2 months today since we left. Holy cow!!!
Last night, Court and I sat up for about two hours and talked. About ghost stories and scary stuff we've experienced, and our lives as kids. We weren't tired. We finally went to bed about 12:30.
We got up about 7:30, and applied for our Vietnamese visa and bought bus tickets to Hanoi. Our bus leaves on Saturday, March 22 at 6:00PM. It's about a 19 hour bus ride. Yikes! The visa cost us $55US, the bus ticket $27US. We arranged it right through our guest house, which was a mistake, because if you shop around, you can find better prices on both the visa and the bus trip. Oh well, we'll learn eventually.
We went for breakfast, then back to the guest house, packed and took a tuk-tuk to the bus station and found the bus to Thalat (or Thalath...there's usually many different ways of spelling places over here, sometimes similar, sometimes totally different). As we were trying to find the bus, there are always friendly locals coming up and asking where you going, and pointing you to the correct bus, or bus stop, and not expecting anything in return. It's great.
The bus we had actually very nice, air conditioned, but the seats were very tight. Both Court and I had our knees up against the back of the seat in front of us.
We got to Ban Thalat (Ban meaning "town"), then got a shared tuk-tuk with some locals to the lake (a small port community called Na Num) and then ran into a small problem. We were kind of expecting a "ticket booth" of some sort selling boat rides to different islands, but there was none. We walked around with our packs for a while, then put them down, and wandered around a little more, then finally decided to just follow the shoreline and start propositioning locals to take us to Don Santiphap (Santiphap Island...I'll let you figure out what Don means here). We finally found a group of friendly locals who indicated one of them would take us out, for 50,000kip. We bargained to 40,000kip, so one of them got a small boat, and came and picked us up, and off we went. It was about a 15 minute boat ride in a very wobbly boat. Most boats I feel safe in, but this boat felt very unstable. Weird. We got to the island about 2:00.
The island is small, and the guest house is quite run down, and Court and I are the only ones here (and 3 or 4 locals who run the guest house). Our bed is clean, though. To get an idea, you have to be careful where you step at this guest house, because you never know when a board will break underneath you, that's how run down it was. It was falling apart. Both Court and I loved it!!!
The lady asked us how long we were staying, maybe 1 day, maybe 2? I said we think about staying 3 days, maybe 4, and she started clapping, jumping up and down with glee. I don't think they get very many people at their guest house.
Court and I decided to go swimming, but before we did, the lady of the guest house asked us if we'd like chicken for supper at 6:00, we said sure. She was going to the market in Na Num to get supper. We went swimming for a while (water is very warm!), then setup our Siam Hammocks for the very first time. We just lounged in them for a while.
Then two other falang showed up, about 4:30, Jasmine from US, and Sapir from Israel.
We are totally isolated here, and it's so quiet! No electricity, no animals (except for two cats), nothing.
The four falang sat around, waiting for supper. It finally came about 8:00, and consisted of chicken, potatoes and other veggies in a stew, and steamed rice. The chicken was actually chicken parts, Courtney got the rib cage. I was fortunate enough to get part of the breast, but I also had other parts, I had no idea what they were, so I left them alone.
After supper, we played cards and sat around in the evening, and went to bed about 10:00.
Intereting note:
Tiger Balm, I'm sure you've all heard of it. Over here, it's called "White Monkey Holding Peach Balm", presumable because Tiger Balm is copyrighted!
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