As soon as we crossed into Laos I looked around, pissed in the bushes, and breathed a sigh of relief. I was back for my third time and purely happy. Laos is my favorite country in Asia, and there I was, with three good friends, soaking in all of its ramshackle laid-back glory.

Luang Nam Tha

After about an hour on our crammed little bus, we arrived in Luang Nam Tha, a town in the northern part of the country, most famous for bordering the Nam Tha National Protected Area (NPA), a virgin swath of jungle and mountains that contains a host of endangered plant and animal life, as well as many hill tribe people (who could be considered endangered as well). The town itself is unremarkable – a one strip place set up near a medium-sized river, but there is a cluster of decent guesthouses catering to the stream of tourists coming through, along with a couple restaurants, bike/motorcycle rental shops, and internet cafes which offer modern connections at the speed of mud. The word glacial springs to mind. However, unlike the onerously restricted net in China, you are allowed to check facebook, if you don’t mind waiting the twenty minutes it takes to load.

The next day we rented motorcycles and rode through the NPA – taking in stunning scenery – to the town of Meung Sing, where we ate lunch and were ceaselessly badgered by a group of hill tribe women selling bracelets, bags, and little packets of sticky black opium. They followed us everywhere and hawked their goods with a desperation seldom seen in laid-back Laos. We bought a couple of hippy bracelets, hoping that would satiate them, but it was only like throwing chum in shark-infested water. On our way back to Luang Nam Tha, we stopped at a small waterfall and washed the road grime away. This was one of many waterfalls visited in Laos, and like most of the others, we had it all to ourselves.

After Luang Nam Tha, we were forced to spend a night in Udomxai, due to missing the one nonstop bus to Luang Prabang. Udomxai is a merchant town located at crossroads between China and Vietnam. It’s a place of commerce, but otherwise qualifies as a real shithole, and I can’t recommend staying there unless you must. The bus station does have some interesting cuisine for sale, though, and Sir David did me the courtesy of buying me a rat for breakfast, which I valiantly attempted to take down, aided by a local guy who as more than happy to assist me in my endeavor.

Luang Prabang

This was my second visit to this old French colonial town and UNESCO heritage site, located on the confluence of the Mekong and Khan Rivers. I had been here before with Steve during the winter of 2006 -the dry season, as well as peak tourist time – so the town was overflowing with visitors. This time it was even more laid back, with a lot less foreigners around, and the town was just as perfect as I remembered it. Luang Prabang is firmly on the tourist map, but is still worth the visit, especially in the lazy, sticky summertime, when the river is fat, the pace slow, and the afternoon rains wash down the streets.

Luang Prabang is simply a lovely place, worth all the hype. It’s the kind of place I could linger for months, perhaps longer. It’s a mix of French and Lao architecture, a place of wooden houses and shady side streets. Local men play pentaque (French bocce ball), and cafes line the steep riverbank, where you can sit under the shade of the trees and sip coffee, cold beer Laos, and watch time slip by.

Our time in Luang Prabang was spent relaxing and exploring. The highlight of our time there was August 13th, which was Angry Steve’s 40th birthday. After a big breakfast, we bicycled 32 kilometers out to Tat Kuang Si, a gorgeous multi-tiered waterfall. We spent the day marveling at the falls and swimming in its cool, deep pools, one of which has a rope swing, where Sammy – being an Idaho boy – showed us his expert technique. Rope swings are a kind of religion in Idaho. That night we dined at L’Elephant, Luang Prabang’s finest French restaurant, where we savored some deliciously sophisticated dishes and two nice bottles of pinot noir. Nightcaps were then consumed on the riverside, at what seemed to be a tiny gay bar (it was literally one “bar”). The cocktails were mixed expertly by the agile barman, and we closed the place down, since almost everything in Laos closes by 11pm. This is a national law, and these things must even be obeyed on a friend’s idyllic 40th birthday.

Nong Kiaw and Muang Ngoi

We took the riverboat six hours up the Nam Ou to the town of Nong Kiaw, located at the one spot the pot-holed road crosses the water via a bridge. The weather had turned from a once-a-day thunderstorm to constant drizzle, swelling the already powerful river.

Nong Kiaw is located among many limestone mountains, called karsts. The landscape along the Nam Ou is simply spectacular, with green jungle punctuated by gorgeous geological formations. We stayed in scandalously cheap bungalows that overlooked the river, drank beer, played poker, and explored a cave that the old communist guerillas used to take shelter from American bombs.

After Nong Kiaw, we boated one hour further up river to Muang Ngoi, a village only accessible via the river. It is a magical place with no cars and only three hours of weak, generator-provided electricity each night. There are a smattering of guesthouses and basic restaurants, and from there you can explore the remote region surrounding it. We did more hiking, found another hidden waterfall, and swam in a spring fed stream that flows through a cave. Muang Ngoi was the end of the line for us – it was the furthest point on the rubber band of our trip. I could have stayed there for much longer, but the rubber band contracted and snapped us back through Udomxai: back through Jinhong, Kunming, and eventually to Shanghai, where we showered, shaved, and re-embraced the “civilized world,” drinking a whole night away, prepping our souls and livers for our imminent return to the Korean Peninsula.

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