I’ve traveled along curvy roads before, but nothing like Highway 13 along Vang Vieng towards Luang Prabang, just the name tells you something and the many dangerous sharp curves made me even more nervous.  We would be traveling for hours, but didn’t get very far, just from this mountain to the next, as the road wraps around from one mountain to the next.  We passed several cyclists along the way, I admired those that took the challenge, and felt for them when they started climbing slowly up the steep hills, going down is not so bad.

I think I should mention it here that bathroom break is out in the open, if you can find a good bush, then you are very lucky because most of these curves don’t have many bushes.  It takes some getting used to, but if you decided to go this route, then be prepared to be embraced by the sky.

I don’t regret that we took this route, well, the only route there is to get to Luang Prabang by car.  What I like best is the view, the luscious beauty that the land has to offer, seeing in photos or videos doesn’t  justify the real beauty, air is a bit denser up in high plains, and might be difficult for some to breath, but as for me, it’s definitely a clean fresh air.

Each little village/town that we passed have their own produce that’s grown or produced locally.  If you look for fresh fruits or vegetables, there are many selections to choose from.

I know I couldn’t resist this, fruits are one of my favorites, and I had my fair share.

This village has what they called in Lao language ‘Eegang’, it’s a type of deer that live in the mountain, and as you can see that anything that can be eaten will be eaten, as many parts are made into medicine, or put in liquor as medicine, very common for a Lao locals to drink this before their evening meal.

The living condition seems a bit harsh for me, as the huts sit right next to the road, and it appears to be the playground for children in that area as well, and the backyard is the cliff.  Some of the farms sit on the slope of the mountain, a steep and narrow path to get to their farm on a daily basis, which means carrying crops in a basket backpack, a typical day for Lao Tung.

The sight of  the rice paddies along side of the road is beautiful, little paddies lie in the valley of the mountains.  I’ve noticed that they still harvesting rice crop the old fashion way, made me think back of the time when we were living in Thailand several decades ago, but I noticed that rice paddies in Laos are a lot smaller in size than the ones in Thailand.  My dad thought that it might be because the land is not as flat, so the rice paddies in Laos are squared or rectangular off into smaller paddies, but of course bigger rice paddy yields more rice crop than the smaller rice paddy, but with small plot of flat land here and there, then rice paddies in Laos are smaller in size, especially in the mountain area.

I’ve never seen the dragon fruit farm before, it looks very strange, but yet beautiful along side of the road.

Fresh honey from Vang Vieng, something that my dad absolutely loves, but we knew that we couldn’t bring it back home with us.