Ko Long Cave, Laos

We got in from the main entrance. But there was another outlet we could go out visit some local villege (but we didnt see anything)

It was very dark in the cave （only one small part had lights on). We were depending on the flash light to see the cool rocks in there.

We sat on the tiny boat which could fit 5 people in total (2 were drivers)

We were late after the trip. But we joined some locals playing gitar and drinking beer, and they gave us a ride back to the town!

We Swoop on in to Nam! OK, Maybe not "swoop", but it sounds cool!

We left Lak Sao in Laos, and caught a mini bus towards the coast of Vinh, Vietnam.... not even mentioned in our shoestring guide to SE Asia! The entire city was destroyed in the war with French in the 50's/60's, then rebuilt, and then it was completely destroyed again in the war with the US, as it was apparently the starting point of the "Ho Chi Minh trail." Literally only two buildings were left standing, and we didnt get to see them. Our bus dropped us off, and we managed to stay in a slightly sleazy but very cheap room just blocks away. We nearly payed 15 bucks a night, but found a room with AC, cable(with tons of english channels, OMG, YESSSS!!!!), and bars on the window for 7 dollars a night! It was so nice(and cheap), we decided to veg out for a day and just relax and not travel, after having spent 2 straight days on the road.
There is nothing to do of note in Vinh, even after consulting google, so we just walked around and tried some random Vietnamese food, which is awesome. We got super lost, i sweated my shirt in to a swimming pool and we saw some interesting, "soviet style architecture." With wide streets, concrete buildings and a billion scooter parts stores, Vinh doesn't have too much going for it, but it was way better than people on the thorntree LP forum make it sound, and people were very friendly and nice to us. People online describe the Vinh posse as "hostile", but they seemed very friendly to us, and more just curious and excited about some actual foreigners making fools of themselves in their front yards.
After a day and a half we left our AC igloo of a room, and decided to splurge on a Super Nice leather bed bus to Hanoi. There was minubuses going on the 6 hour ride for 5 bucks, but they are prone to stopping at every last place to pick people up, deliver mail, drop off 100 cases of heineken(seriously), and fill up every last crevice on the bus with people... and that could have easily turned our 6 hour ride in to 3 week "oregon trail" like adventure. So, the 8 dollar VIP bus still went ultra slow on the 2 lane(1 on each side) road that goes North to South up the coast of Vietnam. I somehow imagined a faster system of roads since Vietnam has such an obvious one way up and down the coast route, but I was very wrong. Our bus gladly turned the 2 lane road in to a 3 lane road, driving down the center of the road, forcing every other vehicle left or right, but it still seemed like we went 30mph the whole way, which we basically did!
We got dropped off 10km outside of Hanoi, and I was so pissed I nearly killed our bus crew when I demanded a refund for our "expensive" tickets, and they laughed at me! the taxi ride in to town was looking to cost more than our 6 hour AC and leather seat bus ride! Finally, with Jin's cool headedness, we hopped a city bus in to town! I think we may be the only non Vietnamese people to ever take a Hanoi city bus, but it was surprisingly simple, and we found our way withing a km of our hostel!!!! Jin made some friends on the bus (as usual) and they said they'd help point us in the right direction towards our hostel when we got to our stop. Instead, when we got off, at 8pm, they called over a motor scooter taxi and tried to get me and Jin to ride backseat on a tiny motorscooter with 100lbs of luggage! Yeah Right! Plus, that isnt really our style when we can easily walk. They were in shock and told us to hold our bags very tight and looked at us like we were insane! But, after just 20 mins of wandering around, and only asking once for directions, we made it to our hostel!
We actually got sent to another hotel cause our hostel bumped us, but either way, we survived our first night in Hanoi(although I'm still a little upset after specifically choosing our fun hostel online, then getting sent to some ultra boring hotel upon arrival.)

Vientiane

In front of the Patuxai(literally meaning "victory gate", thanks wikipedia!) in Vientiane. This is called the Arc de Triomphe of Vientiane or the "vertical runway," because it was built using cement the US had donated to build a new runway at the airport. The Patuxai was finished in 1968 and built as a monument to the people's struggle in their fight for independence from France.

The view from the top. At 7 floors, this is one of the tallest structures in Vientiane.

We still haven't figured out what this building is, but it is right next to the Patuxai, and one of the largest in the city.

