After our stint in the mountainous hippie town of Pai we took on a three day journey to reach our first destination of Laos, Luang Probang. Getting to Louang Probang involved first 9 hours on a bus followed by an overnight stay at a guesthouse, then a ferry to the border crossing, then a long wait before 7 hours on a slow boat going down the river, then another night at a guesthouse, then another 8 hours on the slowboat. What I am getting at is that we were wiped out by the time we got there. The slowboat wasn's all that bad though. Drunken locals were insistant on everybody being as drunk as them so almost everybody in the boat had atleast one free shot. Also we made many friends that we would end up hanging out with later.
Louang Probang is a historic town with many old temples and things of that nature. We rented a scooter here to get to a waterfall that all the tourists hang out at. We went to visit one of the temples and noticed that there was a woman selling small birds in bamboo cages. For the equivalent of 3 dollars you can buy a pair of these birds and set them free. Just like everything else in asia, it is supposed to give you good luck.
Next we took a nauseating day long bus to the next town of Vang Vieng. This town sucks tourists in for months on end sometimes. The main attraction of Vang Vieng is tubing down the river. For about $6 you can rent a tube and have a tuk-tuk drive you upstream a ways. The river is lined with bars and other stands trying to sell you things on their "happy menu". Many of these bars have large dangerous waterslides, rope swings, and platforms to jump off. There is an average of one tourist death a year from getting too drunk or "happy" and trying to use a rope swing they clearly shouldn't. We heard that some of the locals will get kick backs from the hospital if their dangerous water apparatus gets enough business for them. We only managed one day of tubing and one day of puttering around on a scooter before we headed to the capital city of Vientienne.
For us our trip to Vientienne was not much more than a place to cross the border back into Thailand. We did however visit an interesting museum which gives a history of Laos from the earliest humans to be discovered to the war with the "American Imperialists and their Puppets" Oddly enough this museum had several confiscated drugs on display which included a .5 kilogram package of heroine.
From there we headed back to Bangkok and next we are going to Krabi to check out some rock climbing on the beach.
P.S. search for vang vieng tubing on Youtube for an example of this madness.
