Laos

After 7 days in Luang Prabang we are still not ready to leave. This has to be one of our favourite places of the trip for easy living. It is a beautiful place and the people are so friendly. I have been volunteering at Big Brother Mouse, a local charity which creates books for kids in Lao and English. They encourage tourists to buy books from their shop or from the market to give to kids who live in villages. If you have enough money you can sponsor a “book party” where they go to a village and tell the kids about books, play games with them and let them select a book each. Or you can sponsor a book itself to get it published. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of money at the moment but fortunately it’s possible to help out in other ways. So I spent 2 hours every morning this week going to their office and chatting to young Lao people who want to improve their English. They were mainly 18 & 19 year old students and one or two locals who are working in tourism. ...

Moved guest house again as although the bed was extra comfy the plumbing had a dodgy odour and there seemed to be a loud woman banging on the doors at all hours. We are far too old for such nonsense. And we were glad to check out as the guy on the desk tried to charge us $15 instead of the 100,000 kip we were quoted. Very rude. Later happened to come across it on Tripadvisor and it was something like #76 our of #98 B&Bs in Luang Prabang and most of the reviews were terrible. Turns out the last reviewer had also been almost ripped off by the grumpy staff so I left an equally bad review for the place there and then. ...

Another earlyish start. After yesterday’s overflowing boat we wanted to make sure we got a seat. We boarded the boat at 8:10 for a 9:00 departure to find it was a different boat from yesterday. This time there were about 20 car seats and the rest were stiff wooden benches about 8cm deep. At least we had a seat though. And there were cushions too covered in teddy bear material and many people didn’t get a seat so can’t complain (much). It was only for 9hours after all. ...

Not sure what to write about today. It gave us doubts about travelling. Made us feel old. Well me anyway. And like we’d missed the boat (excuse the pun). Yep we have spent all day on a boat full of young twenty-something travellers. Got up early so we could have breakfast at 8am in time for the boat pickup at 8.30. Pickup then wasn’t til 9.10. Fine OK no problem. Dropped off at the harbourside with our ticket & boat no. and the 9 of us from BAP Guesthouse traipse onto boat 099 which is filled with old car seats in 2s and 3s. We find our perch and wait. And wait. And wait… 10:30 comes and goes. More people pile on. 11:00. More people arrive. 11:30 still more people. The boat is pretty full to capacity now and we were meant to leave an hour ago. 12:00 and a whole another group comes pouring on. The good old plastic patio chairs come out down the middle of the aisle and by 12:15 we’re packed solid and away. ...

After exactly 1 month in Thailand we are now in Laos. It was pretty simple. We jumped on a rickety old bus from Chiang Rai, our bags piled high at the back of the bus with everyone else’s luggage and our knees up under our chins (well Matt’s anyway) and 2.5 hours later we were dropped off at a tuk-tuk stand in Chiang Khong on the border with Laos. 5 min tuk-tuk ride and we were at the Mekong River and border crossing. ...