Laos in a Nutshell

Plain of Jars Site 1

It is becoming that time in the trip where it is harder and harder to be aware of the world around you. As you can see I am behind on this blog, I have not been able to keep up with TV shows back home and did not even know the NBA finals were going on. Therefore I am going to make this one quick.

After Luang Prabang and meeting some great people I went down south to a city called Vang Vieng. This is known as quite a bit of a party city yet I was able to get my fair share of other activities cone as well. We went tubing down the river, visited some caves and a place called the Blue Lagoon. They had a rocket festival which brought in the rains to begin the rainy season (it actually did start raining the next day). I got to finally rock climb which i had missed so much so that was absolutely wonderful. Because we were so active, and sometimes had a little too much free whisky (yes FREE whiskey) we had a few rest days in there as well.

Upon leaving Vang Vieng we traveled to the central part of the country where i learned much about the effects on the Vietnam war on Laos. They were heavily bombed for many many years and they are still having repercussions from that today. I wrote a long facebook post about it which you can go check out. I don't remember all the city names but we went to a place that has the Field of Jars which was a major war zone area.
 It was a bus ride from hell getting there and I do not suggest anyone takes a bus in Laos ever again. The next place we went to we took a bus as well yet after 1 hr of driving in circles the bus mysteriously broke down and we were dropped off on some dirt road outside of town. We had to wait another 7 hours until the next bus. I was very angry about this but it ended up being okay because this is when i learned a lot more about the hardships the Lao people still face today from unexploded bombs. When we finally got on the bus to go to a place where people lived in caves for 9 years to escape the bombings it was another bus ride form hell. So long and you cant sleep from the bus jumping up and down constantly on these shitty ass roads. The caves were cool though not as much as we were hoping for.

Overall it was nice but if I had to do it again I would've stayed up North with another girl I had met while traveling. Her way seemed more fun and easier. We finally got to Vietnam but that was a struggle too though luckily the roads weren't bad so you could sleep a little bit. The bus took us to this smaller city in mid-east Vietnam and there was no bus station. No one could speak English and it was a struggle. We walked around with our heavy packs for about an hour until we saw a bus all lit up and asked if it was going to Hanoi. Luckily it was and we were able to catch a ride!

There is Laos in a nutshell