Group B from Griffith Uni arrive in Laos

On Friday we had a very busy day indeed! We all arrived with a tone of luggage in tow, excited, teary eyed & ready to leave for our stopover in Bangkok. The flight over was quite good – most reports I’ve asked about seem to be about a very smooth ride & the food being surprisingly good! When we arrived in Bangkok after a whole day of flying though, the team was overall, a little fatigued.

Many of us went to bed, but some of us somehow managed to summon up the energy to attempt to catch a took took into town for some dinner and drinks. After an interesting conversation between two taxi drivers on how to actually get to the city (!), we decided it might just be better if we were dropped off at the local hang out. Firstly, we visited a local Thai nightclub. The club staff made a big fuss over us, making sure that we had fans to keep us cool & mosquito repellant to keep the mozzies away etc. The local band that was even playing sung a song or two in English for us. Next, we walked around for a little bit & then settled down at a quiet little Thai restaurant where the special of the day was a steak, fries, salad AND a beer for 229baht (approximately, $7.50AUD) and a waiter that thought he was an X-man?!? He also had gout… A fun and interesting experience was had by all involved and most of us (MOST that is…hehehe) managed to get back on the bus, bleary eyed & yawning in time to leave for our flight to Luang Prabang.

After our short stopover in Thailand, Group A successfully met Group B in Luang Prabang on Saturday. When we arrived, we all needed to convert dollars to kip, so our lovely guides helped to show us the best places to go to do that and also gave us an idea of where to eat. I would just like to mention here that ‘Joma’, a local western style café where most of us ate lunch on this day, is fantastic even by western standards! Cheap, good quality food that is familiar to the western palate. I had a cheese and chive scone for lunch on this day, costing about 8000kip (One Australian dollar!). It filled me up & it was yummo!

After lunch, they took us around town to a local mountain called ‘Phu Si’. We climbed the mountain together as a group and saw heaps of cool and interesting things along the way such as the 24m guilded stupa called chomsi, the local Buddhist temple, Buddhist monastery and a really cool little cave in the side of the mountain that apparently a couple of the locals used to call home. From the top of the mountain, we took in the view of ‘Buddha’s footprint’ and slowly made our way back down the mountain. After that the local guides showed us some REALLY old buildings and temples (400+ years old) that were undergoing refurbishment. I think the name of the area is called ‘Wat Xieng’.

We were all pretty knackered after our long walk, so we tidied ourselves up and decided where to head out for the night. We decided on a spot of shopping at the local night market before going for dinner. We all just can’t get over how cheap everything is here for us compared to Australia. 1AUD buys about 8000kip and to give you an idea of how much bang you get for your buck – it’s a lot! T-shirts are about 20000kip (approx 2.50) and a can of coke is about 5000kip (approx 70 cents AUD, depending on where you buy it). Bargains galore for any keen eyed shopper out there ;-)

For dinner, different groups went to different places, but a group of students from both Group A & Group B decided to meet up at Utopia, the local tourist restaurant / nightclub. After searching for ages to try to find the place, we walked into a peaceful, chilled out club and settled down onto the floor mats where the idea was to just relax and unwind. ‘Shish’, a kind of local flavored tobacco seemed to be quite popular here. I had a delicious cashew and chicken stir fry and some of the others I was with had vegetarian sandwiches. All really tasty, safe things to eat in the restaurants in town, I can assure you.

Will blog again soon!! Louise Mills