Elephants!!!!

Southeast Asia has many places where people can ride elephants but the problem I have with them, mostly the ones in Thailand, is that the people taking care of them are very abusive and cruel to the animals. In South Africa I made sure to go to place where the animals were loved and well taken care of and apparently the ones in Laos are far better treated than the ones in Thailand so I decided to give it go.

We were picked up in a big tuk tuk and drive for about 45 outside Luang Prabang. There were 6 big elephants and one tiny 9 month old baby!!! He was so cute and playful!

The first thing we did was to feed them some bananas and fresh sugar cane. The little one is still nursing so you could see him go to mom and get some food!!!

After their snack it was time for the ride!!!

I was lucky and didn't have to share my elephant but my ride was extremely bumpy!!!!! 

Most of the seats on the elephants had a bar to keep you from falling but mine didn't so it was scary when going down hill and I had to hold on tight to the sides!

On the ride we went outside the property into the village and down to the river. We saw many kids come near and wave as us! Some of them even followed us to the river and back!

While on the river two of the elephants started to make noises and seemed like they were getting aggressive! One even fell on his knees but thankfully nobody got really hurt (only Waffle got a scrape.) it was funny to see that the baby elephants was the noisiest one, he made very loud noises and at times he even teased the big elephants but getting next to them and trying to push them! 

Once we were done with the ride it was time to give them a bath!!!!!

I wasn't sure if I wanted to since it was in the river and the water very dirty! At the end I did and it was an awesome experience! We were given a bucket and some brushes so one had to pour water and the other scrub the elephant! So much fun!!! The cutest thing was to see the baby elephant having so much fun!

5:45am alms giving

this morning I woke up extra early and some of us went to the streets of Luang Prabang to see the monks receive food from people.

Monks eat only twice a day, once in the morning and lunch before 11am. They do not have money to buy food so all they eat is the offerings that they receive every morning on the street. 

Here in Luang Prabang there are many temples and approximately 400 monks! You see them every morning walking bare feet on the streets collecting their food. I thought it was very interesting to see how young some of the monks are! Some of the children looked like 10 or 12 year olds!

Usually, the older monks walk first followed by the younger ones.

From my group I was the only one who bought food to feed the monks so I got a basket with plain sticky rice and some pieces of sticky rice with banana covered in banana leaves. Apparently that's all people are supposed to give them!

The local people who gave the monks food received the monks blessings and did some chanting. Locals also threw water on the street which signified that they were transferring luck to dead people (or something like that)!

Finally made it to Luang Prabang!!!

We got to Luang Prabang in the late afternoon and went for our orientation walk!

The touristy part is quite small and we only went for dinner at Lao Lao and then headed to their night market!

Hands down one of the best night markets I have visited so far!

They have tons of knick knacks so I had a great time buying stuff out for my friends, the kids, and myself.

I don't tend to buy much when I travel but this time they have so many cute little stuff that I can't help myself! The good thing is that they don't weight all that much nor occupy much space!

The only sad thing about this market is that there a lot of little kids selling! At times some stalls didn't even have a grown up in them! 

A monkey for Hunter Z!

An elephant for ASR!!!

An "I 💜 Mom" pin for my mom :-)

After much shopping I went back to the hotel with one of the group members and we got lost! 

We saw a house full of people partying and decided to say "sabaidee" and ask for directions... We did not get much help with figuring out how to get to our hotel but we did get offered a shot of something very strange a couple of times! We politely declined every time and after about 7 minutes we were able to grab our map back from their hands, said "copchai" and went the other direction! 

On our way to Luang Prabang

This morning we got in a bus for a 7 hour drive to Luang Prabang! 

View from our room this morning was very nice:

On our way we had two touristy stops. 

First was at an illegal market where locals sell animals that are not meant to be killed and eaten!

We saw mountain goats, cats!!!!! Street cats (super sad), super big rats, moles, frogs, and even bats... Disgusting! 

I even asked our local guide how they eat bats and he said that they either boil or steam them...yuk!

They also had whiskey for sale! Not your regular whiskey though! This one had animal intestines inside... Such a delicacy! Haha

Our second stop was at a scenic view! 

It was very beautiful to be surrounded by mountain! Perfect spot for yet another group picture :-)

I loved the loo with the view:

I slept the whole seven hours!!!! The whole route was extremely curvy and luckily I got the whole last row all for myself :-) (I don't know how happy the rest of the group was about it!)

Exploring Vang Vieng

Today most of group went on a 7 hour kayaking and tubbing adventure. For me 7 hours in the water sound more like torture than adventure so I decided to stay and rent a bike and explore the town.

Becca and Sophia decided to stay as well and we later found out that Chris and Miriam also stayed because Miriam is not feeling well.

First we decided to rest for a little since we had a long night and a very early start visiting the temple.

At 10 am we got ready to go out!

