Breaking news: As some of you know, our laptop have been broken after a wild and bumpy motorbike ride, but the great news is that we got it fixed. We were extremely lucky and found a guy, in Savannakhet that could speak prober english, and fix our laptop at the same time. We used 3 hours at his shop, and got all our saved stuff out of the laptop, before he reinstalled all programs, gave us every program that we needed, and even let us use his own computer meanwhile we were waiting. He was super friendly and helpful, and very interested in getting to know us better. Erik asked him out for beers afterwards, but instead he invited us to come to his favorite restaurant, together with his wife and two daughters. We would pay the lunch and that’s all he wanted for helping us out with the computer. We drove in their big 4 wheeled truck out of town, where no other tourist come, there was a few floating restaurants on a lake, all with small bamboo houses, that fitted a whole family, and then we sat on a carpet on the floor, and enjoyed all the food they ordered. A day full of happiness.. Well, back to where we finished last time..!!
Wednesday 6th Nov.
After swallowing our breakfast, a shared baguette with omelet, our tuk-tuk driver waited for us and should drive us to the bus station. We picked up more people on the way, and the tuk-tuk got really loaded, with both heavy luggage and overweight older english tourists. The tuk-tuk was driving very slow at one point, and we quickly discovered why – the left back tire was punctured! The driver waved us out of the tuk-tuk and said 5 min. I was waiting for another tuk-tuk to pick us up, but this guy was so use to switching the tires that it actually didn’t take longer than the 5 min, he first told us. I was impressed, and shocked to see how old the tire was, there was absolutely no grip or rubber left on that tire, but either way he was probably just gonna go and get the hole fixed, and then use it for another year or two. The new tire was normal European standard. We made it to the bus station in time, and off cause the bus were around 30 min. delayed. There’s a saying about Lao, shorted down to LPDR = Laos Please Don’t Rush. It’s a special peaceful mind they have, it’s shown in their way of living, the traffic and their general approach of life. And you can feel that people are never in a rush here. And you should always depend on being delayed, no matter what you do here.
The busride to Vang Vieng only took 6 hours, a mix between dirt and concrete roads, in mountains most of the way. I think this driver forgot the saying LPDR, cause he was driving insanely crazy at one point, and even speeded up when we drove through villages, where small kids was playing in the side of the road. We were relief when another passenger told him to slow down, after almost hitting a big truck in a curve. That’s about the first time that both me & Erik haven’t spoken up when something is wrong. We met a german couple (Florian & Kathrin) in the bus, and since we didn’t make any research on affordable hotels, we decided to walk with them to the guesthouse they had found interesting.
It was very good looking bungalows, with bathroom, fan and terrace, but sadly they smelled of mould, like a lot of places do here, because the humidity is so high all year around. The manager quickly lowed the price from 60000 to 50000kip, so I already made up my mind and wanted to stay there, but Erik was full of energy so he wanted to have a look around, to see if we could find another place that didn’t smell, actually only because he knew I was gonna whine after a while in that smell, but I’m hard like a rock if I have already made my decision, so we ended up in the bungalows.
Now we could also hang out with the german couple, and we really needed some social life after being almost just the two of us, through the week in Luang Prabang.
Vang Vieng is known by young people for its tubing (a big inner tube from a truck that you drift on in the river for 2-3 hours). There’s several people drowning every year, because they drink too much and then get carried away with the current or hitting rocks. Last year there were 22 young people killed there, so a lot of the bars and swings have been closed down now. It’s a great party scene, which is probably also the reason why every bar and restaurant in the town shows American sitcoms, mostly “Friends”, but a few also shows “Family Guy” and "South Park". There’s a relaxed atmosphere, and almost every restaurant have the low tables and comfortable cushions, just to make you feel like home, and then of cause a lot of young tourists (and us)!!
At night when we got home to our guesthouse, we were amazed over all the geckos in the reception and outside the house, they were literally everywhere, we watched them and talked about that I actually wasn’t afraid of them anymore, they are way nicer than spiders.. So I didn’t bother the one I saw in our bungalow just a few minutes after, but what did bother me, was when Erik jumped out of the bathroom with his pants around his knee , quickly closed the door and told me I shouldn’t go out there, and I didn’t wanna see what he just saw. Now I got really terrified, because I could tell that he didn’t finish his toilet visit, since his pants was still around his knee, something really big and scary must be out there. I insisted that I wanted to see it, and it turned out that a big spider came up from the water drain in the floor, and was apparently ready to attack Erik, as the predator it is. I’m still laughing inside of how scared he looked when he came out from the bathroom. Erik poured water on it, and it began to jump towards us, I hit it with a shoe I had in my hand, and that spider is never going to see daylight again. That night none of us had a good sleep, me basically because of my arachnophobia and the cold fan, and Erik because of the noisy rooster outside (or that’s what he says, but I bet you, it was the spider that kept him awake!)