Inside the top floor of the Patuxai, looking towards the river and our hotel.

Our cooking class at Tamnak Lao Restaurant in Luang Prabang

We decided to take a cooking class in Luang Prabang. Luckily, we were the only people to sign up that day, so we got the whole day to ourselves with the teacher/chef. The school was part of the Tamnak Lao Restaurant in LP. The restaurant has a website, www.TamnakLao.net

The class is from 10 to 5, but because of our ëxpertise" we finished around 4. We paid 25 dollars each, and got to spend the entire day one on one with the chef, asking him all the questions we want, and doing our best to squeeze every last bit of detail from what he was saying. The day started out with a trip to the Phousy Market, or LP's supermarket. Here was all the ingredients needed to cook basically any kind of Lao or Thai food. The chef showed us around himself, answered all our questions, helped us bargain, and even waited around while we found some more water buffalo jerkey. Jin piqued his brain constantly, trying to figure out what the contents were of the multitude of unlabeled bags of food which were everywhere. The market was fun, and was certainly much more interesting than the previous trip we had made alone, when we were totally clueless.

Jin certainly got the most out of it, and i'd be pretty confident to say that we could cook some pretty legit Lao cuisine now, especially given all the right ingredients. We watched the chef cook lunch, then made same dishes ourselves, then ate them! After lunch, we watched the chef cook 3 more meals, then chose 2 of them to cook ourselves. We then cooked a third meal, Laap, or an amazing Lao meat salad(Soooo Good!) We will post some recipes soon. We got to make 3 meals in total, then got to eat them for dinner! So all in all, we had 5 full dishes, a personal tour of the market and a few hours of private cooking instruction one on one with a professional chef, not too bad!

Our class began with a trip to the Phousy Market in Luang Prabang. This market is a collection of fake tshirts, fake electronics, fruit, vegetables, meat, more fake stuff, pharmacies, drug stores, and anything else one could possibly find in Laos. It is generally referred to as L.P. only "supermarket." Every other market in town is no bigger than a UPS delivery truck.

The chef, mincing chicken on his little 3 legged tree trunk cutting board!

Lunch!

Our dinner. On the left was a curry dish, and the right the Laap(amazing meat salad.) This was the patio outside the school were we got to eat and take our tea breaks. Across the walkway of the tiny alley you may be able to spot the signs for the book exchange where I picked up the Dharma Bums and Twilight!

Ben pretending to be a Lao chef!

Jin waiting for me to quit taking pictures so we could eat!

Tubing in the Vang Vieng/Rocket Day!

The view from our hotel in Vang Vieng. Despite the amazing view's our hotel was extremely shabby. Our room consisted of a towel rack, a tiny metal table and a king sized mattress on a fairly dirty floor. However, the hotel was cheap, in the heart of town, and fairly secure..... plus it had screens on the window, a huge luxury!

Vang Vieng is basically long L shaped roads with a bunch of other random streets scattered around. When we got to town we were greeted by a gravel parking lot(possibly a runway as well) that was aproximately 1000m long(maybe longer) by 250m wide, woo hoo! Our bus, after traveling the 5 hours from Luang Prabang drove through the gravel lot and towards the main road. It dropped us off at the "bus station" which is basically what every tour guide calls their office. We walked in to town with our bags on our back and searched for someplace cheap, not scalding hot, and near stuff. The town is basically a bunch of 19 and 20 year old European and Australian teenagers who somehow escaped from home and all gathered to party in some random Lao truckstop. The main attraction(and only attraction within the city) is inner tubing down the river. You basically pay 7 dollars for trip, including the tuk tuk ride 2 miles up the road. The Tuk Tuk drops you off, and there is a small stairway leading to the river, and then about 15 bars over the next 200m of the river, on both sides. All the bars have trapeze style rope swings, high jump platforms, and one even a waterslide. Each bar has a small dock, where the bartenders throw a rope with an empty plastic soda or water bottle on the end(which floats, a la a life preserver.) Every bar has a person throwing these "life preservers"at you, until you grab hold of one, while floating down the river, and they pull you in. From there, there is buckets(literally) of drinks as well as food, and other tasty treats. It is basically a million college kids going crazy on the edge of some poor Lao river. It seems as though every bar does their best to think up more dangerous ways to enter the water than the next!

