Feeling good after a few Margaritas with Chris and Christy we bid them farewell, with hopeful plans to meet up in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We got back to our guesthouse at the designated pick up time of 6:30pm. By 7:15, and after some concern that they weren't coming, they finally showed up. Not entirely sure why we were surprised, since leaving Germany there hasn't been much of anything that has been on time. And what is sort of becoming a pattern, we were the last two to be picked up and thus left with the two least desirable seats on the over night mini van ride - right behind the driver, middle seat next to a creepy old German dude, and the seat next to the sliding door with nothing to lean against and Zero leg room.
So more about this creep dude, as I feel this deserves a bit of explanation. He must've been 88 at very youngest, smelled VERY odd, mumbled a lot, knew very little English, and had a very strong German accent, and through it all I managed to make out about 2 out of every 10 words this guy was endlessly uttering. What I did make out, however, was that the man had outstayed his Thai visa and was heading over to Laos to get another 30-60 days. He had spent all of his Social Security cheque, or whatever Germany's equivalent is, on what he likes to call his Thai "ladies", which he also explains are VERY expensive. He even got so desperate as to try to exchange his camera for said "ladies"! So, goes without saying that by this point in the journey (20 minutes out of my 20 hour van ride) I'm completely sicked out!! Fortunately, for me and my cunning power of persuasion, I convinced Adrian to trade places with me and happily took the ultra uncomfortable spot next to the sliding door, so uncomfortable that even 4 margaritas and a fairly strong muscle relaxer had no effect on me, aside from being groggy and out of it.
I will not bore you will ever grueling, awful, painful detail but suffice to it say this journey took apprx 21 hours, 5 different automobile transfers, $72 USD to cross the Laos border, 1 creepy, German sex tourist, and 0 sleep but alas we made it and checked into the Champa Lao Villa around 4 p.m. in Vieng Vang, Laos.
All we really wanted to do was to rest and relax directly in front of the fan in our adorable bamboo bungalow, but given that we hadn't eaten since our visa document stop at the Laos/Thai border at 5 a.m. we were famished and so we pried ourselves off the bed and out of our room.
We made a stop at the first legit looking establishment we came across Banana Bar. Now, there are several very unique, interesting things about Vieng Vang, but the first and most apparent was in these eateries. They all look rather alike, raised floor and low table and floor cushions to on which to lounge. Pretty awesome, right? Well, in possibly 90% of all these restaurants they play endless episodes of the hit T.V series Friends. In talking back-to-back-to-back. I probably hadn't seen an episode in 5 years, but it's pretty crazy how easy it is to get sucked in. Soon hours have past, you have forgotten where you are, what you had planned for the day, or how long you've been there... Must be some hypnotic effect of so much canned laughter.
At any rate, we eventually paid for the two sandwiches and two BeerLao we consumed and decided to take a stroll through the dusty streets of Vieng Vang. We checked out some shops, saw a stunning sunset, got a small dinner, and as early as we thought it was a suitable time to go to sleep (8 p.m) we headed back to our guesthouse and collapsed into a much needed 11 hour slumber.
In the morning after a quick run and free breakfast overlooking the Laos mountainside and river, we rented a couple of bikes and made the difficult 7 km bike ride out to a mountain cave. We had read about this swimming hole you can access by climbing 200 meters into the mountain and climbing through a cave. After 45 minutes - an hour of negotiating uneven terraine, rocks and boulders, and heaps of dust kicked up by passing vehicals, we got to the cave. When we arrived, we were greeted by a Lao man who didn't speak any English, but wanted to guide us through the cave. From what I had read, that wasn't necessary but I really couldn't communicate that to him so along he came.
The climb up was short, but rather strenuous and at the top I took a look at the cave and realized why he insisted on coming, and felt fortunate to have him there. The cave was pitch black, a bit slippery, and very cramped in some places. Our man had a headlamp and lead us through pointing out intresting rock formations and plenty of stalagtites and a few mites as well. We got to what seemed to be the end, or at least the end of what wasn't extremely trecherous to navigate through. It was then that I realized that there would be no swimming hole on the other side. Oh well, cool cave anyway - and we made our way back to the daylight.
The climb up and cave crawling had been a hot excerise and by the time we had gotten down, we couldn't wait to go swimming in the nearby Blue Lagoon that we had read signs for on the 7k journey. So we picked up our bikes and made our way over. When we arrived and took a look at the Blue Lagoon,we had a feeling we made a mistake. Did we take a wrong turn somewhere??
After referring once again to the map and the posted sign, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that yes, that murky, brown/green, bug swarmed water was, in fact, the "Blue Lagoon". But as I mentioned we were hot and the water was wet, so "what the hell?"
