It's been a long time since I updated this blog, and these pictures are a little out of date. I'm in Austria right now, but these pictures are from a few weeks back when I was in Laos.
This is me and Dan on the slow boat that we took from Thailand to Luang Prabang, Laos. We were on this boat going down the Mekong River for 2 days.
This is the view that we had while we were going down the river. The boat was open, so we got a lot of fresh air. When it started to rain, though, we had to pull tarps over the "windows" so that we didn't get wet.
This is just another of the many pictures that I took of the Mekong River. I was on this boat for two days... I had to do something, so I took pictures of water.
After the first day on the boat, we stopped in a little town for the night called Pak Beng. This is me at "The Only Bar in Town."
This is what it looked like at The Only Bar in Town. Apparently, being the only bar in town isn't enough to attract customers.
This is a big group of English people I met on the boat. Here we are at The Only Bar in Town.
This is the boat on the second day. For the second day, they got a smaller boat, so there weren't enough seats for everyone. That meant that we had to sit at the front of the boat where there were no seats.
Here are the Englishmen trying to entertain themselves while lying in the boat. I actually didn't mind not having a seat on the boat - I thought it was much nicer to lie down on the floor rather than sitting in an uncomfortable car seat. That's also something worth noting - the seats on the boat were just seats that were pulled out of old cars and set inside the boat. The seats weren't even attached to the ground, so you could move them around if you wanted to.
Along the way, we stopped at little towns to pick up people or big bags of who-knows-what.
This is one of the little Lao boys who was convinced that this English boy's fingers should be able to bend the wrong way...
This is where the pictures start from life after the boat ride. When we got to Luang Prabang, we stayed at a pretty cheap and dirty hostel called Spicy Lao. One thing that they did have to offer, though, was free snake whiskey. This is a big jug of whiskey filled with snakes and giant centipedes. Yummy.
This is the night market in Luang Prabang. I didn't like Laos so much, but I can't deny that they have some good food. It seems that Lao people really like to grill things, so we often ate grilled fish or chicken on a stick. Laos was also a French colony at some point, so they make really good baguettes and sandwiches.
This is me at one of the most beautiful water falls I've ever seen. The water was this beautiful bluish-green color that doesn't really show up in the pictures.
This is me and Dan in the water at the main waterfall.
There was a tree at the main waterfall with a rope swing. You had to climb up with a long stick and somehow get ahold of the rope before you could swing down. It was pretty scary trying to balance on the tree and fish for the rope.
This is me swinging from the tree into the water. It was amazing. After this, we also went to the top of the waterfall and jumped over the waterfall into the pool. This waterfall was the best thing I saw in Laos.
After Luang Prabang, I took a bus over to Vang Vieng. This is one of the typical restaurants in Vang Vieng. They have TVs. You sit down, eat, and watch TV. How crazy is that? Most restaurants are set up this way with everyone sitting in rows facing the TV.
Vang Vieng is also a popular place for "tubing." Tubing is where you sit on big tubes and float down the river between bars. It's a super dangerous idea, if you think about it. Imagine hundreds of drunk people floating down a river and people getting in fights because someone stole their tube... It's not really something I want to do again.
At the start of the tubing, they'll take you across the river to get to the first bar (which is called "The First Bar"). In this picture, you can see the boat where they are taking our tubes across for us and the bar in the background.
This is that English guy and a Dutch girl named Jo. While I was in Vang Vieng, I lived with Jo and a Chilean guy named Josa.
This is Jo jumping into the river from The First Bar. I guess that's the idea - when you've had enough of one bar, you jump in and swim or float to the next.
These are my roommates from Vang Vieng - me, Josa, and Jo.
Floating down the river will not take you directly to the bar. This is how you actually get to a bar - People throw you a rope, and you have to catch it and hold on tight while they pull you in.
This is me and Jo getting ready to get back into the river.
This is Josa holding onto the stairway to one of the bars.
There are many exciting things to do while you're tubing, and this is one of them. Some of the bars have big water slides that send you flying into the river. Woohoo!
This picture is just to remind you that there are temples everywhere - even when most of my pictures are of silly things like tubing and rivers. If I put up pictures of every temple I went to, you'd probably die of boredom. But never fear - While in Southeast Asia, you're never more than 50 feet from a temple.
After Vang Vieng, I went to Ventiene, which is the capital city of Laos. Ventiene was my favorite place in Laos. It was a nice city where people were mostly occupied with their own lives rather than busying themselves with exploiting tourists. I didn't take any pictures in Ventiene because I was already tired of being in Asia by the time I got there. Once I got to Laos, I had a really sudden change of heart about my travels. Before I came to Laos, I was in love with this traveling lifestyle and I was hoping that it would never end. After I spent some time in Laos, I became tired of the constant battle between tourists and local people. I started to really feel the separation between the Europeans and the Asians, and it depressed me and drained all of my energy. After Laos, I simply didn't have any more energy to care about temples or cultural experiences or beautiful landscapes or any of the things that excited me before. The time had come for me to leave Asia. Luckily, I had a flight to Germany in less than a week. Good timing, right?
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