Lao Lao

It feels like its been AGES since I left Vancouver....and for that matter, updated you all on my adventures. But actually, I think I'm doing pretty good if I get an update in every couple of weeks.

Chiang Mai was awesome. It's a really laid back city (a tad overtouristed perhaps). In general the people were SO friendly. Among the highlights was a day spent playing with elephants! We went to an elephant farm and learned how ride and bathe the elephants and then we went swimming with them!!!!!! Craziness I tell you! Apres Chiang Mai we made our way up to Chiang Khong. This is a small town on the Laos-Vietnam border. There wasn't really much there but we did luck out arriving on market day. We wandered a bit and were trying various street foods (as one does in S.E. Asia) and ended up talking to two local ladies with a baby. So cute! At one point, May asked if she could take a picture of us -Mom literally threw her baby into my arms. Catch! Haha. ANYWAY, the ladies ended up buying us a sample of some traditional Thai street food. It was delicious. No idea what it was. (So go many of our culinary experiences)

From Chiang Khong we took a slow boat up the Mekong river to Luang Prabang (Laos). It took two days, but we all think it was better than being cramped on a bus for 18 hrs. We stopped overnight in a little village called Pak Beng, which I'm pretty sure depends completely on tourists taking the slow boat.

Moving on...We arrived in Luang Prabang last Monday. Its an AMAZING little city -a UNESCO world heritage site, dotted with temples and full of monks.
We met some fellow travellers and ended up touring the sites with them. (Two Brits and a Vancouverite!)

We're now in Luang Nam Tha which is in the North West of Laos (closeish to the Chinese border) and we just returned from a two day trek through the Laotian jungle. Maybe a little crazy...but good fun all in all. We stayed in a village at the top of a mountain and our trek was only the 4th time the people there had seen foreigners. Needless to say, I think we were there just as much for them to see us as for us to see them....