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Vientiane is a capital city that you would barely recognise as a city, let alone as a the central hub of activity! But because of that it is a very special place... We stayed with Greg in his beautiful house on the Mekong, having beers on the balcony watching the sunset, waking up to the sound of the monks collecting alms and singing on their way to the temples. It was a really lovely place to spend a week, or two!
I received the care package from home - with new cd's, care of my brother (Fiest, The XX, Uzi and Ari - Awesome!!) and Christmas presents!! Don't worry I haven't opened them... saving them for Christmas day, wherever we will be for that!
Greg had been working really hard since we saw him in Georgia, and so we decided to have an adventure on the weekend and go looking for Wild Asian Elephants in the Phou Kao Kuoay National Park. Only an hour out of Vientiane this park is said to house 30-40 wild Asian elephants, which is pretty impressive. So out we went...
The trip involved getting to Ban Na and hiring 2 guides and hiking out to the Elephant Tower. This is where you can stay over night and keep an eye out for elephants coming to the salt lick by the side of the river... So we climbed up and settled in... Unfortunately we didn't see any, but we heard some noises in the forest. It's one of those things that cannot be guaranteed, so nevermind. We did see big tracks in the river sand, so they must be around... We had a nice hike though, but Fintan got bitten by something and his face started to swell up!
Over the next week, Greg was pretty busy again at work. But we decided to hang around and go out to the park again for some camping and sightseeing.
We spent the week planning the next stages of the trip, and decided that we'll go across the Friendship Bridge to Thailand, then drive to the other Friendship bridge back into Laos at Savanahket. From here we will drive down the Mekong to Pakse and 4000 Islands hoping to see the Mekong dolphins, then cross into Cambodia. From Stung Treng we will either go to Phenom Phen or Siem Reap/Angkor Wat... We have a month visa, so we are in no rush!
On the Saturday we started packing up for our camping trip and went shopping for mosquito nets. We ended up with these bright Barbie pink nets, but they were cheap and the mesh was very fine, so they looked good. As you can see from the photo, they were quite big so not very low key when we set up camp! We'd driven up to Tad Xai, a seven stage waterfall (seven= good luck) and gorgeous area. Amazingly, there were no other people camping/visiting, so we had the whole place to ourselves! Fintan even went into the pools for a dip!
Getting back to Vientiane we packed up and headed to the Friendship bridge - in disbelief that we had spent a month in Laos, and still had so much left to see! The border was so simple, we got stamped out of Laos, crossed the bridge and filled a form with our names and passport number on, got stamped in... no cost, no passport photos required... AMAZING! So easy!! So a couple of days in Thailand! There is even a Tescos (UK grocery store) here!! It's called Tesco Lotus, and in Aisle 13 there are pet foods and Monk baskets! Love it!
- comments
mum I REALLY want to go there!!!
Mike Richards Now that's waht I call HiVis. I think I should raise this as a safety Share Shonny and Fintan. Cheers Mike