My 23rd!
A day of pure traveling heaven!
I breakfasted on a cinnamon whirl and a bacon, egg and cheese bagel with hot chocolate. Rob had ginger snap cookies (how very exciting?!)
Then I took Rob jewelry and scarf shopping for the third day running and this time actually purchased something, flashing my driving license around and getting some delightful discounts, on account of it being my birthday!
Then we had lunch in a lovely restaurant which I made sure sold no noodles, fried rice or anything that wasn't instantly recognisable. I had an amazing sandwich, and an orange juice, which for once, probably had something to do with oranges at some stage.
Then I called my parents so that they could wish me Happy Birthday and went to round the day off with a brownie and a coke.
Our stomachs were groaning on account of being so delightfully full and also utterly confused at having eaten three times and not once having to digest E-Coli, Bird Flu, SARS or food poisoning.
I can safely say I had an amazing and very special birthday. The evening was not so much fun.
We got on the 5.30pm to Huay Xai, a charming little skuzzy border town. It was probably the most uncomfortable 15 hours of my life. I think my car crash was a more relaxing experience. The standard bags of rice were seriously in my way, and there was absolutely nowhere for my body to go. We both artfully moved into our seat and realised this was where we were going to be sat until 8am. I could feel a spot of DVT coming on.
Then the music began. Screaming-Laos-squeaky-plunky pop music blared out of the many, many speakers at ear splitting levels. It was relentless - no let up for the entire journey. At its very loudest my i-Pod only slightly muted the caterwauling.
We stopped off for dinner, where the locals tucked into something's face for a culinary treat, while hurling around various other questionable animal parts. At the end of the stinking strip of diseased vendors sat a really strange looking animal in a cage. It looked like a gerbil, but was the size of a pretty large dog. It also looked quite angry.
Then it rained. Very, very hard. We found some other travellers and huddled together quite terrified. "It's my 23rd Birthday evening today" I told them morosely. They made an extremely good effort of saying "Happy Birthday" but sounded like they were about to cry.
And so the bus experience continued, the tyre had to be replaced, as did the headlights, and something else underneath the bus. Amazingly given the howling wind, blinding lighting and streaming rain, we only almost crashed once. Needless to say, I did not sleep, and was overjoyed to get off the bus.
This feeling was quite short lived when I was presented with my backpack, which had been sat upside down of the top of the bus through the storm. Every single item of my clothing could be wrung out to water a small garden, and a vast majority of it has a new, very fetching red tie-die effect, due too a skirt running everywhere.
At 9am, feeling pretty sick, and exceptionally pissed off, we got a tuk-tuk, then boarded a boat, then passed out of Laos, then got in a jeep, then got stamped into Thailand, then got a mini bus for a further 5 hours to arrive in Chiang Mai. We arrived in Chaing Mai at 5pm. 24 hours of travelling hell.
Just what I always wanted!
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