To Vang Vieng...WOW

We went to the Scandinavian Bakery in Luang Prabang last night, and had a good chocolate fix. Yummmyy!!

Another cool, cloudy day.

We got up at 6:30AM and got a tuk-tuk to the southern bus station, and bought a ticket on a VIP bus to Vang Vieng. The VIP bus costs more than a public bus, and is aimed at falang, naturally, everyone on the bus was a tourist. It was a nice bus, by Laos standards. It even had air-conditioning.

If you haven't been reading the comments on my journal, my dad has been following our progress using topographic maps he found on the internet, and he sent me an e-mail indicating that it looks like the road to Vang Vieng is quite spectacular. He's right. The road (Route 13) is very mountainous, the road is very, very twisty as it winds through the mountains. Lots and lots of hairpin corners. Needless to say there are some spectacular views from the bus. The bus didn't travel more than 50 or 60 km/hour most of the time, barely reaching 30 km/hour much of the time, because of the roads. I don't know how the distance from Luang Prabang as the crow flies, but it took us about 6 hours by bus.

Another thing that makes the trip quite spectacular is the number of armed locals you see walking along the side of the highways, or sitting at the edge of the road, with their machine guns perched up against a tree or laying on the ground. Kind of unnerving, actually. I even saw some teenagers that were armed, including one teenage girl! The Canadian gov't web site advises travel from Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng to be done by convoy in the day only, because of shootings and banditry. Indeed, we heard stories about shootings along this stretch in the weeks and days leading up to our trip.

They overbookd the bus, and a couple of people had to sit in the aisle of the bus.

At about 12:30, the bus stopped at a town for a lunch break for about 30 minutes. My watch was working at this point.
When we arrived at Vang Vieng, there were a bunch of guest house operators waiting for us, so they could try and sway us to stay at their guest house. The first guest house that approached Courtney and I offered rooms with hot-water showers in them for $4US, so we took the first one!! We're easy! The name of the place is Bountang.

When we got in the room, I went to check the time, and my watch was dead. Hmmm, must be battery. Oh well. Tossed it on the bed, and forgot about it.

Court and I walked around Vang Vieng, and there are lots and lots of people along the street and in the market selling watches, and a few have watch batteries as well. I didn't bring my watch, so I'll have to check it out later.

One restaurant we walked by has pizza, and in the menu, at the end of the pizza section, it says for an extra 10,000 kip, you can get stoned. Hahahahaha!! They'll put magic mushrooms (presumably) on your pizza for an extra 10,000 kip ($1US).

So, Court and I had pizza for supper! Hahaha, well, we did have pizza, but just regular pizza at another restaurant. I had a "fruitee" pizza, it had cheese, tomato sauce, chicken and oranges on it. Yummm!!!

After supper, Courtney went for a jog, I tried to as well, but I couldn't keep up. I found out something very interesting about myself...I can't run on a full stomach! Major cramps.

AFter that, we went to a restaurant, and watched The Matrix, and sipped on fruit shakes. Many of the restaurants in town have VCD's of movies that they show, including new stuff, like Harry Potter II and Catch Me If You Can.

AFter the movie, we went back home and went to bed.

Oh ya, our guest house offered "hot-water shower" in the room...in our case it was "barely-luke-warm shower". Oh well.