On the road

---

This morning I woke up feeling like I was in a very trendy bar somewhere. As I got more awake, I realised this is because I was listening to trendy bar music in my room. As a matter of fact it was coming from the monastery next door to my guest house. Yup, it was monk music, but totally sounded like something out of the Buddha bar (ah there is a connection there). It was sort of deep beats with a brass instrument playing a melody, very beautiful (it had to be as I managed to appreciate it despite it being 5.30am!).

The big plan of today was to find a bus (and the station) and head to the next city on my list: Vang Vieng. It's a very small town, basically 4/5 streets in total, catering for the backpacker market market meaning: offering lots of guest houses, organising "tubing" trips (rides down the river in big truck wheels), showing non stop episodes of Friends at full blast in bars etc etc. I am not very taken by the place, and was debating whether to just leave tomorrow but then I decided to book a day of kayaking / visiting-of-caves tomorrow (for the French speakers cave as in grotte, not cave a vins 😊.

The bus journey was "long" by my standards (3.5 hours) but actually very short for Laos, as we only did like 160 km. I took a few pictures of the bus, it looks scary, but can't post anything yet as have not figured out the best way to off load my camera into internet cafe computers.

As soon as I arrived I checked into a guesthouse with private bungalows, seems very clean and quiet. It's actually amusing as I ran into some people who were on the bus with me earlier after I had showered etc in the guesthouse, and they were still sitting at the cafe near the bus station (not having left there since the bus arrived) just taking it really easy and slow. Maybe such a relaxed attitude to travelling is better as it avoids feeling like a headless chicken off the bus..

I did a walk in the afternoon to the nearest caves, passing by some amazing scenery with green mountains and rice paddies.. (hopefully some pictures soon). It feels much more hot and humid here than in Vientiane, I have already used 2 sets of traveling clothes today, am starting to run out!

Am about to head off for a little bite, till later for more news on the kayaking experience..

---