andblahandblahblah: October 2011

I apologize for how long it has taken me to update the blog. I was really busy and it turns out I also had a bad case of worms in my system that took a little while to get rid of.

I last left off with us going kayaking and then heading to Vietnam. The day of kayaking was fun, but we ended up capsizing once, and Tom was pretty funny as he wanted to hurry and get back on the kayak just in case of sharks. Unfortunately the capsizing caused the first casualty of this trip as my camera did not survive the kayaking trip. This also means I have no photos of my trip from this moment until reaching Nha Trang in Vietnam. The day of kayaking was also my last full day in Cambodia. The next day I took a motobike taxi along the beach to the bus station in the city of Sihanoukville to hop on a bus to Vietnam. While there I met Cas who was also staying at Mushroom point, but who I had yet to meet up until that point in time. What was funny about the bus ride was that we had booked a sleeper bus from Sihanoukville to Saigon, but once we got to Phnom Penh we were switched into a normal bus and had to continue the rest of the trip, which was eight hours and in the middle of the night, sitting upright. Cas and I had a good laugh about it and simply accepted the fact we had somewhat been tricked.

The Vietnam border was extremely easy to cross and was far less eventful than when we entered into Cambodia. After a few more hours in the bus we arrived in Saigon, which is an amazing city. I didn't have anywhere to stay that night and Cas had a two bedroom in this pretty nice hotel, so he let me stay with him the night for a few dollars. We traveled around that day and took shelter in this church that looked exactly like Notre Dame during a rain storm and what is funny is this building looked extremely classic, yet there was a neon Jesus inside--quite funny. That night we me met up with Hannah and Joe from Cambodia and went and had dinner--I ended up following Hannah and Joe up the coast of Vietnam always being about one day behind them. The next day Cas and I were going to the War Remnants Museum and also the building which was the last building the Americans occupied before fleeing Vietnam. When we were leaving we randomly ran into Tom, who had just arrived in Vietnam moments before. He went with us to both of the places mentioned above. The War Remnants Museum was really interesting and the section on Agent Orange was beyond sad, but at the same time the museum was bizare in some of its depictions of the US in the war. Normally, although impossible to do fully, a museum tries to look at a situation from a non-biased viewpoint, but at the war remnants museum this was not always the case. Americans are referred to as the Evil Demons in the museum. In some ways as a student of the world, and not as an American, this was dissapointing as I felt Vietnam wasted a great opportunity to use the museum as a symbol to show just how bad war can be, but instead I felt the museum was a political tool, which to me hurt its credibility. After that we decided to go have dinner and then went out for a beer since it would be our last night together. While having a beer this young Vietnamese boy came up trying to sell us stuff and we said no thank you. Next he asked to see the postcards I had already bought a few hours prior, and I said okay. As he was looking at them he found one that he really liked and asked how much it was and if he could buy it from me. I told him how much it was, but also said I couldn't sell it to him as I was about to send it to a friend. He said okay, but instead of continuing on he went into the bar and began playing billiards against 20 and 30 year olds. The funny thing about the whole situation was that he was beating them when they were two to three times his age.

After we finished our beer it was time for me to go so I hopped on my bus to Nha Trang, which was a sleeper bus. On the bus I was sitting next to this middle aged man from Germany who had been traveling with his family, but they went back to Germany and he was planning on doing another week of windsurfing before heading back. We talked about a lot of different things including politics, travelling, and just a lot of different random things. Then he started to tell me about his company that he has, which is a company that makes bra cups for women in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and a few other countries. After talking for a while he told me if I ever wanted a job in Germany to contact him and he would set me up with his bra cup making company. This was a very interesting experience, and I can't say I have yet to take him up on his offer.

Once I arrived in Nha Trang I found Hannah and Joe eating dinner and I decided to join them. The next day we rented bicycles and road around the city and went to Po Naga, which is an old temple from the Champa dynasty. After this we rode back to the city and had dinner, and afterwords I said goodbye to Joe and Hannah again as they left for Hoi An. That night in my hotel room my leg started to itch extremely badly again, and later in the blog I'll explain why. The next day I took a cyclone to Chùa Long Sơn which is a giant white Buddha that has beautiful views of the city. After this I took the cyclone back to the city, had dinner, and departed for Hoi An.

