Nong Khiaw - Luang Prabang - Vang Vien - Vientiane

Have to catch up, so I'll summarize a little bit :)

So I left Luang Nam Tha to go to Nong Khiaw, still not sure about my plans, but I met a really nice french guy in the bus. In the beggining I thought he was the exact copy of my brother, but he actally also had a little bit from another guy I know (big up Hugues ^^). Anyway I spent two days with him in Nong Khiaw, very beautiful and soooooo relaxed there! Real Lao people!

We were thinking about going to Mong Ngoi and then Sam Neua, but somehow we totally changed plans and decided to head south to Luang Prabang by boat. Nice boat drive on the Nam Ou, and we reached the old capital. It's a cute and old city, with a lot of temple, a lot of beautiful waterfall arround, and a lot of tourists. Prices and busyness changed from one extreme to another. We spent two nights a nice day there anyway. After this time I was supposed to meet Elsa, and I (and the other french guy too) was teared apart about our plan. I didn't know whether to keep on going on the tourist road: Vang Vien and Vientiane, but then be able to go south before the end of my trip, or to stick in the north of Lao, with nature, relaxed people and ethnic groups. I decided I would come back another time and we went south to Vang Vien.

We succeed to find a guesthouse in a farm, out of this junky-english-teenage city where we spent two other nights. The city got ugly with ***** tourists, but the areas arround are amazing, sorry to repeat myself again :) We rented bicycles for a day, discovered the country side and did quite good caving, nice!

Then I didn't wanna go to Vientiane and instead go to a small town that's open to tourists for only few years, in the east of Vang Vien, called Saisoumboune. Unfortunatly it's quite a mess to there, and everyone told me to go to Vientiane first, and catch a bus from there. So here I am, in the capital for few hours. It's not amazing here, and I'm really keen to leave to the mountains again tomorrow. There is the highest in Lao, and the region is more or less under control of Hmong people apparently. I hope I can go there, and get back by another way, cause I don't wanna come back here, and I wanna take a quick look in the south before heading back to Bangkok. The french guy went directly south to make a long trek in the jungle... well... I'll do a safer version of what he does next time.

So I'll probably won't have the internet in the next days (I had it in the last days though, but time was running, and we didn't wanna stay ages in the cities).


Nong Khiaw, view from a cave...


Boat to Luang Prabang, on the Nam Ou.


Waterfalls arround Luang Prabang.