We are back from our 5 days in Laos. It is much too short to get an impression of the country, I guess it will be mixed up with our Thailand-impressions. But it was a good starting point for mainland southeast asia. Laos doesn't have big cities, the capital is just above half a million inhabitants, so it feels a bit like a village. It is mostly dominated by communism and buddhism. Glitzy temples, monks in orange and communist flags became a familiar sight for us. And more tourists than we expected. Kristian picked us up from the bus station and later we met the other guys form the German group. It was so good being welcomed and able to talk in German, sharing experieces and just be together! Especially as I started to think that I have travelled enough during the days before.

Kristian visited Laos last year and met a bunch of people who are believers and ex-addicts, andthey live together in one place where they rehabilitate other people who stopped taking drugs. They are doing a cool job, their place has a really nice atmosphere and it was great to see how everyone takes care for the others. We had good times encouraging and inspiring each other. We especially enjoyed our worship and prayer times. On our last day we went to swim in a big lake with many small islands. It was a pity that we couldn't talk to much to the individuals because of the language barrier. But still many of them asked us to come back next year.
Now we are in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and try to plan our vacation with Kim and Kristian, maybe we will just end up on one of the islands in the South.