Houseboats in Asia to World Heritage Sites

After just one night in Vientiene, Dave and I set off in another VIP bus to the much talked about backpacker haven of Vang Vieng. The big attraction in Vang Vieng is tubing down the Nam Song which is graced with 10 or so riverside bars that offer cold beers and various water slides, swings and jarring ziplines. For us, it felt a lot like houseboats in Asia, which is the annual memorial day weekend UC Davis tradition that takes place on Lake Shasta, only we were on a river, there were no kegs and it was full of Aussies and Europeans instead of drunk American college students. The setting for all of this debauchery was truly awesome and despite the hordes of young farang and blaring techno music it almost felt unspoiled. The river is set in a valley among these incredible jagged karst cliff that just stretch on as far as you can see and the natural beauty is really untouched as they seem to go a good job of containing the tourism and maintaining the natural splendor. We spent three nights in Vang Vieng which really only gave us two days. The whole "local scene" was pretty amusing with literraly an entire intersection filled with restaurants with lounge tables where you could kick back and watch re-runs of "Friends" and plenty of ladies catering to the packpacker munchies selling delicious bacon sandwhiches and pancakes (actually crepes) filled with chocolate bananas and other goodies. We spent one day in the tubes and another day kayaking and visiting caves. The coolest cave was one that you actually went into in a tube and use a rope to tow yourself and back into th cave about 50 meters where we disembarked and then crawled/swam even deeper! On our kayak/trekking trip we had some not so amusing japanese tourists along with us. The women came wearing high heels!! and refused to paddle, don't know what they were thinking when they signed up but anyways! The day in the tube was fun too, although Dave and I really couldn't get that into it. We had some beers and each went off an assortment of slides and swings but thought the whole thing would have been more fun if we had been traveling with more friends.

Now we are in beautiful Luang Prabang, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site. It is a town that is filled with Wats (temples), monks wrapped in Saffron robes and lots of old french colonial buildings. Upon arrival we climbed up to the top of Wat Phousi to see an incredible sunset and views of the entire city. We spent the next day cruising around on bikes and visited a not so exciting market and saw many many temples. Today we accidentally slept all the way until 10 am (possible our latest yet!) and then hurried off to arrange a tuk-tuk ride to these incredible multi-tiered waterfalls with great swimming. We have been eating lots of tasty street food with highlights including pork on sticks, beef noodle soup and this vegetarian buffet where you get a heaping plate of noodles and salads for just 5,000 kip (about 50 cents!) We have also been perusing the incredible night market trying to decide what to buy (scarves, jewelery, pillows!) and tonight will be doing some actual purchasing. Now we are struggling to figure out where to go next but are thinking of heading off to the mountains to do some trekking and maybe even a village home stay. We will keep you posted though! We miss you all and love getting updates from everyone back home so please keep writing to us!
Jess