Laos

Even though Thailand is amazing and we could easily spend there the coming 12 months, it was time for us to start exploring the rest of Asia, so off we went to our next country “Laos”. We crossed the border at Chiang Khong and decided instead of taking a long bus to Luang Prabang to take the famous 2-day slow boat over the Mekong river. Such a relaxed ride, sitting for 2 days in an open boat, feeling the breeze of wind through your hair, the constant zooming of the motor and the only thing you can do is to enjoy the view, read a book or have a chat with one of the other passengers from all over the world. So quite relaxed, we arrived in Luang Prabang. An old French colony city with beautiful temples. My favorite is the one on the

picture that has on the side a statue of an elephant. But also the temple on the mountain was definitely worth visiting for the view over the city and included a free exercise class (so many stairs to walk up and that on top of a super humid and hot day :-( ). Another thing that you do as a good tourist is waking up at 5.00 AM to see the morning ritual with the monks, where you see lines and lines of monks walking on the streets and receiving food from the local community. One of these activities that the Lonely Planet tells you not to miss out, but the only way of waking up so ridiculously early is with promising each other to straight afterward to jump back in bed and never to put an alarm clock ever again ;-p
The day after we had the genius idea to save a night in a hotel by taking the night sleeping bus to Vientiane. Not sure if you ever did this, but let's say, it's a great idea, but not in a country like Laos, what a nightmare!! Besides the fact that the beds are made for 2 tiny short

Asian people, the beds are from plastic, so you nicely stick to it, for 12 hours you can't sit up straight, as the ceiling is too low and the road is mostly still sand/half asphalt roads with every 2 meter a big hole, so it feels like being in a never ending attraction of Disneyland that took at the end 20 (!!!) hours. What happened is that because of the rain there was a mud slide (we were driving mostly in the mountains) and we got stuck with the bus, so without doing any announcement, the bus driver stopped the bus on the side of the road, turned off the electricity and air-conditioning and for 8 hours we were wondering in the dark what was going on, till 8 hours later he turned the air conditioning back on and started driving again, without saying a word. Maybe this happens so often that it wasn't even worth mentioning?? We probably will never find out ;-)
In Holland you have a nice expression "Een ezel stoot zich geen tweemaal aan dezelfde steen" ("A donkey doesn't hit himself twice at the same stone"). So you would say that after that we would have

learned our lesson with taking the cheap transportation in Laos and not the expensive tourist option, but well, apparently we didn't, so we chose the cheapest option for the 6 hour ride to Thakhek, in the local bus (that you can see on the second bus picture) where of course the promised airco didn't work and were every few kilometers people jumped into the driving bus (did I already mentioned there weren't doors in the bus?!) to sell all kind of food. Except for fried chicken legs and lots of boiled eggs on sticks we didn't recognize too much, but well, at least this bus stopped every hour on the side of the road, so you had the change to pee in the bushes with all the other people of the bus ;-D Well, let's say.... local traveling in Laos is an experience :-D
But at least we arrived without any more delays to our destination Thakhet, a sleepy little town from where you can start "the Loop", a 3-days motorcycle trip through the country side of Laos. A real adventure of approximately 500 km of driving, so much fun and so worth doing! Because we knew we had a long ride ahead of us and it would be more complicated than normal to get our motorcycle fixed in case it would break down, we decided on a bit more expensive and newer motorcycle. The owner kept on showing us how low the mileage was, well...probably that should have already have made us suspicious, but what can I say, always easier to see it thinking backwards ;-p I think after 200 meters driving Yohan already found

out that the speed meter didn't work, 2 km into the trip that the mileage meter didn't work (no wonder that the mileage was so low!) and maybe 5 km into the trip that the light that turns on when your motor has problems? Well... that one turned red. But on the bright side, most importantly was that the meter of the petrol level still worked, so at least we knew when we needed to refill the tank ;-D Nevertheless, the road was absolutely beautiful, the people on the way and in the guesthouses were super nice and we saw such special places, like caves and rivers and against the odds, the motorbike drove great and we didn't have any problems or breakdowns on the way. Worth mentioning was also the Konglor cave, a 7.5 km long cave that you enter by boat. I personally hate caves, as I don't like dark places with water, but still trying to be a good wife (people keep on telling me that it will pass with time ;-) ) I joined Yohan so he wouldn't had to go alone. You see my face on the picture? Ok, so now look at the one below, you see how happy I am when we exit the cave? That was just 1 minute before I found out that the only way back was going through the same 7 km pitch black ride on the water in a boat again :-S
As much as I don't seem to get used to water and boats, Yohan is having a tough time with the buses. Promised airco usually doesn't work and sitting for 12 hours in one small place is of course never fun, but probably the bus to the 4000 islands was a new level of

experience ;-) The only way to get there was in some kind of open truck, where you have a roof, but the sides are open and in the middle they put things that need to go to the same destination like wood, car tires, children bikes etc. As we were the only tourist that still wanted to get so late to the islands and nobody spoke English, we were very lucky to walk into a guesthouse owner of the island Don Det, that was traveling the same road. Thanks to him we took the correct truck and after he took us also in a tiny boat to cross the Mekong river to arrive in Don Det at 2200 at night. Don Det is one of the many islands of the 4000 islands. Except for walking the whole island in 2 hours and biking through the rice fields there isn't too much to do, but that was what we really wanted after the Loop, 4 days of doing absolutely nothing!