Luang Nam Tha

Luang Nam Tha is a very small town in northern Laos and really the only reason to go here is for a trek to the nearby national park. Which is what I spent three days doing.

The trek itself was really good it started off from a local village where we picked up our second guide and more importantly our cook for the first night. The trekking itself was fairly easy and through some very beautiful jungle. The only downside with the first day was that upon reaching the camp for the first night there was nothing to do there; no fire, no where to explore, and nobody brought cards or a book. So needless to say when the sun went down at about 6:30pm it was bed time shortly afterwards as we only had one candle to give us light.

The second day of trekking was similar to the first although it became very muddy in sections thanks to water buffalos living in the region. For the second night we were joined by a different cook from a different ethnic group to sample some different local food. The second camp site was also in an abandoned village so we were able to have a nice fire and go exploring so there were things to entertain us here.

The final day was spent trekking through more mud back out of the jungle to Luang Nam Tha. The trekking here was excellent: through very scenic jungle, not too hard, the food was delicious, and the only downside was having to constantly pick leeches off of ourselves.

After Luang Nam Tha I went to the town of Houay Xai which is on the border with Thailand. Here I spent a couple of days but the town has nothing to do so I didn't stay very long and quickly took the ferry across the Mekong river and into Thailand.




Trekking through the jungle.






Standing infront of a section of bamboo forest.



The sleeping accomadation for the two nights.






One of the houses that we used as a camp on the second night of the trek.











The guides preparing lunch on the first day of the trek: sticky rice with some pork, vegetables and chili sauce all eaten using our fingers off of bananna leaves.









A view from just outside Luang Nam Tha of the rice fields at sunset.

Luang Prabang

For anyone who is very much into culture and history then Luang Prabang is a must to go to. The center of the city has been proclaimed a world heritage site since there are so many wats there, there seem to be thousands of them.

I spent a day in Luang Prabang just wandering around the city itself and stopping to visit some of the wats. It was a pretty good day but for myself once I've seen 3 or 4 wats then they all start to look the same. So needless to say I didn't see all of the wats that the town had to offer.

Surrounding the city are some nice waterfalls and caves that can be visited in a day trip, although I split it into 2 half day trips since I didn't get up in time to catch the boat to the caves on the first morning. The waterfall that I went to and the water level wasn't too high so we could climb up to the top of it and stand right on the edge of the waterfall looking down with the water rushing around our feet. At the bottom were sets of smaller falls with pools that were deep enough to swim in so most of the time at the falls was spent swimming in the pools and jumping off of the smaller sets of falls. A great way to spend the afternoon on a hot day. As we were leaving the falls we took a little detour and found a cage of 7 black bears, apparently it was an operation that saved orphaned bears and kept them so they didn't die. The caves that I visited the next day were fairly unimpressive after all of the caves around Vang Vieng. The only slightly interesting part of the caves was that there were thousands of Buddha statues in them.

On my last morning in Luang Prabang I got up at sunrise (5:30am) to see the parade of monks collecting their alms. The entire procession was fairly interesting to watch as hundreds of monks walked down the street collecting rice from locals that lined the street. The only drawback was that there were so many tourists there taking pictures that it didn't seem very real anymore and almost more of a tourist attraction as even some of the tourists joined in giving out alms and getting pictures of them doing it.







One of the many wats in Luang Prabang.









The monks receiving their daily alms.














Myself jumping off of one of the smaller waterfalls (about 10 feet high).







Standing in front of the main waterfall.

Vang Vieng

I'm fairly certain that Vang Vieng is unlike any other town in Laos (and maybe Southeast Asia). The town itself is pretty small but a major destination on any backpackers trip as there are tons of activities around here and some pretty good night life too.

