Leaving Laos Famous

In two hours I leave Laos for Vietnam, promising myself it'll not be the last time I'm here. The last two days here have been the best of all. Monday was learning to ride and drive an elephant, and I am now fully versed in all the futile instructions you need to try to make an elephant do something they don't want to. Then we trekked through the jungle on them and tubed back to "camp", which was in fact a huge luxurious villa for each of us with verandah, outdoor bathroom and huge comfy beds. The next day we went up the river and kayaked 10km or so down into Luang Prabang through some fairly basic rapids, but ones which managed to throw me and my Swiss co-pilot, Nick, into the water. It could have been that we were reaching for river weed to throw at our guide that did for us. A running battle was fought all the way down the river, which we lost miserably.

About half way down I spotted a snake swimming across the river. Out guide, Tuy, spotted it too, and paddled furiously to reach it before it got to the bank. One swift bash on the back and the snake was ours. Tuy explained that this was very good luck, and good eating, and we spent the next hours shouting to anybody on the river bank in Lao "We are very lucky, we have a snake". By the time we passed our camp of the night before, an excited crowd was gathering on the river bank to inspect the snake. It seems the jungle telegraph works a treat. Or maybe it's mobile phones.

Our guide invited us to dine with him that night, with snake soup as the main part of the feast. As a guide he earns reasonable money for the area, but his house was still very modest, and it felt a real honour to be able to go to his house, meet his family, and have fresh river snake - something they probably only have a few times a year at most. The whole Tuy clan were there, wife, child, Mum, Dad, Father-in-law (who particularly enjoys his rice whisky, but not the Merlot we brought them as a gift), Mother-in-law, two dogs, and the Tuk-Tuk driver. With great ceremony the food and drink was placed in front of us, and we did our best to explain how we were very grateful for they effort and generosity.

Among all the people I've so far talked to travelling, there seems to be a concensus that the happiness and the warmness of the Lao is the most of all people in South East Asia, and this makes it a particularly easy and fun place to travel. I'm now steeling myself for the bustle and dynamism of Hanoi, which I'm not sure will be at all same same, but different.