Without expectations we came and with good memories we left a laid back country :)

Laos is already behind us for a longer time . We're still in Thailand, with a week left before Australia. Here are the stories we did not tell before about the land that was so friendly and easy going.

SOMEDAY WE'LL MEET AGAIN  -  DON DET IT WAS
After the weird border entry, we managed to find a nice little bungalow on the island of Don Det. It was fun, more fun than we expected. We wanted stay only for 2 days, but then decided to hang out longer as we met again with 6 others we'd seen before in Mongolia and China and it was simply just worth enjoying the relaxed atmosphere of the island. There are these moments in the journey where we just need a break, and Don Det was a good spot to do so. It's a funny environment; some hate it (too many tourists, too much party), others love it and stay for weeks. If one word describes it, it's a "happy" place. Only here, happy has a meaning you normally only get in Amsterdam. (Don't worry, we never have been in need of that extra ecstatic stuff and we won't be starting it in a place where severe jailtime is done for it!). It does however mean that you need to be careful not to order a happy breakfast if you don't want to be spacing around the island without knowing what happened to you.

Our happiness meant simply beautiful sunsets from the 4 euro bungalow, with an icecold coffee or lemon-mint shake in your hand while you watch the fishermen from your hammock. We cycled around - oh no a flat tyre! - and watched cult movies at the "tipi"-place. (No one remembers any of their bungalow name; they're all called Mr.B, Mr.Nai, Mr. Bouaphun, Mr.Something). We tubed around with a bunch of girls (8!) which made Jan a guy that many other envied) and did a kayaktrip to watch the Irrawaddy dolphins. Of course, Jan wanted a single kayak, so guess who ended up in a single kayak too?? My arms were still sore a day later! We mastered the rapids without capseizing (not everyone in our group could say that!) and paddled out to the Cambodian border. 

It's sad that there are so many loud motorboats "chasing" the dolphins, trying to push the dolphins towards the tourists. From the kayak you can see them relatively close, but the boats will still annoy them and we felt a bit bad about it! The kids at the lunchstop were priceless! A few funny faces and a - thanks Laurie! - magnificent Raptor imitation kept us busy until the food was gone :) They helped us back on track by pushing the boats enthusiastically - "hey wait there is no one in that boat yet!!"- into the water, and off we were. We drove a part to have a quick stop at South East Asia's biggest waterfall: check out the photos to see how many people fit in, or on top of a truck with canoes. A last sunset from the kayak to cross the river and we were back at the islands.

The family of the restaurant next to our bungalows kept inviting us for dinner. Snails and sticky rice with your hands. Tastes a million times better than it sounds! We felt so welcome!!!

There was only one downturn: the internet. No catching up on uploading photos, no blog and sorry... no skype. A bit annoying as we needed to book some flights - see our map ("kaart") for a detailed plan!

SKYSCRAPERS IN LAOS?
On our way to Vientiane we had a 6 hour (it became 7,5) stopover in Pakse. The ATM crashed on us..., meaning the machine got our pin, the amount was reconfirmed and the machine started sorting money by the sound of it. Quite scary when you then see the screen turning black - we didnt get any money :D. Luckily the machine spit out my card, and so far no money has been taken out of our account... The best of the town was the rooftop terrace of the Pakse hotel. Otherwise there is just nothing to do :) except for waiting... Pfff... Almost 6 months on the road....we are still getting annoyed by the lack of info from travel agents, the clumsy communication and inefficiencies we encounter.

In Vientiane we applied for the Thai Visa. We know, it's not needed, but if you travel over land you are only granted 15 days. In order to avoid a visa run to Myanmar, we simply applied here. Long waiting queues and another unwanted night in a much more expensive capital.

But we used the time to cycle around. The heart of Vientiane is being rebuilt to some sort of modern World Trade Center, and all along the river, gigantic exclusive hotels sprout. Maybe they try to build another Las Vegas here for Thailand? We don't know, but the posters with 3D renderings just look surreal. Guess who's investing and building? Again, Chinese money flowing here.

The herbal sauna in a forest right next to one of the many temple was heaven. Simply blowing off some steam!!! Perfect. We “mouth-watered” at real punsjruller, but didn’t buy in the end as they were too expensive….chocolate will have to wait. Maybe it sounds ridiculously trivial to mention….. but we crave for real and good chocolate (and not to mention the liquorice...) It’s the price we pay for being in Asia :S

NOT GOING HOME
From Vientiane, we moved on to Vang Vieng. It was a difficult time. We received a phonecall that we least wanted to have; Jan's grandmother died. I actually didn't want to write about it, as we didn't feel it is an appropriate  blog topic; written words cannot do justice to it. Maybe it's been the reason why we've dreaded so long to write something at all. The last thing we want people to think is that we are here partying around while our family at home grieves. But it is one of the things/risks we took by starting this journey and what we considered thoroughly before we left. So it is also part of our journey and therefore part of our blog.....- we decided not to go home.
We're sad, and we're really sorry that we cannot be with those that miss us and need us. I hope you all know you are in our thoughts all the time.
 

It's hard to pick up the blog from there....but we'll give it a try.

VANG VIENG: ENDLESS CAVES
Vang Vieng treated us with a little riverside bungalow, called "the Other Side".  A little town that had a bad reputation of drunken Westerns, tubing - and dying!!- down the river. The restaurants have been made inaccesible from the water, the alcohol has been - attempted to at least - banned and the town has become much quieter. By 20:00 o'clock they do turn on the loud music, but the real partyscene vanished. Good for us! We spent some more days than planned, thinking, watching the sunsets and trying to sort out our thoughts.