We stepped out of the hotel only to notice that our neighbors wee already outside dancing and singing to their karaoke machine!!! At 10am!!!!! This town is super funny and a little crazy!

We headed over to the place where the group hired the kayak to get a motor boat to take us around the river. The guy who had said that the motor boat was 80,000 kip was now saying that we needed two boats for three people and that would cost us 160,000 kip and of course we tried to negotiate to get the three of us on a boat but the price was 150,000 kip which was still very expensive so we decided not to do any business with him.

We kept walking around town and it seemed like nobody else was offering any motor boat tours and while walking back to the hotel we saw the tiniest sign that said "boat tour" and an arrow pointing down! We followed the signs and we arrived at the river where all the guys with motor boats were. At first they said that they couldn't fit three people on a boat and that we needed to rent two, after a long conversation going back and forth about the price they finally agrees on putting three chairs on the boat instead of two! Yeay

The view from the river was pretty spectacular! We had mountains on one side and on the other we were able to see villagers washing their clothes or kids playing by the water!

The river was shallow and very rocky, several times we hit big rocks and were a little scared of our safety! The good thing is that the water didn't seem to be deeper than 4 feet most of the time!

After our boat tour we decided to go back to the hotel and rest for a little. It was 11:30pm or so in El Salvador so it was the perfect time to FaceTime my mom and wish her a happy new year.

At about 12 we decided to go rent some bikes and ride around town, visit a cave and grab a bite to eat. Since Miriam and Chris stayed in we decided to invite them to come over but Miriam was still feeling very sick and only Chris decided to join us.

Chris had looked up on trip advisor restaurant recommendations and we decided to go to the number one spot listed for Vang Vieng. We rode our bikes in search for the restaurant but the directions and comments from people on trip advisor were very misleading! We decided to just ride the bike and keep an eye out of the restaurant! We ended up going through one of the many bridges in Vang Vieng and decided to visit the caves... Nothing spectacular but at least we did something!

On our way we saw this lady selling something that looked like little cakes, we decided to get them even though we had no idea what they were! It turned out to be little sticky rice cakes... They were alright!

After the caves we kept looking for this very mysterious restaurant that nobody seemed to know of! We went into dirt roads and pretty much looked everywhere! When we decided to bike back to the hotel Chris noticed that the restaurant was on the Main Street, and not on a dirt road very hidden and hard to find!

By now it was already 2pm and we were starving! We ordered our food and didn't realize that there was a group of probably 8 people who had just placed their order before us. Long story short it took almost two hours to get our food!!!!!

A guy who was sitting close to us stopped by our table and said to us "is a long wait but the food is delicious", kissed his fingers and did the typical Italian "delicious" move! 

The kitchen of the restaurant (AMD) is tiny and only one person in it! So all dishes were made to order and one by one! When our food came it was truly delicious! 

I ordered a spicy papaya salad and to be honest is the best papaya salad I have ever had!!! It was mouth watering but maybe only a tiny bit too spicy! My curry was delicious and everybody really enjoyed the meal. 

We loved it so much that we asked the guy if he could sit 12 people for dinner, he said yes so we sent Sophia (since she was done with her meal) to check with OLeang if it was ok to go there as a group for dinner!! Yumm

Once we were done with our very late lunch is was already time for sunset! We stopped at the hotel to check on Miriam and by then the group was back from kayaking and we invited them to come for a sunset drink!

In the morning I overheard a tour guide talking to his group about having drinks at a bar while looking at the sunset so we went to look for such bar with an amazing sunset view!

We rode our bikes to the main bar area overlooking the river and mountain and we did find the "it" spot for sunset! For tables they had raised platforms with cushions where we could relax and enjoy the view. A very famous thing to do in vang Vieng is to go on a hot air balloon ride and we got to see them very close to the restaurant while watching the sunset!

While sitting at the restaurant Chris got a text from Miriam to come back to the hotel since she was feeling worst. The whole time we didn't know what she had, she had been complaining of cramps and feeling stomach sick. By 6:30 pm that we got back to the hotel Chris and Miriam had already left the hotel and were on their way back to Vientiane in an ambulance because Miriam had appendicitis and had to get it operated! So sad!!! We all felt sad that they had to leave! Now we are only 9 left!

As a group of 9 we went back to AMD for dinner! This time service was super quick since we were the big party and a lot of people ordered the same thing!

We had warned the group that it would take a long time so we even started to play a game of Mafia (a super fun game where the mafia is trying to kill the villagers and villagers are trying to find out who the mafia is) but only after one round the food started coming!

We couldn't leave vang Vieng without having another pancake so after dinner we all decided to go get our last pancake (I have learned to ask with "little oil and little butter). After our pancake Sophia and I decided to go check out some bars and have a little walk.

