Laos... land of the lost

If anyone feels the need to share my childhood travel experiences in places like Thailand and Indonesia make sure you head to Laos in the next year. Laos really reminds me of Thailand and Bali about 10-15 years ago. To give you an example: when we arrived in Vientiane, their capital, they had just begun to install sidewalks... really. Vientiane was a very quiet city with a midnight curfew still in effect... so we did very little during our time there. There was a large golden stupa, the holiest site in Laos, that we went to see. Legend has it that Buddha's collar bone is buried beneath the stupa.
From Vientiane we took a long bus ride to Vang Vieng, a small town in the mountains that now has only one function: tourism. It really isn't so bad as the town is only composed of three streets, the prices are all very reasonable, and the entire draw of the town is river tours. The river that curves around the town has one 6km stretch that is calm and wide enough to allow for very relaxing tubing. To make things even more interesting the locals have set up bars on the river banks so that you can float down the river, from bar to bar, drinking and eating as you go. These "bars" can be anything from a rather large establishment with several different thatched platforms jutting over the river to relax and drink to one guy perched on a rock in the middle of the river with a bucket full of ice and beer yelling "BEER LAO". The larger bars have trapeze swings. You climb up to a platform and swing out over the river, quite high up in the air really, until you decide to drop into the water. A rather disastrous idea I would think to have at a bar... but everyone seemed to be fine and no one got hurt while we were there. We also did a kayak tour of the river, which included one section where we were again put in inner tubes and using a guide rope we hauled ourselves into a cave that the river ran through. At parts the ceiling was just a few inches above our heads, at others roughly 100 ft. We went about 200m back in the cave in our tubes, it was completely dark with the exceptions of our headlamps, and one of the coolest things I've ever done.
We continued our northwesterly route and wound up in Luang Prabang, the UNESCO world heritage town and gateway into Northern Thailand. Luang Prabang reminded me a lot of Ubud, Bali. The town is fairly quiet but there is a decent amount of shopping, food, and tours all geared to tourists. What surprised me the most was the amount of Thai tourists that were there. We spent our first day in the city lounging around, doing very little. At night the main street becomes a large night market with people from the neighboring hill towns arriving with their goods and wares for sale. Laos silk is really beautiful, and we spent several nights and a fair amount of money negotiating with the vendors. Unlike the Vietnamese and Thais of Bangkok, the vendors in Laos enjoyed old fashioned bargaining with lots of smiles and playfulness that I haven't seen yet on this trip. We got some very good bargains and had a lot of fun in the process. We also decided to splurge a bit and went on a day long tour with a private guide that included an elephant ride, swimming at a beautiful waterfall, and 4 hours of kayaking down several small rapids back to Luang Prabang. The rest of our days we lazed away... Luang Prabang is the perfect down to do that in. If we felt adventurous we went on walks... at one point we followed a French tour group and ended up at the top of the town's central hill to watch sunset from the steps of a temple.
Like the rest of Asia, Laos too is bound to change soon. This trip has been a testament to how rapidly Asia is westernizing and how tourism is becoming a major economy, especially for a tiny poor country like Laos.
Although our trip is not entirely over, I am already starting to count the days until we arrive on Guam just in time for Christmas. Believe it or not, I miss the silly Christmas music played in malls and the lights and decorations that get put up just after (and these days well before) Thanksgiving. I know we'll be there shortly and the time will fly, but part of me just wants to go home now and start the party! Hehe.

I took some extra time out of today to update photos:
I fixed the second batch of Vietnam photos so now they include more of the Cu Chi Tunnels, and added some photos of part of our trip to Cambodia.

Vietnam #2

Cambodia (for now...)