almost in china!

Spent a few days in the north of Laos in Luang Nam Tha- enjoying the scenery and hills and cycling around. Went on a days kayaking trip down the rapids which was really fun, especially as chris and marc spent the entire time falling in. they didnt quite have the technique! becky and i had to be looked after cos we were girls, and the guides took us through the rapids, which was a bit less exciting, but probably safer! anyway, the scxenrey was stuning- jungle surrounding us on both sides and the river was so peaceful when we werent in the rapids.

Up there in Northern Laos there are lots of people from the various hill tribes, which is quite interesting. they all wear amazing multi-coloured clothes and hats, etc, and all have special customs that they still live by...one tribe only wear indigo tunics, and kind of white legwarmers, and when the girls reach womanhood, they pluck out all their eyebrows and take two strand of hair tye it back around their heads and wear a bun on top, and that is what they look like from now on
And another tribe wear loads of silver coins sewn all over there hats and down their tunics. its really cool! we didnt really do any hilltribe village tours which seem a bit like a human zoo, but it was nice to see them walking round in the markets. unfortunately a lot of them are quite pushy and literally accost you to buy their bracelets and things as soon as you get off the bus, and when you say no, they surrepticiously pull a massive bag out of their bag and whisper 'majijuana, opium?' at you. its quite weird. these little ladies about 60 and they're trying to sell you opium...its amazingly open but right in the golden triangle there.

after a nice few days there , we went even further north to muang sing. now there was a place with nothing to do, apart from try to avoid the crazy hill trive women! it was quite nice, but not very exciting apart from the fact that we cycled to china! we were only 10k from the border so we thought we should see it! it was a hard climb on the worst bikes but we made it! and ooh, it looked really different! we probably could've just cycled on through- the border control didnt look very strict- loads of people were just wandering on through- but we decided to give it a miss! instead we shared a small warm chinese beer between the 4 of us and went back to laos...