Three weeks of holidays!!!

Sa bai dee!!! I'm writing from Vientiane, only this time it's a brief stop in the middle of my 5 week holiday!!!!!!!!! Its been really great so far - since it's been three weeks since I last wrote I probably can't remember everything in as much detail as I usually do, but I'll try :-)
The last week at work was a real struggle - just hanging in until holidays started. We had some guests from Singapore towards the end of the week who we signed a distribution agreement with for electric fencing material - they were quite old and entertaining English characters, not what I expected!! We went 20 minutes outside Vientiane to LIRE's Jatropha field and set up a trial electric fence, which was lots of fun (except for the heat - it is really hot now!!)
Chris and I also had a small party at our house on Thursday night to see off a few people that were leaving Laos whilst we were on holidays -always a sad thing to do, but it seems to be a part of life here in the expat community. We went with the international food theme again - the Germans are always good at participating with this!
Saturday night saw us leaving for Australia - I was so excited that I couldn't sleep and spent most of the day sitting around watching the clock :-) We flew to Bangkok at about 10pm, and had an eight hour stopover - so we decided to check into a dayroom at the airport. Only hoping for some sort of horizontal surface that wasn't a collection of chairs to sleep on, we instead got a fully fledged hotel room, complete with bathroom, computers, TV and king sized bed, complete with view of people wandering around just outside the window - for the hefty price of $200US for six hours. I slept like a baby :-) We arrived back home at 8pm on Sunday night to a reception from Mum and Dad and Rosie and Bryce :-)
It was a bit bizarre being home at first - getting around everywhere in cars on the left hand side of the road, the cost of everything, the neatness and predictability of people, houses and traffic - but it didn't take long before I felt normal again :-) We filled our time before Robbie's wedding by going to Rosie and Jimbo's graduation (yay!), flying down to Albury for a brief catch up with Chris' family, seeing Rosie and Bryce's new house, eating and shopping and hanging out with my parents and my sister's family, having high tea at the Sofitel with my friend from church in Kirribilli (yum!), lunch at uni with PhD buddies, breakfast in the city - basically food with people!!! Chris spent Thursday and Friday doing wedding related things with the boys, so I amused myself :-)
Saturday was Robbie and Sandy's wedding in Wilberforce (near Windsor) - Amy and I spent the morning dolling ourselves up at Mum's flat (Katie lent me a dress, and I bought some killer - literally - purple shoes to go with it!) and then headed out. The boys (especially Chris and Jason!) looked exceedingly dashing in their suits with knee length coats, and Robbie and Sandy looked esctatic to be finally getting married. It was great to catch up with some of our closest friends - even though our lives have all changed so much since we were at uni together, we still spend all our time together laughing :-) The reception was in Belmore in the evening - we ended up back at Mum's flat just after midnight.
Sunday we had a huge family breakfast (considering the whole Berry family was actually in Sydney - a very rare occasion! Although it won't be so rare if Amy and Jason move back this year....) and spent the afternoon hanging out with the family preparing to come back to SE Asia.
We boarded our plane to Bangkok at 9pm - it was simultaneously sad to be leaving knowing I wouldn't be back again for another six months, and exciting to be leaving for holidays with my sister and brother-in-law!! :-)
We arrived at Bangkok very early in the morning, and were lucky enough to be flying with Bangkok Airways to Luang Prabang in the afternoon - which meant we got to hang out in their lounge for a few hours. We were all very exhausted, sleeping on the chairs, doing puzzles, and occasionally getting up to play with the internet.
We arrived in Luang Prabang in northern Laos (the ancient capital city) at about 3pm - to absolute chaos. Lao New Year (Pii Mai) had begun the day before - this is the Buddhist New Year, and is usually characterised by cleansing with water - although now it has evolved to a full-on, three day long massive water fight (appropriately timed, because April is the hottest month in Laos). Our taxi got drenched a few times on the way to the hotel, and we were only out of the car for about two minutes before we were also drenched. Being so tired, we were all a bit confused and grumpy, and so avoided the water throwing as much as possible before we went to bed!
The next day, with 12 hours sleep behind us, we were ready to explore. We visited Luang Prabang's most famous temple, Wat Xieng Thong, before settling in a cafe to watch the New Year Parade (a safe spot to avoid the water throwing!) We ventured out after a few hours to climb to Phu Si, the temple on a mountain in the middle of the city (being drenched in the process!) - the views were amazing. We enjoyed Happy Hour at the bar across the road after 5 (something we enjoyed so much we went back every day!) We visited the night market in the evening and did a bit of shopping.
Wednesday we went outside Luang Prabang for a truly awesome experience - elephant riding! Two of our fellow AYAD's who we had run into during our travels around Luang Prabang also came along. It was a bit scary and wobbly to start with (especially with Chris as our mahout - who is the one who directs the elephant!) but after awhile we started to enjoy it :-) After a yummy lunch we started on a three hour trek to a Khmu village - a quite crazy thing considering that it was about 40 degrees. The scenery was amazing and the village very interesting - but when we finally got back to the river to catch the boat back to the elephant camp, we were all very glad!!
Thursday we took it easy - visiting Tat Kuang Si, an amazing waterfall about 30 kms outside Luang Prabang with crystal clear, cool swimming pools. In the afternoon we had a massage and did some more shopping. Friday we checked out, only to find that the Royal Palace Museum which we had planned to visit was closed for the morning - so we settled into a cafe and played 500 for a few hours until it opened :-) After about a hour and a half wandering through this (as far as I know, the royal family was killed with the communist revolution in 1975 - so it was fascinating seeing what life used to be like) we went back to the cafe for some icecream (the weather was seriously hot!), then shuffled onto our happy hour bar before going to catch our plane to Vientiane :-)
We took Amy and Jason on a abbreviated tour of Vientiane on Saturday - going to Wat Si Saket (the temple with lots of Buddhas), That Luang (the Golden Stupa), That Dam, and Pataxai (the 'Arc du Triomphe'), with plenty of breaks for food and drink along the way (unfortunately lots of my favourite restaurants were closed for Lao New Year, so they got a somewhat downgraded food tour!) We watched sunset over the Mekong with cheese before heading out for some French food :-)
Sunday we all went to our church in the morning, which has changed a little with the temporary departure of our CMS-UK missionary friends. We had lunch with the congregration, then headed to Vientiane's brand new water park, complete with slides - something that we had been looking forward to for awhile. But after Amy bruised her jaw, I hurt my arm (the other one from when I fell off my bike!), the boys almost became sterile, and we all almost lost our swimmers, we decided the place was far too dodgy to hang around, and so we were out of there in an hour!!! To top it off, a ant bit me on the side of the eye later in the afternoon, causing my eye to swell up to match my arm (don't worry Mum, they're getting better!!!) So we spent the afternoon chilling out at home, before dinner in town and a martini at the Jazzy Brick bar :-)
Chris and I are in the process of packing for the rest of the trip while Amy and Jason are at a Lao cooking class, so I had best help out :-) We are off to Hanoi tonight (including a three day cruise on Halong Bay), then Siem Reap (aka Angkor Wat), then Bangkok, then Ko Samui (where we meet up with Katie and her family for five days of beach filled fun!) so I won't be back for another three weeks - but there will be plenty of stories!!! (and photos!)
Until then, sok dee!!!
Susan