Hey everyone!

Well we are coming to the end of our trip now with only 10 days to go! So since the last blog we have had a great cultural experience of Laos. We left Vientiane (capital of Laos) last Saturday and headed on to Vang Vieng. We arrived laste afternoon and headed to one of the many outdoor bars that play "Friends" all day (others play Simpsons and Family Guy) and you sit a platform thats made into small sofas with your legs under a coffee table (see photos). We had a lovely BBQ dinner - although the waiter was weird- constantly going from a very high to a very low voice when talking!

On the Sunday we went tubing! Laos is famous for tubing which involves floating/swimming in a black rubber ring down the Mekong Ruver for 3-4km. Although this is not why it is famous - it is illegal in most countries because along the way there are lots of pubs that throw half full bottles on a rope at you to pull you in! Not only this they have massive slides and rope swings from the pubs over the river in areas that are not deep enough to guarantee you won't hit your skull on the bottom (explains the massive disclaimer you have to sign at the start). The problem is that all the pubs sell drugs on the menu and most people get "high" or drunk. At first I didn't think I would do the tubing as I didn't want to get badly burnt but then when I saw the river I couldn't resist floating along in the tube. So we headed out in the morning with lots of suncream and floated down the river. We stopped at a couple of bars and Ryan did all the rope swings he could - actually he was the only one who did as a couple were so high the other guys didn't want to. I cringed a few times as he fell in. Unfortunately we do not have any evidence of the tubing as on the first rope swing the cheap waterproof camera fell out of Ryan's pocket and it was the only one we had for the group. We all pulled about every muscle in our bodies pulling ourselves up the bamboo steps, rocks and through the water currents in the shallow parts of the river. We ended up having to get a tuk tuk (trailer pulled on back of bike) back as we had to have the tubes back by 6pm and no one had told us how far it was down the river! That night just chilled out having a BBQ dinner again-loving getting away from the rice for 2 days (told mum not to suggest a chinese takeaway for at least month after I get back or I will scream)!!!

The next day we had a long windy trip in the bus to Luang Prabang. We passed a massive forest fire on the way as you can see in the photos and the local people were not worried at all. We headed in a tuk tuk for dinner at a western restaurant. Ryan found a bakery earlier in the day and spent at least 30 minutes talking about how much he loved sandwiches and everyone was sooo happy to have these "normal" sandwiches! I'm not a sandwich person so I didn't get it! haha! On Tuesday I went to an elephant reserve where I got to ride an Asian elephant for an hour. It was so much fun especially when the elephant was trying to get into the river. Ryan didn't want to go so the guy you can see in the photos in the tour guide for GAP adventures-he took the opportunity to steer the elephant-sitting on it's head! I thought it would be unfair if I sat on her head!!!haha! After the ride we took a thin speed boat along the river to see a small waterfall! Although as it is dry season the waterfall was literally non-existent! We headed back to town and went to the "famous" bakery for late lunch and that night had dinner at a local Laos restaurant.
Wednesday we got on what was meant to be a 2-day slow boat cruise along the Mekong River. Unfortunately though this year the river had dried up so much that we could only take the boat for one day and had to get a bus the second day. So Tuesday was spent relaxing on the boat watching local people down by the river searching for gold. We stayed in a small village that night and had some Indian food for dinner! We got to see new born kittens at the restaurant too just born that day. On Thursday then they organised a bus for us instead of the boat but told us we could either go on a dirt track for 6 hours or a tarmac road for 11 hours! We picked the dirt twisty track! So everyone armed with motion sickness tablets headed up into the hills of Northern Laos towards the border. This actually turned out to be my favourite journey so far as we went through all the local villages. We stopped in one and the children were all running around us- apparently some of them had only seen white people for the first time in the last two months as this was the first time people had to drive this road due to the shallow water! We got to the Laos/Thailand border where we had to cross the Mekong River (no man's land) to get to Thailand. After all 12 of us piling into one small tuk tuk we got to our hotel in Chiang Khong overlooking the river.

Friday we had a very early start to head to Chiang Mai. But today was to be a very good day as an unexpected chance of going to a Tiger Sanctuary arose. As you can see in the unbelievable photos we got a chance to go in with a one month old Tiger cub and also the adult Tigers! It was literally one of the best experiences of my life and definitely in the top 3 things of everything I have done in the last 5 months! There were 3 cubs and they just all wanted to sit on top of each other. So so cute! When we were in with the adult Tigers it was a little scary (especially when I accidentially hit the electric fence with my shoulder and screamed as Ryan was lying over the Tiger and the Tiger sat up and looked round! Ryan couldn't have ran away any faster! I was definitely in the bad books after that!). You can also see the Tigers fighting in some of pictures-that was over a palm tree leaf toy they love. Ryan also had one of those fish foot massages I talked about before in Cambodia! After Tiger Kingdom we headed into Chiang Mai where everyone's excitment grew at the sight of a McDonalds!!! There was also a Boots so I got myself a couple of facial sachets-need to get the skin sparkling for coming home! Early evening we headed to the train station for the overnight train to Bangkok. This train was quite different to trains in Vietnam where we didn't have 4 to a room - instead we had an open carriage with 40 people! Although it looked like just tables and chairs when we got on by 8pm it had transformed into bunks with curtains! So managed to get quite a bit of sleep before arriving in Bangkok Saturday morning. As this tour overlaps with our next tour we headed to stay at a different hotel so we could go to meet the new group for the "Roam Bangkok to Singapore" GAP Adventures tour - its a full tour (15 people) with everyone from England except us! We headed out last night after the meeting to say bye to all our old group which after spending 30 days with we had formed quite a close bond with so it was sad! :-(

Anyways onto the last tour....

Love Kimberly xoxo