Day 73: Planning and little else

Today we did even less than yesterday! We had a hotel breakfast and then spent the morning in our room, doing some research about Laos and onward destinations. Ventured out at lunchtime for some food and a walk, which we had in a nice cafe a couple of blocks over. It's funny - there's a little strip of ultra-modern hipster cafes just along one street, and it's mostly only locals going in there. No expats, no tourists (except us, obviously!).

Back to our room in the afternoon where we did some more planning and research, as neither of us had looked into Laos that much. There are three main towns - Vientiane the capital, just across the border from Thailand in central Laos, Vang Vieng a couple of hours drive north from Vientiane on a nice river, and then Luang Prabang another 8 hours north and up in the mountains.

Laos is very different to all the other Indo-China countries, in that it's still very laid back and slow, and of course much less developed and less dense. We decided to skip on Vientiane since there isn't much there, and to also skip Vang Vieng since apparently the only thing there is backpacker bars (and most of those shut down a few years ago due to deaths from tubing). So we booked a flight direct to Luang Prabang, which is apparently a nice city up in the north, and thankfully on my list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites to visit! There's one other site in Laos but it's a long way to the south, and out of reach without independent transport (or more money than we're willing to part with).

We also decided that after a few days in Luang Prabang we would do a 2-day cruise up the Mekong back towards the Thai border crossing (most of the Laos population lives within a couple of hours of the Thai border), from where we'd cross back into Thailand and head for the cities of the north - Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Pai, and Mae Hong Soon. This also solves our visa problem, since we only have 30-day tourist visas for Thailand which are due to expire on about the 3rd of September.

To celebrate we went out to a cake shop we'd seen earlier and had iced coffees and a plate of waffles with cream and strawberries. Delicious! And of course by then it was dinner time, so we wandered a bit and found a very cheap Thai food place that was packed, meaning that the food was good. Since it was crowded we ended up sharing a table with a late middle-aged Austrian lady who was an ultra-keen diver and had been diving in many out of the way places. She'd even been to Burma in the early 90s literally days after it first opened to westerners! Now that's keen.

Back to the hotel where Shandos went to bed while I stayed up until 1am watching the Man United match. Early start in the morning for our day trip out to the river Kwai.Read more