Laos is sparce...

For the past few days, I've been trying to upload pictures and video of our adventure so far in Laos... unfortunately, that has proved to be a difficult task in a country plagued by rolling black outs, lack of power or internet lines outside of the biggest cities, etc. So needless to say, we're going to keep trying, but don't expect much until we hit Cambodia at the very end of July.

Note: Nico has currently scampered off to find a higher speed connection, so there is a small chance that is all entirely wrong.

Moving on. Laos is sleepy. The pace of life on our trip has been nice, but upon reaching Laos (properly, post our wild Gibbon Experience adventure) our trip got even more relaxing. After getting back to Huay Xai, we booked tickets for the slow boat adventure down the Mae Khong, only to find out that it was actually just that. A very lazy 6-9 hour trip depending on how often the driver wanted to stop and say "hi" to people along the way.

Don't get me wrong, the views were spectacular. Imagine pristine jungle layered over rolling hills, with the occasional mountain thrown in there. Imagine sunny blue skies contrasted with lush greens. Imagine low hanging nebulous clouds splitting as they slowly collided with cliff sides. And imagine that no view was muddied with human construction, trash, or light pollution. That is what we saw... it was unbelievable. Unfortunately, we saw it for 300 miles and 15 hours straight. And even worse, because we were constantly surrounded we didn't take a ton of pictures. Shame, but not that bad because we wouldn't be able to show you anyways.

Then we arrived in Luong Probang. LP is a World History Preservation site. I've never heard the term before, but I imagine it means, beautiful town that should be visited and untouched - providing a boost in tourism that hardly makes up for years of French colonialism. All that in mind, we were ecstatic to arrive in LP and be able to check into a comfortable 3 dollar a day hotel. We relaxed and made our way over to a restaurant called L'elephant, written up for being the best French place in the country. On our travellers budget it would have been hard, but lucky for us our 4 star meal was covered by dear old dad, who foolishly thought that I couldn't hunt down a great meal when given the opportunity. (Thanks Dad! It was the most delicious thing Nico and I have eaten since departing the states!). We sat, talked about how life was short, that we were making the most of it, and how we had to make sure never to forget that.

Yesterday morning, Amanda Luther (BCG Dallas Badass Extraordinaire) flew in from Bangkok to hang out for the week and since then, we've mosied around LP, covered 15 kilometers kayaking, hung out under and jumped off of the most beautiful waterfalls imaginable (sad, but because we were kayaking we have no pictures), and took a 30 minute elephant ride around and then up those very same waterfalls. Life continues to be good. Days continue to be great.