Well we survived Laos and Northern Thailand and are now in Bangkok. We're about to embark on a 2-3 (or more?) day shopping trek around Bangkok. So we should have some downtime between malls to update our blog! Our plan is to walk about a kilometer from here, take a boat down a canal about 5km to the 'big' shopping district (basically a kilometer of massive stores). We will find a hotel there to leave our stuff and then head north about 10km to a massive weekend market. Once we are too tired to walk anymore we will head back to the shopping district and check out the sales for tomorrow. I never saw Tara get ready as fast as she did today.
In the meantime, I'll fill you guys in on part of our Laos experience. As we said last, we headed out for 3 days on a scooter to tour the coffee region of Laos. It is called the Bolaven Plateau and it produces some of the 'best' coffee in the world (Asia seems to be full of superlatives). As well there are some amazing waterfalls there.
We spent the first day traveling with a Brazilian guy who is traveling around the world, by bicycle, as part of a social project. The first waterfall we visited it was just the three of us. Tara left her bathing suit on the bike so she had the prestigious job of photographer.
That small white speck to the left of the waterfall was me. It took me 5 minutes to get Tara's attention to take the picture. I couldn't whistle because of the wind from the falls.The next waterfall was a little more inaccessible. We made it down as far as we could to take some pictures. The drop is apparently 120m.
The third waterfall that day was more like the first, but with more people. I was in a bit too much of a hurry on the way to the bottom and slipped on the rocks. After bouncing off rocks in 4 places and falling about 10 feet I landed on my feet, covered in mud and blood.
Just flesh wounds, but kind of scary considering how far we were away from medical care.
We arrived at our first stop about 30 minutes later. We had been going the whole day and really needed... some nice coffee. It was actually pretty awesome so we were excited to go to the market the next day to buy some beans to take home. We parted ways with our Brazilian friend here and had an amazing sleep.
The next day was a lot less eventful. We wandered the market and couldn't find a single coffee bean: only ground stuff. We drove around town trying to find coffee beans (it was supposed to be the coffee capital of Asia!!) but had no luck. So we set off again determined to keep our eyes open for anything that could be coffee.
By the end of the day we had visited 4 markets, 2 coffee shops, and countless villages in search of coffee beans. It was all to no avail. The Java gods were against us.
We stopped for some lunch in the shade of a bamboo grove. When we stopped an old lady walked up to us. She was wearing only a black bra and a long skirt. She said something in Lao, laughed, and then walked into the field beside us. About 10 minutes later she emerged with some mushrooms wrapped in a banana leaf. I'm not sure if she was trying to sell us them, give us them, or explain the unique chemical properties of the mushrooms but we had a 5 minute conversation with her without understanding a single word.We arrived at the final waterfall of our trip: Tad Lo. There, we booked an elephant ride and got an awesome deal on accommodation.
We had a large bungalow, fully modern, built with beautiful wood. And it was only 10$ a night. 
And it was right on the edge of the waterfall.
The next day was again spent traveling and searching for coffee. We even followed some signs that pointed to a coffee plantation (13km from the main road - about 25 minutes on the scooter). No beans. We ended up where we started, back in Pakse at the coffee place and we bought some beans there.
This is Tara, quite angry about the lack of coffee beans.That night we jumped on a bus for Vientiene, still frustrated about the lack of coffee beans.
Tomorrow (I hope!) we will post about Northern Laos and our (painful) adventures there.
