Upon arriving in Vietnam towards the start of February, we had planned to equally split the next three months (before our flight to St Petersberg) between Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. But as we to spoke to various travellers and received advice, we kept getting the same message: we should spend the majority of our time in Vietnam and Thailand. So we opted to spend roughly a month in Vietnam, a month in Thailand and split the remaining time between Cambodia and Laos. We could have easily spent more time in both Vietnam and Cambodia, but no matter how long you travel, there is always scope to see more! Overall we felt the amount of time we had in Vietnam and Cambodia was enough to see various parts of each country, so we can’t complain.

As we prepared to visit Laos we kept receiving very mixed feedback from other travellers, strong opinions but always very polarised. For some people it was their favourite country, for others they said they didn’t like it at all! It is the only country where we have received this sort of feedback – so we had some amount of trepidation as we prepared to fly out from Siem Reap to Vientiane. But we have always had the same viewpoint that ultimately you have to just go visit somewhere yourself if you really want to have an opinion – so we pushed all the naysayers to one side and headed to Vientiane excited about what we’d find there.

When we arrived at our connecting airport, Pakse, in Laos – we immediately felt like we were in a different country. The airport is very small and old-fashioned, it isn’t miles away from civilisation (like airports typically are) and is instead just along a road, with peoples houses and businesses on. The airport doesn’t have very many flights per day, so it doesn’t cause major problems for the residents. Inside the airport, there are almost no facilities: just a place to get a bottle of water, a toilet and a clear lack of air conditioning (which was evident from all the hot and sweaty customers waiting with us, for an hour and a half, for the check-in desk for our second flight to open). Despite it being so basic, it had a certain charm about it: like going back to an older, more basic time.

When we arrived at our hostel, we were amazed at how laid back and quiet Vientiane, the capital city is. Quiet streets with mostly small buildings, lots of little street vendors, very few mainstream shops, there isn’t even a McDonalds (it is one of the relatively few numbers of countries in the world which doesn’t have one). However, we found a lovely little street which was fall of homemade furniture (made from shipping crates) and lots of little food stalls which you could choose from.

As we were only staying in Vientiane for two nights, we had a single day to see as much as we could, so we signed up for a full day tour which took us a lot of the main attractions. We started with Wat Si Saket, which is a temple which contains a thousand Buddha statues and is, possibly, the oldest temple in Vientiane.

From there we went over the road to Ho Phra Kaew Temple, which was built in 1565 to house the somewhat famous Emerald Buddha, although the Emerald Buddha has since been relocated to Bangkok!

Next, we went the COPE Visitors Centre (COPE stands for Cooperative Orthotic & Prosthetic Enterprise). This is the main source for artificial limbs and other walking aids in Laos. The visitor centre gives a lot of information about the devastating effects of having 260 million cluster bombs dropped on the country during the Vietnam war. It is the most heavily bombed country in the world, ever. There was a bomb dropped every 8 minutes, 24 hours per day, for 9 years straight. The country is still plagued by the reminiscence: 30% of all bombs which were dropped didn’t detonate, so the country is scattered with UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) which causes havoc, with the majority of the victims being farmers who are digging into the ground for a living. It was in equal parts shocking to find out about this both from the point of view of how tragic it is, but also from the point of view we had never heard anything about this up until now.

After being a little depressed from our learnings from COPE, we were happy to head over to Buddha Park next, which is a park with over 200 Hindu and Buddhist statues. It is claimed all the statues are built by one person and his students, although there is some speculation this may not be 100% true. The park was quite interactive, allowing you to enter and climb on some of the statues.

From the Buddha Park, we headed over to Pha That Luang, which is a golden stupa (Buddhist shrine), which features on the countries banknotes. It is set in a reasonable sized grounds, with various other halls and temples throughout.

Finally, we were driven to Patuxai, a war monument which was built in dedication for those who fought for independence from France. You can climb to the top of the monument to get a view of part of the city, but interestingly, when you climb up inside, you go through several indoor markets, selling nothing but souvenirs, which isn’t what we had expected!

 

We rounded off the day with a drink in a bar which overlooks the Mekong River, and on the other side of the river, in swimming distance, is Thailand. We hadn’t appreciated just how close we were to Thailand until this point. But it was nice to look across and enjoy our final night in Vientiane before we headed to Vang Vieng the next day.