The night bus to Hoi An was quite an adventure. When we were first on the bus there was this girl laying below me who started screaming, and her boyfriend jumped up and said what's wrong what's wrong!?! And she replied that something had run across her leg. Her boyfriend proceeded to reassure her and tell her it was nothing and that she would be fine. A few hours later she jumped up again and yelled that a cockroach had landed on her head. From that point on she couldn't sleep and the three French girls who were also in the back of the bus started getting all jittery. A few minutes later I saw a cockroach running on the ceiling and it ran to a spot right above me. At that point I was thinking in my head we better not go over a bump. Luckily the cockroach ran off and I watched as it ran to the front of the bus. After it ran to the front of the bus it ran back and was standing over me again. This time unfortunately we ran over a bump and the cockroach landed on my stomach. I proceeded to slap the cockroach off of me and I thought that was the end of it, but the next morning another girl woke up on the bus and said she had found a cockroach in her hair the night before, and she was laying in the direction I flicked it. I made sure not to tell her I had flicked one off of myself the night before.

The next morning I arrived in Hoi An and hurried to the hotel that Joe and Hannah were staying at based off of the facebook message they sent me from the night before. I got there quite early about 8 in the morning and as soon as I got there I saw that Hannah and Joe were about to go on a tour to some of the old ruins outside of Hoi An called My Son. I had about 5 minutes to decide if I'd go or not and I decided I would. So after the 16 hour bus ride to get to Hoi An I hoped on another 2 hour bus ride to get to the My Son ruins. Once we got there I felt like I was about to go to war, because the tour guide had us sit down in front of a huge map of the complex and kept pointing at figures with a stick saying "FIRST WE WILL GO TO A1 AND AFTER B3 AND AFTER C1 and you must make sure to keep on time. We only have 15 minutes for A1 and if you do not stay on time you will not have time for the toilet at the end!" I felt ready to go to battle, and I have to say I love dragonflies, but for the second time on this trip one made me spaz out. First on the train to Cambodia, and then at My Son. While we were sitting, being prepared for battle by our tour guide, a dragonfly flew into my face and made me knock over the chair next to me to everyone's amusement, but I will admit it was quite funny.

My Son was very beautiful as it is up in the jungle and as the Champa dynasty, the civilization that built it, declined and collapsed it was largely forgotten until the Frenchman M.C. Paris rediscovered it in 1898. The whole time I was there I was wondering what it must have been like to have been M.C. Paris trekking through the Vietnam jungle and finding this forgotten city built by a great civilization more than a millenia before, absolutely amazing. Our tour guide was also explaining to us how a lot of the complex was bombed during the Vietnam war as the US practiced carpet bombing, which is a style of bombing that progressively destroys a section of area that is believed to be housing enemy combatants, which in this case was the Viet Cong. Because of this much of the temple complex has been damaged or destroyed, which as someone who strongly believes in the preservation of our worlds great monuments, remembering ancient civilizations, it did somewhat upset me. Although it did upset me about the destruction I couldn't help chuckle a little at our tour guide because as we would be walking around he would say this once use to be the most beautiful temple in the complex, but than the Americans bombed it. He would say this over and over again, and it unfortunately did make me chuckle. Another interesting part of the complex was the large phallic symbol of an actual penis. As the story goes if in the Champa civilization a woman was not happy with her sex life, or she was a virgin, she could rub on the penis and it would bring her a man, or if need be a second man. If a male wanted a larger penis he would insert his penis into the hole and pray, and the next morning his penis would be larger.