It was worthwhile doing a kayak-cave-black water tubing- trip to set our minds on something else, where the best of it all was the 500 m long dark cave that is flooded: It makes a fun tubing ride! I hitched a ride attached to Jan's tube, with the result of me freezing my butt off as I didn't paddle :) Stupid. Nothing for those that are claustrophobic!! And helmets? Overrated?

It's a long way to the end of the cave and back- it feels endless!! But really cool!!:)

We took a scooter out to the Tham Pou something cave, nicknamed the blue lagoon. It's an enormous cave that you can explore on your own, after you've managed the many steps up. Behind a reclining Buddha in the middle of a huge hall, the red arrows guide you to a pitch black area with a 20 meter high ceiling of stalactites. Impressive! just watch the "danger" sign next to a hole that goes so deep you don't even see the bottom. Lao security :)
If we just wouldn't have lost Jan's hat, it would have been perfect. We hate it when that happens, especially with things that we are attached to.

But the best in Vang Vieng were our sandwich-ladies (really, that is how they are marked on the map!!). "come on man!" After 4 days of loyally ordering a chicken sandwich for breakfast, lunch, dinner (and those in between!) with the same lady, the sandwiches grew to the double size and we had free bananas all the time! Respect for the ladies - they work from 07:00 to 23:00!!!

LUANG PRABANG: MONKS IN THE MORNING AND PLAYING TARZAN
The airconditioned reclining seated  "nightbus" to Luang Prabang turned out to be a crappy old Toyota. Thankfully, it was only 3 of us - so a bench each. We waited...and waited...and waited. In the end the 3rd person joined 1,5 hour too late...or 0,5 an hour early in her perspective. They didn't bother to tell us that the 20:00 and 22:00 bus had too little people, and they simply "merged" the two..... Lao communication!!! So we had a few more sandwiches and then finally headed off. At 02:30 we are woken up. Luang Prabang. Not the promised 07:00....sigh.... We decide against a hostel (we took amore expensive nightbus to save the cost of that!!!) and slept on a bench. There was nothing open anyway :).

It did mean that we were up early enough to see the monks' alms procession around 06:30. They do it all over South-East Asia, but in Luang Prabang it is the most coordinated and obvious (or touristy?) Long lines of orange clad monks march the streets, having their tins filled with food by people kneeling on carpets. What is too much, they donate to the poor.

Probably the other most touristy thing to do is to go to the Kuangsi Waterfalls for a dive in the blue lagoons. But it's beautiful, and so is the scootertrip thereto. After a 100 meter steep climb, you can wade through the water at the top of the waterfall, looking down the steep falls. A refreshing dive into the water afterwards was really welcome!!  Swinging from the vine of a tree (OK, it actually was just a rope) into the pond, from 3 meters above the water was cool! If wouldn't have wrecked Mar's neck for the next 2 days it would have been even better. But time heals everything.

Slowly we felt that we needed to move on. The flexibility we had before has been limited since we booked our flight to Australia. We really started to like the Lao people, who are pretty relaxed, fair in negotiating and smiling a lot. Their lack of communication (or understanding), their- almost naive - way in dealing with security, it all fades when their bright grin is put on their faces.

Somehow we lost another row of items: Jan's hat (as we mentioned before), one of our point-it booklets, and worse, our Laos Lonely Planet. We were so darn lucky that one of the Australian girls we met gave us her copy!!! Thanks again! You can definitely travel without the guide, and surely none of the prices are correct anymore when the book is published (everything changes so fast!!) but for maps, and finding transport the book was indispensable. Ah yes, and for avoiding guesthouse ranked nr. 1, as we noticed in Thailand.

To get out of Laos, we took the slow boat on the Mekong River to the border crossing at Huay Xai / Chiang Kong. (By the way the most unproblematic and cheapest border.) 2 days cruising, on a noisy longboat. We managed to get the best seats, out of the wind and far from the - open!!- engine. :) only because we were persistent and waited until the lady of the official ticket office was present. Anyone else, including the official "navigation" office tries to rip you off. So we got reserved seats with our name on it :) Magnificent! The first time something actually worked!!!

We bought sticky rice from the friendly old lady that waited on the shore during one of the stops... Otherwise we did not much more than playing cards, reading, drawing and enjoying the view!! Blend out the noise (hurray I have oropax :) !) and it's a perfect relaxing two day trip. On the second day we had RAIN, but of course only for 15 min when the boat leaves and just before it arrives!! Pouring down, so we had to close the plastic covers. When we arrived in Huay Xai, it rained so heavily we had to run for it. The Laos people seemed to be even more surprised about rain in the DRY season! They said never happened before - so much to "no" climate change :)) We took the first guesthouse we could get :) and got our umbrella "borrrowed" or better said - stolen. 6 months I carry this bloody thing around, use it once and then it got nicked. Such irony. But it's another 200 gramms I can spend on souvenirs now :)

And then we were out again, just about when we were able to count in another language, we left again.

Neung (1): had to take one of the most difficult decisions; to not return.
Song (2): the amount of foot & back massages we had :)
Saam (3): items lost. We lost more things than in any of the other countries
Sii (4): amount of sandwiches in one day; more than we did during the whole trip.
Ha (5): the number of times we had to ask someone before we got an answer that makes sense.
Hok (6): the 6th Asian country, the 15th in total (other than DE and NL) on the list.
Jet (7): the number of steps of the beautiful Kuangsi waterfall.
Paat (8) + Kao (9) = 17: the amount of days we stayed in total.
Sip (10): One of the best words for negotiating :)
and finally Song Sip Hok (26): the amount of people that fit in one car with kayaks on top.

More stories promised about Thailand, hopefully a bit sooner!