First blog entry from Laos! Unfortunately updates are being made opn the blog page so I can't upload photos - darn it!

Well, I (we) am doing fine so far - enjoying it all! To quickly summarize what we have done so far:

I left Aarhus friday morning and flew to London where I met up with Anders for lunch followed by the traditional icecream at Haagen Dazs at Leicester Square - this time to celebrate my 11th visit to London. We then flew from Heatrow to Bangkok via Dubai and arrived in Thailand at 19:00 saturday evening - no problems. We quickly found ourselves a guesthouse, had a very late dinner and walked around the backpackers quarter for a bit. Sunday was spent having breakfast with a friend of Anders - Frauke - who is presently living in Vientiane in Laos. She happened to be in Bangkok that weekend so we met up to make plans for our arrival the next day in Vientiane. Following that we went to see the Grand Palace, walked around Bangkok to see the Great Swing and the Golden Mountain. We were supposed to catch a night train from Bangkok to Nong Khai at the Thai-Lao border but when we arrived at the station we were informed that there had been some sort of train accident such that all trains to Chiang Mai and Nong Khai were cancelled - quite the disturbance for quite a few backpackers. We talked to a travel agency for buying bus tickets instead but all were sold out so we ended up having to buy a flight ticket for monday morning and spending yet another night in Bangkok.

Monday morning we flew to Udon Thani, transferred to the border where we got our visas and then made our way into Vientiane to met Frauke and experience the boat festival going on that day. Apparently this festival signified the ending of a buddhist tradition lasting for a few months where people had to abstain from alcohol. The ending of this faste was celebrated with a boat race down the Mekong River (fantastic seeing 40 people in one boat moving completely in sync!!! And boy then went wuite fast!), copious amounts of alcohol and a market fair. Soooo many people. All very friendly though and it was really funny and interesting to experience a local festival. Tuesday was spent at a nice waterfall a couple of hours drive from Vientiane in Phu Khao Khuay forest - mmmm. Beautiful and relaxing and refreshing. Lets just say it is quite varm and quite humid here.... My t-shirts are soaked within half an hour...

Wednesday morning we jumped on a bus for Vang Vieng to do some activities. We rented mountain bikes and decided to go check out some of the numerous caves existing in this interesting terrain consisting of different limestone/karst rock formations. The first cave was well visited by tourists and huge! Walkways and lights had been installed in the cave and it was an amazing sight. We felt quite adventerous and ventured off into the darkness where the path ended until we met a dead end... Damn. While exiting the cave a 20cm large gekko decided to fall from the heights and drop onto MY CHEST!!!! Well, i did scream like the girl I am and scared it off quickly:) thankfully it wasn't a spider. We then went looking for another famous cave but thankfully we took a wrond turn on our bikes and ended up visiting another cave. FANTASTIC. I think that experience ranges on the top-something of best travelling experiences ever. We met an old local lao man on our way and he showed us around the cave - thank you for taht. He had two flashlights in addition to my lamp and he took us deep inside the pitchblack darkness of the cave - we had to crawl on our stomachs trough narrow passageways or edge our way along in a 45degree angles on our hands on slimy rocks and feet in dirty water through 50cm wide trenches. Wauw. So exiting. In some cases a bit TOO excitin for my taste as the place was crawling with spiders... and not just small pleasant ones... I saw two that had a leg span of 15-20cm.... Let's say I wasn't a happy camper - almost had a small panic attack (no crying though) and made it through anyway. YES. personal victory!!! We were quite exhilerated after this.

Today was spent rock climbing for the first time. Man that was fun as well - well, fun in the scary sort of way. Must say that even though we were securely fit in harnesses and helmets and with experienced guides I was shaking all over as I made my way to the top along jagged limestone cliffs. And it was quite strenous as well. Sometimes one thought 'huh? Where was I supposed to go? There is nothing to bloody hold on to or put my freaking feet at!!' but up we made it anyway. Though using our hands too much - lactoses attack! Anders' hands were so camped that he couldn't make the next two climbs but I almost made them both. The second climb - damn, had to give up only about 2 meters from the top as I suddenly got really uncomfortable. There was a slight overhang and I couldn't spot ANYWHERE to put hands or feet and I was starting to get tired as well... So down I rapelled instead with a small notch in my pride. Third climb - made it 2/3's of the way until I could suddenly feel my left hand loosing all strength - right now I still can't open a waterbottle or a tied knot with my left hand as I overstrained it. But it was fun, even during all the shaking, and dispite all the bruises on my legs:) Will maybe try again, definitely learned a lot from climb 1 to 3 and would like to put that into practice again when not so tired! Maybe I can go all the way on all three climbs then. We then rented mountainbikes again and went to see the cave we had originally planned on seeing yesterday. Beautiful ride through small villages and muddy dirtroads (Anders was impressed at how dirty I managed to get ha ha!) and a strenuous climb to the cave entrance. A local boy followed us wanting to be our guide in the cave but unfortunately his lamp had run out of batteries and I had forgotten mine. At the same time anouther couple of travellers made their way to the cave with a local boy so we went inside with them - though only with one lmap plus my cellphone light. Man it was dark and uncomfortable!!! The other girl quickly decided to turn around but the three of us +boy continued on. That did not last long though - after a passage through a small hole where the ther guy almost stepped of the ledge into a big drop because the boy didn't point his lamp our way to guide us or speak or anything we decided this was no fun and turned back...! No point in risking our lives that way! Jesus.

Well, tomorrow we will do some kayaking and then head north to Luang Prabang and meet up with Frauke again to celebrate Anders' 34th birthday on sunday!

Take care all of you until next time - lots of hugs and sunburned/bruised/jetlagged (oh yeah - jetlagged REALLY badly this time. Slept 2 hours and the plane, 2 hours first night in bangkok, maybe 3 hours second night in Bangkok and then maybe 4 hours the next two night, waking up a million-gazillion times - am quite tired sometimes but for some reason I still can't sleep at night! Hopefully being physically exhausted after the climb+biking plus relaxed after my one hour lao massage will help tonight!) greetings from ME