Old Lady Time in Laos!

Sabaidee! (That's hello in Lao)

On Monday we took a flight from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang, Laos. When we got on the plane we realized that we had just joined up with tour of people all three times the age of us, and when we got off the plane the average age of the travelers around didn't change much. However, we decided to fully embrace this, and let our Grandma side shine through with pride this week. The hostel we stayed in for the first couple nights had a variety of nic nacs on display, a cute little canopy over our bed, and they even provided us with robes. Just darling!

Luang Prabang has an artsy feel, and there are adorable cafes all along the main tourist strips serving delicious food. We have eaten our pancakes, fruit, and granola everyday by the Mekong riverside. However, Laos is a third world country which was very apparent as soon as we left the tourist strip in town. The lives and the people living in the villages around town were far from glorious. There was a very enticing night market there every night that sold hand crafted items from the nearby villages, and the sandwiches that we couldn't live without were conveniently placed at the end of the road that the market was on. So, we may have visited here a few times, and picked up a few things. You just can't pass up $2 hand made scarfs, or feel bad about directly injecting money into their economy!!

We will just fill you on on the main activities we indulged in this week. We saw the famous Wat Xieng Thong Temple, along with another famous temple that we hiked to see, took a tuk tuk ride to the Tat Kuang Si Waterfalls (gorgeous!), took a 7 hour cooking class, went to the Royal Palace Museum, and went to a tradition Lao ballet. Yes, Meghan actually did some cooking and didn't light anything on fire! We made five traditional Lao dishes all together, and all but one of them turned out pretty good.We actually did meet a few people here close to our age that we took the cooking class with. There are a really fun group of guys from Arizona, Washington DC, and England. We have had some great conversations with them, and they even convinced us to break away from our grandma ways and go out a few nights.

We just arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam and before we posted this blog we thought we would fill you in on day 14 quick. We had big plans for this day, but factors in Asia tend to play a large role in screwing with your plans. There wasn't any power in Laos. So, we couldn't shower, take out money, or get food. We had just enough money to pay for our hotel room, and get a ride to the airport. However, we couldn't afford food and we were pretty dirty. So, when we arrived in Vietnam we weren't in the best of shape. Shannon's first description on Hanoi was, "It's like New York only on crack, with a million and one motor bikes." It's pretty crazy here, and overwhelming. We already booked a bus ticket out of here to a smaller town called Hoi An.

Hope all is well back home! We talk daily about how excited we are to get home and see all of you!