Laos

We crossed the Mekong River into Laos on 3rd May, by an extremely official looking boat, and having sorted our visas when we got to shore, we took a tuk-tuk to the bus station, from where we'd make our way to Luang Namtha in northern Laos.

Unfamiliar with the currency, I unintentionally managed to give our tuk-tuk driver a whopping tip! After a fairly bumpy four-hour bus ride, we arrived, got another tuk-tuk into the town centre, found a decent guesthouse and went out to sample some of the local brew, Beerlao, which is served in 650ml bottles and costs about 70p - very good indeed.

After a bit of a wash-out on the Saturday (meaning the local brew was sampled yet again), we were up early on Sunday for a day-long trek. There were five of us on the trek, as well as two guides, and we all bundled into the back of a van and headed off towards a protected forest area about forty-five minutes away.

Unfortunately, it started to hammer down with rain the moment we arrived at the hilltribe village (our starting point) and didn't stop all day!

After lunch, we set off again, expecting a gentle amble for a couple of hours before arriving at our finishing point. Three hours later, it became fairly apparent that our so-called guide had managed to get us spectacularly lost! Having poked his head into a local hut to borrow a torch, we then carried on falling on our backsides, and batting the armies of leeches trying to get into our shoes, for another three hours through what seemed some fairly inhospitable land, before finally arriving at the end point soaked to the skin a few hours late!

Despite getting pretty lost, we'd all had a great time, and over dinner and more Beerlao that night, we made plans to travel together down to Luang Prabang the next day. Washing my socks in the sink that night, I discovered a rather plump looking leech - lovely!

The following morning, we were all crammed into a full minibus, looking forward to a ten-hour journey along some very bumpy, unsealed roads. Known as one of the most dangerous routes in Laos, we were instantly put at ease, when we met our driver, to discover that he only had one hand. Not only that, but his agility was also questionable after he fell off the roof of the minibus whilst trying to secure all our bags. Luckily both he and his remaining hand escaped injury, and we were on our way. The journey was thankfully without incident, and we arrived in Luang Prabang that evening, and having found a fairly rank guesthouse, all went out for a meal and some more beer.

We spent about three days in Luang Prabang, thoroughly enjoying the riverside restaurants and other local sights.

On our second day in town, we all hired bikes to venture slightly further afield. We managed to make it to a slightly disappointing waterfall, before heading back to town due to some technical faults with my bicycle - the chain was too big for the bike, and came off about fifteen times!

That evening, as a reward for all the hard effort cycling, a chum called Jules and I decided to sample some of the local speciality whisky. The chap selling it said it would make us strong, and looking at him, we could hardly question what he was saying.

Following our (rather rank) whisky, we then raided the night market for some rather tastier local delicacies.

Our final day in Luang Prabang was Lauren’s birthday, and all five of us went slightly further out of town to visit the spectacular Kuang Si waterfall.

Following a swim in the falls, and a look at the local bear sanctuary, we all headed back into town and went out for some birthday drinks and a slap-up meal.

The next day we were on the bus again, this time to Van Vieng. The bus journey wasn’t too bad, and the scenery was fantastic.

Van Vieng is famous for something called tubing - basically where you hire a big inner tube, get taken 5 km’s up river, and float back into town along the Mekong, past loads of bars. If you want to make a stop at one of the bars along the way, you shout out to a bloke at the bar, and he chucks a long rope out to you in the river, and hauls you in! This worked well every time except for one, when Lauren was too far away for the rope, and the bloke had to do a Baywatch style rescue in order to haul her into the bar! As well as the beers, these bars offer extreme swings and zip lines, where punters can launch themselves off high platforms, and basically plunge into the Mekong from great heights at great speeds. All very good fun indeed, despite both Jules and myself giving ourselves whiplash! Unfortunately, it was not really a day for taking the camera!

After Van Vieng, we headed down to the capitol of Laos, Vientiane. We had heard that the standards of accommodation weren’t great here, and after about an hour of wandering around looking at various options, we both agreed that this was the case. We finally settled on somewhere pretty rough but also pretty cheap, before heading out for a bite to eat.

We spent a couple of days seeing the various sights of Vientiane - namely a Buddhist Stupa and a poor imitation of the Arc de Triomph.

Other cultural stuff we did included a look at the National History Museum and also an exhibition raising awareness of unexploded landmines and bombs left over from the war in neighbouring Vietnam. Laos is the most bombed country in history, and still have over 80 million unexploded mines and bombs littering the countryside. (It made getting lost on our trek a rather more sobering thought!).

Glad to be getting out of Vientiane, which we found to be slightly dull and dirty, we got a sleeper bus (a coach where all the seats have been removed and replaced with bunk beds!) down the 4000 Islands, an area in the Mekong in the far south of Laos.

We finally arrived at our particular island, Don Det, found some accommodation, and went for a wander around. It was essentially a massive farmyard - loads of animals roaming around, and not getting out of the way for anyone or anything!

As well as looking around at various other things, we decided to book a Mekong fishing and BBQ trip for our third day. It was to be a trip that I will not forget in a hurry!

Arriving about an hour late picking us up, our skipper for the day, called Mr. Monkeybar, had the whiff of Lao Lao whisky on his breath. We boarded our vessel - rather like a long canoe, but slightly wider, and we set off. Within about five minutes, the engine conked out. And Mr. Monkeybar’s valiant efforts to restart it were dashed when he snapped the pull-cord. With no paddles and no engine, we started to pick up a bit of pace heading downstream - in the wrong direction. After a bit of frantic shouting and waving, Mr. Monkeybar managed to attract the attention of a local chap, who hopped into his boat and towed us back to the riverbank, where we sat for a further hour, before a replacement boat was sent to collect us.

So, two hours behind schedule, we were finally making our way to the fishing spot, and thankfully, Mr. Monkeybar now had a co-skipper - a twelve year old boy. We arrived at the fishing place, and the co-skipper launched out the anchor - a large stone. Unsurprisingly, the anchor didn’t catch - indeed when the anchor rope was pulled back in order to try again, the large stone had fallen off the end! Not having an anchor wasn’t the be all and end all, however, as we changed location and found a tree in the middle if the river to tie onto.

We eventually got the fishing lines out about two and a half hours late, before a huge storm started coming rather rapidly our way. This being the case, we headed for the nearest bit of land on the other side of the Mekong, and found some shelter in a local village before getting the BBQ underway. This was Mr Monkeybar’s cue to start again on the whisky, and about twenty minutes later, he was absolutely plastered!

We had a great BBQ, and the bottle of whisky quickly disappeared - the rest of us trying to drink as much as possible in order to keep Mr. Monkeybar sober enough to navigate us home across the Mekong. Our efforts were in vain though, as we set off to head back to the boat, he could barely walk! Luckily, one of the locals noticed this, found it all very amusing, and volunteered to take us back across in the boat. On the way back, our co-skipper was instructed to call Mrs. Monkeybar, so that she could get to the pier to pick him up, and no doubt give him a bollocking!

Luckily, we still had a couple of days left in Don Det to recover from our ordeal. We visited another pretty meaty waterfall - only about six minutes downstream from where we broke down on our fishing trip.

Finally, we got ourselves ready for the next leg of our trip, which would take us to Vietnam - a 26 hour monster of a journey which will be described in full detail in the next update!