Impromtu Thailand
Thursday, February 14th, 2008After the fun of Vang Vieng, we caught a bus down to Vientienne. This sleepy capitol is definately a nice place to exhale. We spent a day here and strolled along the Mekong river where hundreds of impromptu restaurants / food stalls dot the river bank. As always in Laos, fresh tasty pastries, cookies, and cakes are always available.
We took a bus to the Laos/Thailand border, walked through an eerily quick immigration/customs line, and pow… we were ready to catch a sleeper train (overnight) to Bangkok. We joked that we had so much fun in Laos, it was probably best that leaving the country was such an unnoticeably quick process… otherwise we may not have left.
On the train, we met up and had a few drinks with a Venezuelan and an English guy, both of whom were studying business in Hong Kong. We had some laughs and tried to stay up as late as possible. Sleeping went fine for me (thank you beer lao) but paula unfortunely never settled in. We arrived in Bangkok around 6am, and grabbed a bus down to Pattaya beach.
In Pattaya, we found a kitesurfing school and a resort with a nice pool for cheaper than Mui Ne… Sweet, right? Well, we had fun and I got some kitesurfing in. The wind in Thailand is not ideal for kitesurfing but I was able to get some good time in and even made a few launches on the board which felt great! Added bonus… the instructor showed us a website (www.windguru.cz) for checking wind and it turns out that the Chesapeake Bay has good wind for us! So maybe we can bring our new sport home! Maybe we’ll get some of these moves once we get goin’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoCC5-5Sbs
After a few days of beaching it, we returned to our old stomping grounds in Bangkok. Kao San Road! This is such a lively area and is never to be missed. We grabbed some cheap Phad Thai from a street food stall of course and watched the night go by as we shared some late night ice cream. The next day, we lounged around a pool and found a great breakfast place that we are looking forward to checking out before we leave for India. Also, it being valentines day, paula and I traded cards (homemade). Thankfully, she didn’t make too much fun of the cheesy/lame faux flower that I got for her (the only flower type object on the block)… I’m such a lucky guy!!
admin