Northern Lao

From Vientiane we headed by minibus (3 hrs) and boat (1 hr) to a little riverside village with a few lodges and amazing scenery. We stayed two nights and took a beautiful walk to a few caves and through several farming villages. This picture is as we were leaving the road, we were in a little boat (12 passengers and the boatman) like the ones in this picture.

This is the village where we stayed.

Views from our hotel.

This is the first cave we reached on our hike.

Cheers Omar!

From the riverside village we took several minibuses to reach the Muang Sing valley and a little village in a national park and near the China border. The day we reached here we rented bikes and rode through several nearby villages.

The next day we moved to a different lodge a little ways outside of town and a few kilometers from the China border. We got a hand-drawn map of the surrounding villages with vague, but pretty good walking directions (we only got a little lost and had to back track once). We had a beautiful walk passing through several villages of different ethnic groups (or hill tribes are they frequently called).

After a long day walking we relaxed and watched a beautiful sunset from our balcony.

A chilly early morning tuk tuk ride to the bus station.