Broken Promises

okokokokokok, I know I PROMISED I would post about Laos about...19 days ago. ok crap, you got me, sorry, I guess I just haven't been as bored as I thought I'd be...I mean not that I need to be bored to update or anything, I just... yeah, I'm digging myself a hole here so I'll get on with what we did in Laos.

here goes:

SO, We arrived safely to Vientiane, Laos from Vietnam, a little dazed from the valium I guess, but as awake and happy as you would expect us to be after a 28 hour bus ride through the laos mountainside. Although, funny thing is, I took a few valium and it really helped me and Jo sleep. There were times when we would stop and get out and eat, and I remember those stops very clearly, but it only occured to me the next day that I had slept for 27 of the 28 hours we were traveling. One downside to the trip was the fact that I forgot my little guitar I bought in Saigon on one of the buses when we made an unexpected bus change at 2 am :(.
One thing that became very apparent right away was the enormous amount of Canadians that visit Laos. I mean, we'd just spent a month in Vietnam and met all of four, and on our bus into Laos there were no less than seven Canadians. From Vancouver no less.

Vientiane is a pretty boring place to visit actually. I mean, gorgeous, but there isn't much to do as far as tourism is concerned. Vientiane is the country's Capital City, and it is on one side of the Mekong River bordering Thailand. On one side of the river is Laos, and the other is Thailand. When we went it was dry season, so all but 50 meters of the kilometer wide riverbed was dried up, and children and tourists can been seen playing football(soccer, that is) throughout the day, and taking relaxing walks at sunset. Laos is also home to the delicious Nazim indian restaurant chain, and of the 3 days we spent in Vientiane, every other meal was at Nazim. We indulged in some Beer Laos(80 cents for a large bottle.) with the Candians we met on the bus and went to bed. The next couple of days were spent on a motorbike looking at the 2, I'm not joking, TWO tourist attractions there and eating more indian food than I thought was humanly possible. Kfir also emailed me explaining that China and Hongkong were too expensive to stay long andhe really missed traveling with Jo and I. A collective awwwwwwwww! was exhaled I assure you.
Kfir caught the first flight into Vientiane and we waited the extra day to meet him. The next day we left Vientiane to a tourist trap of a town called Vang Vieng.

Vang Vieng is the tourist town in Laos, if you know anyone who's been to South-East Asia, chances are they've chilled out and gone innertubing down the river in Vang Vieng. The tiny town is lined with bars/restaurants with beds instead of tables, and big screen teevees that play one of three things all day everday: Friends, The Simpsons or American movies. You can literally get up and sit down in the morning at a restaurant, order your three square meals, a lot of beer, and watch tv all day, without going farther than the bathroom. I assure you, we did not do this, we actually moved to another bar. Other than lie around drinking all day and laughing and Friends, the only other thing to do is sit around in an innertube and float down the river all day, AND drink lots of beer. Kfir, Jo, Rich, doogs and I(oh yeah, we met these to awesome autralians on the way to Vang Vieng fyi.) opted for a less carefree way to go down the river, which was getting a tour of some caves upriver and then Kyaking down instead of tubing. The cave was cool, we had to innertube inside the cave to get to the beginning of the footpath, and the water was damn cold, damnit. Once inside there were plenty of big spiders to freak Joanna out, and also big Kfirs to scare Joannas out by joking about huge spiders. The cave got pretty low at one point and we were crawling in the mud with headlamps that had batteries the size of car batteries hanging around our necks. After the caves and so walking, we had lunch and watched a poor monkey yell at his owner for food. After that we got into our kyaks and headed downriver towards the booze and rope swings(Awesome combination btw, Just kidding mom, kind of) We had many waterfights and a very relaxing ride down to the riverside bars and clubs. We picked the bar with the biggest swing and docked our kyaks on the riverside. We ordered some Beer Laos and met up with the Canadians from Vientiane agian, and a good time was had by all. The Rope swing that was set up was a full 8 meters off the ground, and would fling you 8 or 9 meters into the water, it was incredible.

After four days of sitting, drinking, and watching more episodes of Friends than my family does, we were ready to leave, and head to Luang Prabang, the old Capital of Laos.

I don't think I mentioned that the roads in Laos are the most curvy, up and down, crap roads I've seen, ever. There are seriously 160 degree turns in the roads leading up and down the mountains. Also, there is some rebel groups in northern Laos who oppose the government, apparentely fighting is low at the moment, but a very common sight on Laos buses(ok, EVERY bus ride we went on) has at least one civillian or military soldier with a gigantic AK47 assault rifle. Apparentley this is for protection, although protection from whom remains a mystery to me. As crazy as it sounds I got used to waking up and seeing some avergejoe dude sitting infront of me with a F***king machine gun. But more on that a bit later. As I was saying, the roads are in very poor shape most of the time, and a busride that should take an hour and a half takes six. so after six hours of gorgeous mountainside and the occasional dude with aKalishikov(Ak47), we arrived in the beautiful city of Luang Prabang.

*Inturruption*

Sorry everyone, it's just occured to me that Jena and I need to wake up 3 hours from this moment, that is to say that we need to wakeup at 3:30am to catch an early flight into BURMA! I'm sorry for the inconvieniance, but I'll have to continue my retelling at a later date.(hopefully not too much later)

Burma is a very underdeveloped country and as such has NO internet access and little, if any international phone stations. As of today, there will be complete brodcast silence for 20 days. Don't worry if we don't contact you, it is only because there is no way to do so.
We are going to have an absolutely Amazing time I'm sure, and I hope you'll do the same. Our return flight is scheduled for April 4th, so expect some emails/phone calls around that date.
Have a great few weeks!
Love,
-Ben

p.s.
Jena is keeping a travel blog of her own, and considering my current posting record, it might be wise to check her blog for a more up to date retelling of our adventures.

www.jenagogo.blogspot.com

Also, Jena is cute.