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Published: January 28th 2009
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I woke early and checked out of the guesthouse and made my way to the main drag of Luang Prabang to the booking office. After dropping off my bag at the office, I decided it’d be best to grab some breakfast and a baguette for lunch on the road-the trip was going to take about 6 or 8 hours. On my way to the breakfast joint I met with Daniel and Rianne. After ordering a latte and a bagel sandwich for breakfast, the other two sat to wait for our order and I walked down to the place where I had ordered an amazing panini previously. I put in my order for take away and waited patiently for my delicious basil pesto, tomato, mozzarella Panini only to receive the wrong thing-I told them I didn’t want it and didn’t have enough time to wait for another. So I walked back to have my breakfast only to discover Daniel had accidently ate my sandwich instead of his and drank my latte thinking it was his…PERFECT! I rushed to reorder everything so I would have something to keep me going for the long trip. It all worked out and we made our way back to the office to load into the minibus. The booking agent asked us to head around the corner to load our things, and when we got there we found an old run down van. The driver was standing on the top of the van and he told us to hand up our bags and some of the people started to complain. “We are suppose to have two vans.” “We better not be taking THIS van all the way to Vang Vieng”….blah blah blah. The driver insisted that we all just give him the bags and get in and he would take us to the place where the vans were. Sure enough we arrived at the “bus station” where all the vans waited, and we separated into two vans. I rode in one with Tom, Ryan, and Janne along with several other strangers. Tom and I managed to snag the front seats-which turned out to be the most spacious and probably offered the best view for the drive. The road carried along up and down luscious green mountains and through villages filled with what seemed like only young children and animals. It was absolutely stunning. I found myself frustrated after I watched our driver finish his drink and food and nonchalantly toss all his rubbish out the window. AHHHHH! Sooooo we made our way through the winding mountains and valleys on the bumpy mostly unpaved road-luckily. We had heard rumor about a bus load of tourist barreling off the mountainside not many days prior, and along the trip I could hear the front brake grinding. We arrived in Vang Vieng just before the rain started. The bus stopped just 2km or so from town…so we hopped in a tuk tuk. Once in town we decided to just find a guesthouse on the main road. I shared a room with Becky(a new friend from the mini bus) and Janne. After settling in and taking a shower I headed out to find an ATM and check out the town. It was a tiny place, filled with internet cafes, restaurants with low tables, cushions, and TVs, travel shops, and guesthouses. After discovering that the ATM was apparently temporarily out of order-I went to an internet shop to get a cash through them. We all met up at a little restaurant to eat some grub and watch for the rest of the travel crew from the other van. It started to pour outside and we settled into our spots. Ryan, Tom, and I all decided to take a look at a special menu the restaurant offered-we ordered some banana shakes. :D It wasn’t a crazy shake, but I will say that we laughed and hardly functioned the rest of the night. We sat at the same restaurant the entire afternoon, watching Friends, the rain, and tubers coming back from the river. The others arrived some time after dark and when I asked why they told me that their van had broke down and they ended up riding with some locals in a van, while some of the others waited for a tow. The others ended up riding in a Beer Lao truck and arriving late in the evening. After deciding I was going to turn in for the night, Janne and Lauren showed up saying there was a big party down at a bar by the river. So we decided to drag Ryan and Tom out of their room as well and we all made our way to the river. After standing there for about 10min and talking briefly with Emma(one of the Swedish girls I met on the slow boat), Tom, Ryan, and I decided we were too “out of it” to stay and that we were going to head back. I turned in for the night…The next day-TUBING!!!
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