Laos

I left for Laos after class on a Thursday and returned back on Tuesday night. Wow, Laos was amazing and so much fun, probably one of my favorite places I've been to so far here in SE Asia. It's just so funny to think that in all my years of geography and history and studying about Laos, I never thought I'd actually go there. I mean, when you think about Laos, do you ever think of going there to vacation? I personally never did. It was crazy to see so many farangs there (all from Western Europe, mainly Britain) who go there to go on vacation when Americans never do or think to go there. But now I've been there and now I know: if you have a chance to visit SE Asia, try to see Laos as well :]

Thursday & Friday: Vientiane

Vientiane is the capital of Laos and is located right across the Mekong from Nong Khai (it's about 20 min. in). There were 9 of us girls that left that Thursday night. We took tuk-tuks to the Laos-Thailand Friendship Bridge and off we went to Laos! It seemed very similar to Thailand at first but when we got into the city there were farangs everywhere, backpacks and all. You don't see that as often in Nong Khai. We went around and looked for guesthouses (aka hotel) to stay in. Oh, that's something that kind of made this trip more fun -- we didn't have that much planned for it. We didn't book a guesthouse in advance and kind of just went with the flow. I don't know but traveling that way is more fun and easier because I feel if you have everything planned out, like to the hour, you will get stressed if you aren't on time or if you have to be somewhere at this time and it just gets too complicated. ANYWAY, we all split into 3 different guesthouses and ate out to dinner at this Italian place. It was AMAZING. Seriously, international food taste 100000 times better than in the US. I don't know why but they are just so good at cooking it here.



Being classy, drinking wine w/ our dinner. Me, Pooja, Emma, Laura, Kathleen, & Dana. (Lexie, Sarah, & Danielle were at a different table)








After that we just walked around for a little and sat down at a resturant at drank some Beerlao. Um, can I just say how much I LOVE Beerlao? It's now on my list of favorite beers...it's definitely my favorite Asian beer now...it is WAY too good.

The next day we went to a wat...beautiful, as always and then we went to this HUGE archway. This archway was built when the Laos people were freed from the French...kind of funny, they built it based on Frensh architecture.




The Wat :]



























More wat














Us & the archway













Pretty!




















After exploring these two places we got lunch, and took a mini-van to our next destination: Vang Vieng.


Friday Night - Tuesday: Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng is spring break '99 European style. I swear there were more farangs than Laos people here...young, and ready to party haha. Vang Vieng was full of water activities, hiking, caving, and a lot of partying (don't worry mom -- I controlled myself). At night there were so many different bars, such as Bucket Bar (free buckets for one hour, nice), Smile Bar (lots of dancing,) and everyone's favorite: Q-Bar (major major MAJOR CODE BLUE). It was so much fun.


During the day:

- I went hiking up this mountain one day...pretty: you could see the whole town!

-Tubing: basically, you float down a river and there are bars along it as you go. People throw rope at you and you grab it and they pull you in. They have ziplines and ropes you hang on to and swing into the water. I went on way that was sooo high I almost peed my pants when i let go..it was so much fun. It takes a long time to get down the river since there are so many bars. After awhile though it got kind of boring and the bars were down and current was extremely slow. It took about 6 hours of my day on the river.

-The Blue lagoon was this extremely pretty pretty lagoon. I went w/ Dana before heading back to Thailand. There was a tree we jumped off on and it had rope swings too.

























We finally went home on Tuesday night and I was sad to leave Laos. It was definitely one of my favorite places I traveled to and hopefully I'll go back some day!