Well after this we took a boat trip down the Thu Bồn River and stopped at a little island where they create the wooden riverboats that you see all over Vietnam. We learned that the reason you see eyes on the front of all the boats is to ward of sea monsters, kind of cool. After this we docked at the Hoi An dock and before we got off the tour guide felt obliged to tell us that they charge 20000 dong, aka 1 dollar, for foreigners to ride the boat, but only require 1000 dong from locals. I don't know why he felt it necessary to tell us this, but he did! After this we walked around the Hoi An market for a while, and then Joe and Hannah decided to go and pick up the shoes that were hand made for them. Hoi An is famous for its hand made crafts as it has always been a center for trade. During the Champa dynasty My Son was the spiritual capital and Hoi An was the trading capital. This is where the Portuguese came to trade when they first came to Southeast Asia, and in the 18 century both the Chinese and Japanese felt it was the best port to trade at in the world. The Japanese went as far as to say that the dragon, which was the heart of all of Asia, was buried below Hoi An. Anyways, when Joe picked up his shoes I thought they were pretty legit looking so I placed an order as well and since I was in one of the capitals of fabric in SE Asia I decided to have a nice pair of trousers made for myself as well. After bartering I got both the shoes and trousers for 26 dollars each. Where else in the world can you have leather soled custom made shoes for 26 dollars, and have them properly made? It was great. Later that night we went and had a few beers along the river at a restaurant, which look amazing in this city because it has remained relatively unchanged in the last two hundred years. Why you ask? Well it has to do with the Nguyen Dynasty in the 18th century. The Tay Son Rebellion was a rebellion by the Vietnamese against Western imperialism, unfortunately for the Nguyen Dynasty the rebellion didn't go as well as planned, and because of that they gave exclusive trading rights to a port nearby called Da Nang to the French, and this caused Hoi An to be relatively forgotten and hence changed very little over the following two centuries.Anyways back to the trip, as we were sitting in the old French style buildings, reminicing over 5,000 Dong local brewed beer (.25 cents) we decided to have dinner as well, which I have to reiterate was amazing while sitting on top of the French colonial style buildings over looking the river.

The next day we all decided to go pick up our stuff from the merchants. I was quite happy with the pants I had made and the shoes were awesome as well, and everyone else liked the shoes. Hannah had a dress made, and while she was picking it up I decided to buy a pair of fake Ray Bans. While bartering for the Ray Bans I realized that I was finally thinking in terms of Southeast Asian currency and not the US dollar. The lady selling the Ray Bans originally wanted 100,000 dong for them, aka 5 dollars, I got her down to 60,000 dong quite easily, but I really wanted them for 50,000 Dong. After I finally talked her into it and was walking away I realized that I had just spent around ten minutes bartering for 10,000 Dong, which is 50 US cents, but in Vietnam can go a long way towards helping to buy a meal.

Later that day Joe and Hannah traveled up to Hue, and I stayed one last night at the hotel before departing first thing in the morning for Hue also. That night my leg became even more itchy than it had been before and I began to get little spider legs running from the different bumps, but since it was staying relatively in the same area I decided that it wasn't a big enough concern to visit the doctor. While waiting for the bus the next day someone tried to sale me a weight that you stand on to measure how much you weigh, and it had surely been used. At that point in time I felt like people had officially tried to sale me everything you could possible sale. The bus trip to Hue was quite pleasant as it was the first time in Vietnam that I was taking a bus for less than 12 hours. While the bus ride was only supposed to be 4 hours it turned into a 6 hour bus ride as the bus broke down on the way to Hue. It did get a bit hot on the bus during the two hour delay, but it was only a minor inconvenience as I have grown more and more accustomed to things working on their own time in Southeast Asia.

Once I got the Hue I stayed at a place called Backpackers Hostel Hue. It was a nice place to relax at and was one of the more Western places I stayed at on my journey. The hostel was also a great place to meet people and once I got there I went to the Old Imperial City with two guys from the hostel. One of them was a student at Stanford who was Vietnamese and decided to return to the country of his parents to visit. The Imperial City is at the heart of Hue and is where the kings of Vietnam used to live as Hue was the capital of the country long before Hanoi was. Later that day I went out to dinner with a group of 6 other people, four of which were females traveling solo, which is quite extraordinary as it is not quite as common to see women travelling alone as it is to see men doing it. It was also significant because we were all talking about how a night before none of us knew each other and a day later we would all be going separate ways, but for that one night it was like we had known each other forever and were having a dinner with close friends. At this point in time it was completely true, as today I can't even remember any of their names, but for that night I felt like I had known them forever. Oh the life of backpacking!!