Unfortunately, this year has been really dry, and the river is really low. Jin has been a little sick and on antibiotics, so she couldnt drink, and there was hardly anyone on the river that day anyways, so it was basically a few groups of friends hanging out at each bar. It was cool, but not the best excuse i've seen to party and my motivation to get crazy at 1pm on a wednesday in 100 degree heat isn't what it used to be. I was basically excited to just sit in a tube and float down the river and swim all day. However, because of the low water, the river was moving well below walking speed and after 4 hours of swimming and "tubing" we had only gone one mile. The point is to tube back to the center of town, pull out your tube and start partying more, but the river was moving soooo slow, and we were in danger of not making it back before dark, and the 6pm cutoff time to return our tubes by. Finally, Me and Jin pulled our tubes out of the river, baking in the sun, and got a tuk tuk to drive us back the 1 plus mile to the center of town. it was wayyy too hot and dirty outside to be walking through town, and our tubes might have exploded rolling on the concrete. The tar in the roads was seriously melting to our shoes as we walked, it was so hot!

One reason for the quiet day on the river, was that it was "Rocket Day!" I'd never heard of this holiday, but it certainly was fun! We first noticed something strange sitting down for breakfast and seeing trucks and tuk tuks driving through town with 20foot long colorful arrow like sticks angled from the back over the front carriage of the car. The flatbed part of each truck had maybe 10 or 20 people standing up, wearing super silly clothes, with pots and pans, faces painted, etc. At first I thought this is what the insanely crazy local bars did to drum up business in the quiet morning hours. Later, right after we paid for the tubes, we found out it was Rocket Day, and that all the bars on the river would be closed so the employees could party. The bars were open, though not all of them. The rockets, which basically resembled the model rockets young boys build, but between 5 and 25 feet long were insane.... Some more resembling actual missiles than a boy's toy. They went off from various locations throughout the day, reaching a crescendo around sunset. Some went a few hundred feet, some well over a couple thousand feet... It got hard to estimate. But I know they definitely went way higher than the ones i built and launched when I was 13 or so, which was around 1200 feet max. Some had white smoke, some black, it was definitely a sight to see.... My first Rocket Day!

P.S. Lao is home to some of the world's best traveller hippy tshirt/basketball jerseys. You can't go an hour in this country without seeing a 20 year old wearing the "tubing in the Vang Vieng" jersey.... So I had to steal it for our title! Sorry Lao T Shirt Makers!!!

Getting into Laos

Crossing in to Laos from China, we had to walk across the border and meet the bus on the other side.

View of Sisavangvong Road in Luang Prabang, day and night. This is the main street, and home of the night market.

The view of the night market from our hotel, Thalien Guest House, on Sisavangvong Road, Luang Prabang

Jin at the Night Market on Sisavangvong Road, Luang Prabang.

Scenes from the night market.

Luang Prabang!

