Oh, what a lovely lovely day. Adam, wherever you are, bless your heart for insisting I stop at Vang Vieng. Although it’s totally overrun with backpackers, they can’t do a thing to dent the sheer gorgeousness of this place. All of this is made even better by the fact that the bed I slept in last night and the shower I had this morning are without doubt the best since home. I’d tell you all the name of the guest house, but I’ve forgotten it again.<\/p>\n
The drive from Luang Prabang was spectacular, albeit bumpy – all those hills and mountains I saw from the Mekong were our terrain. And about 4 hours into the 6 hour drive, these different-shaped, almost jagged, rocky heights began to appear on the horizon. I thought how lovely it would be to get a better look at them, sit in their shadow, watch the sun set behind them. Imagine my surprise, then, when I wandered down to the river’s edge here in Vang Vieng after checking into my guest house, and found myself standing squarely at their foot. I spent the day on a little peninsula\/island in the middle of the river, lying in a hammock and reading, jumping in the water to cool off now and then. Idyllic doesn’t even begin to describe it. <\/p>\n
I feel like so much has happened since last I posted that I shouldn’t even bother trying to set it all down, but I feel compelled to share the highlights: a spectacular 3-course french meal at L’Elephant in Luang Prabang, with good French wine, eaten in perfect colonial liesure and luxury; sunset from Mt. Phousi; the best homemade yogurt – well, I’ll spare the rest of the superlative statement. It’s been a great few days. Let’s just leave it at that.<\/p>\n
Next on the agenda: tonight, try to find my friends who arrived this afternoon. Tomorrow, kayaking and innertubing, partly in caves. Monday: kayaking and riding to Vientiane. Whee!<\/p>\n
Oh yes, and my back is feeling much better, thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oh, what a lovely lovely day. Adam, wherever you are, bless your heart for insisting I stop at Vang Vieng….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","category-the-big-trip-2002-2003","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}