Laos

After an almighty 28hour bus from China we finally arrived in Luang Prabang, Laos. The most obvious thing to do after such a journey is to take it easy, maybe grab some food, have a beer, hit the hay early but this was not to happen. The night started off well. We went for dinner, nice and relaxing, and even found the Laos equivalent of blue WKD much to our delight. Felt kinda drunk after one drink,this should have been an indicator for us not to down a bottle of volka but no, in true Annie & Sherry style we drank the heads of ourselves and went on the search of Utopia bar. Being a world heritage site, Luang Prabang is supposed to have an 11pm curfew on alcohol, but the sneaky feckers have all the loop holes sussed,including all night bowling where you can get beer, we choose the other options of the out of town night club, mayhem..damn it we should have went bowling. Start as you mean to go on I suppose, because while up until now our traveling has been 99% culture, things took a massive swing in direction when we hit Laos- we let loose!

We tried to keep the culture ends of things up in Luang Prabang. Its up there with one of the most beautiful places we've been. Until 1945 Laos was a colony of France and you can see the influence in the architecture of the town and the bakeries and baguettes. At night they close down the main street and it transforms into night markets within minutes. The markets were so pretty. All lit up and so peaceful. Nobody hassles you to buy so you could stroll around them for hours looking at all the local produce and handcraft. So many stalls and unlike your usually markets there is no major tack, its mainly yummy food stalls as well selling cakes,crepes and the most delicious sandwiches all for very reasonable prices. 

The only thing that Luang has more of than bakeries is temples and monks- they are everywhere! We did a temple tour one of the days (including a boat trip to temples inside caves) and also got up at sun rise to see the dawn procession of the monks to collect their alms. We were almost expecting a big parade whereas it actually turned out to be a simple affair. Small groups of monks from different monasteries walk through the main street collecting offering of food from local people who line the streets. We were originally shocked to see the amounts of young monks around or even the large number of monks on the streets but you get used to it. They seem to have quite a liberal life, chatting to locals,giving Buddhist classes to young school kids, riding around in tuk tuks, using the Internet and even seen one with a full on sleeve tattoo and it wasn't a Buddha figure either  it was a total river boy job (home & away). He's possibly the coolest monk in town. 

Above everything the waterfall outside the town was the highlight. Definitely one of the most spectacular waterfalls we had ever seen. Started off with a few minutes walk through a forest taking in a bear enclosure. The bears were so cute just chilling out in hammocks and bathing in little pools, when we say cute we mean in a giant killing mammal kind of a way. Then you reach the main attraction the waterfall. The main waterfall is beautifully powerful, gushing down from a height of about 30meters making a nice backdrop for a picture. It splits into lots of small pools which (heres comes the science bit) due to the high mineral content they are the richest opal blue colour. You could swim in these pools or for the more adventurous swing off ropes and dive, Tarzan ahoy.....The water was freezing but for the sake of a photo op we had a quick wardrobe change,bikinis on and into the freezing water which actually wasn't so cold when we were in. Little fish kept biting our feet which freaked us out and we couldn't manage a photo without screaming. These were sharks according to one guy! We went on the hunt for what Miriam Kerins had described in her email as a hidden gem of a pool, climbing up to the very source, but all we found has mud pools! Thanks Miriam, great email (*eye roll).

That was the last of anything cultural in Laos, our next stop was Vang Vieng. Main reason for stopping in Vang Vieng was tubing and feck did we tube. Three days of pure mayhem. Not sure even where to start with this one. Craziness. About thirty years ago a local farmer set up a scheme where volunteers could come to help on his organic farm. He wanted to give them the chance to see the beauty of the nature along the river and so bought a tube for them to float down it and take everything in. Then one day someone brought beer along with them while they were observing; and so tubing was born! An explosion of bars cropped up along the river and it became the most unlikely of party places in the world. This year, due to deaths and injuries, all the bars are closed so its a BYOB kinda situation. We had heard it was a ghost town and decided we'd do tubing once, just to say we did it and then head on,however we had so much fun we went three days in a row. Oh and Est sandwiches became the stable food for our time in Vang Vieng. Est is the best, Est is the best. What a legend. Omelet cheese and veg, delicious. I mean "how could you tube without a sandwich" that would just be wrong.

