Hello! Well it's been a while since I've blogged, but i do have good reason! Right now i'm in Laos in the Capital, Vientiane. In the last few days i've been doing some seriously intense travelling, it's been go, go, go, i just haven't stopped and now i have a day here to catch up and slow down. I'm pretty tired out! So i can't remember what i last wrote but since bangkok i headed North to a place called Chiang Mai, which was quite nice, didn't grab me really but still it was pretty. I took a Thai cooking course there which was excellent so now i can cook you all some fantastic dishes...famous last words i think! No but really, it was great and you get a cook book at the end so i can cook some of the things i learnt there.
From there i headed into Laos with a couple of guys i met on the bus to Chiang Mai, one Scot, one from the UK and also one of the guys girlfriends, Om from Thailand. So we had to catch a slow boat from the border down to the first town called Luang Prabang. The boat took two days and i think 'slow' boat is an understatement...it was hell. Ok so i exaggerate a bit there, it was great for about 3 hours, beautiful scenery, different way to travel, exciting and all but after that when they just keep stopping and keep packing on more and more people it got a little frustrating. It acted as a kind of bus for the locals too and so we were all squashed onto the floor, people standing everywhere, not enough seats, bags chucked on top of you. I had a baby put on top of me while the mother went to sleep! Very cute for about 2 hours and then after being kicked and bitten and grabbed at for that long i got a little grumpy!! Got some great photos though. Plus the fact that they would say it's only 6 hours on the boat and "we're nearly there", then we would take about 8hours! So two days of 8 hours each was quite enough for me! Luang Prabang is a Heritage listed twon so it's very well kept, very pretty and very French! So we went to some amazing waterfalls there and rented bikes, which was good fun! We went out to the only club there too which was just locals, that was really good to see, and being the only western female there was cool because i had at last got away from any tourists! It was something different. Then we went down to Vang Vieng where the famous tubing happens! Basically you rent a rubber tube, stick it in the river, hop in and off you go. Very touristy really but great great fun! There are rope swings and places to drink the whole way down, you can buy a beer and get free jumps and then hop back into your ring and keep floating with your beer! Most people are pretty intoxicated by the end, it's few kilometres long the river so we took about 4-5 hours floating along until the sun set amoung these beautiful mountins that we were at the base of. The rope swings were fantastic, very high and very hard to hold onto after a few drinks!
After this we half took a tuk-tuk (little mini-van type thing thats open air) and half kayaked down to the capital where i am now, Vientiane. the kayaking was fun, a few rapids (i didn't capsize, very impressed with that!) and some cliff jumping along the way. So now i'm here and travelling with a different group of people, 5 others, some from the UK and some from the States. Really cool people and from here we are hopefully going to go back into Thailand and go camping up this mountain to watch the sunset and sunrise which is supposed to be stunning, then back to Bangkok and onto the islands! I'm dying to get to the beach! So we'll see about the camping because the tourist police took one of my friends passports!
So apart from that i'm doing well, looking forward to France now! Only two weeks left!
Will put some photos up when i get the chance.
Hope your all keeping well,
Love Katie xx
