Ang Nam Ngum, take two

Saturday morning we woke up, a bit lazily after the 4th of July Embassy reception. We'd planned on going to stay at a villa in Vang Vieng, but the other couple who was going with us heard that the roads were flooded and shouldn't be attempted. So we decided to try a "resort" closer to Vientiane. Dansavanh Resort on Nam Ngum in the Mountains, sweet! So minus the other couple, we drove that way and made great time. Only 2 hours to the "resort".  This is what the "resort" advertises http://www.dansavanh.com/namngum/index.html.

I seriously wish we'd taken a picture of what it actually looked like. I thought I was going to get a disease just touching the room, the pool was drained and it cost $40 to take an hour boat ride. Just plain run down and dirty! Mike wanted to look at the rooms, and in each one my eyes kept getting bigger and bigger and my NO WAY JOSE face kept getting stronger and stronger. At one point I was even shaking my head at him, but alas we ended up taking a deluxe room....the resort also advertises a "mini" zoo. I am glad I didn't see it but apparently it is just 2 bears in small cages in the back parking lot. AH! Thankfully Mike came to his senses after walking around and realizing there was NOTHING to do and was a huge rip off, we totally bailed!

I was praying we'd just turn around and go home, I desperately wanted a shower, but we pushed on farther North and ended up back in a small fisherman's village, called Thalad, this time going a few hundred meters farther than our boat restaurant and ended up at Longngum View Resort. http://www.longngumview.com/index.html Much, much better than the last place, but most of the rooms were booked, so we got a room that was fairly small with a king size bed, for half the price we would've paid for the craptastic resort before. I wouldn't say it was the best, but it was charming and this is Laos not Hawaii.

We slept in bed with Finn and Maggie crammed between us, HORRIBLE, and Tess got her pack-n-play AWESOME. She was the only one to sleep through the night. The weather was clear the whole day, but that night it rained, all night and Mike and I kept waking with fears that the roads would wash away or worse, but none of that happened. We got up early that morning, ate breakfast and Mike rented a kayak. He took the older kids out to explore the islands that were created when the dam was put up. They had a rockin time, but no pictures since they were on a kayak, we didn't want the camera to fall in the water.

They did find an island with a huge "rocket" and cows...Mike and Finn decided that cows crashed their rocket on the island and were stuck forever. The "rocket" is still questionable...

While Mike took the older kids Tess and I hiked around the lake. She's finally big enough to fit in our hiking backpack, which I would've killed for when we were car less.

A little exercise in the morning

Heading out, Maggie didn't like it at first

Please come back happy :)

Didn't quite make it in time to get them returning



She'll get used to this

 After everyone got back, we had lunch, packed the car and headed back for home. A successful trip in the end. As usual we have to fail to succeed.