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Our visas for Vietnam (that we applied for in Vientiane) don't start until the 19th of July so we are beginning to make our way towards the most north eastern boarder with Vietnam to a town called Diem Bien Phu.
We spent 3 days in Udomxai, a trade lane town between China and Laos. The town has a 25% chinese population and we felt very much like we were in China! We thought Oudomxai was going to be a bit nicer but it was mainly full of metal shops and mechanic shops with not much to do, only a few places to get a beer and one cafe which had translations to English. It was nice to relax though and we found a few things to do.
We walked up to the Buddha on the hill and found a nice local restaurant to eat lunch at one day, we enjoyed watching the children of the family playing with their new puppy and Matt saved it on a couple of occasions from running into the busy road.
On our last night we thought we would go local and went to a chinese restaurant, they didn't have a menu at all so we were ushered into the kitchen and had to point at what we wanted. With not too many recognisable ingredients in the fridge we pointed to a dead plucked chicken and hoped for the best. As others were bought their food we got more excited as it looked and smelt lovely. We were not so lucky. The waitress bought out a massive bowl of soup, enough rice to serve 10 and left us to it. Inside the bowl was a broth with various bits of the chicken floating around, including the feet and head. There wasn't one piece of chicken meat in the whole bowl, and the meal was the most expensive we've had in Loas - think they saw us coming!
The next morning we headed off on the local bus to our last stop in Laos, Muang Khua. It is on the "Red Valley" and set along the side of the river, very pretty and we enjoyed watching the many river boats and local fisherman.
We stayed for two nights and had a great time, it is a very small village, like all the villages we had been driving past on our travels so it was nice to stay somewhere small and watch village life. We met some fellow travellers on both nights and swapped recommendations as most were going the opposite way to us. Two Canadians had just finished doing the Top Gear route through Vietnam on motorbikes, they had some great stories! They had just arrived and said they had passed the bus coming from Dien Bien Phu and didn't think it would get to Muang Khua as there was flooding due to heavy rainfall.
We went to bed wondering whether we would get to Vientam in the morning as the bus we were due to take was the bus that the Canadians had passed and we weren't sure whether it ever arrived!
Laos Summary...
For a large country with only a 6.5 million population Laos is a wonderful place to visit. The country is more affluent than Cambodia but nowhere near as much as their giant neighbours Thailand and Vietnam. Northern Loas in particular is absolutely breathtaking and every second we spent travelling here was incredible and one of the highlights of our trip so far.
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