The leisurely pace at which the boat strolled down the Mekong would have put us to sleep if it weren’t for the intense heat of the jungle surrounding us.  Two 9 hour days of travel allowed Mandy to read an entire book.  I couldn’t keep my eyes off the shoreline because I had never seen anything like it.  The river looked like something out of Charlie’s chocolate factory.

Occasionally the boat would drop supplies off at little villages along the way and in order to accomplish this it performed a maneuver like a truck jack-kniving on ice.  The driver would lay off the gas, turn the wheel so the rear end of the boat was facing the wrong direction and would slowly make it’s way towards the shore.  It allowed for some great pictures.

So about this boat we were on.  This was most definitely not luxury travel, but it did it’s job.  We arrived at out destination without dying.

Those are seats they took out of old mini vans, which if you can believe it are an upgrade over the planks of wood used previously.  I didn’t get a picture of it but there’s a table at the back where a nice lady would sell you all the pringles and beer and cup o noodles you could eat.  I laid off the beer once I had to use the restroom, which was just a hole in the back of the boat that I’m pretty sure went straight into the river.

At the end of the first day, we stopped at this little town for a night.  Life here must be pretty strange for the residents.  Each day, a bunch of boats show up who are on their way to Luang Prabang and all they need is a place to sleep and some food and then they wake up and leave the next morning and then by that afternoon, more boats show up.  It’s like a bad version of groundhog day. We had some pretty good Indian food for dinner in one of those restaurants on stilts, which is a thing I thought I’d never say.

The next day, we were up early and had another long travel day down the river.

We eventually arrived in Luang Prabang, our favorite city in all of Laos.  Unfortunately, I made a mistake in planning our time here.  There are beautiful waterfalls here and for some reason, I thought they were in Vang Vieng, our next stop.  It wasn’t until we made it all the way there that I realized one of the top things I wanted to see in Laos we had missed because I got lazy and didn’t do my homework.  I blame the river.

Mandy got to see what she had been talking about for a while: The giving of Alms to monks.  She had to wake up at 5:30 and so I noped out of that invitation and stayed in bed.  She got some good shots for me though.

This is all the food the monks will have for the day, and they’re unable to refuse what is offered them.  They seriously had to put out a memo to the generous people giving alms that, although cheeseburgers are pretty great, quit it with the cheeseburgers because some of the monks were getting fat.

It’s important to note that this is a pretty serious thing for both the monks and the alms givers.  The appropriate way to observe this tradition is from the other side of the street, while not making any noise.  Chinese tourists are notorious for being obnoxious and taking selfies with the monks.  Blue shirt guy up there is way out of line.  Mandy said it was kinda hard to get a decent shot without a Chinese tourist in it.

I don’t know what it is with stairs in southeast asia, but we climbed more of them while here for a view of the city.

At the top of those steps were more steps.

And then more steps.

Worth it?

Yeah.

It was time to move on to Vang Vien.  Without seeing the waterfalls.  Not that I’m bitter or anything.

It was rainy season in Laos and the road got washed out.  So our bus stopped and we watched as they got it cleared, which took a couple of hours.

The views along the way reminded me of Costa Rica.

We need to talk about Vang Vieng.  This little town used to be known for it’s crazy river bars where you could apparently get anything from beer to meth and a bunch of stuff in between.  After a few Australian kids died on the river, the government stepped in and put a stop to the madness.  Just do a google search for Laos Vang Vieng tubing and see the videos on youtube.  It was madness.  You can still float the river but in a much safer environment.  Only two bars are allowed to be open at a time and the most illicit substance you can get besides beer is a balloon filled with nitrous oxide.  Mandy made a video from our GoPro about our day on the river.

Our next stop in Laos was the capital, Vientiane.  Here are the pictures I took while there:

Like I said, we’re not big fans of big cities, even in Laos.  The one thing we did here was walk to the Cambodian embassy and apply for our visas for that country in person.  We had read that it’s best to do it this way since you can get ripped off at the border.  It took about an hour and half to walk there.  Looking back, we should have just gotten a taxi.  When we went back the next day to pick it up, we arrived about 30 minutes early, but since we were the only ones there and the Cambodian people are the nicest in the world, they gave us our visas early.

Our last stop in Laos would be the southern tip of the country on the border with Cambodia, called four thousand islands.  We would take our first, only, and hopefully last overnight bus ride to get here.  Yes, we’d be attempting to sleep on a bus to get to our next destination.

See how the bus says Luxurious VIP on it?  Yeah, no.  It didn’t help matters that the bus driver was going 97 mph down roads that I’d have reservations about walking across.

We could have done without four thousand islands. Maybe it was because it was off season, or maybe because these ‘islands’ were not the kind of islands you’re thinking of.  It was relaxing, if nothing else for the simple fact there was nothing to do.  We rented bikes for $1 and got stuck in the mud on roads that looked like this.

And hung out on our hotels deck that overlooked the Mekong.

It’s hard to put a hat on Laos.  It’s quintessential southeast Asia, with it’s own unique twist on everything.  We’d go back to Luang Prabang in a heartbeat.  I hear they have some cool waterfalls there. I wouldn’t know.

It was also here that we decided that we would fly out of Cambodia and into Europe.  We had been in Southeast Asia for a few months by this time and were ready to move on.  Our last country in Asia would leave a lasting impression on us for many reasons, but one stood out the most: The people of Cambodia and how nice they were.