to fame along the backpacking route is a river tubing ride, "happy shakes" and Friends. Specifically, I mean literally the only thing people do here is consume various opium-laced fruit shakes and float down the river in an inner tube and finish off the day by going to one of the many restaurants set up with pillows and cushions, grab a seat and watch hours upon hours of Friends' episodes. Not to worry though, you have three reasonable and prudent young ladies traveling...ok, well Reena and Hannah are reasonable and prudent and they seem to mimic my mother's look of concern (i.e., the look of death) sufficiently enough to quash any potential for tom-foolery on my part. We did however indulge in a drug-free evening of Friends watching--seemed like the thing to do. Reena and I really enjoyed it, Hannah seemed disinterested with the six episodes we watched and was much more concerned with the possibility that the green curry she had for dinner was laced with narcotics (see below)...Not surprisingly, it was not.

Here is a picture of the river:


River tubing sober may have been a go except the town had shut it down. Rumour has it that some inebriated travelers lost their lives the week before. It is likely that they were completely off their heads and they decided floating down a very fast river was a great idea. The town people really didn't talk about it so its difficult to know if there was any truth to it or they were merely being pre-cautious because of the high water conditions. However, given the lack of regulations of any sort here, I doubt that was the case. It seems that most anything goes around here, so best to use your own common sense. Nevertheless, our day was kind of wasted, so we upgraded to a hotel with a pool and spent the day there...not a bad deal either.

After Vang Vieng, we took a bus to Vientiane, the Capital of Loas. This was the most chill city I've ever been to...VERY RELAXED. We spent a few days seeing the sights, including the Arc de Triomphe, which we thought was quite lovely.







Apparently the Laos disagreed, calling it a "monster of concrete"....



It is funny how much our mindset has changed since Vietnam. We have adopted a much more laissez-faire attitude to this trip, well perhaps I should say I have adopted this attitude--Hannah, God bless her, tries, but the need to schedule SOME things persists...

We arrived in Cambodia on the 26th and met with Hannah's friend Emily. We were planning on taking a trip to Kampot in the south before meeting up with Melanie back in Phnom Penh but Sunday was election day and consequently most things were not running, including the buses. This forced day of being grounded in the city with next to nothing open did not deter Hannah, who still managed to find a market for us to see. We then discovered---a SHOPPING MALL. Strange as it may have been, because it was so western, it was good to see it because it was not directed towards tourists at all, so you didn't feel like you were being forced fed some type of culture, rather you saw how your own culture has been forced fed here. Could have been a mall in any north american city, where teenagers hung out, greasy mall food abound but surprisingly, you could still barter on prices...The mall, not surprisingly, also had a movie theater and so we spend a few hours watching a Cambodian produced film (luckily with English subtitles) called "The Last Letter". Interesting way to spend the day. Anyway, Hannah and Emily have escaped to Kampot while Reena and I stayed in Phnom Pehn to await Mel's arrival tomorrow morning...