Along side the bank of the Blue Lagoon there were a couple of rope swings and even a rather high ramp tower to jump off of. It was actually quite hard to decipher exactly how deep the water was below because of the dark, murky nature of it, but after a 10 second investigation of it, Adrian confirmed "It was probably ok."
So he grabbed for the rope swing and a quick one, two, three... In he swung and down he splashed into the dirty water below. After approximately a half a millisecond Adrian rose to the surface and declared, "Actually, it's a little shallow. Don't do that" as he stood in waist-deep water.
We both cooled off in the water and stepped out to dry off. After just a few minutes we were dry and back on our bikes rolling back into town. The plan was to spend the rest of the afternoon floating down the river on tubes, as apparently tubing is THE THING to do in Vieng Vang and we love ourselves some tubin'. When we got to the tube rental and took a look at the time we realized it probably wasn't the best idea as we wood need to get the tubes back in well under 3 hours and it takes at least 3 to get down the river. We would hold off til tomorrow. Instead, we got a little late lunch, caught a couple more episodes of Friends, and hopped back on the bikes to check out what this tubing was all about. The starting point is about 10km north of town so off we went on two wheels to see what the fuss was all about.
On our approach to the starting area we could already make out loud, thudding sound of bass-heavy music pumping. As the treeline gave way to the the riverbank, it was unreal the sight that lay before us. Throngs of people dancing in swimsuits, covered in pen markings, drinking out of buckets, while simultaneously others were throwing themselves off of soaring high rope swing, jumping platforms, Waterslides, and Ziplines. There were makeshift wooden shack pubs lining the river as far as the eye could see. Wow, ok... I get it. I will have to prepare myself for this one! We turned back and pushed our bikes back to the path and headed back into town.
We returned our bikes and grabbed two large BeerLao for the walk back to our guesthouse. As we wandered down the street and pulled my eyes away from the beautiful setting sun, who do we run into but... Josh Peerless! An old friend and colleague from CBS in SF and his mate John. How fun? More friends! They were heading to a pub to catch the sunset and as we had just bought 2 big beers we decided to park it at a viewspot watch the sunset and come meet up after. I must say Laos has definitely provided us with the best sunsets so far!
As the sun dipped behind the mountain tops we drenched ourselves in our citrusy, deety perfume aka mozzie spray and made our way over to meet the guys. Upon arrival we saw they had made a couple of friends, so we pulled up a couple extra chairs, order two more big BeerLao and settled in to what would become hours of chatting and catching up. So fun!
By 10 o'clock or so we all decided we were pretty hungry and after a couple of failed attempts found a place had some dinner and drinks. It was about midnight when we decided to pull the plug, as we all knew what kind of day tomorrow would be.
We woke the next morning, had breakfast, and nearly on cue all met up at the tube rental shop at 11 a.m.
We exchanged our 35,000 Kip for 1 tube each and jumped into the back of the TukTuk. We arrived once again at the starting spot and carried our tubes to the other side of the river where the first bar was located and where you enter the water. It was still a bit early as people were only just arriving and not too many people had shown up yet. We ordered four BeerLao and took in the sight around us. Pretty soon we were surrounded by hundreds of 20-30 somethings, some of which were playing beerpong, then flip cup, then dancing. We really could have been in any college town or spring break spot across America, except that we were on a river... in Laos. A couple hours past and we began to realize no one is moving! So before consuming too many bevys we thought it best to get a move on. Of course, that didn't last too long as we floated to the next bar we were towed in by a rope with a water bottled tied to the end.
We were greeted by free shots of whisky and encouraged to get involved in the zipline, which we all did one by one. After various levels of pain was endured by the hard slap of water against the skin, we jumped back in our tubes and once again embarked on our journey down the river.
The rest of the afternoon was spent like this, and as what tends to happen on these types of days, the hours quickly escaped us and we were faced with a whole lot of river ahead of us, but only 30 minutes to get back to return our tubes without penalty. Luckily for us, we spotted an inlet and a TukTuk driver on the opposite side of the river. We flagged him, swam over, gave him our tubes, and jumped into the back of the TukTuk. We flew down the road, weaving in and out of traffic and at apprx. 5:59:30 we squeezed into the line and got our 40,000 Kip deposit back.
A bit drunk and a very exhausted, we made our way back to our guesthouse and did what anyone in our situation would've done... Drunk dial Matty Whyte and Georgie Ling, of course! After 4-5 calls and as many belligerent voicemails, I thought it was best to leave 'em alone and get some dinner. We ate dinner at a yummy organic farm restaurant and instantly began feeling human again. We got back to our guesthouse around 9 and were asleep shortly after.
We woke feeling not as bad as we deserved to. By 11 o'clock our driver came to pick us up and bring us to the bus station for our 7 hour journey to Luang Prabang. I have heard the trip is very mountainous and windy. We shall see how this goes.