a year of travel: Lovely Laos, Lousy Laos

This blog is about my brief trip to Laos, the lousy and lovely....

The first part of the journey was the boat. We bought a package deal in Chiang Mai, for a slow boat river cruise to Luang Prabang, Laos. From Chiang Mai my mom and I took a bus to the Thai-Laos border, formed by the Mekong River. We stayed a night in a cheap and not-so-nice guesthouse on the Thai side, included in the (quite lousy) package we had bought in Chiang Mai. The next day we and the whole big tourist group with numerous package deals set out across the border.
The crossing was pretty painless, though instead of forming nice lines on the Lao side, everything was a big blob of humans rushing to get their visas and get going. We did so and exchanged some of our Thai baht for Lao kip. Then we were taken to the boat. After waiting around for a while, we finally got on the boat. The seats were not hard benches as we had been told, but old seats from mini buses. Then we headed out.
The boat trip was lovely. We cruised through the pretty country side, and passed many local people washing or fishing on the sandy beaches. That night after six hours on the boat, we pulled into Pak Beng (lousy) to stay the night there. We were greeted by touts, offering rooms for the night.... And the travel agency in Chiang Mai had said we would have a hard time finding a place to stay, that there was no money exchange and no Baht was excepted. Of course there was a money changer and they even took Baht at most places, and probably US dollars. The kip is a fairly unstable currency so dollars and baht are used a lot.
   We stayed the night in a mediocre guest house an the next morning headed out to Luang Prabang with a German/Colombian couple. When we arrived we went to a more pricey but very nice guesthouse. In the evening we ate at the night market. The next day we parted ways and my mom an I went to see a friend from Eugene, Karen.We met at her massage course area in the country and after that went to see a beautiful waterfall.
   That evening with the couple from the boat we found a great restaurant a little way away from the main area and very hard to find. The food though, was delicious, serving a small menu of Lao and western food. The chef had been to Europe so it was authentic. The next day the couple left and we went wat (temple) hopping. The main one was on top of a hill in the town and provided a great view. The rest of the day was spent relaxing. We had switched to a cheaper guesthouse then. The next day we took a kayak trip down the nearby Nam Khan. We started out early while it was still cool. We and our guide passed elephants and locals bathing in the river. At around noon we stopped for lunch which was uneventful. We continued on and at some points the river and surrounding area was so quiet you could hear a coin drop in to the water downstream
   That was a fun conclusion an the next day we left to Vang Vieng. VV is more of a party town and in the main area are restaurants playing reruns of dumb TV episodes, in other words nothing interesting. The other side of the river was quiet and pretty but there was no internet over there and we needed that. We stayed two nights there and were glad to move on, to Vientiene, the capital. The roads were terrible and we bumped along to the bus station. It was a bit out of town and we had to take local transport to the main area. As we were waiting for our driver the bus slowly, but with gaining speed, started to roll backwards towards a pond. Fortunately the driver stopped it before it crashed.
Vientiene turned out to be rather boring. We stayed at a nice cheap geusthouse and saw the main attraction, Pha That Luang, a giant golden tower. We were glad to leave in a few days time.The crossing went smoothly and we were back into Thailand.