The bus left early for Laos and it arrived at the border crossing 3 hours late. We got a couple of hours sleep before we crossed over the Mekong into Laos. The slow boat we had booked was an experience, we bought some beers and sat chatting to various people, the first leg was a 9 hour meander down the Mekong to a place called Pakbang where we stayed the night to get back on the boat for another 7 hour trip into Luang Prabang. These are all photo's of the boat trip... all 2 days of it.
Luang Prabang was amazing, we managed to get a really cheap room with wifi, probably one of the best we'd stayed in, the markets were amazing and the vibe of the whole city was chilled loveliness.
On the first day we haggled with a tuk tuk driver and made our way to Huang Xi waterfall, this is the most amazing waterfall i have ever seen, I'm not sure why but the water is a beautiful refreshing menthol green colour, there were big rope swings and places you could jump into the little lush lagoons. There was also a bear sanctuary there saving bears from poachers. All in all a magical day.
We met that evening with some guys we'd met on the boat at a bar called Utopia, so named because it was chill out central. Everywhere in Laos shuts at about 11pm, but if you want to carry on drinking you can go to the 'Bowling Alley' where they serve alcohol and you can also buy beer etc. This probably wasn't a good idea in hindsight as we didn't arrive back to our room until about 4:30am and had booked mountain bike riding and kayaking for the next day which started at 8:30 AM, oooppps.
The bike ride was intense, our tour guides bike kept breaking, hello Laos. We saw some beautiful scenery and then had lunch and chilled out at Tad Se waterfall, menthol green pools with a tiny rope swing.
Onto the Kayaking and our tour guide fixed up one of the holes with leaves, haha. It was so hot and we just floated down the river as the current was quite strong. By the time we were an hour and a half in the heavens opened and there we were just paddling down the river in a monsoon, this was strangely beautiful. We sang songs and laughed at the random situation we had found ourselves in on a hangover from hell. All in the name of fun, I won't forget this day. Truly awesome.
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