LAOS!

When at the border for Laos we decided to kind of stick with 2 guys from our minibus, Andreas from Italy, and Freddy from Stockholme. After waiting for them to get their visas we had a decision of the public bus or a mini bus (which took some good few hours less) so we opted for mini bus, but had to find another 6 people to book one with us! And so this is where we got our Laos crew together! Added to us 4 we got Mike from Austria, Laura and Louis from Canada, Martin from Prague.

The trip, unfortunately, took about 12 hours on terrible roads, and after the van 'breaking' and the trip getting extended by hours everytime we asked how long left. Cause we didn't arrive in our destination of Luang Prabang until about 2am, Mike kindly booked us all into the hostel he was staying at cause we were all just going to find somewhere as we arrived but, 2am aint a good time to go exploring! The Spicy Laos Hostel was good though, very good price and very central.

We spent our first day there looking around, we went to the temple on top of the big hill in town, and the Palace Museum, and walked by the Mekong River. In the evening we went for dinner with Mike, Frodo, Martin and Linda (a new friend from Spicy:)) After dinner we all of course went to a bar, and some how got onto what our party tricks are! And thus we all got our new nicknames:

Linda Kondom
Martin Hairy Pussy
Mike Bendy
Frodo Deepthroat
Elliot 3 Nipples
Christy Retard (rude!)

Andreas turned up with his new Lao friend Hoi, and we all ended up in a tuk tuk to the local DISCOTECH. Which I have to say was pretty awesome, as I wasn't expecting much at all! While in there dancing away, Laura and Louis appeared from the bar!! WOOHOO! When the Disco closed we headed in a tuk tuk to the BOWLING ALLEY! So awesome, drunk bowling, causing havoc, mainly Elliot and Andreas getting in trouble on the lanes. Frodo soon dissapeared when he spotted some females and Andreas managed to rugby tackle Elliot onto the lane! When the bowling closed we headed back to Spicy. Awesome night out though!

This general pattern happened again another night, and we went to the same restaurant on the river and the same bar everynight for our giraff (tower) of beer Lao! Luang Prabang was ace fun. One morning we decided to go to the Alms Giving where loads of monks get up at 5am and accept food from locals on the street. This involved not getting drunk and getting up early, which was hard. We actually went out for a few drinks but still managed to get up, too much temptation! Frodo even managed it and his motto for the mornig was 'Fuck the Monks!'. Not 100% sure if it was worth the painful 5am wakeup, but I guess I will never see that again, just too many tourists! The nutella baguette helped though.

We also did a trip to the local waterfalls which was beautiful, even when ridiculously hungover!!!

Linda suddenly upped and left one morning when she discovered her flight hadn't been cancelled after she thought it was and rushed off with an hour til takeoff! We left Luang Prabang a day later, heading towards Vang Vieng, where we had heard so many stories and seen so many bruises! Turns out we all LOVED Vang Vieng and had such an ace time, we went tubing twice and got very drunk both times. The first time we didnt make it past Bar 3, the next time we bypassed the first set of bars so we didn't get 'stuck' there and headed downstream in our wonderful rubber rings and adventured to the mud volleyball, tug of war, and HUGE slide (on which Martin, who we dragged out for another day of tubing when he was pretty sure he was done in Vang Vieng, managed to rip his shorts open!!!) While the boys took part in all the manly things, me and Laura got free drinks for being ladies, and got drunk. Well so did the guys too, but they just hurt themselves while doing it! We ended up in Bucket Bar that night, and got free buskcts and danced all night!

After Vang Vieng we went separate ways with everyone, and headed towards the city Vientianne. We had a coach booked, but when we got on we were chucked off saying our tickets hadn't been booked properly and so had to get off cause there weren't enough seats! Well annoying. So to make sure we still got to leave that day we decided to get a jumbo, which we discovered was just a bigger tuk tuk, full of locals and stopping CONSTANTLY to pick up people or sacks of stuff. One guys ended up getting off cause he felt sick, and one woman looked like she was dying grogging/throwing up in a plastic bag!! ERGH! The journey took HOURS....and we got dropped off in a dark carpark full of tuk tuk drivers, right pain, but we were pissed off so didn't let em mess with us! They actually gave us a really cheap price for a change! WOO! We couldnt find somewhere very cheap to stay so we stayed in a nice hotel :) There wasn't much to do there considering it was a city, but we went to the Buddha park which was cool, hundreds of Buddha and Hindu statues all collected together and we went to a cultural show with music, dance and foood where Elliot got dragged up on stage to dance with them hehehe.

We then booked our travel to the 4,000 Islands (Si Phon Don) which involved an overnight 11 hour sleeper coach and a 3ish hour mini bus, then a boat to the island. Took quite a while and it was REALLY hot but Si Phon Don was lovely. Very relaxed and they have only had electricity for a couple of months, so nice and simple. On our first day there, we were sat in a bar and Laura and Louis appeared! How ace :) So we had dinner with them and arranged to go tubing down the river the following day, which we did, but it was SO HOT so didn't get too far before we headed to shore for a drink, and thats where i discovered I had burnt my legs so much! They were bright red...ergh! Very painful. Laura and Louis were leaving the next day so we had dinner with them again and said goodbye and said we would meet up in Cambodia. We had planed to leave for the border ourselves either that day or a day later, but my legs were so painful that we postponed it for a few days. Everything was pretty cheap there and the hut we were staying in was £3 a night between us so we weren't too bothered! But then as we were about to leave we realised we didn't hardly have any cash left! There were obviously no cash points on the islands, and there were non at the border!! So we didnt have enough to go straight to Cambodia...We had to go all the way upto Pakse which was a 3 hour drive away, which after our minibus kept breaking it took about 5 hours, we decided we couldn't be bothered going back for another 5 or 6 hour drive to the border for the then even more hours to a town!!!! Sick of buses....So we got a bus to Savannakhet and bought a plane ticket back to Bangkok (oooh flight - luxury!) SO we ended up not going to Cambodia!! We thought we would spend the money on the Southern Thai Islands instead. We do regret not going cause everyone says its amazing, and we still want to go, so NEXT TRIP!! :D