Laos New Year - Luang Prabang

The water fight in Luang Prabang was crazy. We (me and the Swedes) had water guns, and matching electric salmon BeerLao t-shirts....which made us a team....and a target :) I got really good at shooting people directly in the eye-balls...but I got shot in the eye-balls as well...so it was even. I didn't dare take my camera out there, I was drenched within the first block. Imagine thousands of people walking down the same street, all spraying each other with waterguns, plus countless teams on the side of the road with huge bins of water dumping buckets on everyone that walked by. Oh yeah, and there were countless vehicles driving by with huge bins of water soaking everyone....it was out of control. So much fun, oh yeah, they kept wiping weird black crap on everyone's faces...and blue crap...and green crap. Oh, and flour, throwing an insane amount of flour. It was tons of fun.

That's it, split up with the Swedes, took another overnight bus (not even sure how many I've taken) to Vientiane...now I'm taking yet another overnight bus to Bangkok. Probably no more posts with pics as I've lost yet another camera cord.


This picture really doesn't do the waterfight justice. Taken from the safety of our guest house, it was just a random soaking, no where near the main street of the fight.


T.E.S. Team Electric Salmon getting ready for battle. Notice the modified water tank on my gun? Yeah ya did. I broke the original one due to excessive pumping (too much pressure, burst the container)...they gave me another one at the store...and I broke that too. The 2litre Pepsi bottle was awesome, held way more pressure...allowed for a fiercer (is that a word) stream for direct eye-ball shots. 12pts for shooting monks, 15pts if you shoot monks in the eyes :)


The "after" pic of the first day of fighting.



Random waterfall (in Luang Prabang) shots.

I love the backflips.

Nong Kiew

I went to a little town called Nong Kiew with the Swedes for a few days, it was awesome. SO beautiful, set right in the between mountains and right beside the Mekong River. It is a tiny town, no internet...I didn't even see a bank. The only thing to do at night is go see a movie at this little "cinema" (little business this guy made, just private little rooms with decent tvs, pick from hundreds of dvd's)...but the guy got too drunk two nights in a row and didn't passed out...so we had NOTHING to do at night. First day we tried to climb a mountain, but our efforts were quickly thwarted by dense impenetrable bush. So we went for lunch, then went swimming in the river. We hiked along a trail on the side of the river for a few km's, arriving at a little village. It was super cool, total village life. Some guys escorted us into a building where it seemed like just the men were partying...pretty much just getting drunk on some sort of liquor. They wanted us to try it, so we did....it was the harshest liquor I've ever tasted, it burned in my chest for about 5 minutes. They really wanted us to stay and keep drinking this stuff (I think it's called LaoLao, pretty much everything is named after their country), but we quickly got out of there as it was getting crazy. We hired a dude to give us a ride back on his boat, cool experience.

Next day we rented bikes (yes, with baskets and bells) and biked down to some caves that the Lao people lived in during the war in the 70's. We biked a bit farther just to see more landscape, then swam in the river again. It was SO hot, even at like 7pm I would still sweat profusely. Cool place.

Today we took a local "bus" (more like a tuk-tuk type pickup thing with two benches running the length of the truck bed and a roof) which was much cheaper. It got so packed on this thing, they even set up small plastic chairs in the middle, I had to (damn Canadian courtesy) give up my seat and stand on the step up part at the bottom of the tail-gate....for hours! We got SO SOAKED on that trip, it's the Laos New Year and they celebrate for what seems like weeks by splashing everyone with water. I just ziplocked my camera and mp3 player and I was good. I'm not even sure how many buckets of water hit me today, I lost count...I was wet all day. I love this country and the people here, always smiling and waving and saying hi. Super friendly people, super beautiful Country.



Boat ride home from village.


Local "bus"...BEFORE it got packed.

Laos

(exploring in Vang Vieng)

I took a bus from Hanoi (Vietnam) to Vientiane (Laos), taking about 20hrs. I've heard it referred to as the "bus from hell", but it really wasn't as bad as I expected. The only thing that was crazy was the amount of people they crammed on the bus, everytime we stopped to picked up passengers I was astonished. Most of the seats had 3 people jammed into two seats...and there were at least 20 people jammed sitting in the isle...it was crazy. BUT, we made it and it was cheap, that's all that matters.



Vientiane

Only stayed there for one day, didn't do much.

The crazy Swedes eating Swedish pizza at a Swedish pizzeria. This pizza has ham, banana, and curry....apparently it's a normal pizza in crazy Sweden (it was actually really good).



Vang Vieng

What a ridiculous place. It's super laid back, made for backpackers to come and hang out with eachother while pretty much doing nothing. MOST of the restaurants play re-runs of "friends".....ALL DAY! The tubing is kind of fun though, even though there really isn't much tubing to do. You start on the river, and about 50metres away is the first bar. There are about 8 bars along the way, each with ropeswings that are sketchy to say the least. This would never be allowed in North America...feed a bunch of backpackers buckets of alcohol, then encourage them to climb up a sketchy ladder to a sketchy platform and swing off a rope into a river that is only a few feet deep at times. Never-the-less, I had fun trying backflips on the ropeswings. No pictures from tubing as me+water+camera=bad, but Klara brought a camera one day so there is one vid that I put on facebook. Another day we (I've been hanging out with a couple from Sweden, we met on the "bus from hell") rented motorbikes and searched out the area finding some cool caves. Yeah, that's about it.

Hehehe, we found some AWESOME BeerLao shirts in an amazing color...I call it electric salmon. We rented bikes with baskets and bells and rode around feeling pretty special.

Exploring caves.

A mid-afternoon lagoon dip...




Luang Prabang

Cool city. I really like Laos, the people are much more friendly than Vietnam, and it's WAY more laid back. Today we (me, the Swedes, and Julian - from California) went for a walk around the city to see some sites. We found a trail that went down a hill, then crossed this sketchy bamboo bridge and swam in the river with the local kids...and a bunch of monks...strange. We searched farther on, I'm guessing no tourists get that far, we found a school and bought some pepsi in a bag with the kids at recess. It was awesome :) Oh yeah, it's coming up to the New Year here in Laos, which is celebrated in a water festival....basically it just means getting everyone wet. The New Year isn't for another week, but people were out in full force today, including a group of monks! Sssooo, we bought some really big waterguns and soaked the monks, that was also awesome :) Tomorrow we check out some cool waterfall, then head North somewhere.


Me coming out of an attempted front flip, swimming with monks and kids in the Mekong River in Luang Prabang.


A monk....possibly reflecting on monk things.


The Swedes, Julian, and me in Luang Prabang.