The Roses in Laos

Hello again, it has been a very long time since I wrote (may be one month?) Not sure. Anyhow, we have done and seen a lot in the last month and it has been great. We have discovered Laos and Cambodia - where am writing this0, 2 countries which we did not know much about and which have both surprised us in a very good way.
Starting with Laos. We crossed the Thai / Lao border on a little barge (we did not have enough money for it, but they were kind and let us pay less!), and made our way to Luang Nam Tha, small place, not much to do there, only beautiful scenery and absolutely lovely people (change from the Thai!). We decided to head further north to Muang Sing (even more the middle of nowhere! 2 streets and that's it!), where we booked our self for some trekking! Why I do not know as for one day we went up up up up and up. We thought the guide was having a laugh when he showed us where we were going (ridge of mountain), well he was not! I never done a walk so hard in my life and glad I did it (well there was no alternative really!!!). We camped at night in a village at the top of the mountain and it was great, playing with kids, trying to talk to the Akka people, drinking lao lao to forget the sore legs and having a very strange and a bit violent Akka massage (Andrew will never forget his hip nearly being dislocated!). We did the trek with some guys from Alaska and had a very good time!
We then headed to Nong Kiaw still north and met some nice French people (they are everywhere in Laos!), and enjoyed it there a lot too - again nothing to do but the scenery was amazing, river, mountains, lots of monks!!!
We then went to Luang Prabang on a boat a 5 1/2h trip with some of the best scenery ever, something out of lord of the ring as Andrew said.
Luang Prabang was fab, nice to be back in civilisation after few days in the mountains, no phone, e-mail sometimes. Luang Prabang is a beautiful city, lots of French architecture, wats, little markets (with so many beautiful things!!! which we cannot buy!), had a lovely massage there and visited / chilled there for a few days.
We woke up early there to see the monks doing alms and make merit, so we sat down and gave food to the monks in their bowls, was really nice indeed.
We then headed south east to Phonsavan where we visited the plain of jars (bit like stone henge stone jars everywhere and they don't know why / how). Liked it there and also there we realised (seeing old ammunitions and craters in the landscape) how much Laos suffered from the USA bombing - Laos is the most bombed country in the world, and it is a real problem still today as so may UXO that the land cannot be cultivated and not much other resources for the country placing it in one of the poorest in the wold).
We planned to cross to Vietnam from there but we did not plan on Tet (Chinese new year), which meant that buses were cancelled for 2 weeks and we could not go there .... so we went to Vientiane the capital to see if we could fly to Hanoi. Unfortunately it was too expensive so we gave up on Vietnam all together (visa ran out soon) and decided to concentrate on Laos, Cambodia, Thailand rather than rushing it all! We just will have to come back again sometime!
From Vientiane we headed with the overnight bus to Sin Phan Don or 4,000 islands, lots of big and small island on the mekong. It was amazing there, hardly developed, river surrounding, lots of little islands, so chilled, which we needed after nearly 1 month moving a lot, on the go!
We stayed there 4 days, chilling, tubing on the mekong (we laughed so much, was scared to end ou in the waterfalls!), visiting the islands on the bicycle (got puncher in middle of nowhere!), and having to get credit from guest house as no ATM on the island and we ran out of money! People are so nice in Laos, they gave us credit!
And that was Laos, a beautiful country, poor but I think rich at heart, with extremely friendly people - truly remarkable, they have suffered so much (being a colonie, bombs, Indochina war), yet the Lao people are the nicest I have met so far (yes nicer than Indian people) and lot's of kids everywhere!!
Next is Cambodia!!
The Roses!!