Laos - relaxing, friendly, beautiful

Wow! As soon as our bus crossed the border into Loas, it was a completely different feeling. Beautiful green mountains enshrouded in mist - and roads that twist and turn so much that it takes 12 hours to cover 400 km.

Two days ago, Chanel had the crazy idea to rent mountain bikes to cylce out to the Guang Si waterfalls, a short 32 km outside of Luang Prabang! Ha, she's never cycled for then 5 in her life, brilliant! Poor Natascha gets to put up with my crazy antics...but we made it! There was one monsterous hill about 10 km in, which we walked our bikes up; but it was followed by a wonderous downhill ride!! The waterfalls were picturesque (I really will post pictures soon!!). When we finally found the designated swimming 'pools' and jumped in with four beautiful local Laos girls, who were the sweetest! We played tag, and jupmed off of the rocks...loads of fun even though we couldn't understand each other!! We took a tuk-tuk back to town, don't know if we could've ridden the whole way, and Natascha would probably have murdered me if I suggested it!! :D

Yesterday we took the morning bus through the Loas mountains again...fantastic...and landed ourselves in Vang Vieng - a small town with one main street that's remind you of an old-school version of Las Vegas! It's famous for the tubing you can do down the adjacent Nam Song river, once the rain lets up...we're headed out!!

In Vang Vieng they are famous for their 'Friends' re-runs. Yes, the tv show we all used to watch Thursday nights! Your can actually sit in restaurants/cafes and watch the DVD episodes all day!! I think we watched a good 6 yesterday, just lounging around drinking .50 mixed fruit shakes...mmmmmm.

Tomorrow we're set for another big series of bus rides to take us back to Vietnam (we are going very reluctantly, Laos has been fantastic!!). Here's to hoping central and southern Vietnam will leave a better impression on me than the North! Or I may just have to hop up back into Laos - I seriously recommend people to come here!! I wish I could post pictures right now...but I'm paying per minute, and it would take too long, haha.

Loves & Misses.
xoxo.

p.s. Happy Father's Day DADDY!!! :D