Ok, Jin just yelled at me for posting too long, and blocking out all the pictures she just posted below! Please check page 2, they are pretty cool, and basically recap the end of our stay in China.
We got to Luang Prabang on the night of the 1st, and caught a small Tuk Tuk(motorcycle with a small truck bed on the back) to the main street. We arrived at about 8pm, and were so happy to finally be somewhere, besides on a bus! The city is more like a country town, until you get to the main street on the peninsula. The peninsula of Luang Prabang lies between the Mekong River, and another River and the entire thing is protected as a UNESCO world Heritage site. It so so beautiful here, and the main street is closed down to cars and features a market in the center of the road about 3 blocks long from 5pm until 10 every night. We walked down the main street through the market, and looked for the cheap hostels listed in the LP(lonely planet.) The only ones we found weren't that nice, and fairly unimpressive, and nearly double the cost of that listed in the LP.... listed at 30,000kip per room, actually 5o,000. Luckily, we found an awesome little hotel in the middle of the main street shopping area. Our room is ultra clean, very cool, super quiet, and seemingly rather secure. The owner is really nice, and we were able to score the room for 50,000 kip a night, or about $6.25! A bit more than we had been paying in China, but a lot nicer! Plus, our room, although not underground has the feel of a basement, with two eternally running vent fans pointing outside, glass bricks for windows, and a super powerful oscillating fan pointed straight at our bed! Not too bad!
Luang Prabang is amazing. The city is so quiet and beautiful. There is zero hustle and bustle here, and it feels like Hawaii 70 years ago(or probably thailand around that time.) There is backpackers and travellers from all over the world everywhere, and everyone is just chilling on "Lao time." The night market is beautiful, and has awesome tshirts, silly Lao basketball jerseys, baggy long hippy shorts and pants made of cool ethnic home made fabrics, tons of wood stuff, crystals, fruit smoothies, silver items, womens clothing, and all kinds of other handmade nick nacks and souvenirs! The restaurants here have amazing Lao food, Thai food, Indian food, French food(Lao was a french colony), and general western food! Everything is between 8000 to 60,000 Kip, or 1 to 8 US dollars(exchange rate is 1 dollar to 8200kip)! t shirts are 25000 kip, a pound of mangos is 6000 Kip(best mangos since hawaii!)
The town is sooo chill, no hurry at all, nada. There are amazing cafes with awesome coffee, with small tables and comfy chairs under amazing trees covered in fruit! The rivers are on both sides of the peninsula, making the area about 20 blocks long by about 3 blocks wide. We are right in the middle. Everyone is chilling, and there is basically nothing to do, but wander around, eat, drink, sit by the river, drink coffee, rent bicycles, go to the Wat(temples), the small museums, or take a tuk tuk to the waterfalls outside of town.
We did basically nothing on our first full day here. We just sat around and drank coffee, ate bagels(YESSS!), looked at books at the book exchange, walked to the river, and were just happy to not be on a bus! Today, monday, we awoke and ate more bagels(my idea!), drank more coffee(my idea again!), then went to the town market, which is very strange, and then the Royal Palace, which is now turned in to a museum. The Phosy market, is part flea market, part fruit stand, butcher, vegetable market, part fake stuff market, with a lot of cell phones, home items, plastic stuff and other things mixed in. Basically a Lao walmart. Not a whole lot of great stuff was there, but we did get some more great mangos(yes!), some laundry detergent to wash our clothes in the sink, some water buffalo jerky, and a really silly fake Casio watch with a hilarious multicolored light show for a light! The watch was the highlight for me. It is literally the exact watch I wore from when i was 7 to 12 years old, the old school black plastic casio with the day, date and time listed on it, but the light, instead of the normal white or yellow, flashes from green to red to blue.... basically like a Phish concert! So i'm happy! Plus it took the place of my much more hip looking 3dollar Chinese watch that broke in 2 weeks!
After the light show, i mean market, me and Jin hopped the Tuk Tuk back to our hood, and went to the Royal Palace Museum which is right across from our hostel. The palace is amazing, and the perfect example of Lao style. Very subdued, beautiful and chill, but with lots of taste! The first room had amazing murals all over the wall, all the way around the large 10mx6m room and up to the 5m tall ceilings, all pictures of Lao life in the 1930s but in a Van Gogh sorta style... Super cool!
The rest of the museum had a cool throne, a ton of 1000 plus year old buddhas collected by the king, some old buddhist artwork, really chill art deco furniture, and some amazing Japanese Glass mosaics covering the wall of another even more giant room. The Dichromatic glass depicted life in Lao and was really cool, and totally covered the huge throne room walls! We got to see the king and queens seperate bedrooms, and the rest of the palace too, including some more cool crystals, swords, artwork, and gifts given to the king and queens from countries all around the world! The highlight of the gifts for me was a Lao flag that was taken to the moon aboard Apollo 11, and some tiny moon rocks given to the king of Lao by the US govt. Another cool item was the silver box given to Lao by JFK and dated February of 1963. After the palace, we were starving, so we came to a local restaurant with free WiFi and got some awesome Thai soups, and Pad Se Ew(which is totally different than the ones I eat back home.) I've now typed a novel, and if anyone is still reading, Thank You for your stamina and undying interest! Jin also finally got to post all the pics she has been editing from our trip to China, and which I have now buried on page 3! She is great though, and I super appreciate all her tireless picture editing to preserve our trip online through this blog! The net here is very slow, and this cafe(one of the many in town that offers free wifi), totally empty at our 4pm dinner, has the fastest internet of any internet cafe in town....
Ok, i'm off to happy hour with Jin, she has almost finished reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe while I have written this, and we better pay and get out, before this restaurant kicks us out! Love to everyone, and check out the pics on the next few pages!