vientiane, captial of laos. what else can i say.

We left Luang Prabang by bus for the capital of Laos, Vientiane. The ride was one of the curviest of our lives, but through some really scenic mountains. Lots of people take a night bus, but I can't imagine how they stay in their beds through all the twists and turns.

The city of Vientiane doesn't have as much character as Luang Prabang. I realized that I used the word amazing a lot in the previous posts about Laos, this marks the place where that stops. I don't have anything bad to say about the town, it just felt like your generic SE Asian semi-big city.

Vientiane is on the Mekong river and Thailand is literally right on the other side. Here though, the Mekong isn't cutting its way through mountains, so it's not as spectacular of a view. We stayed only two streets off of the river in the middle of the Farang area.

The main drag our Guest House was on in the city.

Four brother and sister kittens who we fed chicken to. Yes, these are four separate kittens.

A common sight in Laos, the cauldron trash can made from old car tires. Fitting we were there just before Halloween.

Our favorite thing to do was eat dinner down by the Mekong river. It made us feel slightly like we were back in Paris... but not really. Instead of baguettes and cheese, we had fried rice and instead of a nice bottle of red wine, we had Beer Lao and cheap Asian wine in a plastic bottle. But the sunsets were sometimes nicer than in Paris, at least.

It kind of looks like the Seine. Kind of.

A little wine, beer Lao gold and fried rice - ain't nothing finer

Sunset over the Mekong, looking into Thailand.

kuang si waterfalls outside luang prabang

One of the big tourist attractions in Luang Prabong is a group of waterfalls a few kilometers outside the city called Kuang Si. Some people ride bicycles there, but in the back of a tuk tuk, it took us around 45 mins, so it's not a short bike ride.

On the slow boat to the city, we had met a French couple named Julie and Arnaud, who went with us, along with another french girl they met while they were traveling in Indonesia.

The gang, minus Maggie (who is taking the picture), in the tuk tuk to the Kuang Si waterfalls.

You go through many small villages and across many small bridges on your way there. The bridges are only wide enough for one car, so it's a tad bit of a game of chicken when two cars approach them from either side.

Once you get there, a little Farang village sells all the normal stuff with many restaurants to choose from. On a side note about Laos, I don't know whether it's because it's Communist or something else, but everyone sells the same stuff. You'll have ten stores or restaurants right next to each other and they will all be selling the exact same things. It makes you wonder why anyone ever goes to any store or restaurant but the closest one. Talk about location, location, location.

Once you pay your entry fee to the waterfalls, you hike past a bear reserve where they take care of rescued sun bears. I guess there is a big demand for bear parts in the Chinese medicinal trade, so there is a lot of mistreatment of bears in Laos, even though it's illegal.

The bears here have manes like lions and are cute - as bears go.

Once you get to the falls there is a series of them that you can walk along. There is one in the middle that you can swim in and it even has a rope swing that can help you get over tip-toeing into the freezing water. We both opted for the rope swing.

The lowest of the pools was our introduction to their turquoise color.

You got to take those Kodak moments when you got them.

Maggie in mid fall from the rope swing while Andrew watches from below.

The most spectacular of all of the falls is the top one. The water falls from a tall cliff and makes the most amazing series of falls. There is a bridge across the bottom, where you can get a great photo of it. We also heard you can hike to the top if you are up for a stedp climb - we weren't.

The bridge below the largest fall.

easy livin' in luang prabang

The slow boat up the Mekong dropped us off in Luang Prabang (the second biggest city in Laos. Population: about 50,000. Or, to put it another way, half the size of larger college football stadiums.). We heard that it had the largest influence left from its French colonization of any town in Laos, and we were not let down. Baguette sandwich were being sold everywhere by the street vendors and bakeries had croissants and all other sorts of French pastries.

The old part of the city, where we stayed, hugs the Mekong river and there is a street that you can walk down where restaurants hang over the river and the sunsets are beautiful. We stayed in the city for ten days, although it felt like much less. It's such a sleepy town, where days drift by without notice and one could spend much time without even realizing it. 

