I am in love with Laos already! We crossed the border from China into Laos by tuktuk early today, and arrived at our bright blue guesathouse around lunchtime. We pretty much have the entire house to ourselves, so in the afternoon we dragged the couches outside onto the balkcony, everyone gathered around drinking "Beer Lao", exhausted after our bike ride.

We rented mountain bikes for the day (quite a step up from our Japanese bikes) and rode through our town and the surrounding villages to a waterfall, where after a slippery walk we reached the beautiful, secluded pool, which we shivered into. The waterfall splashed onto our backs (quite an enojoyable massage!), so loud that we had to yell at eachother.

I can already tell that this is the second poorest country on earth - the villages are all painfully poor. Most of the houses stand on stilts, with scrawny chickens, and adorable black mini-pigs munching away underneath. There are kids everywhere, most of them running around nude or with a tshirt on. Some of them are very shy, whilst others call out "SAMBAIDII!" which is hello is lao. It is such a relief not to be constantly, blatantly stared at like in China - here we attract glances, for sure, but they don't have the hostile, rude edge that most did in China. Another relief is that the roads nare a lot less busy - I don't feel as though i might die! I remember in Kunming one of the options was to hire bikes around the city. Now, as much as I love a bike ride, I also love my life. You couldn't have paid me to ride a bike in a Chinese city lol. This rural little town, on the other hand, have barely any cars at all; the most "dangerous" vehicles are the scooters. Most people ride bikes, and they are all pretty skilled - often balancing two kids on one, or riding whilst clutching an umbrella (although it is very hot here, raiun is common). We even saw one girl riding her bike, whilst holding an umbrella, whilst reading a book! Now that's multi-tasking!!!