2 weeks of Sundays

Hey Everyone,

Well there is no question that we are dedicated bloggers because we are currently sitting in one of the best/cheapest malls we've both ever been in and we're blogging! Thanks for the posts, every one of them makes our day! We miss you all so much!

Our experience in Laos was nothing short of amazing. The people were incredibly warm and inviting and always had a smile or something nice to say (even if it was just "hello!"). It was really humbling to see people who according to our "western" standards have next to nothing but seem to be some of the happiest and satisfied people we've ever seen. Most of the people living in the countryside live in tiny straw shacks on stilts, drink rain water, raise and kill their own livestock, and for the most part live pretty similar to how life was 100 or so years ago. Elephants are still used for transport, people walk rather than drive, there's no electricity in some places, kids play with straw soccer balls, and everyone wears traditional clothes. There's definitely an emphasis placed on family and friends rather than higher education and wealth. The guidebook says that Laos people actually feel sorry for those who "have to think too hard." With all that said, you get really laid-back and content people. We often walked into markets or small stores and people would be just sleeping or reading magazines rather than yelling at us to buy something. All-in-all Laos was incredibly refreshing and a great place to soak up the atmosphere and recharge our batteries. Oh, and the food was fabulous!

Vientiene

After our unsuccessful (but fun, nonetheless) coffee search, we headed up to Vientiene. Besides being a pretty nice, laid back city, Vientiene lived up to its name of being one of the most boring cities in South East Asia. There just wasn't a whole lot to do there. We spent most of the day reading books and eating carrot cake (there was, however, a great bakery there!).

Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng, on the other hand, was fantastic! It is a little backpacker town that is surrounded by Karst mountains and beautiful scenery. We went on a caving tour one day to 3 different caves. One of the caves was inhabited by around 250 people during the war. They lived in the cave for around 3 months and basically caught and ate anything that happened to go into it (snakes, dogs, spiders, etc.). Fortunately, most of them survived, but they left their names written on the roof of the cave in smoke. Very eerie.We also went into a "water cave" which basically involved attaching a battery-operated light to our heads (safe? Glad there was an electrical engineer on hand) and paddling through the cave on a tube. There were spiders and webs all over the roof, and at times if we leaned all the way back on the tube the roof was literally touching our noses. At one point we got off our tubes and crawled (slithered) through some really small cracks in the stalactite. Definitely not a tour for the claustrophobic!

After the cave tour we did something that pretty much every tourist who comes to Vang Vieng does - we tubed down the Mekong for a few hours and drank some Beer Lao. It was a blast! There were bars every 1/2 kilometer or so where you could dock your tube, get more drinks, and go on giant rope swings.
It was one of my highlights of the trip. You start about 10m up and you swing quite a ways. I'll put a video up on YouTube once we are out of Thailand.

Andrew, of course, took advantage of the swinging (someone else was taking advantage of the $0.60 drinks!)
and ended up doing the world's worst belly flop! He was literally black and blue for a few days. Ouch!
See, Tara got it all wrong. This was the best belly flop ever. It was a little scary the next day when the other side of my stomach started turning yellow, but I regret nothing.

We had a fantastic time though, and it was an amazing experience floating down the Mekong and taking in all of the beautiful scenery.

Luang Prabang

After all the drinking, tubing, and belly-flopping fun we decided to make our way to the ancient capital, Luang Prabang. There are around 33 ancient temples in the city which are still inhabited by the monks. We went and checked out a few of the temples and walked up the "sacred mountain" called Phousi. The monks in Laos wear these bright orange robes (the colors range from almost yellow to rust, depending on rank) and look really striking next to the gold temples. Apparently every Loatian male is expected to spend some time in a monastery during his life. It is quite strange to see these 8 or 10 year old boys walking around wearing bright orange robes.


We relaxed a bit more in Luang Prabang (we needed it!), but ended up climbing up a waterfall one day (no, Andrew didn't practice his gymnastics this time!).
The waterfalls were absolutely gorgeous.
We walked up about half an hour or so and there were little pools all the way up. The water was crystal-clear and sooo inviting after the sweaty climb up the fall. We ended up sharing one of the pools with about 20 Lao kids who were swinging from vines by the water. They were adorable and incredibly brave. They would start out swinging from the highest branches, flip around mid-air, and then somersault into the water! Scary!

After Laos we went on a 3 day boat/bus trip into Thailand. I'll leave it to Andrew to fill you in on all the details tomorrow. Our shopping trip is getting a little out of control, so we haven't been updating as much as we had planned.

We're missing you all and hope everyone is doing well. We have just a little over a month until we're back - can't wait!

Love,

Tara & Andrew
XOXO