This past week was Chuseok and as such we had the week off. As is apt to happen when we have a week off we went traveling. This time we went to Laos. We had been wanting to go for some time as we had heard such wonderful things about it. The trip turned out to be absolutely amazing. We had such a good time and we are currently struggling to get back into the school mindset. So what made this vacation so amazing, part of it was the country and the people which were both amazing, more about them in the next post, but also a perfect combination of plans and outcomes. To be more specific our vacation was great because it was; a balance between doing things and relaxing, not having too much time or too little time in anyone place, having a nice enough place but not feeling like we were paying too much, eating at the right places, not getting sick, no delayed flights, not too much time between flights. All of this and more goes into our trip planning and travel and this trip seemed to work out perfectly. We managed to get enough advice from coworkers (Thanks Marie, Mark and Alec) along with doing online research. So while I’m not complaining about any of our trips this one seemed to hit the target as far as a vacation and there seemed to be no hiccups. I am fully aware that the next trip is going to be a doozy of problems, I’m thinking of planning one to somewhere I don’t want to go just to get it out of the way. So here is what we did.

We arrived late on Friday night after school t Vientiane, got to the hotel and got some rest before exploring the next day. As we only had one day (thank you Mark) which was more than enough to see the sites we meandered through the streets sight seeing, stopping in Buddhist temples and  mixing in some strong coffee, fruit smoothies, and some Belgian beers we found. All in all it was a nice start to Chuseok and got the ball rolling. We didn’t take a ton of pictures in Vientiane but we made up for it in Luang Prabang.

Buddhas surrounding a temple.

The buddhas were in this building around surrounding the central temple.

The doors of the temple.

Caitlin taking pictures from cool angles.

Caitlin touching one of the Buddhas on the outside of the temple. You could see where they were frequently touched by the lack of patina.

Chao Anouvong Statue along the Mekong.

Caitlin chilling at the juice shop. Boy do we miss tropical fruits, we got spoiled in Latin America.

A ton of people were working out along the Mekong in the park.

Looking out at the Mekong right after sunset. The clouds were really cool.