I know its been ages, again, since I posted last, but I'll will do my best to remember everything I've done for the last few weeks. When I left off last I was still in Luang Probang celebrating the new year, which was quite a lot of fun. There was a large group of us still hanging out at that point, which meant we spent more money going out in the evenings, but also had a lot of fun. One such evening I accidentally told the restaurant it was my birthday and they brought out a whole cake for free! Haha, the menu said cake for special occasions for large groups so I figured I might as well try, but I couldn't explain any other event in a way that they understood so in the end they just assumed that it was my birthday. The cake was totally worth all the confusion. We ended up staying in Luang Probang longer then planned because one of our new traveling friends, Paul, was sick, but as soon and he recovered we headed east to Phonsavan to see the Plain of Jars.
Phonsavan itself was somewhat of a dreary place, but I thought that the Jars were really awesome. There are huge fields full of large jar shaped stone carvings that no one really knows where they came from or why they were made. One theory is that they were ancient burial grounds. A more local theory is that they were used to make huge amounts of Lao-Lao (rice whiskey) haha. Theory one seems more likely. Part of the reason that they haven't been studied all that much is the face that the area is covered with UXO's that could explode anytime. A few of the sites have been cleared of UXO's, which is why we could see them, but there are thousands and thousands of jars all over. Its crazy.
After the Plain of Jars we went to Vang Vieng, which is the party city of Laos. Its a strange place, full of drunk tourists hanging about bars watching tv. It also has some of the most beautiful landscape i have ever seen, so it was worth going even with all the tourists and bars. We mostly avoided the city by renting motorbikes and spending two days just driving around back dirt roads. Its was tons of fun, tho i just rode on the back, haha. There is tubing in the river there too, but everyone told us the water was so shallow we didn't even need tubes, so in the end we just swam down the river. I think we decided tubes would have been better, but i had a good time anyways. All along the river there are bars who have set up crazy zip lines, water slides and rope swings as ways to get you to come up and buy drinks. Some of the swings and slides were pretty fun, tho i think Pieter and Paul enjoyed themselves more, I was happy to just swim. In Vang Vieng there were still 6 of us traveling together, but Erica and Lindy had to head back to Bangkok to begin teaching the new year. So then the four of us took the bus to Vientiane.
Vientiane was a capital city that I liked quite a lot, as capital cities go it was very mellow. It was also the first, and only place in all of Laos that I saw a road that was more then one lane each way. We only spent two days there but we spent a lot of time eating, drinking iced coffee, and going to this crazy sculpture garden. The garden was great, it was full of hundreds of crazy Buddhist and Hindu statues, every kind you could imagine all crowed together in one garden. We also went bowling, haha, I lost terribly, but had a great time. Our plan at this point was to make it down to the 4000 island area of Laos by way of Savannakhet and then I was going to go to Cambodia with Anne and Paul and Pieter was going to go to Vietnam on his own. We got all our visas settled in Vientiane and headed south.
We made it fine to Savannakhet, which is a nice place but not very exciting. It does have a dinosaur museum which is small but the guy who runs it is super nice and lets you touch everything, even the bones so that was cool. We were only going to stay two nights, but I ended up getting really sick which messed up all out plans. I'm fine now, but I ended up staying six nights and decided to go back to Thailand instead of trying to rush all over Cambodia with less then a week left before meeting Anjali in Bangkok. I took one of the Laos-Thai Friendship bridges to Mukdahan and then a bus to Ubon Ratchathani and the next day another bus to Kantharalak which is where I am now. My plan is to go across the Cambodia border closer to Siam Reap so I can just do Angkor Wat and then go back to Bangkok. It seemed like a good plan, but its a little more complicated crossing the border on this side of Thailand since its really not touristy at all, the town I'm in isn't even in the guide book. Hopefully I can make it tomorrow, stay for two or three nights and then head back to Bangkok to meet Anjali on the 8th! Alright I think thats all for now.
New Friends from the slow boat!
Some of the jars at the Plain of Jars.
