Vang Viang

During our break last week, some of my teammates and I went on a spontaneous trip north to Vang Viang...A scenic town about 3 1/2 hours from Vientiane that is famous for its beautiful scenery, and (unfortunately) its year-round Spring-break-like revelry.  We stayed one night and went tubing down the river and exploring in a cave. Here are some of the pics.

Sunset over the mountains. The view from our guesthouse.

We ran into these cuties on the way to the cave. They wanted to have their picture taken.

We hiked for about 20 minutes to get to the cave and crossed several of these bamboo bridges.

Kenton, Linda, me and Stephanie in the cave

This little boy is Hmong (a minority people group here in Laos). He was so cute and friendly and loved posing for pictures.

The Hmong family walking back to their home. They were picking ginger in the forest.

The little kiddos loved seeing their picture on the screen.

Kenton and the sweet Hmong boy

One of the bridges in Vang Viang. I love the view of the mountains in the background

Christa and I are new motorbike drivers so we took a bus to Vang Viang (the other 3 drove motorbikes). On the way back the bus was packed because everyone was heading to Vientiane for the 450th anniversary celebration. Just when we thought it was overly full, the bus stopped and picked up a huge group of people. Every time someone new got the Lao people on the bus would let out a loud "oooohhhh" expressing what all of us were thinking in our heads: what you're going to try to fit another person on this bus?!

Here is our row...we were in the back corner with about 7 people crammed in there. Can't complain too much though, because we had a seat and many others didn't.