no cars go

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spent the last week in lao villages on the nam om river. most of the time was in muang ngoi nuea (an hour north of the town on the map). probably one of our favorite places to visit yet... no motos or cars, just a small village on the river that fishes and farms. there's giant limestone mountains along the river, looking like they were cut by a glacier long ago and then covered by dense jungle.

we'll get some pics up soon, but to get a sense of the place: we ate fresh garden salads and lots of curries and soups. got to go hiking to neighboring villages and had to mime words to get fed cause no one spoke a word of english. trekked out to hidden waterfalls and got lost in rice fields and among water buffalo herds. went fishing for a day with the locals with long nets that could circle half a soccer field... caught a few fish and cooked them over a fire sitting on sand bar in the river, eating the fish on banana leaves with salt and crushed red pepper. wandered around in long, snake-like caves where villagers lived in the 70s while the US was bombing laos back to the stone age. we even got to river "hitchhike" to get from a hike back to the muang ngoi nuea village. all in all, it was an incredibly fulfilling week in the villages... and we gladly left it all behind for the promise of hot showers and indoor plumbing in vietnam.

if you navigate on the map above, you can follow the river north all the way to muang khuea, then on highway 4 over to vietnam. thats the path we took. we stayed in the muang khuea village last night before crossing over into vietnam today. at about 4 am, i heard a rat frantically scratching its way across our room. it ended up climbing up a wall and falling off onto the bed. it clawed across laura, waking her up and giving her a 2 hour psychosis. she doesn't like rats. at all. terrified of them. she didn't get back to sleep and spent the rest of the night like a petrified mummy wrapped up in a sheet from head to toe. pics are on their way.