Visit to Laos (Warning, frigging long post)

Just see through the pictures if you’re lazy to read. This is really a frigging long post. Can make up for 1 month of post.

I finally had the time to blog. I’ve been so )*@&#)@ tired for the entire week (and going out every night) that I can’t really find the time and energy to blog about this whole trip.

Anyways, yup, I’m back. I’ve survived the trip!!! *wipe tear from eye* I was so so so so so so worried that I’ll be lost somewhere in Laos and might have to end up going for a trip to the Singapore embassy over there, I even noted where is the location of the building LOL.

Lao’s is generally a very nice place to be in, the people are very friendly and warm. Whenever our eyes met with other people, the Laos people will just smile back / nod back to us (and nope, our fellow country people don’t do that). And the population there is not that crowded, we see westerners here and then (everyday) but it’s definitely much much much much less crowded than Singapore (duh).

I set off on 29th June, and took a flight at ~11pm to KL, and then waited there for 6~7 hours for the next flight to Vientiane, Laos. Yup, it was *&@)$#@ tiring and hellish, felt like a trip to sang overnight K, I did that a only a few times and every time I went for it I’ll regret it like hell the moment the clock strikes 3~4am. Anyway, when we finally reached Vientiane (capital of Laos) at like 9~10am, we are damn shaggggggg, didn’t really slept at all for that day.

And when I look down to the land of Laos from the plane, to my horror, I saw that the road are not really roads, it’s kinda just a… sandy path and I don’t see much vehicles. At the point of time, million of thoughts ran past my brain, one particularly to buy a ticket and fly straight to home (just kidding), I was constantly thinking how are we going to move about if there’s not much vehicles?

Then we got down, and to my another horror. The air port is…. Hm…. How should I put it, the air port is really worth the name, it’s there for the planes to port. My another friend told me to get the map of Laos when I’ve reached the air port, and when I looked at the information center… There’s like nobody around there at all. Hotel information counter is empty too. It started off really bad, I kept thinking it’s a bad idea to come here in the first place. Sorry, forgot to take a picture of the airport. After some hassling of changing to Laos Kips (Their currency is not recognized at all anywhere throughout the globe, the money can only be spent in there and you can’t change it back to your currency outside of Laos) and finding the hotel person, we’ve finally reached our hotel and got our room *cries*.

Win Hotel, Vientiane

Accommodation in Laos are generally quite affordable, most of our rooms are worth 10~30 SGD. The greatest achievement we’ve sone for the entire trip is that we changed hotel every night, so we’ve stayed in about 4~5 hotels. some other nights are spent in transportation.

So.. We started out by just roaming around our hotel, first thing : lunch.

Doesn’t the above looks nice haha, I’ve ordered fried rice, cuzzzzzzz, it sounds the safest to me and most importantly, I don’t really understand what the other dishes are, some weird names and they can’t really converse well in English, so yeah. The drink on the top left is coconut milk shake, they took the coconut flesh, liquid and blended it with ice I think. The drink isn’t that nice, too sweet / artificial, but the fried rice is niceeeeeeeeeeeeee.

The above is one of the things I like the most, it’s some pancake thing and it’s pretty cheap, around 1 SGD for a box of pancakes. The uncle was friendly, and he gave us to tried the ones he’s making because we didn’t know which one to buy. We even dropped one of it accidentally but then he offered to give us another one (see, so good, most people will just give us irritated / black face, *touched*). And then we asked to take a photo with him which he agreed gleefully haha. The pancake thing is not like the ones in our country, it’s crispy, sweet and a little salty due to the cheese. Regretted that we didn’t buy more of it, and since we left Vientiane the next day, we only tasted that one box.

Next up : Moving to Buddha Park, a highly recommended tourist hot spot on websites, coming from an asian country, actually it’s not a very rare sight for us to see. Took quite an amount of pictures here though haha.

Buddha Park

Phra That Museum

The admission for this place differ for locals and foreigners, 2000 kips for locals and 5000 for foreigners, our country should do the same thing man, we’d earn a lot for tourism if this happens hahaha.

Patuxai, “Eiffel Tower” of Laos

Kinda like this place, looks pretty cool. But it was about to rain when we were there at that time, we didn’t even managed to explore the building properly. Now that I look a the picture above, wow, my face complexion looks sooooooo good LOL.

Last King of  the country place

We borrowed the umbrellas from the driver, pretty nice huh? Even the umbrellas over there are nice haha.

Moving on to Luang Prabang, Laos

This is one of the most interesting things I’ve encountered in Laos. As you guys probably already know, or should have known, Genting is like my third home. On days I just want a holiday and don’t wanna spend money, I’ll tag along with my parents when they go off to Genting and gamble. They go to Genting and gamble quite often, I think, to them, gambling are like games, just like how World of Warcraft is to me.

Anyways, I’ve took a couple of coach rides in my entire life. My mum was a malaysian, so when I was young, I also had to take coaches to go back to my mum’s mums home (grandma’s house to make it easier).

My point is, the coach I’ve ridden up to date are pretty much more or less the same, and I thought VIP sleeper bus that the bus stations in Laos are offering the same thing as what Grasslands offer. I didn’t know by “sleeper”, they really meant “sleeper. Instead of chairs, they had some very close to bed seats that let us sleep on it. Refer to the below picture for reference.

