Northern lao

stuck on the high way to Luang Nam Tha, road work held us up. The smoke in the background is the locals burning the rain forest to clear land :-(

On the way to the less than impressive waterfall outside Luang Nam Tha

The lowest water falls outside Luang Prabang, they got even more impressive.

So here we are in Louang Nam Tha in northern loa. We arrived yesterday after a few days in Luang Prabang. Our trip up through the north has been a welcome change from the madness of Vang Vieng.

On the 31st we fled Vang Vieng for Luang Prabang, our trip across was the most hairy bus ride that we have had yet. The bus snacked on the ridges of mountains over looking valleys that didn't seem to have a bottom for 8 hrs. The lack of guard rails and the threat of on coming dump trucks left us both a little tense. Several close calls left us holding our breath and clenching our seats as we waited for the bus to shoot over the cliff.

We arrived in Luang Prqabang thuroughly exhausted from the emotional roller coaster, a tuk tuk swiftly loaded us up and dropped us in the middle of town. We took about an hour to find a guest house, as they were all over priced for what they were. In the end we settled on a place for the night for we had seen enough and were very hungry. The next day we switched guest houses because there were bugs in the other one and that wouldn't do for the price we were paying. We spent the day putting together an itinerary for the rest of the trip and booked tickets to fly for some of the longer legs.

The rest of the trip looks something like this, some time up here in the north, return to luang prabang for a few days, fly to chang mai, fly to the south of thailand to spend a week on ko tao and then return to bankok for a few days before coming home :-(.

Our second day in luang prabang we headed out to some waterfalls in the area, it took us awhile to get there but was totally worth it in the end. The cascading pools of whitish blue water were breath taking, like nothing either of us had ever seen. We hiked to the top of the largest on and explored the many smaller pools, enjoying a swim on our way out.

The next day we headed out via mini bus to oudomaxi, totally worth the extra five thousand kip. The bus ride went pretty smooth for the first leg of the trip. Along the way I started to do some further reading into our proposed route of return to Luang Prabang, as it turned out there was not really anything of interest in either of the towns we had chosen to stop in so I pointed it out to charissa. When re got to oudomaxi we talked it over and decided to pay the bus driver some more money to take us with the rest of the travelers to Loung Nam Tha, he agreed and we were on our way. The next leg of the journey was a little rougher on every one in the bus as the roads were crap and there was lots of construction being done. We had to stop twice for road work delaying our arrival by an hour.

We got into town around 6 found a guest house with no troubles and set of for food in the quaint little town. We ended up eating at the night market, which rewarded us with a whole roasted chicken and papaya salad ( so good). While we were enjoying some beer we made a friend with a very drunk thai man who insisted on talking to us even though neither part could understand what was being said, it made for a good laugh for all of us. We kept going with the beer drinking and ended up landing ourselves in a night club after some searching. The rest of the night was a hoot, charissa ende up dancing with the ladies while I chatted up a young man. All in all we probably stayed to long and had one to many beer but we enjoyed ourselves thuroughly.

We nursed some minor hang over this morning while doing laundry, so much fun and then set off on bikes to find a water fall 4km from town. It turned out to be a little trickle down a rock face, nothing much to write home about. The ride through the villages was very fun for us. Charissa enjoyed the constant hellos from the local children as we road by. We explored a bit more of the townbefore calling it a day.

We will eat at the night market again today as the food was so cheap and tasty. The next few days are left open so we will see where we land.

Hope you are all well, hopefully not to cold and wet.
Can't beleive that we will be seeing you all in less than a month :-( Boo Hoo!!!!

All our love
Kieran and Charissa