Luang Prabang

We arrived in Luang Prabang yesterday. We took a slow boat from Huay Xai which stopped over night in this weird little town called Pek Bang....greeted on the boat by hundreds of kids stealing our pringles , pops, and pillows out of our hands ahha while all the older people (still probably only 16-25) tried to recruit everyone to their hostels. Very strange little place but it was nice cause we knew alot of people on the boat that we had left Huay Xai with! After 2 days on the boat, we got to Luang Prabang and it is the cutest little city ever! It doesnt feel like asia at all (minus the Laotian people), it gives this sort of euro vibe, and the streets are sooo quaint and so pretty and the architecture is very victorian and beautiful. The city is right between 2 rivers as well so its incredibly scenic. We went to this cool bar last night called Utopia where we played the lifesize Jenga (each block has a dare on it though), it got pretty funny. the bar also had a volleyball court in it and andtons of other sweet games. Today we rented bikes (ppink and purple ones with cute little baskets haha) and biked around the city. we visited a couple temples, a market sort of out of town where there are no tourists, went to the Kings Palace, and just sorta explored. we love it, its incredible! TOnight we are going to this temple at the top of a hill to watch the sunset (its supposed to be really beautiful), then to this bar called Hive where there is some weird ethnic dancing and fashion shows or something haha. We also bought tickets to a ballet tomorrow night!
okidoki, time to go. we are trying to upload a few pictures from the Gibbon expereince but the computers here are absolute shit so even to upload a few takes about 40 minutes. We are working on it and hopefully can get some up shortly!
xox
nomes

Gibbon Experience

Just got back from the Gibbon Experience in Northern Laos. It was INCREDIBLE!!! The trip started with a 3 hr ride in the back of pickup towards the national park. Pretty bumpy and uncomfortable ride but still fun. From the first village we hiked for a couple hrs before hitting a waterfall where we got to swim and hang out for a bit before continuing our walk. From there we walked to our first ziplines which ultimately led into our first treehouse. It was awesome!! you literally zip IN and OUT of the treehouse onto these landings. The first night our treehouse was 30m above ground (i think) and then the second night the treehouse was 40m high. They were sooooooooooo cool! THe first night was the most dramatic haha since everyone isnt used to the whole "jungle" atmosphere. The night came and within minutes we spotted several HUGE spiders just hanging out above each of our beds. Later on as we were playing cards we were then greeted by a rat that was trying to get into our garbage...the rat caused some serious uproar haha. The second night wasnt as dramatic, still bugs and weird creatures and spiders but we were more adapted by that point. The days were always really calm, all we did was hike and zip line around...the ziplines going overtop huge valleys and up to i think 600m long! they were sooooo cool and so fun! The second day everyone was wiped from walking so mucha nd sleeping so badly (cause of all the weird sounds and animals running around your head in the night) so we all napped midday and it was the BEST nap ever. SOooo quiet, just the sounds of birds and crickets, with this nice little breeeze. it was great! Our group was awesome too, (thank god), it was 8 people - 2 canadian guys (from kelwona), 2 brits, and 2 frenchies, and then us. All around our age too whcih worked well especially during the nights because everyone was so afraid! all in all, we LOVED it and it waas 100% worth the cost! OH, we didnt see any gibbons though unforuntaly! we saw some monkeys, snakes, and then all the weird night creatures that emerged haha.
we are heading to Luang Prabang tomorrow by slowboat. It takes 2 days (stopps one night in a little town) then continues on the next day. All the people we did the Gibbon experience with are doing it as well so were all going together!
okidoki. Nomies out.
xoxox

Long Neck Village

Bamboo Rafting and Elephant Trek

CHiang Mai - Oldest temple, Butterfly farm

Chiang Mai

We are finally in CHiang Mai! took us about 2 days to finally get here (its pretty high north and we were way down south). The journey started with a 2 hr boat ride from Koh Phangan to SUrat Thani (mainland) where we caugh a bus to go to BKK...that was 12 hrs...after that bus we arrived at BKK at 5am and had to wait till 830am to leave by train for CHiang Mai. After that it was another 12 hrs. We got to Chiang Mai at 930pm and found a hostel. This morning we switched to a hsotel we liked better and is cheaper, its called Malak Guest House. We really really like Chiang Mai, it is a lot quieter than BKK and has more of a thai feeling than the islands (which are incerdibly touristy), its also quite a bit cheaper. TOday we rented bicycles and biked around the little markets, alleyways, and visited several temples. At one of the temples, there was something called a Monk Chat which we had read about. the point is to go and sit with monks and ask them questions (and they ask you) to help better their english. It was funny causeour designated monks' name was "Chat". He was 22 and he was very good at speaking english. We wer wanting to upload a bunch of pictures from our hostel (casue the computers are free) but turns out they are incredibly slow and they have blocked the usb access so that people cant download antyhging onto the computers. Oh well! we will try somewhere else maybe later. tomorrow we aer going on a day trip to do anelephant trek, bamboo rafting, visiting a few tribal villages (long neck villages they aer called, where people put large rings over their necks so that overtime their neck becomes quite elongated). Should be cool! we are going to try and leave for Laos on the4th or 5th, and then hopefully do the Gibbon Experience in Bokeo Province(we are just waiting to hear back from them). anyways, thats all folks!
xox
Nomes