The next day I booked a night bus to head up to Hanoi, but on the way to booking it a Vietnamese man came up to talk to me. He asked me where I was from and I told him I was from California, and more specifically the San Francisco area. He was really surprised, and told me that he was going to visit San Francisco next year as his sister lived there. He went on to tell me that he was a helicopter pilot in the military and was waiting for his kids to get out of class to drive them home. He then went on to ask me if I would like to grab a beer so he could ask me some questions about California and what to see. I told him sure of course, and pointed to a little bar right across the street. He insisted that we should go somewhere else as people in Vietnam could always be listening to report to the government and we were in a crowded area. The only problem was we weren't in a crowded area and so I told him again I'd be more than willing to talk to him about visiting California here, but I wasn't going to go anywhere else. He continued to insist we go somewhere else and I decided I wouldn't go and politely turned down his offer and continued to walk to the bus station. In Vietnam even Facebook is technically illegal so I was weary in the country to talk about certain subjects, mostly when the person wanting to talk was in the military and required that we go somewhere more quiet to talk. I might have missed out on a great opportunity to talk to a local about current events, but I felt uncomfortable about the situation so I decided to listen to my senses and not go with him. I think it payed off because about half an hour later I noticed him driving down the street, but without kids, which went against his story of saying he was waiting for them-- who knows!! After I booked my ticket I had about 8 hours to kill before my bus arrived and I decided to go visit a few tombs of the old kings. I rented a motobike taxi to drive me around for the day as I wouldn't have been able to find the tombs on my own because they were quite a distance away. The motobike driver charged me 8 dollars to take me for the day, which is a pretty good deal. We first drove to the tomb of Khai Dinh who was the 12th emperor of the Nyugen Dynasty inVietnam and ruled between the years of 1916 and 1925. His tomb was very European in style as he ruled during a time when France played a significant role in the culture of Vietnam. After this we drove through the jungle to the Tomb of Tu Duc who ruled between the years of 1847 and 1883. Before we reached his tomb the motobike driver stopped at the DMZ and showed me an area where American soldiers were stationed during the Vietnam war. He went on to explain to me that during the war he served with the United States and helped move supplies around. Once we got to the tomb I realized it wasn't a tomb at all but a fortress. When Tu Duc, the 4th emperor of the Nyugen Dynasty, was ruling he wanted to make his tomb look like the Imperial City so he could be as comfortable in death as we was in life. The other interesting thing about his tomb is that in life it was also where he and his family vacationed. This altogether helps explain why his tomb isn't a tomb, but a complex. Half of it is the remains of where he, his family, and the servants would stay while he was escaping the city, and the other half is where he and his wife are buried. It was quite an amazing complex and although I haven't been to Egypt I imagine it has to rival some of the Egyptian Pharaohs tombs in size and scale. After this the motobike driver took me to the Thien Mu Pagoda, which is the largest pagoda in Hue and is quite old, being built in 1601. While I was walking around the pagoda, I noticed a Japanese tourist who was trying to take a picture of himself in front of the pagoda. I asked if he needed help and volunteered to take the photo for him. After taking the photo he asked me where I was from and after telling him California he insisted I take a photo with him, which I agreed to do. To this day I never learned his name, but there is a photo of me circling somewhere in Japan with him. Once I finished at the pagoda the driver took me back to Backpackers Hostel and I departed for Hanoi.