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| Flat tire getting fixed |
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| Livingroom/restaurant |
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| Bungalow with free tea, coffee and bananas.. |
Thursday 7th Nov.
We drove 7 km to the beautiful Blue Lagoon, had a swim there and relaxed in the area most of the day. Me, Erik & Florian also walked to the big cave Tham Phu Kham, and crawled our way through the big slippery rocks, deep in the cave with only the light from our camera, and the sound of our own breath. A really amazing experience.
On the way back onto town, we visited the organic farm, just outside of Vangvieng, its well-known for their world class mulberry shakes and pancakes, and we really understand why. In general all fruit shakes here a freaking brilliant, I never tasted so good shakes before. They are all fresh made, of real fruits, not the syrup stuff we get at home and only cost 5-10000kip (4-7kr).
I had become dark before we left the farm, so if we hadn’t brought our mosquito lotion, we would have been eaten up by them. They are most active at sunset and sunrise, so you better remember to put that smelly stuff on before it’s too late.
We had dinner at “Otherside Restaurant”, together with F & K. Lao have a special dessert, with sweet sticky rice and your choice of fruit, it’s actually just rice cooked with milk and added sugar (a’la risengrød). I hope that I can find something like this around Christmas time, so I at least can feel home for a little while.
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| Tuk-tuk drivers hard living style |
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| Cave |
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| While everybody else is just in their swimming wear, these asians are covering up as if the sun would kill them |
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| The blue lagoon |
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| Blue lagoon |
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| Beautiful motorbike trip |
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| Sunset by the river and children playing in the sand |
Blue Lagoon Video
Friday 8th Nov.
We had made a half appointment with a rock climbing center in the morning, but only if Eriks knee had got better. He had trouble with it after our jogging and specially after climbing in the cave. When we woke up in the morning, we both felt tired, and wanted to stay in bed. and skip the rock climbing. Imagine that you can decide exactly what you want to do, and that no one is gonna miss you at work, no responsibility and no duty that’s needs to be done. You only have to decide which restaurant you wanna have breakfast/lunch/dinner at, remember to go to the toilet (unless you’re swimming anyway), remember to put sunscreen on, and decide whether you should do a little bit, or absolutely nothing the rest of the day. That’s how life is treating us, at the moment and that’s uncompareable to the life we lived in Denmark.
Anyway we got up, when we felt like it, and had breakfast before we were off to do the famous tubing on the Nam Song river.
At first the current seemed really strong, but when we got in the water, we wanted it to go faster. We didn’t even tube for 1 min, before the first bar turned up on the right hand side, and 2 min after, the second one turned up and we decided to check it out and have a beer, and a free shot. It reminded me most of a festival bar, with loud music, wooden furniture, basketball field, volleyball, lightly dressed young people and loads of liquor. While drinking our beer, we both mention a few friends that we would have loved to experience this with.
Well off we go.. There was some tubing that needed to be done. The scenery was gorgeous and charming, and we enjoyed it while cruising down the river. It had become cloudy, so the last part was a bit cold, from my point of view. It took 2½ hour, and just before the tour ended, Erik discovered a snake crossing the river, just a few meters away from us. It was fascinating to see, but I was also happy it was in the end of the trip, otherwise I would have been afraid for more snakes on the way.
We booked a bus to Vientiane the next morning, and payed half the price, to make sure that the guy would book it for us. We don’t like to pay in advance, but sometimes we have to.
The night went by, with writing blog and hanging out with Florian & Kathrin.
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| View from our balcony, 50000kip (35kr) per night |
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| Tubing, Nam Song river |
Tubing Video
After entering the bus at 9.35, we drove around town in circles, for the first half hour, to pick up more people. I don’t get why the minibus don’t make a special route they drive, instead of wasting gas. But I think it’s not the point that we shall understand everything Asian people does.
