Lovely Laos

Heylo lovelies,

- As Lonely Planet says, if countries were tuk tuks, Thailand would take you to your destination via a silk shop, Vietnam would run you down for your custom and in Laos you'd need to find the tuk tuk, wake up the tuk tuk driver and try to persuade him to do some work!

Laos is so French in feel (hardly surprising), with lovely bakeries, coffees and most importantly, the people are so nice! So gentle, friendy and helpful, such a contrast to horrid Hanoi. There is very little traffic in Vientiane or Vang Vien, so we can cross the road without praying first, we have pavements to walk on (rather than to park tuk tuks on), and accommodation and food is cheap and tasty.

Vientiane is so quiet and calming for any city, let alone a capital city. On the Mekong River, (the other side is Thailand), it is so hot it feels like 40 degrees celsius (according to yahoo weather) - no wonder we found it slightly on the sweaty side! A pleasure to be, to walk around and to sit and watch the world go by.

Unfortunately the first hotel we stayed in, in Vientiane, Syri 1, had awful bed bugs, so I hardly slept which wasn't helped by the bus ride the day before. Shattered and exhausted, we changed hotels to a beautiful one instead, and set about enjoying ourselves. The temple we saw had thousands of small niches, each with 2 Buddhas in them, (they were silver, now are clay painted gold) and was so peaceful and tranquil with its gardens, despite being in the city centre.

So this morning we took a local bus to Vang Vien. The bus was fine - for only 4 hours. Such friendly driver and ticket collector, and there were fans on the ceiling for when the bus was stopped. Haz and J were slightly confused until they realised that there were 2 chickens underneath their seat (luckily they didn't crush them!) but the journey passed without incident, although we did need to pick up the passengers from the earlier bus, which had broken down, and so was slightly squashed afterwards...

In Vang Vien at the moment, which is a small town catering for backpackers. Restaurants, bars, hotels, travel agencies and internet, - everything we could need, plus Friends playing constantly in the cafes and restaurants! (We didn't watch 3 hours of it this afternoon in the restaurant we had lunch in)...

So going tubing tomorrow - basically floating down the river, being pulled into various bars on the riverside before heading to Luang Prabang the following day. Time is getting rather tight so we're having to go relatively quickly. But Laos is gorgeous, and so much nicer to be in!

Lots of love from us all,
Al xxxxxx