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Over breakfast one morning with Kien, the conversation managed to circle itself around Luke and I leaving for a promotion trip to Laos and Bangkok within the next few days. This sounded great at the time, us both thinking it would be nice to spend a little time away from the hotel and re-charge our batteries.
We left Hanoi Friday evening, 26th of February, with the delusion that a 24hr bus ride would be nothing but relaxing. The bus itself was fine - a sleeper bus, the part that wasn’t fine was every 30 minutes on the drive out of Vietnam, the bus would stop on the side of the road and pick up local Vietnamese people, who had nowhere to sleep other than the isles, Luke had some difficulty with a lady trying to share his feet space and a man wanting to cozy up on his pillow, and I woke up at the border to a man slapping my face. All night there was a piercing DVD of a Vietnamese concert, and lucky for me, I had a speaker right above my head. At 3am, I climbed over the mound of bodies surrounding me and asked politely if
Chilling out
Vang Vieng - Laosthe DVD could be ‘Off’.
We eventually arrived in Vientiane on Saturday afternoon, the drive through Laos was beautiful, we spent the night in Vientiane at Youth Inn. Monday, March 1st we hopped on a bus from Vientiane and headed to Vang Viang, we were both still really exhausted - so when the bus broke down an hour out of Vang Viang it wasn’t the most welcome surprise.
We had a really good time though, chilled out in shack restaurants sipping on fresh fruit shakes watching Family Guy, and lapping up the sun - when we weren’t promoting. Once we’d finished walking around, making our stamp on every shop in Vang Vieng, we spent one morning tubing down the river. I was like a kid at Christmas time - doing something that wasn’t work, Luke was mostly the same, however nostalgia kicked in and it was hard for him not to be disappointed in the dramatic changes of Vang Vieng including the River since he was last here 6 years ago. He couldn’t believe the amount of new guest houses lining the streets, internet cafes, tarred roads, drunken half naked tourists, and the ample bars to choose from
on the river - not just Laos kids bring beers out. For me there was still so much serenity, but Luke felt as if it had lost its culture and innocence.
That afternoon we left Vang Vieng for one more night in Vientiane, where we went into every guest house, internet café and tour information centre, asking to put our A4 promotional sticker up, everyone was really friendly and happy to help out.
We also met up with Muine, Nippopon and Ghi, a few of the kids that Luke became attached to last time he was here in 2004, they were 9 then. Teenagers now, and speaking a little English Luke was surprised at how much they’d grown up. They all still called him Monkey and were really happy and excited that we visited.
We arrived in Bangkok at around 5am on Friday 5th of March, after a fairly sleepless 12hr bus ride, then had to sit outside a guest house for 3hrs before there was a room available. We were both so sun burnt and tired, carrying around our backpacks for an hour before we decided to stop at one guest house wasn’t fun at all.
I was fascinated by the lady boys there, one at our Guest House with the shortest skirt I’ve ever seen, who, in the 3hrs we sat and waited for a room, changed her outfit twice.
We spent five nights in Bangkok, got our promoting out of the way over a couple of days, splurged a little on shopping, ran into Liza, Zac, Bonnie, Jess, and Tom and had a great night out with them. We also ran into Pip and Cat our friends from Hanoi, and their friend Jess, and spent a night at Adhere the 13th Blues Bar with them, which was Luke’s favorite night of the whole trip - it was a good day all round, seeing as he’d finished the hunt for a much sought after calculator watch.
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