Well as luck would have it, we happened to start tubing at the same time as a large crowd of peeps (including the one and only Elton who ended up traveling all through Cambodia with us) we all had one common goal and that was to get pissed and have fun and that's exactly what we did. When we arrived to the starting point there were a few more guys hanging there so we had a nice little posy gathered and off we headed. We were quickly to learn Annie was the worst tuber ever and kept getting left behind. She followed many different instructions " lift your bum out of the tube" "put your bum as low in the tube as possible" etc but alas nothing was working so we invented the honey combing technique which involved tucking your legs under the next persons tube until we were all floating along together. Then the crack, bants and many a song was to start. At one point we saw a little old woman frantically waving from the shore and much to our delight she was selling more beer, pit stop ahoy, she then started hissing and pushing us away as another group approached. . After many " never have I ever's" we all got to know each other quickly. It was decided we were to grab a tuk tuk and do it all again. More drink was bought and off down the river again. Gary's Irish bar for more drink and messiness for the night.

You know when something is so good your afraid to do it again in case the second time its shit..that was our debate the whole next morning..should we go tubing again - and maybe get a good crowd of people or maybe end up just floating down the river pissed, just the two of us. We took the risk and thankfully it paid off! We were all singing away, photo's been taken left right and centre when catastrophe struck- the camera fell into the water and even more worrying a beer. There was a lot of splashing and trying to fight the current. While people were rummaging trying to save the beer, oh we mean camera, Sherry who has a fear of water couldn't get out of her tube and got separated from the crowd, floating down the river on her lonesome. While trying to save Sherry, Annie got a tube to the face and ended up falling out of her tube and loosing it..yeah mayhem. We were saved by a group of people who were gathered on the bank further on, who pulled Sherry into shore and swam out and got Annie's tube. The rest of the group (with Annie hitching a ride on another tube), managed to save the beer and the camera and reunited with Sherry on the bank, which became known as Tassie Bar, due to the high ratio of tasmanian citizens present! who knew that that five minute spell would have such an influence on our traveling. The next three days are a blur of tubing, vodka, Garys bar, omellette baguettes, sneaky shots, more tubing, more vodka, orange peel face, and a little more vodka ahhh! When we emerged from the bender, we have rerouted the next six weeks of traveling. Not only were we now cutting short our trip to Vietnam to be reunited with our favorite two tubing girls Alexis and Jordan but were going to Tasmania for Xmas and going to a music festival there for new years with the Tassie boys. Random or what, but thats what traveling is all about.

We should probably add that our tour guide for tasmania is the almighty Brad Doran, officially the biggest mess of tubing. Its going to be an interesting december!!

Okay straight to rehab for us, our livers need a break. Well not so much rehab but the closest thing Laos has to offer, 4000 islands. We were very confused how a landlocked island could have islands, but we learned they are islands in the river Mekong which runs the whole way through Laos. Wowza they were so beautiful and peaceful. They only have electricity in the last few years and are still so untouched. We took bikes and cycled around our island and across to some of the adjoining ones, even finding a secluded beach to chill by. Just what the doctor ordered, some much needed downtime! 

On our last night we went for food, planning to go to bed straight afterwards. Bam! who arrives at our restaurant but the three amigos Sarah, Tom and Elton who had been tubing with us. It would have been extremely rude not to have a social drink with them.. meh, you know what happened next! One leads to two then three... Worst rehab ever, in fact we actually caught a samosas addiction, eating TEN EACH in a row at one stage (damn drunk munchies combined with cheap food!) The next morning with one hours sleep, still drunk, we only just made the boat to the mainland to catch our bus to Cambodia, having to run to the dock with our backpacks (definitely not a fun activity). At least we weren't alone in our pain, we had the fellow hungover company of Elton and also a German guy Peter who were traveling to Cambodia too. We had actually met peter at the very start of our Laos trip at the waterfall, he was the one who had told us it was sharks attacking us (which we both believed for a long time!). So the four of sat eating ice cream waiting for the bus to come, little did we know we'd be spending the next three weeks together, in a very eventful time in Cambodia and Vietnam......