Sabaidee from Laos!

Okay--your first assignment is to find Laos on a map.  You can see it's a pretty small country but we have had 2 1/2 weeks here and there's still SO much more we want to see and do.  The people here are incredibly friendly and relaxed.  They actually say that "thinking too much is bad for your brain"!  I don't know if I agree with that but I definitely like how much they try to have fun with everything they do, even work, and how much they laugh.

We started our time here with visits to the two biggest cities: Vientiane (the capital) and Luang Prabang.  Both places had a lot of good cafes and restaurants, places to hang out and read a book, and beautiful Buddhist temples everywhere.  Luang Prabang has really nice houses with tons of trees, flowers, and bushes everywhere so the whole city feels very green.  When we got to Luang Prabang we were planning on only spending 3 nights there but we couldn't leave!  We ended up staying 5 nights and spent our days reading on our balcony, having food at restaurants on the river, visiting the many temples, taking pictures of the buildings and the monks, and eating a lot of really good food.  (I will try to add some pictures later if I have more time because then you can see how cool it is.)

After all that relaxing we went to northern Laos to visit some smaller villages.  The first village, Muong Ngoi Neau, can only be reached by boat so there's no cars or motorbikes.  There's one main dirt road with some smaller ones off the sides leading to more homes and the school.  It's on the river and near the mountains so the first day we did a hike with a guide who told really funny stories.  He also invited us to dinner at his house which was great.  We bought a duck in the village, his wife cooked it up, then we ate by sitting on the floor and sharing all the food.  Each person has their own bowl of rice and a spoon and you just take what you want from the other plates of food.  I liked getting to meet the local people and do what they do.

Next we went to a town called Luang Nam Tha where we hired a guide to take us on a 3 day hike through the forest.  At night we stayed at tiny villages that seemed to have more pigs and chickens than people!  There was no electricity and the houses were very basic.  People work hard in the fields growing rice or in the village raising the pigs and chickens to sell later, repairing and building their homes, cooking, and washing.  The villagers all get their water from one central spot: in the first village there was a running water spout that people used to bathe and fill buckets for the homes; at the second village everyone just used the river.  We had a chance to eat dinner both nights with people from the village and our guide would translate.  They were friendly and not used to seeing tourists so they liked asking us questions.  We laughed a lot and enjoyed the whole trip.  Plus, it was good to get some exercise again!

Now we're going to Thailand, a neighboring country, for just a few days before we fly to the island of Bali.  I'm definitely sad to leave Laos because it's been one of my top 2 places we've visited so far.  Plus there's a lot more I want to see.  We just didn't realize how much there was to do or that it takes a long time to get from one place to another.  I guess we'll just have to come back some day!