Bye bye Laos

A week on from our previous post and we're still in love with Laos! We spent our final few days in Vang Vieng by going kayaking and caving one day, going out every night and being really lazy - just the way we want to be! Spending a week there was really cool - we met so many great people and it was sad to say goodbye to our temporary community. Still, by the time we got on our bus to Luang Prabang, we felt ready to see something new. Luang Probang, forgetting the white knuckle "VIP" bus ride to arrive here, is a beautiful river town, full of French style cafes and a great night market.

Gemma and I treated ourselves to a traditional Laos massage on our first day - lovely! I am still covered in huge bruises from tubing (over a week ago!) so massaging my legs was rather painful and not quite the soothing experience I was hoping for!! Let's see how a thai massage compares hey.

We took ourselves down to a local education centre one morning where we sat with local Lao teenagers who are learning English and want help with their reading and pronunciation - this was a great experience as, for once, there was no pressure to spend any money first and we genuinely felt like we were helping people and not being conned out of any money! I sat with a 15 year old girl called Va whose English was really limited but we were able to communicate just about! I showed her some pictures of my family from my camera and wrote down their names for her. I asked her to do the same and her list went on for ever! 12 brothers and sisters! My word. After a while drawing loads of fruit, vegetables and animals I gave up on English and decided to teach her how to play noughts and crosses! Then I tried to show off by making one of those paper game origami things, and before i'd even finished she'd taken the scraps of paper and made me some origami roses...ahh! Really good morning anyway, Lao people have been so friendly in each place we've been to.

Later that day we visited some beautiful waterfalls and a bear sanctuary, and spent the rest of the day relaxing (too hot to do much else) and spending loads of money at the night market! Had a great time this morning going elephant trekking and feeding them bananas afterwards - riding an elephant is a lot scarier than I'd imagined though, especially going downhill!! The elephant trail took us across a river as well which was stunning for the landscapes - then suddenly Sarah and I (who were sharing an elephant seat) heard some loud splashes from behind us, and realised that our beautiful elephant was having a poo in the river!!! Didn't we kill ourselves laughing when huge green lumps of dung floated past us! Well when ya gotta go, ya gotta go!

This is our last day in Luang Prabang and tomorrow we are leaving Laos and heading to Thailand! Probably going to stop in Chang Mai first but hoping to visit Pai as we've heard good reports!

I'm trying to encourage the other two to write some posts on here soon - slackers!