Vientiane,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Welcome to my travel blog!! I know it's already half way through my trip, but I figured better late than never! I will try to upload some photos later today...we'll see how that goes. So to catch everyone up I am currently in Laos, after spending about a month in Cambodia and Vietnam. Both of those countries were incredible in their own way, although I have already fallen desperately in love with Laos. Possibly because I have have already studied the Hmong (a hillside tribe in Laos) and feel very connected to the culture, or possibly its just because of the magic of this country! Who knows, but my travels have been crazy- ups and downs and whirlwinds of excitement. To give an example of how it never gets boring in indo-china, yesterday we had a 14 hr travel day crossing the border into Laos (during the rainy season). About half way through there was a huge landslide (actually three of them over a 1km space) and none of the traffic could pass and of course it was the only rd that goes to where we needed to go (the capital, Vientiane), so thankfully there was another group on the other side of the landslide in the same predicament, so we gather all of our stuff with the goal of swapping buses and trek across (more specifically wade through) the mudslides, the worst one was knee deep and all-consuming like quick sand- i lost both of my sandals and had to dig furiously to get them back (cause they are my really good ones) plus i was wearing a white skirt, so basically i was asking to get covered in mud from the get go!!
Landslide in Laos PDR
! and it was raining the whole time to add insult to injury! but the thing was, i had the BEST time, and it was only locals besides our group traversing the 10ft high mounds of mud, earth, rocks and trees, there was such a sense of "we are in this together" it was great!
I mean anyone who knows me could guess that trekking muddy landslides in the middle of the Lao rain forest would be one of my favorite things to do- plus I got to get SOO dirty!!
Throughout the rest of our 6 hr bus ride, we saw whole villages flooded with 3-5ft of water, some of the houses on stilts were still unscathed, but others just had their roof above water- the roads also had up to 1-2 ft of water on them. A very humbling but exhilarating day!
I am in the capital now and need to visit the US Embassy to try and get fingerprinted for my FBI background check for my Brazilian Visa...so needless to say there will be more adventures to report back on....stay tuned!
Comments
Can't wait for the next installment!
Love you!!!!!