Laos

Arrival into Laos was simple although we were passed to loads of different people. It was a case of 'now you go with my brother he will take care of you' and then once into Laos it was 'go with my sister, she will look after you' then I think the cousin took us to the bus station and then we were on our own, well we didn't need them anymore. Laos is so different to Thailand. The people are so laid back. The agents forgot to give us a bus ticket for our 13 hour journey to Luang Prabang. The Thai's would have charged us again but the Laos bus driver gave us somebody elses ticket once they have already checked in!!

The bus journey was horrible. The roads in Laos are awful. It goes round the mountains in circles. As soon as the bus driver started handing out sick bags we knew it wasn't going to be a good journey. We got to Luang Prabang at 02:30 in the morning!! A tut tut driver agreed to take us to the centre for 50 baht each person (we only had Thai money). However there were eight of us because us tourists had stuck together! The man took our money and then just stood there holding out the money. We kept saying to him that there are eight of us so thats 400 baht but he still seemed confused. At that time in the morning we were getting moody. It turns out the poor man was just trying to give us money back as somebody had given him a 1000 baht note instead of a 50. This is the difference between the Thai and Laos people. A Thai Tut Tut driver would have said nothing and pocketed it as they are greedy where Laos people are honest and don't try and rob you. Eventually we got to the centre and all hostels were closed!! Anthony (one of the guys with us) started talking to some guy. The Laos man did not understand and tried to tell Anthony it was 6 to stay at the hostel. We could hear Anthony going '6 what? dollars? Baht? Kip?' The man didn't understand. He then walked out onto the street and saw the other seven of us waiting. Everyone started laughing as the Laos man looked so suprised. He woke up a lady opposite and she let us all stay in her hostel for 60,000kip.(12,000 kip to a pound).

Later that day after we had got some sleep we went to explore Luang Prabang. It is the most beautiful place. It is full of french architecture and has a great atmosphere. Everyone is so friendly. Its the kind of place where you want to stay longer.

We made our way to the Royal Palace Muesum. This as the name suggests used to be where the king lived. They no longer have a royal family. Therefore once they got rid of the Royals they made a muesum out of their palace. We saw the King and Queens bedrooms as well as all the gifts different country's prime ministers had sent them. They had quite a few gifts from Australia. None from Britain - we must be tight. They had loads of little statues of Buddha which have been rescued from temples that have been destroyed in wars. Laos in the most bombed country in the world and in our opinion the ones who least deserve it.

In the evening there was a fantastic night market. It is on every night. People don't rob you and charge you honest prices. They sold so many fanstastic things. If only we had room to carry any of it.

The next day we went to see the Buddha cave. We travelled two hours on the boat to get there. At least we had nice seats. We looked over at Anthony's boat and laughed at him as he had an awful boat with crappy wooden seats. Once we were there we walked up to Anthony and all burst out laughing. It was such a small cave and such an anti climax! We couldn't believe we had spent two hours on the boat for this! It was a cave full of buddhas but it was tiny. It was so hyped up in the lonely planet book!! At least we had a nice boat trip and it was cheap! Emily slept the whole way back on the boat and Tony had to physically shake her to wake her up. It must have been the shit coach journey yesterday.

In the afternoon we went with Anthony to the waterfalls. We wanted to go to the upper waterfall but after walking for a hour we weren't getting anywhere. Therefore we went back down and got in the lower waterfall. The colour of the water was beautiful. Such a nice blue/green colour. Tony found the rope swing and dived in. After splashing around for some time we went out of the park to see the bear enclosure. We wanted to see the tiger but a man told us it was dead. Later that evening we went to the pub with Anthony.

On our final day in Luang Prabang we went to the most magnificent temple in Luang Prabang - Wat Xieng Thong. There was speakers around with monks singing. There were monks everywhere. There was a massive golden Buddha and behind it were loads of broken buddhas. Some of them were older than Christ. The temple is running a restoration program in order to fix them. The temple was surrounded with pictures. There were some scary pictures of hell which involved photos of spears going up people's bums and coming out their eyes - nice. There were funeral urns around it which contained the ex royal family.

In the evening we went to Phu Si mountain to see our final view of the city. We loved Laung Prabang so much we were sad to leave.

We arrived in Vang Vieng next and we were so suprised at what we saw. There was nothing but cafes & restaurants which played endless episodes of either Friends, The Simpsons or Family Guy depending on which one you went too. We got dropped off at the centre and we just thought 'is this really the centre!!' It was obvious people were only here to get drunk and it was full of dick head 18 year olds. It was clearly sign posted around town 'please don't wear just your swim suits around as it is offensive to Laos culture. So what were the silly 18 year old tarts doing? Going around in just bikini's. It so bad the way mostly British people ruin it for everyone else. It was the same in Thailand. It is illegal in Thailand to go topless on the beach yet we saw tonnes of stupid uneducated women doing it. They had no respect for the country that are in. Its common sense that when you are in Asia you don't go topless but these type of stupid girls are everywhere.

