Luang Prabang

We are currently in Luang Prabang, Laos. We flew from Malaysia to the capitol of Laos on the 18th in the morning. Explored the city a bit and ate a nice lunch by the bank of the Mekong, looking across the broad river at Thailand on the other side. That evening we boarded a "VIP" bus to Luang Prabang. If there is anything I have learned traveling, its that when a bus touts a name like "VIP", it will ceartainly not be for very important persons. I can guarentee that the president of Laos doesn't got "VIP". Maybe there is a "Super VIP" for him. ANyway, we got to our seats for the 10-11 hour bus ride, and found that, of course, the leg room between our seats and the one in front was much less than the other seats on the bus. They alwasy try to cram in an extra seat at my expense it seems. Eric and I experienced this in Bolivia quite a few times. It caused us to fly the one internal flight we did in three months in South America. Needless to say we decided, because of multiple reasons, we are going to fly to Vietnam. But back to the bus ride! I saw our seat and immediately asked the ticket guy if there were any other seats available. He said there were three left at the back. We went quickly and claimed them, thinking we were lucky because we had three seats. This brings me to lesson two: don't count your chickens... If there are available seats, they will be filled, even if it means the bus leaves hours late. Not only did all the seats get filled, but a few people stood in the aisle. Which reminds we of a time in Guatemale, but we'll save that for another time.
After many events, including sitting next to a man with a rifle (we found out later that he was the security guard), we made a bumpy, dusty, noisy, loooong, trip to Luang Prabang. This place was a great rest break last time I was here, and its a great now. Camilla loved it immediately, but unfortunately, she has been a little under the weather. She's resting and starting to feel a little better. We have done pretty well so far and have not had any major sicknesses of food poisoning.

More to follow, we fly to Hanoi on the 25th. It will be a Lao/Vietnamese Christmas.