Wow do the Laos people know how to party!! After three days of being wet celebrating the New Year, we were off to Muang Ngoi Neua, a tiny village along the river.

Again, the minivan ride from hell. They were two hours late picking us up. When we got in the van there wasn’t a happy face in the tourist group. This was only the van that took us to the minivan bus station. We waited another 30 minutes for three more riders (or so they said, we think they were hoping to fill the bus) before our minibus left the station.

Time was tight getting to Nong Kwai to catch the boat to Muang Ngoi Neua. When we arrived a driver offered to take us to the boat station for 5000kip (less than $1), but he was waiting to put all the other people in also, so I decided (not a good decision) for us to walk. It looked close on my map!!

The minidriver (and I am sure the people in the bus) laughed as they passed and saw us hurrying down the road. We finally got there and the boat guys gave us a hard time for being late, but the boat was waiting for us.

Now the real adventure!! When I went to pay I realized in my haste I left my purse on the minibus. My purse had all our passports, credit cards, and most of the money. I begged one of the motor scooter drivers to take me back to the bus station to see if I could find the minibus. Everyone was hysterical laughing at me. Good thing I will never see these people again.

We ended up going all over town to every minibus in the village looking for our driver. We finally found my purse. I think the whole village knew about my purse by the time we found it. It was a real relief.

I paid my new best friend, the motor scooter driver, 20000kip ($2.50). He was very happy. We obviously missed the boat and had to wait for another. We definitely used the time to our advantage and sat and had a well deserved BEER!!

Mung Ngoi Neua is a beautiful village on the river. We spent the evening at a restaurant enjoying many more beers and a nice dinner. We decided to try and trek and kayak tour the next day…

The mountains and forests along the river are spectacular and even more so in this particular section of the river. We took a boat for around 40 minutes and did a two hour trek through the forest and visited a couple villages. The heat is intense so it was not an easy trek but worth the effort.

Now the one thing I was not looking forward to… the kayak. If you don’t know my reputation on a kayak, you are lucky; it means you never had to be on one with me. I only go in circles. I have tried to figure out what I do wrong. To me I look like everyone else, but they go straight. Eric has his bad shoulder, so he was in pain trying to do all the paddling. When I tried to help, I only made it harder because we would start to go in circles.

The other couple from Israel was very patient with us. In fact we ended up hanging around with Ranie and Ronie from Israel the rest of the trip. They are really great people and we had a lot in common. Since we had such a good adventure kayaking, we all decided to go to the waterfall the next day.

Again, nothing is as it seems. We decided that we did not need a guide to find the waterfall, because our book said everything was well marked. Who writes these books!! We got lost at least three times. We found a sign half way through, after being lost for over an hour, that the waterfall was 10 minutes away “upstream”. No one really read the upstream part of the sign. We again took the wrong path and walked up a very steep hill. We had to hold on to branches to get up. Finally, I mentioned that there was no water in the area and I did not hear a waterfall…. We had been walking 60 minutes (remember the sign said another 10 minutes). We decided to go back down and give up.

On our way down Ronnie noticed a path through the stream. We finally came upon some small falls. We all decided that this was the falls and we are sticking to our story. I have made a decision that perhaps I am not meant for Amazing Race, since I cannot read signs and really hate the stress.

We couldn’t even find our way through the small village to find our boat driver, who had been waiting for us. I am sure he realized we were lost, since we were gone over two hours longer than it takes to get to the waterfall. I would love to see a picture of the falls to see if we were even close.

We took a boat for what was supposed to be 4 hours back to Luang Prabang (anything not to get in another minivan). The water is very shallow, since we are in the dry season, so we had to get out and walk and had major problems in the very low areas. The boat ride took 6 hours but the scenery was spectacular.

We are heading back to Luang Prabang to take our flight to Cambodia. Next time you hear from me I will be in Siem Reap.

Namaste.