The long long road to Laos.

With Koh Phi Phi, Thailand and an 18 hour bus ride now behind us we find ourselves in Laos, we never managed to get here the last time around but Sarah was well keen to come and we didn’t take much persuading.

Anywhere that wasn’t a bus would have seemed pretty fantastic after our epic journey all the way from Bangkok but in all honesty I wasn’t expecting to be charmed by Laos the way I have been, at the border we had to pay one of the biggest visa fees we have come across yet and normally if the border pisses me off then I take a lot more persuading to enjoy a country… But no. The journey from the border to Vang vieng was picturesque and we arrived just after 2 pm (we got on the bus in Bangkok at 7 pm the day before) and were dropped right outside a guest house, normally there are touts and tuk tuk drivers fighting for your attention and it’s like being a rabbit caught in headlights but not here. We got our bags and the guest house owner politely asked if we would like to see a room and that was that… 

From our balcony we can see out across most of Vang vieng, it’s a small town sitting in the shadows of soaring limestone hills similar to the ones around Phi Phi, with the infamous river (where tubing happens – more about that later) running between the two. Very quiet and sleepy, the town almost feels deserted at first – even the landscape feels chilled out because the clouds creeping over the top of the nearby hills even seem to be doing it lazily.

Bags dropped we were all keen to get out for a proper meal so we strolled up the road to a little place with a movie on and got stuck in. If there is one thing that you could never forget in Laos it’s the name of it’s national drink – Beer Laos, every restaurant has a beer Laos sign, table cloths ash trays and every shop has beer Laos T-shirts, signs umbrellas and anything else you could think of – everywhere you look, in every single view you will see at least one Beer Laos advertisement!

Needless to say after all that traveling we weren’t much good for anything, the girls decided they were going for a nap but I needed to hang it out and get my body clock back in tune so I rented a motorbike with the plan to go for a drive for a while until they woke up… Georgie is secretly a biker at heart and couldn’t bear for me to be gallivanting around the Laos country side without her so she blew away the cobwebs and got on the back.

Laos reminds me a lot of Cambodia, but it seems everyone has just a little more – it’s clearly not a rich country although when we passed through the capital city of Vientiane I saw several high end sports cars the likes of which I’ve never seen on our travels. There are no hassles here and everyone seems happy, I don’t mean friendly locals and smiley people I just mean in general they seem happy – with life maybe?

We took our shabby little moped from one side of town to the other passing beautifully rural scenes and always in the shadow of the stunning limestone hills, then we set off across a bridge towards the hills to get a closer look, the road was atrocious but it’s nothing super biker Aaron can’t handle and we bounced along next to rice fields enjoying the beautiful scenery with the only passing traffic consisting of cows… We only rented the bike for a couple of hours to get our bearings and feel for the new town and new country and by the time we returned it that nap that Georgie wanted to have had managed to catch up with her so off she went to bed – apart from dinner in the evening we didn’t manage to do anything else, I can never understand why travelling takes it out of you so much its not like we actually have to do any work but still by 9 pm it was most definitely time for bed…

So far so good Laos has charmed our pants off and we are excited to be in a new country, our friend Toby has touched down in Bangkok and although he has had a change of plans we should still be able to meet up sometime soon. Sadly Sarah is leaving tomorrow and we will be off exploring on our own for a while but Laos will be a place we love I think, it’s cheap too which is a good thing for what’s left of our budget.