We found a good located place to stay, near by the city center of Vientiane. The room was extremely hot, and there were no windows, it was horrible to stay in there, without the fan turned on, even just for a short period. The city didn’t seem nice to us, I missed the atmosphere from the smaller towns, but anyway there was some attractions that we wanted to see, so why not stay a few days.
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| 4 food stalls offering the exact same food.. Who mentioned copy cats..!! |
Sunday 10th Nov.
So the next day we got up early, to catch a bus from the bus station to the famous Buddha Park. We got scammed by the bus driver, but only because we read that it would be 8000kip per person, so when we asked him about the price he didn’t say anything, and then Erik mentioned 8000kip, and the bus driver agreed. Quickly after another round-eyed entered the bus, and we overheard that she only paid 6000kip. Erik confronted him about the price we paid, and he quickly turned and gave him the money back. I can’t believe how sneaky they are, cause when we counted the money he still didn’t gave us enough back, so Erik had to go and complain again. Then we realized that the bus wasn’t going straight to the Buddha Park, but dropped us off at the border to Thailand, and we had to take a tuk-tuk from there. They are just trying to rip us off all the time. We regret that we didn’t hire a motorbike for the trip, that would have been less stressful and probably also cheaper in the end.
We ended up sharing the tuk-tuk with 3 german girls, and made a great deal on the price. When we entered the park, they wanted an extra fee (on top of the entrance fee), if we wanted to take pictures. We didn’t pay, but got some amazing pictures. It was beautiful and nice to see, but it was mostly a photo park. There wasn’t any stories connected to all the different statues, not that we are into the history point of view, but I expected that they would be some signs with information on. Well, less to read and understand for us.
We decided to hire a motorbike when we got back into town, there were a few things that we wanted to see, and it would be easiest and cheapest to reach with a motorbike. So in the afternoon after finding a bike, we went to Patuxai, arc de triomphe (triumfbue), which is a small version of the french one. We drove to Pha That Luang, a beautiful golden temple, where there was a big festival starting, with a big market, music and performances.
At night we went to an Indian restaurant, Nazim, mentioned in our bible, that serves the best Indian food in the city, We don’t think we ever ate Indian food before, and we definitely didn’t expect it to be that good. But we can't hardly say it clear enough. Go there if you ever get the change.
When we got back to our room, we wanted to book a flight from Siem Reap to Bangkok, but apparently we CAN’T pay with our creditcards on the internet anymore, only if we have a phone that we can receive messages on. So that was really frustrating for us, since we knew that the cheap flight would be sold out quickly. We didn’t know what to do, and sweared over the new system, cause that’s really gonna be an issue for us, every time that we book flights/hotels over the internet. Luckily this time my mom was online on skype, and we could have the code send to her phone, and she helped us out of our misery, which was a huge help. Thanks mom.
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| Buddha Park |
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| My little stoned mermaid.. |
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| More Buddha park |
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| Patuxai, arc de triomphe (triumfbue) of Vientaine |
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| Somebody actually has a work to be done!! |
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| It's suppose to be food, and delicious, but for us it seemed at little to syntetic.. |
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| A part of Pha Thang Luang temple |
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| Sunset by Mekong river.. And no it's not photoshopped.. |
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| Great and modern street kitchen.. Yummi |
Monday 11th Nov.
We still had our rented motorbike for half a day, so we drove to see the Cope Center. It’s a center dedicated to all the victims of UXO (unexploded ordnance). From 1964-1973 the American dropped an estimated 260 million bombs over Lao, sadly 78 million of them failed to explode, and a lot of them are still in the fields, forest and small villages, ready to explode when people are getting near them. So this center is providing clinical help, training programs, artificial limbs and rehabilitation activities, for all the injured. A really interesting visit, and yet so unreal.
In the afternoon we were in for a treat and spoiled ourselves with a day pass in the biggest fitness center in the city. We each payed 65000kip (45kr), for fitness, ourdoor swimming pool and 1 hour Lao-style massage. What an awesome deal.
After taking another 4 million kip out of the bank, we decided to watch the sunset from the riverside, off cause with an ice cold beer in our hands.
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| Artificial limps from the Cope center |
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| A part of the sweet deal, in the local fitness center |
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| Kids.... |
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| It's 30 degrees and this woman is still wearing gloves, something is really wrong.. By the way, she's offering pedicure & manicure.. And didn't take no for an answer!! |
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| Kids playing with their soft guns |
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