more pictures

 Wat Rong Khun (on our way to Laos). It's a weird place

 The slow boat to Luang Prabang, Laos. It took us 2 days

 The Nam Song River. We tubed down this river.

In Pou Kham Cave (the fake one)

 The real Pou Kham cave

Pou Kham cave. Randy with Buddha.

 One of the deep, dark tunnels in Pou Kham Cave

Biking home from the caves to Vang Vieng. The rush hour traffic :)

Patuxai, the Arc de Triomphe of Vientiane

Pha That Luang, the most important national monument in Laos. It's on all their money. Not that impressive though....but we still had to take one of these cheesy photos.

Vientiane

   Well, here we are in the capital of Laos. We left Luang Prabang via a scary bus. The highway was super winding and overall a bit sketchy, though we made it in the end (though we later heard about a bus that overturned on that highway a few days before).
   The Lonely Planet calls Vang Vieng a "hedonists Paradise" and it is pretty much true. Drunk/high tourists stumble through the streets in the evenings. We went for the tubing ride down the Nam Song River here, which is the towns big attraction. It took us 4 hours, though it takes much much longer if you stop at all the bars on the shore (they throw ropes at you, and try to reel you in). Tubing was tons of fun though, very relaxing. The next day we rented some bikes and spent the day biking to caves around the town. We were trying to get to the Pou Kham cave. Apparently there are 2 Pou Kham caves, the first one we went to was a sham, but still cool. We then went to the real one, and it was super cool. The main cave must be almost as big as the golf dome. We had some flashlights with us so we wandered in through the tunnels which was also really awesome, and pretty scary. There are no health and saftey regulations in Laos, so you can just go wherever you want, which is great.
    We caught a bus to Vientiane yesterday. It is a nice city, but we were only planning on staying 2 nights. However, our whole time in Laos, ATMs have not worked for us, and we have just been exchanging our american money for the Kip. Long story short we dont have enough money to get to hanoi, Vietnam. So we are stuck in Vientiane until we can sort things out with our bank (which is closed for the weekend). Yesterday we managed to get some money off of our visa, but it hasnt worked since. Everything feels different when you dont have money. Oh well, we have enough money to get us through the next few days.

Chiang Mai, Slow Boat, and Luang Prabang

   After taking the night train from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai, we spent  4 days in the city. We wandered to streets, went to the huge night bazaar several times, and ate a lot of pizza :) We relaxed a lot here. However, we did spend one day "trekking." It wasn't that intense at all. They pretty much call any tour there a trek. We rode some elephants (on the neck as well!), walked to a waterfall (a whole 1/2 hour! oh my goodness, so far!! what a trek!), saw the Karen hilltribe village, went rafting, and drove home. Not that amazing, but it was something to do.
    After Chiang Mai, we drove to Chiang Khong, the border of Thailand and Laos. On the way we visited a white wat (temple). It was super cool and really bright. It was a little weird as we had to cross a bridge over a whole bunch of clay hands reaching up from hell. Kind of weird. We'll show pictures again soon. The next morning we crossed the Mekong river into Laos. From there we took the slow boat for the next two days to Luang Prabang. The boat was really interesting; the scenery was beautiful. We saw many small villages in the hills/mountains. The river was also pretty rocky and a bit sketchy at times.
    And so here we are in Luang Prabang, spending the day biking around. We tried to find the bus station so we could get tickets to our next destination (Vang Vien), but we got lost for 2 hours! And none of the locals can understand our map so they can't tell us where we are. oh well, we found it, and now we'll stick to areas we know :)

Pictures

These are some pictures of our adventures so far. Enjoy!

 Streets of Bangkok

 Rafting on the Kwai River near Kanchanburi

 The sketchy bridge near our guesthouse on the water

 Randy on the bridge! There were teenagers hanging out on it, some jumping off of it into the river

 Randy journaling at our floating guesthouse

 One of the 7 waterfalls at Erawan National Park

 Randy swimming in the second waterfall

 So steep! (Wat Chaiwatthanaram, in Ayutthaya)

 Wat Chaiwatthanaram, in Ayutthaya

 Jumping! :) blury :(

The biggest dog of our lives! it's head was actually bigger than ours! If I hadnt given him a rub he would have eaten me!

Kanchanaburi and Ayutthaya

   Well, on saturday we high tailed it out of Bangkok (literally, we took a bus and the drivers are nuts!), and headed to the city of Kanchanaburi. We had booked a tour which included things such as a long train ride, elephant ride, short raft trip, and many other things; too many things to do in one day really. We didn't really know what was going on because everyone on the tour was doing different things in different orders. So we got shuffled around a lot, but somehow we saw what we needed to see and made it back to our bags at the guesthouse. We spent the night on this shifty looking floating guesthouse boat thing. It was actually really beautiful to stay right on the little Kwai River.
    The next day we headed to Erawan National Park and spent 3 hours there hiking the 7 waterfalls. They are beautiful! (pictures will follow soon). There were many pools to swim in at the base of the falls. We only had 3 hours here, but we felt like we could have spent the whole day there.
     After many hours on the bus we ended up in Ayutthaya. It is a small city chalked full of old temple ruins. So today we've spent the day riding these sucky old bikes (that have made our rumps awefully sore) around to different ruins, which has been loads of fun!
   Tonight we catch a night train to Chaing Mai, where we spend a few days (or as long as it takes us to get our Vietnamese Visas!).
 

Bangkok arrival

The flights went well. We had a lot of down time though, and got quite bored of the airports. When we arrived in Bangkok we got a taxi. He couldn't really understand much english. But after much calling and asking around, he found the place where we wanted to stay. It is amazing how much they use alleyways (this hotel was in one). The owner wasn't there so we went and got some cokes :) By the time we went back it was already full. But we went to one just around the corner where we have our own bathroom (which is like a shower because the water just pours onto the floor and into the drain).

     We woke up super early (still trying to get over the jet lag) and started walking the streets. The lonely planet book had the hotel on the wrong side of the street so we started walking in the wrong direction. But we asked around and turned around :) We eventually found the main backpacker stretch, Khao San, and had breakfast there.

     The streets of Bangkok are so hectic. There are people and cars and scooters everywhere! And just recently they've started opening up all their shops and the sidewalks are full of kiosks. 

     Well, that's about it. We want to head to the Vietnamese embassy and talk to some travel agents about a resort in southern thailand. Hopefully we can get this done and not get lost! 

The Day Before...

We don't have much to say other than that we are leaving tomorrow! Crazy. We are very excited but a little nervous. We hope to keep you updated throughout our trip, but we'll see what happens :)