same same but different

In Vientiane we spend the following day walking around and visiting the main highlights. They have a sort of arc de triumph like in Paris. From a distance it looks pretty impressive but once you approach it, you can see that it was never completely finished (because of all the wars). And on the inside they had nothing but souvenir shops! From the top you had nice views of the city tough.
The golden stupa is a golden temple which looks beautiful from far, but far from beautiful. The gold is coming off and the black layer becomes more and more visible.
Except from that we indulged ourselves with nice food (real bread, pizza, pasta... the usual western share) which they had plenty off that in Vientiane!

We left early and took a public bus to vang vieng. They crammed the bus with people, food ... but it took 5 hours to get there (which is the same as the VIP bus that costs 3 times as much). As we got out off the bus we were immediately stunned by the scenery (Beautiful karst mountains)

We found ourselves a really nice guesthouse to stay and we bumped into Lauren who was there already for a day of 5 (she tends to get stuck in places like that).
Vang vieng is real touristy place, lots of backpackers come here to visit the caves, do some rafting, rock-climbing but the mayor draw is tubing.
After signing your life away, they drive you a couple of kilometers outside the village where you get in a big tractor tube and float down the river. The water is pretty cold but the days are hot so as long as there is sun it’s perfect.
Locals have build wooden bars along the way were music comes out of the boxes, beerlao is sold and there are some bigass swings to jump (I’ll send some movies off it!! ). There is a great atmosphere! We had a lot of fun!Lauren did it for the third time so she knew where the biggest swings and the best bars so we got stuck there. And they are in the first 500 off meters so when the sun started to get down behind the mountains, we decided to peddled till the first tuk tuk stop and got out ;-)
A couple of days later we went tubing again bu this time we left just in time and managed to do the whole 4 km to vang vieng. it was quite hard because there were almost no rapids.(it is the dry season so not that much water) so we had a lot to peddle. But there were people selling beer along the way which eased the pain.
The rest off the days we actually did nothing except laying in tv bars and watch movies, endless episodes off friends, eat and drink. To be honest we visited 1 cave, but that was it... tv bars are something strange, you just gotta see it

After a couple of days it was time to move on. We took a bus to luang prabang which is up north. The views were some of the best we have seen here: huge mountains and little villages with streams running through them. Absolutely amazing. LP is the main tourist centre in Laos.

After almost 8 hours of bus we finally got there. We had the usual task of wandering around and finding a guesthouse that was not full or too pricey. It took more then an hour but we finally found a place that had 2 affordable rooms left.
Luang Prabang is a beautiful city with a lot of world heritage listed buildings, which adds to its charm although tourists seem to outnumber the locals. It is a very quiet place with everything, except from a couple of bars, closing at around 10pm. And as it is with the major tourist destinations, everything is really expensive here (accommodation, food, souvenirs). But the food here is great!

The 3 of us spend the first day visiting a lot of temples and the royal palace museum. In some of the temples there are still monks living and some of them could speak surprisingly well English.Every night there is a big night market which Lauren and Laura loved and they both ended up spending a lot off money buying stuff.

Today we took a tuk tuk 30 km south to visit a beautiful waterfall. There is another nice one closer but during the dry season there is almost no water falling down so... The one we visited had bears and a beautiful tiger walking around in a huge fenced off areas. They were taken from poachers when they were still cubs. It was sad to seem them behind a fence but at least they are better off now (as in still alive).

We said goodbye to Lauren for the 3rd time. We will meet again on koh pag nan in thailand within a couple of weeks.

The plan was to hire 2 motorbikes here and tour around the north and northeast for 10 days or so. But since a couple of years it is forbidden for tourists to rent motorbikes here because there have been some accidents around LP. Probably with drunk tourists going to the waterfalls and back. So now we booked a bus to a place in the east. This means 10 hours on a public bus as it is the only affordable transportation going there (minibus is 20 dollars each and we don’t even mention flying there). But we should be able to rent a motorbike there.

We have to be in Bangkok by the 16th because we find out that the 18th and 19th there is a big festival. The line up on the 18th is dEUS (can you believe that??), ian brown, franz ferdinand, and the self-declared-best -band -in –the- world FUCKIN Oasis!! So we are going to order some tickets.
Hope everybody is doing great and don’t forget to enjoy yourselves!