Our First Time in Laos (most underated country in asia)

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. How amazing is this? Hey everyone! We're Stephen, Jess, Hunter and little Koa and we've just arrived in beautiful Laos. We're going to the waterfall! Bordered by China, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, Laos has a vast rich culture to explore filled with fascinating rituals and traditions. And this week we're training trains, cars and buses for a trip around Laos by boat. And we're going to be catching boats basically every day. I feel like they really thrive off this river. And the remote spots we're able to reach are just incredible. We're inside the cave and there are over 5,000 Buddha statues. Plus some fun furry little cameos along the way. Baby chickens! Look how cute! We couldn't be more excited to take our kids to Laos. Good morning everybody and welcome back to Laos. This is our first kind of official episode here in Laos. We call it the last episode. We caught the train from China all the way to Laos and had an incredible day yesterday. But it's now currently 5am in the morning and I am sneaking out to see a very special ceremony that happens every day. So every morning the monks from the surrounding five temples, of course monks don't get paid to be monks, they just practice their religion. So they rely on the community. And this morning we're doing what is called almsgiving. So we've set up like a little mat with some offerings. We've got a big bowl of rice, some crackers, some sweets and it's going to be, I don't know, 50 to 100 monks that are going to come past and then they open up their big bowl and then you can provide an offering or a donation to the monks. Wow, that was a super special way to kind of kickstart this Lao trip. If you saw yesterday, we actually had a basi ceremony where they welcomed us to the country and then being able to partake in a giving that happens every single morning to ensure that these monks can be fed throughout the day. And there's a lady sitting next to me who was 90 years old and she's been doing it since about hunter's age, which wow, that was extra special. And then they prayed to you right at the end. Almost felt bad when I ran out of my rice. I was like, I'm sorry, I don't have any more. But wow, it is now 6.30. I'm going to go grab some quick coffee from breakfast because it opened a minute ago. And at 7.20, we're going to go and have breakfast on the river. So we've got to wake the kids up. Wow. Wow, cool. Is this cool? Oh my goodness. It's a little bed. How beautiful is this? We're going to go for a little boat ride along the river. Okay, when they said we were going to have breakfast on the boat, I wasn't expecting this. Yeah, this is cool. This is beautiful. We're going on an adventure. This is cool. Oh, mama, he's just chilling. Hi, Kawa. He's loving it. Are you happy? Yeah, so we've just been given like some eggs, some bread, some mushrooms, some potato, I think, some salad, and they just served us some fresh orange juice. This is very, very fancy. They told us we're going to have breakfast on a boat, but I don't know, I didn't expect this. It's all so nice. Also, I didn't expect the biggest boat in the world. Yeah, it's the biggest boat, we just asked. I'm doing you over. I've been painting you wrong. My hand gave you sugar. He's loving it. Wow, it's so eerie in the morning here on the Mekong. I don't know how the captain has seen anything. It's almost like it's coming just off the river. Wow, look at this. Like, how do you see anything? So the captain's actually had to stop the boat because it's too misty and foggy this morning, so it's too dangerous to keep going. So we're going to wait for it either to clear or to like lift a bit more. And you can see, you can't see anything. That was such a nice peaceful way to start our morning. So we're hopping off the boat and heading to a local farm. So I've just arrived at a farm. It's called the Lao Buffalo Dairy Farm and the kids are going to learn how they do buffalo milk. You can even have buffalo ice cream here. Yeah, come look at all the babies. Yeah, they're all bundled together to keep warm. That's so cute. They're drinking mommy's milk. How cute. He wants it. Say, here you go piggy. The big one doesn't want it. What about the baby? Oh, here it comes. Oh, he took it and he ran away. There we go. Okay, in you go. Yeah, it's okay. Go all the way in so they don't come out. So cute. They're all going. Oh my goodness. Look at its little mouth. And look guys, Hunter, if you bend down, you can pat them while they eat. Because they don't bite at all. Look. Yes, good job, Hunter. Oh, look at this one, Kawa. You can pat this one. It's so soft. Look. They're loving it. Is it so cute? Look, so in here. Oh, what notes these ones take. Oh, stop it. Oh, they're trying. Oh, someone's eating my foot. Someone's eating my foot. Hello. There you go. It's their lunch. Oh, look, Kawa. They're all eating it. They're eating your little crocs. It's a baby bumble nose. Baby. Just on its back, I think. Good job, kids. How old is she? Around five months. Five months. Five months old. Only five months. You're five years old. Do they like getting brushed? Yes. Yeah. They're feeling like a massage. Oh. If you brush it, Hunter, all the little buggies get off it. And then you give it a big brush. Say, here you go, mama. Is it just so strong? Yeah. Yeah, it's so big. So these babies still drink the milk, Kawa? Yeah, they were