Into Laos and away

Even two days before we arrived in Laos, it was obvious that we were in Southeast Asia. The climate and surroundings had changed so much from what I had seen up until then: paddy fields, rubber and banana plantations and just plain jungle became the norm. Laos and China just feel different too, Laos is much more relaxed and laid back than frenetic China.

On the way to the border we were supposed to camp for three nights, but we hadn't counted on every available flat space being a field of some sort. The first night we ended up camping at the side of the road next to a virtual cliff in the jungle, an unusual campsite made even more interesting by the torrential rain and the ant invasion of our tent. The second night we spent in a hotel in Jinghong due to the continuing downpour which turned out to be quite enjoyable: it is a cool little town to wander around. I also got my hair cut here, those who know me will know what an era-defining moment this was! We missed out the last camp, thankfully, as it was still raining and there was still nowhere to camp, and we crossed into Laos a day early.

Our first stop in Laos was the sleepy little town of Luang Nam Tha, cute, prone to power outages and very humid, this so far seems to be the pattern in Laos. We spent two nights there, then moved to Muang Ngoy for one night where we had a great guesthouse room overlooking the river. This river was our transport the next day to Luang Prabang on a noisy long wooden boat. It doesn't sound very pleasant, but it was really great to travel on the river. We even stopped at the Pakou Caves which were quite impressive Buddhist cave temples next to the Mekong river. Almost as impressive was the number of small children trying to get us to buy the freedom of the tiny birds they had captured in little cages, you had to run the gauntlet to get to the upper cave.

The pictures are our wet roadside camp, the view from the terrace of our guesthouse in Muang Ngoy and views from the boat including Rich doing what he does best.