WOW!!!

Hello All!

I am in Laos now.  I had a fabulous few days in the south on Phi Phi Island!!  There is a certain edge to being so far out because the only way to leave the island is to take an hour and half ferry ride.  I was very concious of doing my best to not aquire and injuries!!  The day on the boat tour was amazing!! Spending the day on the water boating around all the islands was beautiful.  The first stop was Monkey Island.  The island is basically uninhabitable but there's a short white sandy beach.  The monkies are very friendly and come down to the beach for pictures and are very friendly.  I even saw one monkey drink out of a girls water bottle.  I snorkeled for the first time and it was a spectacular experience, possibly the highlight of my day!  The visibility was amazing and the sea life is incredible!!  We also had fun kyaking.  To wrap the day up we went to Maya Bay and took in the spectacular views of the bay where The Beach was filmed.  Then we headed back for home and enjoyed a lovely rice dish while taking in the sunset.  All in all it was a great day!!

Also in Phi Phi I had fun dancing on the beach at night, everyone was painted with glow in the dark body paint and the music was so upbeat and vibrant you couldn't help yourself from shaking your bootie!!  I also enjoyed a lovely day on the beach and wading in the luke warm waters followed by a vigorous hike to a look out point that yeilded amaziing views of the island!!

From Phi Phi we then headed north to Laos and met up with the rest of the core group that we bonded with in Bangkok at the hostel.  It was so much fun to meet up with everyone!!  We had a great day tubing on the river which didn't really involve much tubing, more like dancing and drinking along the river with intermitent river tubing between bars.  Another day about 10 of us from the group rented motor bikes and went exploring.  It was a beautiful day to get away from the tourist trap of Vang Vieng and see the country side.  To see and appreciate the way people live in this country was really eye opening!  I read in my Lonely Planet (from 2009) that Laos is still one of the poorest nations in the world.  The bike ride was pretty incredible to take in the mountain views, like nothing I have ever seen before!  The mountains are sort of jagged mis-shaped rock like formations with jungle trees growing out of them, it's pretty cool!  It sort of felt like a video game zipping along the road (I was a passenger) dodging pot holes, on coming traffic, weaving in and out of herds of cows lazily crossing the street and negotiating the patches of road where there wasn't any road.  About half way back (we were probably an hour maybe a little more from where we started) our back tire blew out.  That was an adventure.  Stupidly, in hind-sight, we had sort of lost the group.  Half of them continued on and the other half zipped back towards home while my friend and I took our time stopping and taking pictures.  So here we are, literally in the middle of no where and it's going to start getting dark in about an hour pushing the bike towards home.  Those little mo-peds weigh a lot more than they look.   I had to take matters into my own hands because I knew that at that rate we would NEVER make it back and stuck my thumb out and starting hitching for a ride.  Luckily a nice man came with his truck and picked us up and took us the the lame bike back to town.  But the adventure doesn't stop there, once we got in we had to hold on for dear life.  The driving style in Laos is pretty reckless.  So we were both trying not to fall out of the back of the little pick-up truck and also hold onto the bike so it wouldn't fall out the back either.  We eventually got back and managed to not fall out but at one point I am pretty sure that I was having an out of body experience!!  We were lucky that nothing really bad happened and now it makes for a good story I suppose.

Today we took a mini-van up north to Luang Prabang which is the 2nd largest city in Laos.  The ride here was hair raising.  We basically had to cross the mountains and the entire trip we were on a cliff side.  There is no middle line, people are driving pretty fast, there are pot holes and large oncoming trucks heading your way.  I am afraid of heights and was trying my best to not have a panic attack but eventually I just gave in.  I knew that the driver drove that same road everyday and I finally relaxed and took in the amazing views!!  The mountains are so lush here and it really is like a jungle and is was pretty incredible to drive through the mountain villages!!

That's all for now...  :-)