getting big, aren't they? There we go. And then give it the milk. And then you have to hold it up. Up, up, up, up, up. Yeah, like that. There we go. Good job, Hunter. There's lots. You can get vanilla buffalo ice cream, chocolate, caramel, coffee, chocolate. They do Baileys, lemongrass, ginger, apple pie, pumpkin pie, frozen yogurt, mulberry, tamarind, or black sesame. That's a lot of flavors. You want chocolate? Kawa, do you want to try vanilla? He's a vanilla lover. What do you want? I want to try something different. Maybe I'll try coffee. Yeah? Maybe I'll try ginger. No, no, I'm going to get lemongrass. Lemongrass? Yeah, lemongrass. Such a cool buffalo dairy farm to go and explore. And they were telling us here it's unique where they, when the buffaloes have their babies, they don't separate the babies. So they stay together. And they only milk the buffaloes once a day. And they only produce two or three liters a day. They say, hold it. And then you pull it down. And they do that every morning and they collect all the milk to drink. Kawa, what is this? Buffalo milk. Yeah. You see, it looks like milk. That's where milk comes from. They say the milk here is much more rich and fatty than a cow. And then they have all these things you can try. So we've got the cheese board coming. We've got ice cream, coffee, all made by the buffalo milk. So I'm excited to try it. Wow. So we've got mozzarella. Exactly. Feta. Marinated feta. Marinate. What's it marinated in? Olive oil, garlic, black pepper, basil. Wow. And then is this ricotta? Yogurt. Oh, yogurt. That is a ricotta. Ricotta. Italian food. Very nice. Thank you. Should I try? I'm going to try the mozzarella. Wow. See if it tastes any different. How exciting. What's in here? Yum. Tastes of mozzarella. Tastes like mozzarella. Tastes so good. I love ice cream. Do you love ice cream? Thank you. The cheeses were so good. Oh, thank you. Ginger. It is lemongrass. Oh my goodness. Wow. So lemongrass. Ginger. And then this, you said, was the cheesecake? Exactly. And then this one, a ricotta cake. Wow. Looks all caramel. Wow. Is it good? I'm excited to try. Yeah, let me know what ginger buffalo milk ice cream tastes like. I like how it's not only like a unique ice cream, but we've gone for a unique flavor. Oh, it smells like ginger. Oh, that's good. It's good? That works. That's good. It's like a, it almost tastes like vanilla ice cream with ginger in it. Oh, yeah? Lemongrass. I want to try the cake. It's a super subtle. I think because I just had the ginger and that's so strong. I was trying to see if I could taste anything because it almost tastes like vanilla. Wait, I need a palate cleanser. Have your buffalo milk cappuccino and see. Oh yeah, I've got a buffalo milk cappuccino. Oh, yum. It's super subtle. That's so good. We're going to the waterfall. How gorgeous is this? We've just come to the Kangsi waterfall. Absolutely beautiful. And this isn't even the best bit. As we're hiking up, it's like we're walking up the cascades and they're just getting more and more beautiful. And the water is so blue. One of these earlier pools you can swim in. Kind of regretting it because I'm not bringing my bathers because it was like 10 degrees this morning. Like it's going to be too cold, but it's now warm straight up. And look how inviting that color is. It's beautiful. How amazing is this? The iconic spot. It is incredible. It's even more beautiful in person. Huge. It's so amazing. Definitely worth the hike out here. It just crescendos to this epic waterfall. I mean the pools, bring your bathers guys. No matter how cold it is in the morning, bring it because it warms up. This is just incredible. You don't swim in the big ones, but the other ones on the way up you do. And it is, I don't know if this camera is, it's not doing it justice on how tall it actually is. It like disappears. And the sun here at the moment, making it like super shadowed, super mysterious. Almost like you want to know what is at the top of that waterfall. But worth it. You're only allowed to enter the temple if you can tell me what the temple is called. Can you say that word? Can you try? How do you say it? Vatsingthong Sayarahamathibodhimahavihanna. It's very long. It's a Pali language. Oh, okay. So long. Vatsingthong is the golden temple. Ah, golden temple. So everyone, we have come to our last stop of the day. It is like two third here and I've been gone since five in the morning. So it is nice that we are ending it at the golden temple. There are multiple pagodas in here. It's probably one of the most famous temples here or what's here in Laos. And we're going to learn more about the Buddhists, of course, the monks that I did the offerings this morning too. They live here. So inside this pagoda is a giant golden carriageway. Almost looks like the covenant of the lost ark. But in here, it actually transported the last king. Lao stopped having kings in 1975. And then the 1950s was when the last king was transported in this giant golden carriage. Mommy, what is this? Buddha. Oh. I just asked before and these two are going to get married soon. So I think they're like making offerings. It was actually really cute. I said to Koa, come sit down and close your eyes. And he was like, am I getting a surprise? Hey, everybody. We just wanted to say a massive thank you to Squarespace, our long-term friends and partners of the channel. They've just been such an incredible support for our little family. And they're here to help entrepreneurs like