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| Burning last year's crops |
The day started early with a breakfast over looking the River Mekong. It was a beautiful view, which would have been even more beautiful had it not been for all the pollution. It was so bad you could stare directly at the sun without feat of burning your retinas. However, the worst was yet to come...
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| The view across the Mekong river to Laos |
After breakfast, we had to cross the border, and I was almost giddy with excitement (I love a land border). And I wasn't disappointed. Before we could even pay for our £40 entry visa for Laos, we had to pay some a grumpy customs official 40 baht because basically he'd decided he wanted 40 baht. I'd spent all my money, but thankfully a couple of my fellow travellers bailed me out, otherwise I might very well still be there. The rest was plain sailing, and we found ourselves on our transport for the next couple of days - a houseboat sailing down the Mekong River!
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| Ours was the one with the white roof |
And very comfy it was too, with plenty of room for snoozes, and delicious lunches served up by our very agreeable hosts. It was a very relaxing way to travel, spoilt only be the pollution which was the worst we'd witnessed (so far) - hence the need for masks (which very few of the locals seemed to wear).
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| A photo of the inside of the boat (obviously not taken by me) |
We reached our destination for our first night in Pakbeng. By now, the pollution/burning was so bad, there was literally ash falling from the sky. A special shout out to any Laotian farmers reading this blog to say thanks very much for burning the remains of all your crop and literally choking half of Laos and Thailand.
There wasn't much else in Pakbeng except a Buddhist temple (which every Laotian town has), our hotel - complete with mosquito net that made me feel like I had been swallowed by a giant jellyfish, and this sign for a restaurant that made us all laugh.
The next day we were back on the road (water). The scenery was quite samey, but we did witness a few interesting things over the two days, such as buffalo cooling themselves down (it was about 40C), kids playing, and people fishing.
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| ... and a half-finished railway bridge (China is building a lot of railways and roads in Laos) |
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| ... and a rock that looked like a dog. |
We also stopped off at Pak Ou Cave, which boasts over 4,000 statues of Buddha.
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| Climbing steps is great fun when you can barely breathe |
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| Lots of statues of Buddha! |
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| Lots more statues of Buddha! |
My favourite statue (not that I closely inspected all 4,000 of them) was this very cheerful looking chap. I very much believe that Buddhism has a good sense of humour.
After two days, we were back on terra firma, and read to join the new year celebrations in Luang Prabang. Oh, and try to find someone to take my stitches out!
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