Day 1
After a 1 hour flight I landed at 18:00 in Laos. I had some turbulence during the flight and when I walked out the airplane it was raining. Although It was raining, i had a good feeling about Laos. I saw some nice mountains while landing and not so crowded. I joined the que to get the visa on arrival. After giving my photo and paid $36 I was ready to go! I saw many people buying a SIM card, but I decided to not buy one. I noticed the last weeks that it is nice to have Internet acces to look uo things and use the navigation. But I also often checked my phone and doing WhatsApp. That us not what I came here for. So in Laos no 4G acces. I use a very good navigation app: Maps.me, you can download the maps when you are online and use then offline.
For €5 the taxi brought me to Khounsavan Guesthouse. I stayed in a 4 bed room. In the evening I went to the night market and had a vegetable buffet for only €1,50 😀After dinner we tried some lokale rum on the market. They have very nice coconut rum and I bought a bottle of it. After that we went to Utopia, a bar were everyone hangs out in the evening. I had only one beer and then I headed home. I wasn't in the drinking/sozialising mood at all, my knee still felt shitty.

Day 2
Today I rented a scooter and first headed to the hospital in town. I didnt know exactly what the best way was to treat it. They cleaned it up for me and hooked me up with some bandages. After paying around €9, I headed off to the pottery Village. On the way I saw a monk walking and I asked him if he wanted to ride with me. He said yes and I brought him home 😂 After that I had to cross the river and took the ferry for €1. When I was riding to the village I saw a French girl (Marie) walking. She said she was just walking the way she said, which was 4km. I let her ride with me and went to the village. There was not alot going on. 1 lady invited me to do the pottery thing, which was cool! I didn't do that for like 17 years I guess😁
In the evening I was at the hostel when a new guy walked in, my new roommate.. But... huh?! Ehh.. Don't I know you from somewhere? YES! it was thw German guy from the meditation retreat in Chiang Mai. His name is Martin. Damn was I happy to meet him. I was not feeling good the last 2 days. My knee hurted and I didn't met any nice people.I had a good feeling now Martin was here. We went to the €1,50 buffet again at the market and spoke alot. He was only doing a visa run he said and wants to fly back on Sunday. Well, we had a good connection and we decided to head to the north of Laos, away from the bloody tourism! After a large Lao beer I went to bed. The beer here is great by the way.

Day 3
Today I went to the Ted Sae waterfalls by scooter with Martin and some other people. This waterfall was beautifull with alot of lagoons. My knee was feeling better and I decided to swim in the lagoon. After chilling there, me and Martin went to the Pak Ou cave. The way there was beautifull, not much traffic, nice mountains... Laos feels great✌Once we arrived at the cave, we found out that it is really a tourism attraction. Theres a lower and higher cave. The lower was packed with tourists and didn't make much impression. After climbing some stairs we went to the second one. This one was pitch dark. Martin came up with the awesome idea to do some meditation here, which we did😌
In the evening I ate the buffet at the market for the 3th time. Later on I chilled with Martin at the guesthouse and slept early.

Day 4
It was 5.00 in the morning and my knee was doing alot better. I climbed Mount Phou Si together with Martin. Its only a little hill in tje town. Unfortunately it was very cloudy, so no special sunrise. After that we jogged though town. At around 6.00 we saw the monks walking through town. They do this every day and collect food the people give to them. Also this was pretty much a tourist attraction. I saw a lot of Chinese people with camera's.
Later in the morning we wanted to go to the nr.1 waterfall in Laos; Kueng Si Waterfall.
On the way there we saw a sign with another waterfall on it. We quickly thought about it and decided to go there. We drove up the way but didn't see any tourist. We ended up in this beautiful property with a nice waterfall. It turned out that a family owned this property. They just started new and want to promote the waterfall. They asked for our help and from the start in we had a good feeling with it. We had so much fun with the owner (Willya) and he called us his sons. He wants to learn English and we want to help him with that. Also his wife and family were so nice. They gave us a lot of food and invited us to come sleep on friday. We will help them promoting the waterfall online. It was such a pleasant meeting with this locals! We made the appointment to sleep there on Friday and then finally headed off to the famous Kuang Si Waterfall. This waterfall was really gorgeous and is definitely worth nr 1 on tripadvisor.

When we drove back I saw that 2 people just crashed with the motorbike. Gladfully I had my first aid kit with me and I helped them with the wounds. Some local people took them back to the hostel by car and Martin rided one of their scooters. But Martin has no experience in driving and didn't have control over himself or the bike. It ended up in him crashing on the other persons bike 😬 gladfully he only had some scratches....
I closed the day by eating pizza and massage.
The next day we are heading off to Nong Khiaw in northern Laos.

Geschreven door FrankArends