Vang Vieng is famous for tubing. This is where you get a rubber ring and float down the river from bar to bar. We did our tubing with Jessica who we met on the bus down to Vang Vieng. A tuk tuk dropped us at the start and the first bar (we got there at 12 midday) had a massive rope swing. It was huge but so many people got hurt. You got on the rope swing and had to let go in the middle of the river however some people dropped on their stomachs and winded themselves. It was awful to see when it happened. Tony went on it a few times. Emily would watch and pray that everyone would come back up to the surface. Jessica winded herslef really bad and bruised the whole side of her body.

We jumped into our tubes and headed for the next bar. The next bars had ropes swings and zip lines that weren't as high so they were much safer. There was one bar with a slide! We carried on going from bar to bar and thought we should better finish for the day at quarter to five. We had to have our tube back at the office for six or they would charge us 20000 kip. (less than two pound each). We were all drunk and decided to all go down the river as a group to finish ( we had met people on the way). The logic was Tony would paddle and hold onto Emily with his legs. Emily would hold Jessicas legs between her thighs, then Jessica would hold the kiwi girls hand. Another guy would go up front to help Tony paddle and Emily would hold onto his tube. It was much faster than everyone paddling on their own. Everyone would paddle together. Eventually we realised that the end was further away than we thought. At six we weren't even close to finishing. Some of us broke off and it ended up just being us and Jessica up front. Fortunately we saw some Austrian kayakers who told us to hold onto their kayaks and they would pull us along. The whole day was so much fun. We returned our tubes to the office at seven!!!

The next day we walked 3 km in the hot sunshine through fields and the town to get to see the caves. It was the most famous cave in Vang Vieng and there was nothing else to do so we thought we would check it out. We needed torches and it was a bit dodgy inside. The was a really weird statue of Jesus and as we got closer it wasn't a status at all. A bit of the rock was a different colour. It was like a natural outline. That was a bit odd. There was a lagoon inside and the guide asked if we wanted to go on. However we couldn't see a bloody thing so it was safer not too.

We left Vang Vieng for Vientiane - the capital city of Laos. It is the quietest capital ever. No hassle at all!! We would have given Luang Prabang more capital status. The first thing we did was go sunglasses, belt and razer blade shopping. Emily had broken her sunglasses in the cave and Tony brought trousers that were too big for him. Tony didn't have any new razor blades and was beginning to look like a cross between Richard Branson and father christmas and Emily was threatening to attack him with the blunt razor blade if he didn't shave it off quickly.

Then we moved on the Laos mueseum. It was fanstatic and showcased how badly the laos people had been treated. It mentioned how Britain and France had a race to take over the world so the French had focused on Asia although to this day they hadn't made any money off of it. They showed photos of the French using the Laos people as slaves and brutally attacking them. In the end in true surrender monkey fashion the French gave up as the Laos people took French soldiers as prisoners. The brutally led to a revolutional group functioning. Geneva granted Lao independent in the 60's. However then the US wanted a piece despite the fact that Geneva had already given them independance. Throughout the muesum they refer to the US and 'their puppets' - very funny term. The US knew that Vietnam was using Laos to ship their supplies for the Vietnam war so they set up concentration camps in Laos and stuck political leaders inside. Fortunately the US left them alone in 1973! They have been independant ever since.

After the mueseum we walked to the presidental palace which is very nice!! Like a smaller version of the white house. Then we looked at a few local temples.

The next day we got on a local bus to the Buddha park. The park was built by a rich man who didn't know what to do with his cash. It is really good, better than the buddha cave we went to. All the figures were different. We were walking along taking pictures when Tony jumped. Emily turned to see if he was ok and a frog was jumping around all over the place with a snake chasing it. The snake evenually got him and started to eat it. It was a little grass snake so we watched to see how it would consume such a big frog. Ten minutes in some kids saw and got a big stick and hit the snake with it. The snake retreated into a tree. Damn kids!!

After the park we went to see Vientiane's Arc de Triomphe replica. It is slightly bigger than the French version - probably just to piss them off a bit. In addition it was built from left over cement donated by the US to build an airport with - ironic! A stairway leads up to the top with t shirt shops on the levels in between.

We got back to the centre in time to take part in a monk talk. The monks wanted to practice their English and they knew we may be interested in Buddhism so every first sunday of the month foreigns can talk to the monks. You cannot touch monks and women can not even be passed anything directly. If the woman wants to give something to a monk she must first put in on the table and then the monk will take it.

We had a chat with a young monk. He told us how you get into buddhism at 12 years old and if you follow this route it leads to a good education. At twenty you can be ordained. He explained why Buddha statues were so slim in Laos and got fatter as you went into China. We asked why the Dalai Lama was head monk and why not anyone else and he explained how it was political. He also asked us about life in England and gave us his email address which we were really surprised about. Tony made a prize cock up when he tried to shake the monks hand. Your not supposed to touch them. The monk shook his hand though which was really nice.

Our final day in Laos was spent seeing the most important Laos monument - a symbol of buddhist religon and Lao sovereignty. Its a massive golden Stupa and the legend is that missionaries from India came here to enclose a piece of Buddhas breastbone as early as the 3rd century BC. Unfortunately it got destroyed in the 1800's when the Siamese invaded. The French rebuilt it in 1900 but had to do it again in 1931 as nobody liked the first job.

After we went to see a few temples.