We passed in front of Gary's Irish pub and we decided to use the bathroom. We noticed that pretty much everybody who was there last night was still there! Haha we didn't grab a drink or anything and we were leaving when we bumped into the three Finish guys we met last night. Somehow they convinced us to have a drink and a round of pool! 

Sofia and the guys the night before:

I am probably THE worst pool player and was a little embarrassed about my lack of skills but the guys said not to worry because they weren't all that good either! We created two group;one was two if the guys and Sophia and I got the other guy in our team. 

We didn't know that it was going to be one of the funniest games of pool in our lives! Two of the guys were actually good at playing pool but one of them was the worst! Maybe even worst than me! He missed the ball so many times that he had all of us cracking up and almost peeing our pants! The funniest part is that he had so much confidence on his game that every time he missed was even funnier! Anyway, it was a pretty good ending to our visit in Vang Vieng!

On our way back to the hotel (around 11pm) we noticed that everybody was once again outside on the sidewalk singing in their karaoke, drinking and have the best of time!!! Even our neighbor was still going since 10am (they did have a break from 4 to 6pm!) 

I really truly love how much fun Laotian people are, they are full of energy and happiness! And they are very welcoming! I stopped at a couple of places to take pictures and they wanted us to sing and join them!!! Loved it!

The start of the new year

Today I woke up at 5:40am to go to a temple and give food to the monks as offerings.

Sophia, Becca, Tiffany, and I were the only ones who accompanied OLeang to see the monks. On our way there we stopped at a shop where we got freshly made rice soup.

(Tired much from last night?)

We got to the temple, took our shoes off and walked to the front where we kneeled. It is the rule that you never have your feet facing the Buddha or monks because they consider the feet to be the dirtiest part of the body so no matter how you sit the feet must always be facing back or to the side.

We put the food for the monks in the special containers they have, we thought about our family and friends and then a monk gave us his blessings and did some kind of chanting in Balinese.

It was a very nice and spiritual start of the year. 

 

Vang Vieng and the new year :-)

Before sunset we made it to Vang Vieng and we were ready to celebrate the new year! Yeay! We even bought some fireworks and poppers for midnight... I felt like I was back home in El Salvador.

Vang Vieng is beautiful! Our hotel is by the river and we have a pretty nice view, it reminded me of Halong bay! Here is Sophia in our terrace :-)

The weird thing about the hotels in Laos is that they do not have a proper separate shower! The head for the shower is in the middle of the bathroom and when you take a shower everything gets wet, including the toilet! Very uncomfortable!

For dinner we went to a restaurant where our waitress looked fourteen and was wearing Minnie Mouse pajamas and the cashier was clearly a 10 year old girl. After dinner I asked OLeang about the restaurant and she said that the mother cooks and the other 3 kids help. The boy chops the vegetables, another kid is in charge of the wok, and the other one is the waitress and helps in the kitchen in between, and dad... Sits and drinks beer! Awesome role model!

 In Vietnam we also saw a lot of that... Useless men drinking beer while the women worked at the restaurants managing, cooking, serving! In one restaurant the man's responsibility was to hold the money while the woman went around doing the math with each costumer and he would just grab the bills and give back whatever the woman told him!

After our dinner we had the typical orientation walk around Vang Vieng. While walking by the bar area a guy approached us and gave us vouchers for a free drink 7-9 and happy hour until 10pm at Gary's Irish pub! 

We kept walking, and stopped at one of the many fatty but delicious pancake carts. Sophia, OLeang, and I were the last ones and we barely made it to Gary's by 9pm to claim our free drink!

Luckily, the rest of the group got there way before we did and got a table right at the entrance of the pub. Gary's happy hour was buy 2 drinks get 1 free so we really took advantage of the deal. Lukas had told us that since he didn't have to pay for an entry visa to Laos ($30) he would buy a round of drinks.. He got all 12 drinks for less than $15! With such a deal we would be fools not to drink, right?

Little by little our table kept accumulating glasses! It got to the point that probably each of us had 3 full mixed drinks waiting in front of us! It was extremely funny to see people entering the bar and staring at our table full of glasses! Some people even asked to take pictures of it! 

By the end we had over 120 cups lined up and we wanted to take a picture at the end of the night but Gary, the owner, said we couldn't because they had run out of cups and needed to reuse ours :-(

We had a fabulous night in Gary's Irish pub, they had great live music, fun people, and cheap drinks!

We all received the new year singing, popping our party poppers and giving each other big hugs! It was a really fun time and Vang Vieng was the perfect little town to celebrate it!

By 1:30am we made our way back to the hotel and to our amazement pretty much every other house in Vang Vieng had a karaoke machine and they were hardcore partying and karaoking outside their house, shop, or restaurant!

Also, another very interesting thing in Laos, and more so in Vang Vieng, is the high number of lady boys! It is even hard to tell them apart! They put on a lot of make up and dress with very short dresses and tight clothes! We now have a game of spotting the lady boys! Most of them are hard to distinguish!