Okay…so much for taking it easy. We’ve changed our plans once again. Instead of taking a trip to the 4000 Islands taht are 2 hours away from Pakse we will take the night bus to Vientiane. From Vientiane we will head further north to Vang Vieng, to catch some cooler weather and to take a look at some of the caves or to do some river rafting/kayaking (we stopped making definite plans!).
From there Lia and I will go back to Vientiane and then Bangkok to move further down to Ko Tao. We’re dying to do our diving certificate. It will also be nice to just chill at a nice beach some a couple of days. We’ve been travelling so much and so fast during the last days that we’re all a little worn out and not in the best of moods.
Will try to keep you updated when we’ve reached the north!
Cheers for now!

We made it to Laos…and let me tell you..it was quite a mission to get here!! We started yesterday morning from Siem Reap with a little delay ( we had organized a taxi the night before but sent it to the wrong guest house…well you must admit, “green town” and “green house” is almost the same…or “same,same but different” as the people would say here ). We had to go back the horrible strech between Siem Reap and the Thai border, but going in an airconditioned taxi made it a lot better. We loved looking at the people on their motorbikes, it’s hard to believe what they carry around with their bikes….whole pigs or about 30 chicken hanging upside down.
We arrived at the border (getting back into Thailand was so much easier than crossing the same border into Cambodia) and then spent some time trying to come up with the perfect masterplan of how get to Laos from there. We ended up getting a taxi to Ubon which is still on the Thai side but very close to Chong Mek, one of the Thai-Lao border crossings. The taxi ride took a lot longer then we all thought ( that includes the taxi driver). We arrived in Ubon around 11p.m. and checked into the Tokio Hotel….durch den Monsun… ;o)
We thought that it would only be a very short stretch to the border and then to Pakse, the Lao city were we wanted to stay, but it turned out, once again to be a whole day’s trip. To make a long story short, we had to take about 5 different buses, pick-ups and tuk tuk to get to our hotel in Pakse. Crossing the border was pretty easy, but expensive…$30 for a 30-day visa! ( Oma, danke fuer die $30 die du mir geschenkt hast…kamen hier super zum Einsatz!)
I really like what I’ve seen so far from Laos, it seems to like a lot less touristy and still very authentic. The people are very friendly and the food ist good!
We’ve decided to take it very easy the next couple of days after all the travelling we’ve done over the last days. We’re very close to the Mekong river here and there a hundreds of little islands. We’re thinking about taking a boat trip along the Mekong and stopping at some of the islands.