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10 hours, 4 taxi rides and 2 buses but yet only 100km traveled was my first experience of a land boarder crossing outside Europe. China and Laos are two of only five communist states left in the world however there seems little coordination between. On reflection we should have perhaps researched the trip some more but we expected the track to be well trodden by westerners although as it turns out we didn’t see any on our three day trip to boarder or the day of our boarder crossing. In China we’d come use to expecting a small town but finding large cities which had 5million plus people so finding civilization never really an issue but Laos only has 6 million people and the north is the least populated so went through town after town which really had no more than one shop and no guest houses. Naively we’d actually expected to change money on the boarder luckily Laos operates a duel currency with dollars

Laos Smiles Delight

Stucros
2006-01-13 18:42:20

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they walk through the streets to collect food from the locals who are now joined by red eyed westerners. It was a great thing to feel apart of this little daily event and very much worth the crack of dawn start.
From Lang Prabang we headed south to Vang Vein. There’s a lot said about this place and probably an equal amount to love and loath. It is backpacker central in Laos and not a very attractive one at that. It really is no more than a shanty town were the streets are paved with Video bars the worst being at the cross roads where four restaurants place continuos episodes friends. Although it proves strangely addictive. On the upside every meal is named as if a MacDonalds kids meal and it’s nice to sit back and relax. Vang Vein is also home to perhaps the most popular backpacking activity in

Who's line is it anyway
Laos…….. Tubing….. It’s strange how the most entertaining things life prove the simplest to which tubing is one. In town you rent your tube and they take you a few kms up stream where you jump in your tube and float……… back down through some amazing scenery - obviously local entrepreneurs have added to the attraction on the river setting up small basic bars and on approach screams of sa ba dee and Beer Laos echos round the limestone cliffs. To accept their invitation you simply raise your hand and out comes one of the most extendible bamboo stick in the world to taxi you in. To add to the attraction it seems every bar has built a primitive fairground attraction of their own ranging from death slides to big swings, all of which ends up with you doing a rather foolish belly flop into the river. It’s a great way to meet people and that normally means that you end up in the last bar after sunset and only have the moon to guide you on the last stint of floating and end up walking through the town in the pitch black!!!! So in total we did it 4

At last keys can actually call someone Chief
days in a row, which by no means is a record but it does show it’s addictive nature or more to the point there is very little else to do in Vang Vein.
From Vang Veing I completed the backpacking circuit to Ventaine where Keys and myself split - Full Moon awaits me in thailand.