The main attraction in Vang Vieng is to go tubing down the Nam Song. Loads of people rent large inner tubes in the town and take them up river where they start the trip back down. The activity was described to me as pub crawling mixed with a water park which is a very accurate description as along the river several bars have set up to allow you to drink beerlao and lao whiskey. Also at all of these bars are swings, slides and ziplines into the river. All in all the activity is very fun but there are many incidents that occur (usually from people who get too drunk so as long as you keep your wits about yourself the day is very enjoyable).

Also around Vang Vieng are several caves which can be reached on bike. I did this for one of my days there and although most of the caves aren't too impressive a few of them are. One cave, called blue lagoon, also contians a nice lagoon in front of it that you can go swimming in to cool off, a great activity in the heat. Although the caves themselves weren't very impressive the ride through the country side was stunning. The dirt road that I followed went through green rice fields with limestone hills rising just beyond the edge of the fields, also the road went through a couple of small villages. The only downside to my day of cycling was that on my way back it started to absolutly pour. So I spent an hour waiting for it to pass in a Lao shop drinking beerlao with the people working there.

The only downside to the town of Vang Vieng is that there doesn't seem to be any real Laos left in it because it's such a party town. The restaurants all seem to have the exact same menu (consisting mostly of western food) and they all play the TV show Friends over and over. So the average person spends the day tubing down the riverm then they sit in these restaurants watching friends for a few hours before going out to the bar. It appears that everybody comes here just to party which can be fun for a couple of days but not many more.

In Vang Vieng there are also plenty of opportunities to go rock climbing, kayaking down the river (I'm told the tubing is better though) and rafting; but I didn't partake in any of these just the caves and a couple of times down the river in a tube before I decided to move on and see more of the real Laos.

Vientiane

The bus ride from Hanoi to Vientiane was anything but enjoyable; however, I feel that it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The trip started by boarding a bus with three other tourists and finding the bus over three quarters full of cargo (not entirely sure what). It still didn't seem too bad at the start as there was still plenty of room on the bus for us four tourists and the 10 or so locals.

Before leaving Vietnam though the bus stopped a few more times to pick up even more cargo and a few more passengers. By the time we got to the boarder the bus was absolutely jam packed with cargo inside and out. The top of the bus had things tied to it about 5 feet high and it was almost impossible to move inside the bus. The rest of the journey wasn't as bad as the Vietnam side as the bus didn't stop to pick up any more cargo along the way. But the journey from Hanoi to Vientiane took just over 26 hours, far more than the 16-20 that we had all been told before leaving Hanoi.

So for anyone else thinking of doing the journey I would recommend spending the extra money to fly.

The city of Vientiane very different than anything in Vietnam. Everything here is so quiet and almost slow, the locals are definitely very laid back. However, in the capital city itself there is very little to see: a few Wats and the vertical runway (something similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris it was built with concrete purchased from the US that was supposed to be used to construct a runway at the airport).

Additionally the entire country has a curfew of midnight so in the evenings everything shuts down. Wandering around outside after dinner makes the city seem dead as there is almost no one else on the streets. All of this together means that Vientiane has to be the quietest capital city in the world.

With the fact that the city is pretty dead and not too much here to do I only stayed for a day and a half before leaving for Vang Vieng. Additionally it was in this city that my memory card stopped working properly so I can't post pictures for this post yet but the next one will definitely have some.

Problems with Memory Card

Alright so it seems that I might have something wrong with one of my cameras memory cards. When the card is in the camera everything works fine: I can take pictures and see all of the pictures that I've taken to date. However, when I try to plug the memory card into a computer there is a problem with it. I can't open the DCIM folder to access any of the pictures. When I check the properties of the DCIM folder it says it's an application with a .exe instead of a file folder.

So I'm not sure what to do to try and fix the problem as I don't want to lose the photos on it. If anyone has any ideas of how to fix the problem please let me know because until I can fix it then I can't upload any pictures to my blog for the rest of Vietnam (Sapa and Halong Bay).

Until then I'll use my other memory card and continue trying to fix the problem on my own.