Last days in Laos

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Here we go again: Luang Prabang - but this time for a pit stop to wash our clothes and get you guys an update on our days in the west of Laos. Next day we were off to Vang Vieng, the town mostly famous for tubing and drinking. That was not what we had in mind.

Again we spend some 6 hours in the bus, for just 300 km but the scenery was truly amazing. The afternoon we checked out the town and checked in to a cheap but clean guesthouse, the cheapness had its reason: we had our room overlooking the river, however, also perfect view and entertainment by the "rockbar" just across the river, playing music so loud that we had the feeling the bar was in our room - not outside!!!
At 12am the music stopped so we finally got some sleep.

The next day we rented mountain bikes and went to the surrounding mountains. We stopped at one cave, being the only one to be shown around. it was very hot, sticky and humid in the cave but amazing to see all the stalagmites. Somewhere we took a turn and ended up cycling a whole one way trip. The landscape was beautiful and we enjoyed it a lot. Then we got to a river and they wanted us to pay a fee to cross this called accumulation of wooden boards of a small river. No way....we went with our bikes through the water...hey, we had mountain bikes!

After a night with loud music and no plan how to spend our day in Vang Vieng, we bought tickets to get to Vientiane. So another trip on the bus 😊

In Vientiane we first had troubles to find a guesthouse, due to the fact, that most of the guesthouses were booked out but then we were lucky. The afternoon we did some sightseeing and figuring the way out to cross the border.
We didn't want to take a VIP Bus to cross the border to get to Nong Khai. This would take some 3 hours, although the border is just 20km from Vientiane and Nong Khai just across the Mekong River. So we bargained hard on a tuk tuk driver, who drove us to the friendship bridge. There we had to emigrate Laos took a bus over the bridge and then on the other side we immigrated into Thailand...that was easy and also our first border crossing on feet 😊

First thing in Nong Khai was to get train tickets for the night train to Bangkok. At the counter we decided to make a stop in Ayutthaya to see the old temples. After having bought the ticket we took a tuk tuk to the city to get some lunch and bridge the time gap. But before we had lunch, we had to exchange books, running out of reading material is not a good thing while waiting for a bus or having enough time...so we were pretty happy with 5 new-used books in our backpacks, which we started reading right away in a restaurant at the Mekong River.

As it was time to get to the train station, we left the town, went on the train. At first we thought: Where are the beds? but then we figured out that they make the seats to beds. 2nd class means everyone in the wagon. At 4.23 am we were supposed to reach Ayatthaya. The alarm went on at 4.00am, however, the train had 3 hours delay, which we didn't know as the train attendances were sleeping. But how can a train get a delay in the middle of the night????

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