Taking a picture of the other people will be able to clarify what I’m saying better. See, each of us have those places to sleep, and truthfully, it’s cramp. Maybe if I were thinner I could have lolled around on the bed more, but even so, because I’m also quite tall, I had to bring up my legs a little too. So if Oi Oi were there, I think your legs will be super uncomfortable and numbed. Mine were a little numb when we reached Luang Prabang. And the journey was about 13~14 hours.

See what I meant? Cramped.

Villa Suan Maak, Luang Prabang

This hotel is pretty nice, the front yard are nice, full of greeneries, the next morning the roosters kept calling out though, I was waken up a lot of times by their calls >.>

Mount Phousi

The start of my nightmare. the stairs are not like the stairs in Singapore, the steps are super steep, and I nearly died while climbing this man. And then after climbing to the top of this, I realised, there’s still more steps to go.

Yup, like this. There’s like 6~7 flight of stairs after this one that you see at the left part. Had to pay an admission fee to climb up to the top though. The view from the top is kinda nice, it gives a view of Luang Prabang, not entire place, but at least the town centre. I’m currently using the picture as my desktop wallpaper haha.

I don’t wanna say that the view is worth the steps, I nearly died climbing the steps. But anyway if I stayed there for like 2 months and do this everyday, I think I might be able to lose off some fats and sing karaoke better.

Some random cat that’s on the peak of Mount Phousi.

Whisky Village

Nam Phou Caves

Another place with lotsa Buddha statues. Aaaaaand then, stairs again. I realised that for the attractions in Laos (or at least most of them in Luang Prabang), to visit them, you’ll have to go through lots and lotsa stairs.

Mekong River

This river is connected to five places I think, I recalled somebody saying it but I can’t remember which five countries, but I know it can lead to Chiang Mai of Thailand. We took a boat trip down this river to visit Whisky Village, Nam Phou Caves.

On a side note, all I really wanna is to finish this post and publish it. It’s frigging )*&@#)@ tiring to upload these photos one by one LOL. Once again, salutes to people who can put up endless amount of photos on their blog. I’d rather make a 2000 word essay.

Anyway, the highlight of the whole trip :

Kwang Si Waterfalls

This place is really really nice, the only thing I regret is I didn’t bring an extra set of clothes, the weather was hot, and the water looked really really tempting, and the water is pretty clear and a little greenish blue, the kind of scenery that I’ve so far only seen on desktop wallpapers. I’m glad we came here, it’s very niceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Singapore would never have this kind of scenery, not just cuz we are a small nation. Most importantly, if this is in Singapore, the below pictures will be flooded with human beings.

Mekong Holiday Villa by Xandria, Luang Prabang

Another hotel that we’ve moved to, we wanted to extend another night in the previous one, but the owner said all the rooms are taken (and actually thank god there’s no space so we have stayed in different hotels for every night haha). Anyway this is our favorite hotel of all the hotels we’ve stayed in. The whole room has a very villa and woody feel.

Bear Rescue Centre

Actually we passed by this while going to the waterfalls, and I don’t have much information about this, there’s nobody around to say anything, it’s kinda just there while every walk past them to go to the waterfalls.

Traditional Arts and Ethnology Museum

Turns out we’re not really museum people, we only briefly went through the items and I only remembered that most of the information written is about their weddings customs. Such as that when a male purpose marriage for a female’s hand in marriage, he’d have to give the female’s family the wedding dowry. This aspect for what I know, is pretty much the same for Chinese, just that in this modern age and western culture integrated into our society, I’m not really sure if this custom is still going on in our culture or not haha.

One thing surprising is, I knew that there are some cultures whereby marriage between different tribes are not allowed, but apparently for them it’s very common and well accepted.

Joma Bakery 

This place can pretty much be considered an attraction already man, it’s all over on the internet and on guide books, the food there is pretty nice. But I think this place caters more to westerners haha.

OH YES. The last number of pictures *tears of joy*.

Train to Bangkok

The below photos are the interiors of the train that we’ve spent 14 hours in, sleeper bunks.

We went through a lot of trouble / effort / sweat / muscle  cells to put up this thingy by ourselves, and then realised that both of us didn’t wanna sleep on the upper bed at all. My friend wanted the lower bunk because the scene was clearer, I didn’t want the upper bed to be up because I’m afraid the whole thing will crash on me. I’ve already survived the whole trip, if I were to die at this last stage, I’d really dang on my head 1000 times.

So in the end we decided to just use the lower bed, really dunno what we’re doing haha.

Oh.. I forgot the Siam Paragon that we went for the half day we were in Bangkok. So.. Just a few more pictures to go.

Subway train of Bangkok

I like how empty it is, sobs.

Siam Paragon

And with that, I finally conclude the end of this entire blog post. And I actually spent the whole weekend uploading and writing shits for this entire trip, omg, damn tired. And, to my horror, there’s like another ~200 pictures that’s not uploaded in this post, and this entry alone takes up ~100 pictures and 2800 words already (okay, I admit that mosty are just bullshits LOL).

Signing off. Tired.