 

Vang Vieng was put on the backpacker’s map almost 20 years ago as a party town to go tubing (floating down a river in an inflated tractor inner tube, surrounded by beautiful scenery). But the scenery wasn’t enough so lots of pop up, unlicensed bars were added, selling homemade alcohol, which you can enjoy a drink in between the scenery. Enjoying a drink turned into drinking yourself unconscious and gently floating down a river turned into going down rapids with huge rocks. To increase consumer enjoyment further, a number of homemade zip lines and rope swings were put up, so in between passing out in the water and having your skull cracked against rocks, you can slide along a zip line over sharp rocks. But as long as you hold on tight you may be okay. So to help with that, huge quantities of drugs were freely made available to all customers, so you can hallucinate, fall off the zip wire, land on a sharp rock, then collapse face down in the fast-moving current which can take you, skull first, into a giant boulder. The backpacker’s dream? After more than 27 tourist deaths in 2011 caused by these activities, the government stepped in and shut everything down. It stayed like this for several years, but has now resurfaced as a much more controlled activity – you can go out on a slow current, without any boulders, with a tour guide in a kayak at the front and the back of the group. There are still a couple of bars along the route, but they just sell beers, and you only stay there long enough to have one or two – so it is back to being an enjoyable experience of lazily letting the rivers current drift you past stunning scenery, with the cooling water feeling refreshing against the beating sun above and a cool beer to sip.

As you can see from the video, it was a very slow moving, easy going day. Certain sections of the river were a fair bit faster, but at the time of year we went, at least, it didn’t ever feel dangerous.

The next day we signed up for more outdoor fun, a combination of caving (laying on a rubber ring and then pulling your self along ropes that go into caves), kayaking and jumping into the Blue Lagoon.

Although we kayaked on the same river, we started at a different part and could go a lot further as we were both rowing. Although it can be a little tiring, kayaking is a really nice way to explore an area, you see so much, it is very peaceful and the exercise leaves you feeling satisfied (and in our case, ready for an early night).

Steve found a couple of different, adventurous ways to get into the Blue Lagoon.

We did not stay in Vang Vieng for very long: three nights and two full days, but we felt like we made the most of our time and enjoyed all the activities we took part in. As we left we didn’t really feel like there was anything else we wanted to do, so it felt like the perfect time to be heading to our final destination in Laos: Luang Prabang.

One attraction that most people that visit Luang Prabang flock towards are the Kuang Si Falls, what we didn’t know before we arrived in Luang Prabang is the fact there is also a bear sanctuary there. The bears have hammocks to laze around in, tires to sit on and a reasonably sized area to move around in. We found them in so many funny poses, a few of which are below.

We could have spent hours watching the bears, but we only had a limited time and were keen to see the waterfalls too, which are both visually stunning and refreshing to swim in.

As has become a little bit of a tradition, Steve was eager to find alternative ways to enter the water.

We could have stayed at the Kuang Si Falls for much longer, but we were visiting as part of a tour put on by our hostel and we had a transfer waiting to pick us up midafternoon.

In the early evening we went to Mount Phousi to see the sunset, well that was our intention at least, the reality was we saw hundreds of selfie sticks, and due to the heavy fog, the sun didn’t really set, it just disappeared into the haze. However, we made a couple of friends, Addy and Yoshi, who we went for dinner with. We also saw the bamboo bridge that connects the main part of Luang Prabang to Dyen Sabai. The bridge is strung with lights to make it look impressive by night. There is a small charge for crossing the bridge, this money is required, as each year, during the rainy season, the bridge is washed away!

In total, we were in Laos for about eight days and we arrived not knowing exactly what to expect, or even if we would enjoy it. But the conclusion is that we both really loved it. It felt different to any country we have been to before, all of the people from Laos that we interacted with were very friendly (the most friendly from anywhere we have been in South East Asia so far). We enjoyed all the outdoor activities, we enjoyed going to bed early and getting up early – which we were keen to do, as we know our next stop, Thailand, would mean going to parties which run all night long! Below is a little overview map of the places we visited in Laos. Next stop for us is a flight from Luang Prabang to Surat Thani in Thailand!

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