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It’s not looking anything like Christmas (in Laos)

Sunday, December 21st, 2008

Savanakhet, Laos.

We plan on leaving Laos for Vietnam in the morning. It feels strange to be leaving Laos so soon. We’ve been here almost a month, but we’ve spent so much time in the other countries we’ve visited (except Mongolia, which wasn’t planned so was just a bonus all around) that a month just doesn’t seem long enough. But I think we’re both ready to move on to Vietnam and a little more chaos and excitement. Laos has been wonderfully relaxing–especially today since we’ve just relaxed all day–including a massage for $4 each! How amazing! It was nice and very different from both our massage in Ecuador and in China. The Laos massage was a lot more stretching and more focused on our legs and feet which was nice after being on them so much. Christmas in ‘Nam should be interesting and hopefully we’ll be able to stumble upon some sort of Christmas celebration. I would love some caroling.

[read on]

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By Laos standards, Vientiane is not so nice

Monday, December 15th, 2008

Vientiane, Laos.

We have been in Vientiane for the past two days, and it’s not really the nicest city. As far as capitals go, it’s not too bad. It’s still pretty small and it’s along a river which on the other side is Thailand (which seems really strange that we can look at another country across a little river). The town is sort of hot and muggy and the guesthouses leave a little to be desired (and they’re more expensive). We came here because it’s about a 10 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang and we needed to stop before heading on to Tha Kaek where we plan to go to in the morning. We were going to leave yesterday, but Steve wasn’t feeling too well (he feels better today) and we bought some souvenirs in Luang Prabang that we wanted to mail back home but the post office was closed on Sunday. So today is a day of errands. I just finished typing up a rough draft essay for my last graduate school application. I’m applying for a masters degree in literacy education and I wanted to write about my experience with volunteering in China, so the essay writing was put off for longer than I would have liked.

But tomorrow we go to Tha Kaek where the original plan was to rent motorbikes and ride around the countryside for 3 days or so seeing caves and waterfalls and little villages. Tha Kaek apparently doesn’t have ATMs or the internet, so we’re trying to figure out how much the trip would cost so that we make sure to have enough kip to do it and get out of there. Running out of money in Muang Ngoi made us a little weary. We’ve gotten so used to ATMs being everywhere, that it’s hard to adjust to the possibility of no ATMs and the fact that you have to carry around a giant wad of bills here since the largest bill is 50,000 and that’s easily lunch. I’m also a little nervous about riding a motorbike around. I road on my first motorbike ever on the way to my weaving class the second day since my tuk tuk (little bike taxi thing) didn’t show up to get me and someone from the Ock Pop Tok store (who I was doing the class through) gave me a lift. But we’re going to see about possibly doing one of the newish tours that have started up for this motorbike loop. Or we might try to hook up with some other travelers doing the same thing that maybe have some more experience (than our collective no experience). I think having someone around who knows what they’re doing and could possibly fix a broken bike would make me feel better. But we’ll see. Either way we’re going to go see some of the sites since you can get there without a big excursion. We just thought the excursion would be a fun adventure.

So, we’ll be without internet for maybe a week or so. But then we go to Savanakhet, which is a bigger city where we’ll stop in order to get our Vietnam visa before crossing over the border. We will most likely be there for Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, Stephen and I were singing the 12 days of Christmas last night since yesterday was 12 days until Christmas. We realized that we didn’t know all the verses, so we made up a new song about S.E. Asia. Here you go (only the last verse):

On the 12th day of my South East Asian Christmas (awkward, I know) my true love gave to me:

  • 12 bottles of Beer Laos
  • 11 hour bus rides
  • 10 Thai transvestites
  • 9,000 kip to the dollar
  • 8 kids to a mother
  • 7 sandy beaches
  • 6 F’ing roosters
  • 5 drunk Aussies
  • 4 banana crepes
  • 3 mosquito bites
  • 2 tuk tuk rides
  • and an umbrella in a fruit smoothie!

Yay! Merry Christmas!

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Luang Prabang, Laos

Thursday, December 11th, 2008
Luang Prabang, Laos. We've been in Luang Prabang now for a week, and lately we've been so busy that I haven't had any time to blog (or upload pictures which takes forever here since the internet connection is pretty slow). I ... [Continue reading this entry]

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Laos, rhymes with cow

Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Luang Prabang, Laos. Our first week in Laos was spent relaxing in the two little river towns of Nong Khiaw and Muang Ngoi. From Odomxai we planned on taking a bus straight to Nong Khiaw, but ended up getting up and ... [Continue reading this entry]

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Boxes to swirls, China to Laos

Friday, December 5th, 2008
Luang Prabang, Laos. Oh China! We were sad to say goodbye, but were glad we got to know you a (very) little bit. Our last bus ride out of China was pretty uneventful. We spent our last afternoon in China sitting ... [Continue reading this entry]

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