SABAIDEE FROM LAOS!

First stop in Laos after a 2 day long boat trip along the gorgeous mekong river was Luang Prabang. Here we went to the kouangsi waterfalls where we all jumped into the turquoise water off a tree! There was a little school in the village next to it where we went and had a look round the school. Not even the teachers spoke English but they seemed pretty happy to let us walk around and play with the kids! One morning we got up at 5am and went to feed the monks at sunrise. This involved kneeling down on the side of a road with a bowl of sticky rice and giving some to each of the hundreds of monks passing by. Being careful not to look any of them in the eye, although I reckon I caught a couple out, haha! We went on a night out here too, we started off at a club full of locals where we joined in some line dancing, then went to a 'more boom boom boom' club (as Yo, our tour guide described it!) and when that closes all the locals everyone head over to the bowling alley which is pretty random!!! I sucked!

After Luang Prabang we got a 6 hour bus along an extremely windy road to Vang Vieng. This was completely different to LP and was full of backpackers and bars/restaurants and everything else catering for tourism. Yesterday I signed my life away twice- in the morning (close yor eyes mum) me and a few of the others hired motorbikes, where they spent about 30 seconds running us through the basics then handed us helmets and sent us off! And if that wasn't dangerous enough, they drive on the right hand side here so I had that to get used to aswell! Luckily Yo came with us and she took us to a river about an hour away where we could have a swim. It took a while to get the hang of but it was brilliant fun once we'd nailed it. The road to the river went over narrow rickety bridges and we quite often had to dodge round cows and black and white goat things stood in the middle of the road! In the afternoon, we went RIVER TUBING!!! We got a tuk tuk further up the river then floated back down it in a tube. There are bars like every 30 meters along where someone will throw you a stick and drag you over to it. Each bar has rope swings where you climb up and swing off into the river, it's absolutely crazy. Both nights we ended up going to Smile Bar to watch the sunset which has a camp fire and a dancefloor then loads of hammocks round it so you could look out onto the river. They sell drinks in buckets for ridiculously cheap prices- although saying that, it doesn't feel cheap when you're paying 10 grand for one drink!

I've had a full body laos massage. I don't think it was as painful as a thai one so maybe now I've had that I'll be ready for a thai one when I get back to bangkok! The Lao people are so lovely, everywhere you go people will smile at you. I've also figured out why locals keep laughing at me. It's not because I have something on my face, like I kept getting paranoid about, it's because people laugh in south east asia as a positive gesture not because something's funny.

I only have 3 days left of my tour now which is sad because there are some quality people in my group. We have today and tomorrow in Viabntiene then fly to Hanoi in Vietnam where the tour finishes. Apparently in Hanoi there's a whole area of snake restaurants, including one where there's 7 courses and you drink the snake's blood (ewww)!