We've crossed the Thailand-Lao border by boat on Thursday Feb 16th and immediately got introduced to LAO Time ... They're absolutely not in a hurry no matter what and thus it took us ONLY 2 hours to get our Lao visa! Then we tried to find a bus to Luang Namtha. We paid the bus ticket at 2 PM, we caught he minivan at 4 PM. Again: Lao Time. Consequently we arrived in Luang Namtha in the evening where we met Andy (again an American ... what do these Americans like about us?? ) and arranged to go on a trekking together the next day.

Our guide was HAK. We started the trekking by going to the market to buy the food for lunch. We went on our jungle trek where we had a fish BBQ together with all the stuff from the market. We finished the day being invited at Hak's Home.... or let's say his parent's home. What a crazy experience: the whole family was there, they had this kind of ceremony going on to call the good spirits for his daddy who had lost one (out of 32). We were all gathered around the table, the ceremony master mumbling something and reading the chicken (that was a few days old); we all had to eat a piece and Lucky Me, I had a piece of the liver ... miamie ... well I arranged the cat to enjoy the other, bigger part of it! The funny part of the ceremony was the drinking part: They served this homemade Lao Whisky (Laolao) of star fruit all night long ... eventually we achieved in actually seeing some dazzling stars

On Saturday Hak invited us to his best friend's wedding . We put on our nicest clothes - meaning our cleanest trousers and flip flops - , got picked-up at 11 AM and experienced the craziest wedding EVER!!!! When we arrived, we first had to greet the whole family and then the drinking and eating part starts. The whole afternoon is about that: drinking, eating, drinking, dancing, drinking, drinking,.... Let me tell you more about the drinking ... it's special ... You're not allowed to drink what you want whenever you want to ... No, no ... somebody at the table pours out the beer (with ice), gives it to you and you have to drink it ad fundum, give back the glass, he pours out a new one to give to your neighbor who has to drink it ad fundum too and so it goes on and on and on the whole afternoon ... until they decide it's time to drink the Laolao (whisky) ... ai ai ai ... with the same ritual. We call this Binge drinking; they call it ‘a wedding'!! The whole town was soooooo drunk and we were a little too. So that made the dancing part easy ... They have 3 dances, which are absolutely childish and of course we got invited all the time ... which was a good way to escape from the drinking part!

Next day we were a little less funny to be around, but that was a travelling day: 4 hours to Udomxai - 4 hours waiting there and another 3 hours to Muang Kua, where we arrived in the evening - looked for a guesthouse - had some dinner, went to bed and slept like babies.

The following destination was Muang Ngoi Neua ... a little piece of heaven ... it's magnificent up there. It's a small town, surrounded by jungle and rice fields, only reachable by boat, no cell phone connection, no internet, no roads. Sooo quite and absolutely gorgeous. We found ourselves a guest house on the riverside and chilled there in the hammock, went for a hike in the nearby caves and villages ...

Wednesday we took the boat again to Nong Khiaw ... it was a 1 hour boat ride that took us 30 minutes longer because we had to charge some monks on the way, some chickens, some ducks, etc etc ... 500 meters before we arrived, the boat broke down. We almost had to peddle. We arrived at 11 AM, exactly when the bus (the busstation was 2 km further) is supposed to leave to Luang Prabang ... Thank God for Lao time for once!!!During the bus ride we arrived at some roadblock where you had a big caterpillar working ... thinking we would be blocked there for 30 minutes, Karen & I decided to walk back to town for about 300 meters to buy some food as it was 1 PM and we were very hungry. Being at our shop, a local guy on a motorbike arrived with Andy on the back: ‘Girls, if I were you, I would hurry up, I don't think it's going to take a long time before the bus leaves again' ... Thanks Andy! We immediately headed back to the bus without buying anything ... when we came behind the corner we could see the caterpillar working but NO bus ... we ran hoping Andy would have stopped the bus and lucky us: the bus was waiting behind the next corner ... Everybody was laughing, especially the Lao people ... Why would you run when you have Lao Time ?!?! We actually started loving the principle of Lao time as from that moment.

We arrived in Luang Prabang ... what a lovely and chilled-out city ... we walked around. Had some lunch/dinner and went to the Night Market to check out what souvenirs we can buy. The 2 following days we spent there we did some biking, visiting the temples, visiting the Waterfall and organizing the following days of our trip.

On the 25th of February we left Luan Prabang (‘Pang Pang Pang' according to Karen, who does not achieve in memorizing the slightest name but can recall the color of the T-shirt of a complete stranger passing by one day) in the early morning to go to Vang Vieng ... which was absolutely not our kind of place. It's packed with young (yeah yeah, we're getting old) party people who seem to be drunk all day long. The only exercise they get is tubing and watching Friends or Family Guy on the big flat screens in the local bars. No wonder nearly 22 people find death in this place every year. Again....Karen found us a nice little guesthouse across the river where it's peaceful and quite ... Oef!

On the morning of February the 26th we said goodbye to Andy ... he travelled with us for 9 days! He's an easy going guy who never complains and never takes any decision either ... good for us because we like to take all the decisions :) After 9 days we were also glad to be on our own again. We visited the area around Vang Vieng by mountain bike. It was a dusty, bumpy road so we were glad we had those mountain bikes ... but we were even gladder to give them back!

Again a travel day to Vientiane where we immediately hopped on another bus to Thakhek. That's where we had a 2 day motorbike trip to the Khonglor cave and back! The first 105 km were absolutely boring but it was a good exercise to get used to the gears (I'm a pro now!!!!) ... the next 81 km were absolutely gorgeous. Of course we had some trouble with the bikes: First the chain of Karen's bike broke down ... luckily we were close to a village and found a mechanic. Then my bike had battery problems, but now I'm also a pro at starting the bike manually. Even with all those troubles, we've made it to Khonglor and visited the beautiful cave first thing in the morning ... after breakfast of course :) Later we headed back to Thakhek.

Now we're going South for a few days & after that Cambodia !!!!!!