The bus trip to Hanoi was once again a pretty interesting adventure. After getting on the bus the bus driver came by and told 7 of us that the bus was full and that he still needed to pick up other people. He then told us to get off the bus and wait on the corner for another bus that would be coming. After getting off the bus I was talking to these two English guys heading to China, who were only eating bread and cheese at this point in their trip because they were running dangerously low on money and still had a month of travels left. We were making a good time out of how the bus driver probably arbitrarily picked us 7 and how he had dumped us on what was honestly a completely random street corner to wait for the next bus. True to the bus drivers word, which at this point no matter how odd their request sound I never doubt them because they always turn out to be right, the other bus pulled up and we were finally on our way to Hanoi. After this the trip was very uneventful and I slept the rest of the way to Hanoi. Once arriving to Hanoi I was dropped off quite a bit outside of the city and had to take a motobike taxi to the hostel and the traffic in Hanoi is crazy, it is all motobikes, but there are so many of them you can touch the person on the motobike to your left, right, and behind you! I decided to stay at Backpackers Hostel Hue's sister Hostel, which went by the same name just replacing Hue with Hanoi. This was a massively huge hostel and to be honest if you never left the hostel you would have never known you were in Southeast Asia, and instead would have thought you were on spring break with a bunch of kids fresh out of High School. Despite that I still met some cool people in the Hostel. The day I arrived I went to the French International Hospital to book an appointment with a doctor as my leg had continued to get worse and I was now developing a cough as well, even though I never went to the appointment I made. After that I came back and as I was riding the motobike taxi back I saw Joe and Hannah randomly walking down the street. I told the motobike taxi to stop and I hoped off and hung out with Hannah and Joe for the day. We went and saw St. Joseph's Cathedral, the lake in the center of Hanoi, which used to have giant turtles which are good luck to touch on the head, and then we had lunch in the old quarter of the town. After that we were walking down the street and we saw the two English guys, both of whose names were Tom, sitting and having a beer with two of their friends they met up with and another of which was named Tom. We decided to sit down and have a 5000 dong beer with them on the street. The street beer stalls in Hanoi are great because they set out plastic seats and you sit on them to have your drink and as the day goes on the seats get further and further out into the road as more people sit to have a drink. After that I went back to the hostel and got some rest.

The next day I hung out with an English girl and these two German girls as Hannah and Joe had left to go to Halong Bay. Sorry I'm bad with names, but they usually flow in one ear and unfortunately out the other. We walked around Hanoi and first went to see the body of Ho Chi Minh. It was a very eery experience as you have to queue in line and then you are directed into his mausoleum. Once you are inside you enter into the room where he is on display and there are four soldiers standing around him and then other soldiers standing along the pathway that you walk on so if you slow down they will grab you by the arm to hurry you along. After you walk around his display you walk back out of the tomb room and that is it. It was cool to see Ho Chi Minh, but like I said very eery at the same time. After that we went to the national art museum, which was really cool because it displayed art work from the first settlers in Vietnam all the way to the Vietnam War and modern art as well. The last place we went to that day was Quoc Tu Giam, which was the first university in Vietnam, and when translated means "Temple of the King Who Distinguished Literature." The thing that I enjoyed most about the University was that all the scholars who had every studied there had their name sketched on these pillars outside in order for their names to be remembered forever. I think I might have to send a memo to Berkeley asking them to do the same thing.

The next day I hoped on a bus to Halong Bay, and while on the bus I was sitting next to a Japanese college student who was studying engineering at his university. We had a very interesting conversation about politics as Japan had just elected their new prime minister, Mr. Yoshihiko Noda. I asked him what he thought about the new prime minister and he didn't seemed too impressed saying he believed they elected the prime minister too quickly and he wouldn't do an adequate job. After that we began talking about sports and he was a big Japanese baseball fan so we talked a lot about baseball.

