Giant stone jars & Tubing

After Luang Prabang, Levka and I travelled along a windy undulating road to Phonsavan to see the mysterious stone jars. The jars are 2500 to 3000 year old structures carved out of massive pieces of rock. They range in size from way above my head to about up to my knees. No-one really knows the purpose of the jars though we were told a few theories and came up with a few good ones ourselves: Giants having a massive party and using the jars as shot glasses for Lao Lao! Cauldrons for a huge coven of witches… The more likely one is ceremonial burial jars.

The stone jars at Site 3

A particularly big jar that I could climb inside

We visited sites 1, 2 & 3 which are the only ones of about a hundred different sites that have been cleared of UXOs for people to look around. Site 3 was the best; we had to walk across tiny pathways through rice paddies to get to a small hill and the jars were all hidden in amongst the trees.

Rice paddies on the way to Site 3

A jar broken apart by the tree growing through it

We just spent one night in Phonsavann then headed straight off to Vang Vieng for some partying. We experienced the wonders of tubing down the Nam Song River on Tuesday. Bascially involved floating along on a giant rubber ring, then stopping off at some bars and getting free shots!

Me, Natalia and Levka at Bar 2 I think

Awesome day and the night was just as good; following the crowd of drunken Westerners to the 3 bars in town! The next 2 nights were essentially the same thing. I somehow managed to make it up in the morning on Sunday to spend the day kayaking and tubing in a cave. This was very cool, surprisingly I even enjoyed the crawling through small spaces in the mud to get to the other spaces!

Laos

My journey in Laos started with 2 days travelling down the Mekong River on the Slow Boat. The river winds through hills covered with lush greenery; sometimes farmers’ fields and rice paddies, sometimes a wildness of trees and plants. It was amazing to see such beautiful scenery all around. Occasionally there were tiny villages of bamboo huts and people travelling across the river in long boats. We spent 7 hours on the river on the first day before we got to the overnight stop at Pakbang. There was another 8 hours on Monday, the beautiful scenery exactly the same as the day before. I’m really glad I took the slow boat though I was also really glad when we finally arrived at Luang Prabang.

View of the Mekong from the Slow Boat

I’ve been in Luang Prabang for 5 days now, and I really like it here. The first day we hired some bikes and cycled around the city. I say city, it’s more like a good sized town. We visited some temples and cycled over the old bridge to the other side of the Nam Khan River, there we found a hidden away bar with views over the river. We climbed the Phou Si hill at the centre of the town in the evening to watch the sunset, unfortunately it started raining just as the sun was going down! Still the views from the top were amazing.

View of Luang Prabang, across the Nam Khan river towards the airport

We went to the Khong Si waterfall on Wednesday to go swimming in the river, however, it started raining again as we arrived which made it too cold to go in. The rain made the waterfall very impressive though!

Me in the rain at Khong Si Waterfall

There is an awesome night market in the town with hundreds of stalls and so many different handmade Laos items. Also a night food market nearby where you can buy really good food cheaply, my favourite so far is the Luang Prabang sausage! I’ve also looked around a big local market which had everything you can imagine in, and tasted different varieties of local tea.

Local Lao market

I plan to go kayaking down the river to the Tad Sae waterfall soon then I think we will move on via the Plain of Jars to Vang Vieng.

Last post from Thailand

Just spent my last 3 days in Thailand in the city of Chiang Mai. I wish I'd had so much longer to explore this place and it's surrounding areas but my visa runs out soon so I'm heading off to Laos. I did manage to do a Thai cooking course yesterday and was then so full I couldn't move for the whole evening. But the food was delicious and I so want to make it again soon!

Chicken Soup and Kao Soi curry

The last few weeks have flown by, I can't believe I've stayed in Thailand for the whole 2 months. After Koh Tao I went across to the mainland and Khoa Sok National Park. Here we went on a long boat across a massive lake and did a bit of swimming which was awesome, then we did some jungle trekking which was not so awesome...

After just a couple of days in the jungle we head down to Krabi and Railey beach for a few days, the beach wasn't much to shout about but the night life was very cool. Did a bit of friendly sparring with L in a boxing ring in one of the bars!

Then it was on to Koh Phi Phi, which is as stunning as everyone says, I never made it to Maya bay unfortunately due to torrential rain, but just the view the island from the viewpoint at sunset was awesome enough for me!


I headed back to Koh Phangan a day earlier than the others to secure a room in Haad Rin, I think I may have got the last available room! But I was very glad for that as I didn't have far to stumble home after the beach parties and Full Moon Night.



And that's a brief catch up on what I've done the last few weeks, after the Full Moon I headed to Bangkok for 2 nights and on up to Chiang Mai!