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  • Day 15

    To Vang Vieng

    February 15, 2018 in Laos ⋅ ☁️ -12 °C

    I don't think we will ever get used to Lao-ish time. We decided to book the bus trip through the hostel. We were told a tuk tuk will pick us up at 8:30am and the bus would leave at 9am. The tuk tuk picked us up at 8:50am and then proceeded to pick up another 8 people. Luckily everything is on Lao-ish time and our minivan hadn't even started loading up. The journey begins. The journey was actually one of the best we've taken, comfortable and the driver drove like an old man so it was actually nice and smooth! I even had a couple of naps 😊 As its Chinese New Year tomorrow, the price of hostels are pretty high so we decided to stay in a dorm which turned out to be great. A hot powerful shower, comfy bed and a rooftop with a beautiful view of sunset, see pic below.

    Today would have been my dad's 78th birthday and although I feel pretty home sick I'm also so thankful. In terms of my health I literally couldn't be happier. Normally this time of year I'm really ill and I pretend to get on with normality. This year I've possibly had the most stressful couple of months since buying a flat and losing my job and yet I've not had a single attack. Touch wood, I'm done with it and when I come back to the UK I'd love to begin my path to raising awareness of non-epileptic disorder, something I've suffered with for nearly 7 years.

    I decided to have a night in reading my book while Will decided to hit the town. There are two bars in Vang Vieng that in the evening give out free Lao Lao, of course that's where Will went! I think he had quite the merry night!

    In the morning we went to the climb up the local view point. We left a lot later than expected, *cough* Will slept... I wonder why... but that did not stop us. It was a very very sweaty, very hot, very steep hike up to the top of Big Pha Nger, but such a lovely lovely day. We then cambered down and did its smaller sister Pha Nger. It was so peaceful and although a bit hazy a really amazing view. Altogether we walked for 5 hours and then decided to get a tuk tuk back to save an hour of walking. We stopped on the river side of the town for a well deserved Grilled Tilapia, salad and fried rice. ☺️ What a great find. The owner and his family were so welcoming, we were the only tourists there and he asked us to join them on their table to drink Beer Lao. It was so much fun. The family were already very drunk when we joined and it was so interesting how you can have so much fun with botched Lao and English speaking. The owner then invited us for a wedding the next day. We didn't know if he was serious but got ready for him to pick us up and he did. Neither of us had clothes suitable for a wedding so we felt very odd. But what an incredible day!! Everyone welcomed us from the very beginning and loved having sooo many pictures taken with us. Their clothes were so colourful and beautiful, it was such an honour to be invited. They insisted on us drinking lots, eating and doing a lot of Laos dancing. Also wow, can the Laos drink. We experienced a taster of this yesterday when we sat with the family but didn't realise they would do it for an entire day! Every glass of Beer Lao they poured they followed by "full" which means down it. The first couple we joined in but it was only 11am!

    At one point I nipped to the loo and came back to see Will teaching the men how to do the macerena. The guys were completely fixated on learning this dance and thought they were the coolest people on earth! They even made Will do it so they could record it on their phones so they could practise. Later on in the night a Hollywood song came on and I taught them my attempts of bollywood dancing too. Everyone was so friendly!

    We felt so guilty that we hadn't paid for anything so we asked the owner of the restaurant how we can gift money. We paid 200,000 Kip between the two of us which bought them 24 bottles of beer and they went wild for it! They did a huge announcement presenting us gifting the crates to the bride and groom and then we had our own special dance with them. They then invited us back to their house for even more drinks and dancing. It was 7pm and it was time to get out of the madness of constant drinking so we started walking to the town centre approx 1km, but soon realised this was going to be difficult, so we found some guests we had been drinking with and jumped in the back of their pick-up truck. Another thing off the bucket list. Today was by far the most welcoming and most incredible day of our journey so far. We have had small snippets of the Laos hospitality but this was just incredible. We can't wait to see more of Laos. We were only supposed to spend a couple of days in Vang Vieng but think we will be here a bit longer.

    The next day we hired a scooter and visited 2 caves and the blue lagoon 1. Although really busy it was still pretty fun to watch people dive off the top of a tree into the pool. In the evening we had dinner and chilled with a couple of brits that were staying in the same hotel playing President, a pretty fun card game. Obviously Dr Will as he is now being named everywhere was president and I was Vice Donkey 😂

    The next morning we woke up very early and on the spur of the moment decided its time to move on. We didn't have a clue where our next stop would be so we got to the bus station early so we could decide. Phonsavan was the winner!
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