Laos
Trip Start
Jun 10, 2008
1
5
20
Trip End
Ongoing
Luang Prabang,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, June 21, 2008
In the morning, we woke up to the most beautiful jungle village, ever. Luang Prabang is situated on a peninsula where a smaller river meets the Mekong River. At the tip of the peninsula are several Wats that we looked at. There are a ton of palm trees everywhere, and I am a huge fan of palm trees.
Anyway, we walked around for a while, at six that morning, and finally a man opened clean hostel for us which cost us 50,000 Kip for the night. It takes about 8,000 kip to make a dollar, so we each had to shell out only about three bucks for the night. And we were able to leave all of our stuff there while we explored. We rented bikes for the day, which was a fast way around town. At around noon, we found (actually, this guy found us) a boat across the Mekong to visit some temples. The ride across the river cost us about 40,000 kip. Once we made it across, the guy left us to jus to fend for ourselves through the jungles of Lao. At least, we thought we would fend for ourselves, instead we were required to pay a 16 year-old kid and his buddy to give us a tour of their cave. The cave was neat, filled with a bunch of Buddha statues, and very warm. After our tour we floated back across to spend the rest of our day in the city.
We woke up at 5:30 the next morning to catch our bus which cost us 15,000 kip less than the one we took over there. We thought this would be fine, even though it wasn't the same bus with a VIP label. Apparently they don't heed guidelines there, and packed the 45-person capacity bus, with nearly 60 people. Oh well, we figured, because we had seats, and it would only be for 9 hours or something. It was a fine bus ride, with beautiful scenery, and only an occasional bounce on the ground as the full wait of the bus impacted bumps. About halfway through the trip, most of the tourists disembarked to visit another village. Alban and I decided to truck on to make our 7:30PM train back for Bangkok, which we missed dearly. About an hour later, there was a terrible sound underneath the bus, like maybe something had broken. Sure enough, after we pulled over, and EVERYONE explored what the matter might be, they discovered a broken strut under the right rear wheel. We were a little embarrassed for them, since clearly, this may not have happened had they heeded the little capacity sticker.
Everything was okay, though. All it took to fix it up was a make-shift strut from some log on the side of the road. Within an hour, we were on our way again. The only sad thing was, we were directly above the wheel that the strut broke on. Even though the driver went like 40 kmh the rest of the way, our ride was incredibly bumpy. I almost hit my head on the high ceiling several times. By the time we finally made it to Vientiane, we had only an hour to go through customs and catch our train. We realized that this would be impossible, and we were starving. It had been a full 24 hours since our last meal, so we decided to take it slow and splurge the rest of our money toward a good sandwich.
With some haggling, and good fortune of meeting Tuk-Tuk driver with some knowledge, we were able to make it to a bus instead, which was nicer than the train, and faster. So, instead of waiting until 6:00 in the morning at the train station for our train, we were able to arrive in Bangkok this morning before 6:00 and sleep comfortably all night in the process.
Comments
Man
What an adventure you had. It's pretty cool how cheap everything is thanks to the exchange rate. That cave sounds cool.