yourself succeed online. Whether you need an all-in-one platform to manage your brand or sell products, online courses like we sell our online courses through Flying The Nest Academy. Our website, FlyingTheNest.tv was designed and put together by Jess, who has zero design background. They make it so simple to drag and drop and pop things where you want it to be, thanks to the Fluid Engine. With over two decades of industry award-winning design, Squarespace's design intelligence uses cutting-edge AI to help anyone, like me, like you, design your website or online shop. Plus, if you're selling a product or course with Squarespace payments, they make it so easy to accept so many different forms of payments. Debit, credit, Apple Pay, Klana. So if you are new around here, guess what? We have an exclusive free trial. You can just go in there, play around. Then if you decide you want to go ahead, use our exclusive discount code, FlyingTheNest, for 10% off your first order. Good morning, everybody. We're actually saying goodbye to Lao Pabong today and heading more north in Laos. But we thought just before we do leave the area, we're going to do a local cooking class. So we've actually come out and met our chef. She's taking us to a very local market. We are going to handpick and buy the ingredients that we are going to be cooking with. And I've never seen piles of rice so perfect before. It's almost like the spice markets in the soups of like Marrakech, which was very cool. But I'm walking around and there is just so much fresh veggies here. It's a Southeast Asian cucumber. Guess an unripe mango. Is that everything we're going to cook with? He used two hands. Good job. Look how cute the eggplants are here. They're so little. Yeah, these are eggplants. An eggplant. At home, our eggplants are huge. So you can just see how local this marketplace is. We have a bit of a shed here and then it's almost like it's growing the shed. And people have made makeshift sheds just here. This is an offering table for the temple. So you can just pick up like almost little, I don't want to call them gift bags, but for the sake of it, I'll call them gift bags. So what people come and pick up when they want to go do their offerings. So you come to the frozen section. So you can get your sausages, you can get some prawns here, you can get some like chicken balls, some chicken feet. They even have a toy section at the market. I remember this Marvel movie. All right, we've been to the market. We've bought all our food. And now we're actually going to be catching this boat for an hour to their village. So then we're going to do a cooking class in her home. I was looking and I feel like this, I think we're in Laos for 10 days in total. And we're going to be catching boats basically every day. I feel like they really live and thrive off this river. We're on the Mekong river and there's all villages along. And we're going to be going all the way up to the North, all the way up to the down to the South and exploring all around. But it's really special today going to, you know, a village. You have to only get there via the boat, go and learn how they cook the food here and the market. I was saying to Stephen, I feel like it was one of the cleanest markets I've ever been to. Like even though the chicken feet, but the chicken feet were in ice. Like usually I feel like you see a lot of meats just sitting out and all looks really fresh and all the veggies look so fresh. We went and grabbed a bunch of like fruit and veg for the kids for this trip as well. But yeah, I'm excited to cook the food here in Laos. I love it. I submit we've done a lot of cooking classes, but this is the first time we've caught a boat for an hour to go cook at a local person's house. Also, I'm not a chicken feet connoisseur, but if I was, I would buy my chicken feet from that place. I think we've arrived to their house guys. It's beautiful. So beautiful. Puppy's allowed to come out. Look at their big garden. Now that I'm a garden connoisseur, I always notice people's beautiful garden. If you haven't seen back at our house, we have a gorgeous garden that I've yet to eat anything from. And that's my goal for 2026. That's so cute. Oh my goodness. There's so many kids that live here. The kids are so excited. Did you hear Cole before? Wait for me guys. So yeah, we just pulled up to the riverbank. I assume we're walking through what is underwater most of the day because it's pretty muddy. And we're just walking into the village. So just been invited into their home. It's so interesting seeing what their home looks like. But this is their kitchen. I feel like they, is this all rice? Rice, yeah. Wow. They store so much rice. How is from the garden? Ah, this is all harvested from their garden. Wow. Come see this. It's so cute. Come. It's baby chickens. Look how cute they are. Yeah. These are all their baby chickens. Are they so cute? I like all of them. Yeah, I like them all. They were saying that even though they have electricity, they still love to cook with fire. They say it tastes better and it's cheaper. She's just set her little fire here. This is a little stovetop that they cook on every day. And then they've got like a hole at the top that like ventilates the smoke. I'm excited to get cooking. Oh, she's taking out all that stuff we got from the market. You know, we come to a very remote village that gets zero tourists when the entire village is out watching koa. I don't think they get little white blonde-haired