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Published: February 11th 2009
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The Presidential Cabinet.We arrived in Vientiane via bus, it was about a 4 hour ride and went by rather quickly. We got dropped off right by the history museum but first things first, we needed to find a guest house. The first few that we found in our Lonely Planet book were ridiculously overpriced so we continued on. We roamed the streets for awhile until we found a little dorm style place charging 20,000 kip per night, about $2.00. I'm not 100% positive but I think this is where a few of the Saw movies were filmed. For those of you who've seen any one of the 5 or so movies, it should give you a pretty accurate image of what I was dealing with. I had to request new sheets because there was sand on mine, and by new sheets I mean the one with that covered my mattress because there wasn't an actual sheet to cover yourself with. While I'm talking about the bed I should mention that I'm pretty sure the mattress floated up in the Mekong river because it was covered in some unidentifiable stuff! Anyway, I locked my stuff in the cardboard locker provided and we went out
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Yet another Wat. for dinner. This city had the best food and I was able to get my first real cup of coffee in a month, I never experienced any shaking but I will admit that I was having some minor withdrawals. We ate dinner, roamed around a bit then headed back to the dungeon to pass out for the night.
The next morning we grabbed breakfast and it was awesome, I got fried eggs, bacon, bread, coffee and a fruit salad. This is literally the first time I've been in Asia that everything I ordered tasted the way I expected it too. These people definitely earned our business for the remainder of our stay in Vientiane. After breakfast we headed off to meet up with the girls who had gone to the market early so we could see the sites. What we didn't realize is how small the Capitol was, so on our 10 minute walk to meet them, we saw all the sites. So, we met up with them talked about it and decided to head to the market and look around while they went to the park to read. The market was pretty cool so we spent some time there
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The entrance to the mall and market. roaming around before heading back to the hostel. There honestly wasn't a whole lot to do in this town so Kailie and I went bowling, it was 50 cents a game so we figured it was a good way to kill some time. I got a 146 my first game which I was pretty excited about. Getting paid to play Wii at work for 7 months really helped me hone in on my bowling skills!
After bowling we roamed around for a bit and grabbed dinner at the same place as last night, no reason to try something else that might suck! Then we walked down to the Mekong River which was almost dried up, I guess this is the dry season but it was really lacking water.
I hopped in the shower when we got back to the hostel and no joke, probably 50 mosquitoes came flying from every direction as soon as I turned the water on. So, I was trying to shoot them with the shower head while trying to bathe myself simultaneously, it was disgusting. Then sleeping back at the hostel this night was quite the experience. This drunk asshole in on the other side of
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The answer is no, I didn't! the half wall was yelling in some other language all night. At first I thought he might have turrets but eventually I got out of bed and told him to shut up because he was being obnoxious and keeping the entire hostel awake. He didn't really know what was going on but it did shut him up for a good 20 minutes or so.....just enough time for me to fall asleep. I'm glad I fell asleep because I was seriously contemplating throwing a bucket of water on him in his bed. I still kinda wish I had because it would've made this blog way more interesting!
The next morning we packed our bags and four of us crammed into a makeshift seating area built onto the back of a motorcycle with all our stuff and headed to the airport. Off to Vietnam!
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Danielle Taylor: "The Big Sister"
non-member comment
I'm exhausted from your blog, little bro
Ok..so how the hell Mom and Dad sleep at night I will never know. The way you travel in stride, rolling with the punches, is amazing to me. I would have been outta there. I was so worried about your travels, then I saw the picture of the million wasted teenagers, so that made me feel much better and more at ease ; ) Please take care of yourself and your sister. I miss you both something terrible! Maybe when you get back to the States you can come to calm Daytona Beach for a very boring time on one of our boats. We have water toys to drag your ass around on..We can always take the twin engine boat to liven the speed to 5 mph, though after your rope swing-err-dental floss swing-experience, even that may seem uneventful. Either way, here we promise not to dry heave on you! I love you with all my heart little brother. Continue to take good care of yourself and your friends and ESPECIALLY my little sister. Tell Kailie I love her! All my love is yours always Cameron...I love you....Love, Your big sister who worries something awful about her siblings!