One Coastless Country to Another

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We left the small town of Muong Ngoy for our hour boat ride back to Nong Khiaw in hope of getting a bus to Luang Prabang the same day. When we arrived there was a bus waiting, we all piled on to the extent that there were people sitting in the middle of the tuk tuk on deck chairs, I had one bum cheek inside the bus and one out, with my legs off the back and there were 4 more hanging off the back. No one was too sure if the tuk tuk would even make it the 4 hours back to Luang Prabang. I got off to stretch my legs one more time and saw a huge bubble in the side of the tyre that was being flattened by the weight of all the bags and people and decided I didn’t want to go on the bus. The driver refused to get my bag off the roof for me even when I stood in the way of his door so he couldn’t get in to drive away, this made me even more determined not to go in that bus. So I climbed up onto the roof and untied my bag and Aarons along with a couple more who decided against it.

We got on the next bus which only had 6 people in compared to around 18 in the last one, we started to leave and wondered what the catch was. We headed off in a different direction and they piled on 8 huge bags of rice, chicken in a cage, and a pregnant woman who was sick out of the side a lot of the way but im sure it was better than being crammed the other tuk tuk!

It was an early start the next day to catch the local bus to Vang Vieng. This time though it was an actual bus and there were only around 10 people on so lots of space for a change, the journey was 6 hours and we drove at an average of 30km/hour, we wound up and down the mountains the whole way, when we drove so high that we were above the morning mist that hangs around in the hills we could see the sun coming up over the mountains it was sooo beautiful. I don’t know why but asian people don’t seem to travel very well because at least half of them on the bus were sick, so the beautiful journey was soon over ruled by the stentch of sick!

Vang Vieng is a beautiful place from a distance but when you are in the town it certainly doesn’t feel like Laos, it is just full of tourists and theres nothing but guesthouses, bars and restaurants playing episodes of friends over and over again. Oh and the places that sell space pizza to make you “happy and fun!”

The reason everyone flocks to this small town is for the river and the tubing. You catch a tuk tuk to take you to the start and then float down the river in your tube and there are bars all along the way, the tubing supposedly takes 2 hours so we left 7 hours to make sure we could stop at a few bars along the way! It was sooo much fun hundreds of people, zip wires into the river and giant slides, we had been to 4 bars and it was about 5 oclock and starting to get cold, Aaron had made a trip back home earlier in the day to get more money because we didn’t have enough and he came back with 1 pound by mistake so it was time to go home. It was brilliant fun but we came home missing a sarong, a camera and one very black eye when Aaron attempted to do a back flip off the zip wire and landed on his face in the water from about 20ft up!!

We got another tuk tuk to Vientienne and it is probably the smallest feeling capital I have been to, it just seeemed like a town which was nice, we had dinner along the river whilst the sun was setting, it was huge and deep orange, after spending a couple of days in Vientienne we decided to head off to Kathmandu a bit sooner so we got the overnight train to Bangkok (with a stinking cold!) We had one last visit to Koh San Road, did a little shopping and then caught our flight to Kathmandu seeing the mighty Mount Everest as we were coming in to land. With no lonely planet, no idea where to go and no money we jumped into a tiny taxi with a couple of Iraeli guys to go to Thamel the touristy area of Kathmandu, it seems crazy compared to South East Asia, the drivers are nuts and they seem to fit there little cars, mopeds and rickshaws through spaces that are nowhere near big enough.

Sarah xxxxxxx

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