Christmas time in Laos!

I think we both started to feel a little homesick in the days running up to Christmas. That's probably a little selfish of us, since I know many people would love to be in our place right now rather than back home in the cold, but still, when you think of your families and friends back home decorating their trees, wrapping up their presents, lighting candles, attending Christmas parties, you can't help but wish you were there. Christmas should be a time for family.

Unfortunately, this year that wasn't to be, but we were determined to get into the festive spirit and bring a little bit of Christmas to Laos. Along with Laura, Andy and Zoe, our travelling companions of the past week, we shopped for presents for each other, found ourselves some Santa hats (which we were not allowed to take off, no matter how hot!), sang some Christmas songs and played some games, and -in the absence of a Christmas meal- treated ourselves to a very nice Italian meal, followed by some wine and cheeses back at the hotel. All of the locals respectfully wished us a merry christmas as we paraded around the streets of Vientiane in our Santa hats, and all in all it felt very Christmassy despite being thousands of miles from home!





Two days later we moved on northwards to Vang Vieng, famous for it's beautiful scenery and even more so for it's "tubing". Tubing basically involves sitting in a big rubber ring (actually the inner tube of a tractor!) and floating down the river. There's a dozen or so bars on the 2 hour route downstream, and if you feel like stopping for a drink you signal to one of the barstaff and they will throw you a line and fish you out of the river! It was a really unusual but fun day. We did plan to do the same again today but we are all suffering a bit, with bad backs, bruised bottoms and Laura's "tube-burn"... oh, and there's the hangovers too, of course!



Tomorrow we are all hoping to move on to Luang Prabang where we will be celebrating New Year. We heard from many other travellers that Luang Prabang is a beautiful city, so I'm quite looking forward to it!