Downtime
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2007
1
8
19
Trip End
Mar 14, 2008
Si Phan Don - Don Det,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Sunday, November 25, 2007
On our last night in V.V. we went out for a couple of drinks and to play some pool at the Sunrise Bar with some Norweigans and we got to talking with this seemingly nice middle-aged Laotian man. He spoke much better english than most Laotians that we've met and he was teaching us words in Lao and we were all just having a good time talking with him... Then he starts going on and on about how much he hates Israeli people which was completely out of the blue and totally uncalled for. Then he told me that I looked like an Israeli. We made our way to the other end of the place and just ignored the guy for a while and then on our way out he starts following us and kicking the back of my legs. I told him to take off and then out of nowhere he full on punched me in the face for no reason! At that point a bunch of people on the street came in to see what was going on and break it up. The Norweigan girl who was there started to freak out at the guy, but in the end I just decided to let things be and get out of there. It was really uncool what the guy did, but at the same time I didn't really want the police to get involved and wind up in a situation where it was my word against his... No big deal.
The next morning we had booked a kayaking trip from Vang Vieng to the capital city Vientiane for 8:30 in the morning. Other than a bit of a sore jaw I was ready to go. It turned out to be a lot more driving than actual kayaking, but we got to go into some pretty intense rapids and Karl and I actually tipped over in a pretty big one. We hit another couple of rapids, but the tip-over was the highlight. The next few days we just spent in Vientiane, which is the most brutal capital city I've ever seen. Other than one night of bowling there was absolutely nothing to do there. There wasn't really any town center and the place just lacked any sort of character whatsoever. Dinner at sunset on the Mekong was kind of nice though. Another interesting part of staying there was chatting with a crazy old American guy who lived there and listening to his crazy theories about the world. He was interesting to listen to, but you could really tell that he pretty much hated everyone except the Americans. Karl and I were with an American guy named Jason that we've been travelling with and he was pretty pissed about the guy after we left...
Since Vientiane we've been on a small island called Don Det in an area in the Southern-most part of Laos called the 4,000 Island (Si Phan Don) which is an area where the Mekong river spreads out with tons of small islands in the middle. The area ends off with a pretty intense waterfall which is more just like tons of massive rapids converging into one area. We biked around there yesterday and hung out at this little beach which just appears out of nowhere amidst all of these rock formations that look like they belong on Mars or something. The island itself is pretty laid back. They only turn electricity on until 10pm and the showers run on Mekong river water which I usually just try not to think about especially after the things we've seen on this river... It's a pretty nice place though, our little bungalow is built on stilts right on the very edge of the river so we have a huge patio with hammocks so it's a great place to relax. That seems to be a pretty common trait of the places in Laos that we've seen so far. Tonight we're going back to another little beach and we're going to build a bon-fire with some travellers and some locals and maybe crash there for the night.
Other than that, we've been trying to figure out what our next plans will be. Our Laos visas run out on Dec. 5th and we were thinking of going straight down from here into Cambodia and then going back into Southern Thailand for mid-December until after New Year's... On the other hand, we don't want to rush our way through Cambodia either so we've decided to kill off the rest of our Laos visa and head back up North in a couple of days and maybe see a couple of spots we missed and maybe even hit the tubing in Vang Vieng one or two more times (I still have dreams about those rope swings!)... But as always, plans are always prone to change at the last minute so who knows where we'll end up next...
