Nico and Jo’s Excellent Adventure

Rainy morning in Laos, with the wetness coming from Vietnam. The rain comes and goes so hopefully, by this afternoon, the rain will give way to a cooler (but drier) day.

We’re planning on going to Vietnam by the end of the week. We’ll pass through Vientienne, in southern Laos and then onto the Lao/Vietnam border. Crossing the border should be fairly easy as we’ve already obtained a Vietnamese visa while we were in Bangkok. From the border, we’ll head to Hanoi, then more north to Sapa (a small villiage in northernmost Vietnam) then take the train down the Vietnam coastline, stopping in Namn Tran (where the famous China Beach is…should be fun for snorkeling and lots of sea kayaking!!) as well as Vinh and other beach towns before getting to HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City…aka Saigon).

We’re having a blast and meeting tons of people from everywhere. Ironically, we’ve met a lot of French travellers (who laugh when I say in French that my French is bad…which is good, no? :))

Last night, we attended a Lao Baci ceremony in which a shaman presided and a group of the female elders in the villiage. We had “lao lao” which is a kind of alcohol made by the villiagers (aka moonshine LOL) and I think it could have been airplane fuel! It was sooo strong! Nico, Mr “Stomach made of Steel,” drank two or three shots. (I had a sip) But he was OUT by midnight. 🙂

Going to see the Ou Pak caves today, a cave where hundreds of Buddha shrines have been set. We’re going to try and get to the waterfalls as well, weather permitting.

We miss you all!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 7th, 2005 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.