We woke to our last sunrise in Thailand, the beautiful country that we had all come to love. The thought of leaving such a surreal environment left us all stunned. Thailand was a place where we were pulled out of our comfort zones and forced to develop new friendships and try new foods, activities, and explore new cultures. Being able to experience all of of these new opportunities allowed us to become greater people as we were able to see exactly how much we take for granted. Things such as fresh clothing, air condoning, security, housing, and even the bare necessities are thought of as rights but we now know they are privileges. Muay Thai boxing, rafting, and the house build were among the favourite activities. We think that it is fair to say that we all struggled with trying new foods, sleeping in new environments and communicating with the locals as many of them could not speak English.
Sanee and Chai were the tour guides that practically became our best friends, they knew exactly what we would ask for at the dinner table, and they were always there for a good laugh. Saying goodbye to them was almost as hard as saying goodbye to our family as that was what they had become. As we said goodbye whilst travelling through customs we still had a smile on our face because we were beginning the next chapter of our TLC – 2017 Temples adventure. We soon boarded a bus that took us over the boarder (the Mekong River) and allowed us to see one side with Thailand and one side with Laos. We were greeted by our new tour guide, Joy, who is a local. We hopped onto songthews that took us to our new home for the next 7 hours. 5 minutes into the boat trip and practically everyone was playing some form of card game whether it was spit, uno, go fish, cheat, or spoons. The scenery was stunning as every direction had something different whether it was wildlife, plants, mountains, locals, or village huts. The sight of muddy brown water never got old as it provided all of us with the realisation that we were in such a wonderful place. With so much history, culture and colour. The Mekong river was filled with various types of things such as locals swimming, water buffalo, other tourist boats and even local food transportation. We were greeted by Joy on the boat with some interesting facts that would broaden our knowledge of the country that we were in. These included…
The population of Laos is just over 6 million.
There are 3 ethnic groups and 49 tribes.
The most common export is beer, coffee and handicrafts.
Vientiane is the capital of Laos and has a population of half a million
They import a lot of rice
They receive roughly 200,000 tourists each year with most of them being from China and South Korea.
Education is free all the way up to 18.
We then arrived in Pak Beng where we saw our hotel the Phetsoksay. Once settled in we then traveled down the one and only street where we saw a variety of food and clothing stores. We were taken to a market where they had bagged live frogs that were croaking! We then retuned to the hotel for a nice dinner filled with rice, chicken and sweet and sour pork. We are all looking forward to a nice sleep and continuing our boat trip to Luang Prabang tomorrow.
Lily Scott and Angelique Fry
