Loving Lao :)

Last week I went up to Lao for about 5 days with my new friends Amy and Scott from the camps. Lao borders Thailand’s northeast side so we decided to travel by land. We began our adventure by taking a 9-hour night bus to the Thailand Lao border. Surprisingly the night bus we took was nicer than some of the buses I have taken in the US. Once we crossed the border we explored the capital city of Vientiane. The capital is a very sleepy city with not much to do except visit their most famous wat in the country, Pha That Luang.

After our visit to the wat we took a 3-hour extremely bumpy and windy bus ride on a non-aircon bus to the city of Vang Vieng. This city is commonly known in the backpackers’ world as a tubing city. They have bars that line the Mekong River with zip lines, rope swings, and crazy slides. The people at the bars throw water bottles tied to rope at you so they can pull you into their bars. So naturally we had to go tubing Day 1!

Scott turned out to be a great person to go to Lao with because he lived there the previous year for a couple of months. He took us on this amazing hike to this hut on top of a mountain with this spectacular view.

After the hike we went to visit this family he had met the previous year in a village. The family not only remembered him, but had his picture framed with their other family photos. The family was very friendly. They invited us in and even invited us to stay the night, but we politely declined the offer.

The last couple of days we just went tubing again and I went rock climbing. After Ton Sai I have really been itching to go rock-climbing again! I think it just might be my new favorite hobby! The rock-climbing itself wasn’t hard, but the actual hike to get to the routes was extremely difficult in flip-flops. I ended up slipping on the way down and scratching my arm pretty bad. Thankfully the Lao guides were prepared with tiger balm. One of them even picked and chewed up a local plant to turn it into medicine to clean my cut. He didn’t speak any English so he just walked up to me and started rubbing this green stuff on my cut. It was defiantly an experience in itself.

I had my first two days of work already. So far so good! I promise to write more details later!

Xoxo,

Nichole