babies out here. They said they never get two-year-olds out here. And what I love as well is Hunter's in the living room playing with all the kids. And I love that there's just nothing in there. But all the kids come all from the village. They're all playing in there. They've put out little crayons and a little mat they're playing on. It just shows that you don't need much to all be entertained together. So we're gonna make sticky rice and she's been soaking it for a few hours. Yeah. This is how they steam it. They steam it in like a bamboo basket. Oh, thank you. I love how instead of paper towel, it's leaves to put the rubbish on. So I'm gonna pull the leaves off and in the bowl. Good job. This is a pumpkin. So you just run like this. Hunter, look at the rice. All the rest in there. It's yummy. Nice. Yes. I love how universal play is. Like there's no language needed. We've literally been in the kitchen the whole time. And the kids have been just playing out there. And they both speak completely different languages. We made this. Ready? Rice, look good. You can eat it from the bowl if you want. That can be your little rice bowl. Is it good? Yummy guys. So we made some fried veggies. We've got beans. That's good. Carrot, garlic. Is it like a soup with tofu? It's like a tofu soup with pumpkin. Got an egg. Made our own sticky rice. Is it good? How's your rice, buddy? The mango here in Southeast Asia tastes so good. Gotta get in before Hunter eats it all. Quickly. The mango monster's here. No. This has been at like all the restaurants we've been going to. It's like a seaweed. And they, I don't know how they cook it. It's like it's air fried. It's probably what it's fried. But it's so yummy. It's got sesame seeds all over it. Crunchy. It's so good. Come to Laos. Try the crunchy seaweed. Did you have fun playing with all your friends? Yeah. We're going now to a cave. A cave, yeah. I think we're going to catch the boat into a cave. Is it cool? I don't know if there's bats. We'll have to find out. I am all up for these long boats. I could have a nap. Do we have a sun that lets us have naps, Koa? Nah. All right, we've jumped back on the boat. And before we go back to our car, just around the corner are these amazing caves. Well, I don't know what they look like. I've just decided they're amazing. We'll see. But yes, we're catching the boat around to the caves. And then we're going to jump in the car. And we're going to start heading north. This is amazing though. We're inside the cave. And there are over 5,000 Buddha statues. And it's a place where you can't trust Koa. Because he came in and the first thing he said was, mommy, I want to knock them all down. Koa, what did you say to mama? No. I think the people would be very sad. I've never seen anything like this before. There are so many. I'm sweaty. That is a hike. If you see a sign to the upper cave, it is a hike. What's special about this cave, it was only opened up in 2008 for the public before it was only allowed for the monks. It used to only be they were allowed to come in here to do like meditation. But now they're letting us come in. So we get to go look in the cave. But it's a hike and a half. Thank you for opening this up. All right, that's the end of our boat. And we now have a five hour drive. It's like 1.30. So I think we'll see you guys and it'll be pitch black at our hotel. Okay, after four hours of driving, we have made it just before the sun goes down. And oh my goodness, this place. We are right on the river. You need to look at these views. You can see the pool. You can see these gigantic mountains in front of us. We're literally staying in the middle of nowhere. Like we drove down this dirt road for ages. But that was a bumpy four hours. I'm so happy we are up in the north though. It is gorgeous. It's gonna get chillier up here, they said. Tomorrow, we're not even going in the car. All day in the boat, which I'm so excited for. But just look at this. I had to show you before the sun went down. Just down there is a little restaurant. So we're gonna go have some dinner. But how beautiful to have a little pool right on the river. I'm so excited to have a little look at our room. Come see where we're staying. See if you can work out where the kids are. They said that they're playing animals, I think. Oh, hello. Where's the kids gone? I miss them. What? Whoa. Oh my gosh. What's that finger? I didn't know we were gonna have tigers and lions in our room. Oh my goodness. We are looking at our beds. I love more like the embroidery. Look, so it says Lao and all the little embroidery. Mama, we escaped. Oh no, the animals escaped. You can tell the kids have been in the car for four hours. Wait, we weren't even going to film. I was like, oh, let's just go run down to dinner. But it's so beautiful at night. I was like, I need to show you what it looks like. I'm just on the phone, but the pool is here. Over this little spot's the restaurant. Absolutely beautiful. And then right in front of me is the river and the mountains. It is so beautiful. Hey, everyone. If you're interested in the trip we're currently on here in Lao, it's actually through our friend's company, Iris, who runs Your Travel Nation. If you do mention our name, Fly In The Nest, she will give you guys 10% off the current trip we are on. A few terms and conditions, but make sure you check the link in the description. We've got one more episode here in Lao before we move on to Cambodia. Thanks so much for watching, guys.