Here we are now leaving Vang Vieng… yes, this is the only digi picture I have of this quiet little place. We then began our long journey northward towards Luang Prabang…
Along the way… our bus got a flat tire…
And let me tell you… there are worse places in the world to be broken down… friggen beautiful
Even had this little hut thing to keep out of the sun… here you can see Leela, Eliza, and our guide, Pauline.
We didn’t get in until pretty late, so it was just dinner… and an early night for me as I was in the trifecta of pain and agony… 1) blister that had taken over my entire little toe… convincing me I was going to get gangrene and lose my leg… I actually started splinting my toes apart using medical tape that I had brought for my foot… 2) the continuation of the earlier mentioned food poisoning 3) the sudden onset of severe allergies due to being surrounded by lots and lots of greenery…
The next day, however, I was up and out w/ Leela touring around. The first stop was the palace… which was a pretty incredible museum… lots of cool old stuff… pictures that told legends… and each room depicted a battle scene… often between men and mythical beasts… none of which I was allowed to take pictures of.
But just outside of it was nice little wat that had this cool dragon railing and this Buddha carving in the door.
We then hiked up Mount Phousi… yet another great view… and while we were up there… you could hear traditional music playing from bellow… making it an all too surreal moment… very much continuing the theme that being in laos is like being in a movie.
Climbing down the mountain there were buddha’s for each day of the week… these were the two best.
There was also this big fat Buddha, who I rather love.
Continuing down the steps… you see an Asian version of a unicorn w/ Buddha in the background.
The path then led into a mini cave, where a giant “foot print” is… said to be Buddha’s footprint.
After our little excursion up the mountain, we met up w/ the others and headed to the Tad Se Waterfalls.
If you look carefully, you can see a tiger in the cage. She was rescued from poachers and brought here to the falls… they also rescue bears… but those pictures didn’t come out.
And then there were the actual falls… which were absolutely incredible. I made it about halfway up, then realized two hills in one day is very very bad idea when you’re already under the weather…
So Jenni and I headed down to some of the pools and went swimming. And there was this 16 year old British kid that came over and started hanging out w/ us... Which was amusing... b/c he was kinda hitting on Jenni, but... well... he was 16... and with his mom... and his mom came over and started taking pictures... I can only imagine the poor kids embarrassment... SE Asian when your a young teenager is not the place you want to be w/ your parents.
And later that night… we went bowling…apparently bowling isn’t really big in the UK… which made for an amusing night… and the bowling here… was pretty interesting… as we were doing it barefoot.
The next day I headed out on my own… checkin out this quiet little town. This here is a picture of mount Phousi from behind.
I then found Wisunalat Visounarath… Now for some reason… as cheap as laos is… they kept charging at least $2 to get in to ever place. After a while you just start spending too much money each day. So when they told me $2 I was like, no, I don’t really need to see anything that bad right now… and the woman was like, $1, no ticket… and I was like… cool… I haggled w/out haggling. So I got in, it was painted with tons of cool stories, and had this huge alter. That also had that little demon guy… which I found brilliant.
As I was wandering out I saw that there was a red cross around the corner… where to raise money, they give $3 massages… which was actually pretty nice… so I typed well, and they were really excited about that… feels good to help out
We spent the night wandering around the night market… which had tons of beautiful things…scarves, jewelry, paintings.
The next morning we got up ridiculously early to see the monks collecting alms… This was an awing experience… to just see hundreds upon hundreds of monks lined up wandering down the road… oh, and i got yelled at for using my flash...
As a random filler… it was here that we found a bakery… and in this bakery was a newspaper… and its at this point I actually started looking at the job ads… and realized… I’m pretty qualified for just about everything listed…
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