The street that parallels the Mekong.

View from the street over the Mekong, near sunset.

View from our Guest House across the city.

The street we stayed on. It felt very European for SE Asia.

Luang Prabang is much like Chaing Mai in Thailand - the cultural heart of the country. This meant there were Wats everywhere and Monks walking about the city. A very common sight is a group of Monks making their were somewhere during the day - where a Monk has to be, I have no idea, but they walk around like they have lots of places to go and things to do.

The Wat at the end of our street, being decorated for the festival. (Note the monks on the ladder)

Monks with somewhere to be.

The temple in the Wat at the end of our street.

Another of the many Wats around town.

While we where in town, one of the largest festivals they have took place, the Festival of Light. It marks the end of Buddhist Lent and to celebrate, they parade dragon floats made by different groups of people around the town and then float them down the river.

In the days leading up to the festival, all of the hotels and restaurants around town made little boats they displayed outside.

One of the parade floats

Laos has many cultural groups and these little girls represented some.

 Another part of the festival involved people buying little "boats," made of flowers that they could float down the Mekong for good luck. We bought a boat because you never can have enough good luck.

The flower boats you could buy to float down the river.

Once the sun went down, the lights went on. Lanterns were hung all over the town and all the floats had built in lights. 

A Monk lighting the lanterns outside his Wat.

A boat getting ready to set sail.

The other part of the Light Festival is sending off paper lanterns into the sky. It was really amazing to see, but very hard to take a picture of. We did out best.

A group building up the hot air in their lantern before sending it off.

The sky above the city filled with lanterns.

 At the end of the night, we climbed down to the river and Maggie set off our flower boat into the river for good luck. As our teacher during the Meditation retreat would say, "We got the good luck."

Maggie sending off our boat. You can see it in the upper left corner. Maggie at least had good enough luck to not fall and get soaked in the very slippery, muddy river in the dark. Good luck!

slow boat up the mekong

At the Laos boarder (after we crossed the border on a long boat across the Mekong from Thailand to Laos) we jumped directly onto a slow boat that would take us down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. It is supposedly a rite of passage for any South East Asian backpacker - so we had to do it.

Yes mom, they still have Farang Badges in Laos

We decided to take the slow boat rather than the fast boat, even though the slow boat would take two whole days and the fast boat only six hours, because we've heard very very bad things about the fast boat, and we saw what they were talking about right away. They're eight-person boats where you have to wear helmets and hunker down with your knees to your chest and not move for six hours. Apparently quite a few people have died in the frequent crashes. So yeah, slow boat it was.

We'd heard varying things about the condition of the boats, but ours wasn't bad. The first day we actually had a table to set our stuff on which was quite nice.

It's like boat roulette. Which one is ours?

We sat across from a French couple that we befriended and made the trip much more enjoyable. Good conversation has a way of doing that.

Arnaud and Julie. I think Julie is asleep, not just avoiding the picture. (Sorry for the weird pic, Julie!)

The sun was setting over the Mekong as we ended our first day on the river. The village we stayed in the first night seems to exist solely for the river boats to make their stop on the two day trip to Luang Prabang from the Thai boarder.

The hotel we stayed was right on the river and we had quite the view from the restaurant. Though, even while on the river, work still needs to be done.

Elephants taking their morning bath.

The second day had many more locals on the boat as we made our way into Luang Prabang, the second largest city in Laos. This made it a much tighter fit as locals brought aboard all of their goods to bring to the big city.

Laos's version of dick in a box... cock in a basket. (In other words, somebody brought a rooster on the boat. One guy also had a gigantic bag of grub worms all the Lao people were fascinated with--apparently they're a delicacy.)

The river itself is not that beautiful. It's pretty muddy. But the surrounding mountains were dramatic and gorgeous.

It turned out to be a fine trip, but we were pretty ready to get off the boat once we got there.