We visited Laos as a detour from Thailand and wished we had longer to explore more of this wonderful, unspoilt part of Asia.
We came from Nong Khai across the Friendship Bridge and this couldn't of been easier. You catch a bus to the bridge, go to the check point to show your passport, the bus then takes you across to the Laos side and here you fill in a simple form, hand over you $30 (cheaper than getting it in Thailand) and 10 minutes later you are through. Here you can catch one of the waiting three-wheeled motorcycles into the center of Vientiane.
This is a busy city and we visited the morning market, which is full of wondeful fabrics, clothes, and souveniers, always barter with the vendors they expect it and it is part of the fun. There are also some interesting wats to visit, we only spent 1 day here before going on.
We caught a bus from the market place early in the morning (8am?) and travelled to Vang Vien on the recommendation of some other travellers. This took 8 hours on a very crowded bus but was definately worth it. We stayed here 3 days in the end. You can hire bicycles here to go off and explore the area and visit the caves nearby. Check these bikes before setting off and try to get a repair kit if you can. My bike ended up with a puncture and it was a long walk back. There are numerous caves to visit but the best ones we found were the furthest away, perhaps because less people went there. You can buy a map at most of the guest houses. We then got a tyre inner tube and went floating down the river for 3 hours which was interesting and restful, just watch out for the rocks just below the surface....
I had one of the local skirts made up here, which was very practical and the locals seemed to approve of you more wearing this. It was quite cold here in the evening so a jumper would definately be recommended.
We then travelled up to Luang Prabang, the bus ride was very interesting and would advise you get there early to book your seat as some people ended up on the roof and it was cold.
Luang Prabang was a beautiful city,definately worth a visit is the Kuang Si waterfalls. Here we watched children weaving the beautiful fabrics you see everywhere and the falls were stunning.
One problem we had was money, we ran out of kip and ended up having to cash $100 worth of Kip on our last day just to get by and this amount of money could last you a week. You can't take the currency out so we did deals with other tourists (not advised). Take Thai baht or US$ with you in small amount just incase. However, everything is so cheap that a budget of $10 a day will give you a good standard of living.
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