Laos

Laos.  What a beautiful Country! Is it really sad to say that I honestly had no idea where Laos was until I heard that we were headed there for a couple days to renew our Visa's?  Our visas were only for about three months and we only have another month left here in good ol' Thailand so it was time to get them renewed. Time has really flown by here! I am getting so excited to see family and have Christmas and be in AMERICA in just one short month! But anyways, back to Laos.  I had no idea it was such a touristy place.  Honestly, I think I saw more tourists and people backpacking through Laos than I saw in Chang Mai.  

I personally thought that Laos was just as beautiful if not, even more so than Thailand.  Granted, we were really only about 6 hours from our home in Phichit, but you could still feel a difference! It is definitely it's own place.  They speak the language of Moeng over in Laos which I think sounds and looks almost exactly like thai, but whatever. We left for Laos at 11:00PM on sunday night and got to the border around 6:00Am and it only took us about 3 hours to get throughout the border and everything.  That was the easy part.  After getting to the American Embassy in Vientiane, Laos, we proceeded to sit for 4 hours straight, waiting to simply submit our visa's.  Yeah, it ended up being a 7 hour long process, so needless to say, we didn't really get to see much of Laos on our first day.  After we finally got to our hostle, I conked out for about 3 hours.  yeah, sitting and standing around all day will do that to ya.   

when we finally got out of our hostle, we saw some pretty neat things. 

This was Patuxia Arch in Vientiane - AKA the Victory Monument.  Pretty impressive right? 

They had the most colorful and brightly decorated taxis and tuk tuk's.  I love taking those things! They are so much fun to ride in! 

This was the entrance to the Mixay temple in Vientiaen.  

The streets are just as crowded, busy and scary as Thailand. 

We did some shopping, and found these little beauties.  So silly. 

When it comes to markets and bazaars, we become like months to the flame.  Literally.  We love shopping so much our money literally goes up in flames whenever we see tents and sales everywhere. 

People sleep everywhere. And apparently leave their children everywhere by themselves as well.

Yummy, lets stop in for a snack of raw Large tiger prawns and squid! 

Check it out, I even caught the fly on top of the wood up in the left corner.  I am a dang good photographer.  Meat drying in the sun. Right next to a super busy road.  Just saying, theres dirt everywhere.  But, Welcome to Laos/Thailand. 

Delicious chocolate shake.  I love that all of the chocolate things here are not sweetened. they use lots of raw cocoa powder in their drinks which is exquisite.