Lao People’s Democratic Republic. This small country was my last stop in Indochina. As you enter from China, the giant of the East, you must give yourself the time to acclimatize to the new Lao way. It’s a pure country and there’s absolutely no reason to rush. With or without the pressure, things always happen in their own time.

We reached Luang Namtha at noon and by the time we settled in a hotel it was almost dark. A cheerful night market right across from the hotel was the best introduction to the new country. The following days we wanted to arrange a jungle stay with a three-day trekking. I don’t exactly understand the reason why we ended up doing it separately from Dimitris. His travel time was almost over and that made him move much faster than us.

The three-day trek proved to be well worth the money and the extra time we spent in Luang Namtha. The first night we stayed in the jungle and the second we stayed in a village of one of the local tribes that own the area.

After that it was time for us to travel the Mekong by boat, something that we wanted to do from its source up in China but we never managed to. We took a really fun way down. For two days we were on a party boat with almost 100 people, having fun and enjoying the river. They were all pretty young like the majority of people traveling Southeast Asia. They didn’t want to spoil the fun so things didn’t get out of control despite the huge consumption of weed and alcohol. We even hung out with some of them in Luang Prabang, the end of our river ride. Luang Prabang, a world heritage city, is probably the most well known travel destination. I’ll tell you all about my story there in my next post.