Be Like Soldier

Laos is known as one of the most undeveloped countries on earth, as I roll in from the Thai border it becomes evident that they weren't wrong. The first stop is the capital Vientiane, as you can tell by the name the French influence is very strong here, it's a very bizarre combination, there are very few sealed roads and everything seems unfinished but then you have these old colonial building lingering around the streets with the Parisian lamp posts blotting the footpaths, you then follow the main road to the business junction and you see a rather incongruous replica of the Arc 'de Triumph right in the middle of the road attempting to appear to fit into Laos with some engravings of Buddha on each side. I hired a bike for the next day and did a complete sweep of the city and there isn't really much to Vientiane, I tried to find any sort of industrial buildings or anything that would prove it to be the Capital but was surprised to find the same terrace like buildings on every square inch of footpath. So after a couple of days it was time to make my way up to VangVieng, a beautiful sleepy town beside the local river nestled between limestone peaks and fluorescent green rice paddies. It is very cheap here, I was staying in my own room with bathroom that had hot water for 30,000kip ($4NZD), it is however very touristy, there is basically one main road in VangVieng, you can only come in from that one road and along this road is Television bars playing repeats of Friends and The Simpsons all day. VangVieng is famous for its caves found in the mountains that the locals used in the Indo China war, so I hired a bike and went exploring, the openings are so small you wouldn't even think a person could fit but once you get in it is huge and frightningly deep. These caves were all completely empty and quite surprising since they are VangViengs major attraction, I gathered everyone was back watching Friends so I hired a Guide (10,000kip = 1.20NZD) and he took me right in, as I was crawling through these incredibly small spider infested holes I was repeatedly told to "Be Like Soldier" which I think meant stop been such a pussy and hurry up. They were amazing, that night I hit the bars and drank a few Whisky Buckets, these things are like steel pales with a whole lot of ice, Lao Lao (the very strong local Lao whisky) and M-150 which is an energy drink in South East Asia that comes in a small test tube like bottle that is so strong is actually banned in most countries around the world. The next day it was obvious I had to go tubing, it is one of the famous attractions in VangVieng where you catch a TukTuk up the river and go down it in a large rubber tube, it takes the whole day not because the river is slow but because the river is littered with bamboo bars selling beer Lao ( the only beer in Lao) and pretty much everyone we came to we stopped and and had a beer, so after the 6th stop we were pretty hammered, especially since beer laos only comes in 750mls bottles and 10,000kip each. There was something really nice about VangVieng and because of it I stayed here for 6days, It was incredibly fun with all the tourists but it was once again time to move on to my present position which is Luang Prabang after of course having the worst bus ride of my LIFE. But 7 hours later I arrived in the even more French town Luang Prabang, it is incredibly beautiful and has the most amazing character to it, I haven't been to France yet but this is what I image it to be. I decided to get straight into it, that night I booked myself a three day trek up into the Laos Hill tribes, It was fantastic, this trek was much more intense then the one in Thailand and much more authentic, it had rained the entire night before to it was crazy, every 30mins the track would be overflowed by the rivers and we had to take our boots off to cross, it was very muddy and very slow, it didn't help that we had a Spanish chain smoker either whos fitness was much to be desired for. We had to carry everything with us since you couldn't buy anything in the mountains, so as well as our backpacks we had about 6liters of water each. That night was incredibly fun as the local Hmong people(pronounced Mong from Mongolia) bought us the local herbs and rice wine that we all drank out of an enormous vessel. The next day was complete rain and with it brought the dreaded leeches, these things are disgusting and there are so hard to get off, once you do get them off you just keep bleeding, then of course the nests of fire ants that hurt like hell and would stick on to you just to prolong your discomfort, the third day after another crazy night on Beer Lao and the local herbs it was down the river in Kayaks which led to me been insanely sun burnt after 5 hours on the water. As we came back into Luang Prabang I was reminded by liters and liters of water been thrown at up by the locals that it was New Years here in South East Asia, they commemorate the staring of the wet season by having a three day festival of water fights in the whole city, I then dicided to go the the lcal disco tek out of pure curiosty, the Laos people are very sexually reserved and was very amuzing watching the locals dance to house music, it is crazy here and I have to stay here for another week for my Chinese Visa to be processed, the wet season is staring so it raining much of the time but Laos so far is amazing.