VIP BUS HELL!!!

09/10/07 - 12/10/07 Silichith Guest House $7

After our awesome experience of tubing, we decided to move on to Luang Prabang, which used to be the capital before it changed to Vientiane. As Vang Viang's suh a small town we weren't really sure what time the local buses would leave and didn't fancy a morning of waiting around on the gravel strip so we thought... what the hell, we'll splash out on a VIP bus... BIG MISTAKE!!!

The VIP bus was 95000 kip (about $10) and it was horrid, quite possible the most awful few hours of my life... and we'd been warned about the bus to Laos! The bus was packed full of tourists and stank of unpleasant body odour. One of the guys on the seat opposite me and Hazel vomitted on the poor guy next to him after whih we all had to sit there breathing it in. Luckily I was at the window side so spent the next few hours with my head stuck out trying nt to be sick myself. Apparently the vomitting was self-inflicted from the beers the night before and the guy he was sick on seemed very understanding... which I'm pretty confident I couldn't have been! What made it even worse was that the smell/thought of sick meant I couldn't eat the Cinamon Danish I'd bought from the "Luang Prabang Bakery" that morning... and EVEN worse was that when I did get to eat it it was rubbish too... grrr! (angry noise!)

Anywho, the second part of the journey wasn't so bad as I got chatting to a guy from Isreal who had already been to Luang Prabang and was able to give me a few hints on what to do. i.e. that the only place open after midnight is the bowling alley?!?

Eventually the nightmare journey was over and we found ourselves a nice guesthouse down by the Mekong River and somewhere to eat close by. Luang Prabang is a pretty small town and randomly the cheapest places to eat and stay are along the Mekong... which is weird as it's places like that that would draw the most cash in England.

I keep meaning to write this and forgetting... but you really have to check your bills when you're in lao... as I think we only ever had one that had been calculated correctly. All of the others had overcharged us, but luckily as we're on super tight backpackers budgets we always noticed. Also local Lao laws mean that all bars have to kick out at 11.30 so that everyone is home for the midnight curfew, so even our hotel doors shut at midnight. Although there must be some sort of random loophole which means that the bowling alley (a short tuk-tuk ride out of town) can serve alcohol and stay open past midnight... so the guy on the bus wasn't mad!. Also there's a disco next door to it, but they have to close at midnight.

AS our trip plans have been a little different to those we planned (we weren't even coming to Lao) me and Mel have now pretty much run out of our Malarone malaria tablets and as they are unlicensed over here... and I must get bitten at least once a day... we decided we'd have to hunt out a new tablet. We'd read all of the various side affects before we came so went to see what was on offer. Luckily we haven't had to resort to the tablets with suicidal tendancies... although the doxycyclene we had to go with does have one or two interesting side affects of it's own, one of which is extra sensitivity to the sun... which for someone like me who wears factor 50 for an English summer may be a problem... we'll see!

We all spent a couple of days chilling out on our own by day and then meeting up on an evening. I spent my time wandering around the town, near the Mekong and the Nam Khan, between the temples, the day market and the peninsular where the two rivers meet. I also went for my first massage which was super relaxing, although I had to ask them to avoid my tubing injuries and I'm sure the poor women must have wondered what I'd been upto.

On our third afternoon me Mel and Hazel met up around 4pm to walk up Chomsy Hill to view the 'That Chomsi' stupa, which I had already admired from afar along with all the budha statues (one for every day of the week and more) and the footprint of buddha (which sounds more exciting than it looks!). We watched the sunset (well the beginning of it) and saw the hugest grasshoppers and moths I have ever encountered in my life, they were bigger than my whole hand!

Later, after doing some serious shopping at the gorgeous night market, we met up with some guys Phil and Reicke who Hazel had been chatting to in the afternoon and their friend Alan for tea. Phil, according to Alan lives according to his lonely planet guidebook, so we went to a place that cam highly recommended and was pretty nice actually. After that we headed to a few of the bars further out of town where we got free shots of lao-lao and 2 for 1 cocktails. Again we had managed to find either a gay or just 'anything goes' bar with several strong ladyboy candidates. Made it back to our hotel just before the midnight curfew, but the doors had already been locked, luckily we just had to give a quick knock and we were in... phew!