Once we arrived at Halong Bay we realized we would be going on different boats so we said our goodbyes. I decided to do a two day one night trip and when I got on the boat I ended up meeting these two girls named Lizzie and Cindy. Lizzie is an English teacher working in Singapore from Ohio, and Cindy works at the same school, but works with graphics and she if from the Philippines. They had a long weekend so they decided they would fly up to Hanoi and visit Halong Bay. Halong Bay is absolutely beautiful, it looks as though it belongs in Avatar as the only difference is the mountains are floating on water instead of the sky, beautiful beyond words. We first stopped at this mountain with caves in it and explored the caves. The funny thing about Vietnam is sometimes they try and make nature look better than just letting the nature be natural. So inside one of the caves, which was beautiful by itself, the Vietnamese government had put artificial colored lights and fountains in the rocks. There is also a rock formation that looks like a dragon so they put red eyes were the dragon eyes should have been. This all the gave the cave the feeling of being in a line at Disneyland. The second cave we went to, which the tour guide said wasn't as beautiful, was completely natural and I think more beautiful. It was also cool because there was a plaque outside commerating when Ho Chi Minh visited the cave and it had the quote that he said about the cave while viewing it. After this we hopped back on the boat and sailed to another part of Halong Bay, which is huge as it goes all the way up to China. Once we stopped again we were given kayaks and kayaked around some of the mountains. Some of them had small caves that led to little inlets inside the mountains that were extremely awesome, they looked like the beach from the book/movie The Beach. After kayaking for a bit we got back on the boat sailed for a bit longer and then docked for the night in a little inlet of mountains. We swam in the bay for a while and were allowed to jump off the top of the boat, which was fun. After swimming we had dinner and it was some of the best food I have ever had. We were given crab cakes that were served in the shells of the crab and had a lot of other types of seafood that all together made an amazing dinner. After this Lizzie, Cindy, and I went and sat on the top of the boat as there was a lightning storm going on and when the lighting went off you could see the mountains all around, but then once the light from the storm stopped it was complete darkness again.

The next day we sailed around Halong bay for a bit before returning back to the coast. On the way back their was an Israeli guy on the boat and I was talking to him about how he felt about Palestine's bid for statehood and the overthrow and consequences for Israel of Mubarak in Egypt. I found out he was Israeli because at the time I was reading a book called Jerusalem Virgil that was about when the English pulled out of Jerusalem

and the ensuing war between the Arabs and Israelis. He was curious about the book and introduced himself and we talked about it for a bit. After we docked we went and had one last lunch together and while we were having lunch the tour guide asked to read my book. Although he was Buddhist he found religion very interesting as he had read both the Bible and Qu'ran. After lunch he returned my book and said he had enjoyed the parts he had read very much.

Once we were on the bus back I met this guy who was on the bus but hadn't been on our boat, which I found very interesting. It turns out he had been staying at a hotel and one of the workers stole his Ipod. He confronted the help about it but the help refused to acknowledge him, so being upset he went up to the room and completely emptied out the mini bar and all the snacks in the room, and after left. At this point he was worried that he would be caught by the police for leaving without paying so instead of going to the bus station he though it would be better to hop on a smaller private bus. He paid the driver a few dollars and the driver allowed to him to stay on the bus. Once we got back to Hanoi I said goodbye to Lizzie and Cindy and headed back to Backpackers Hostel for another night before heading into Lao. The guy who had his Ipod stolen stayed at Backpackers Hostel as well so we had dinner together that night. While in bed that night my cough that had been getting progressively worse got even worse and kept me up all night. At that point I had already booked my bus trip to Vientianne so I decided I would trooper it out and if it got worse would head back to Bangkok.

The next day I got up and walked around the city for a bit and came back to hop on my 20 hour bus ride. When I got back though they had told me the wrong time to show up for the bus and I ended up being late, so they rented a motobike taxi for me to hop on and chase the bus down. I rode on this motobike taxi, speeding through Hanoi, for about half an hour with all of my bags attempting to chase down this bus which we finally did. Once on the bus it was a very peaceful bus ride. We ended up getting to the border about 5 hours before it opened so we all slept on the bus waiting for it to open. Once it did we had to first pay the Vietnamese border guard money to allow us to walk across the border while the bus was being checked by the border patrol. This is funny because before we got to the border the bus driver and the other worker on the bus opened up these hidden compartments that looked like they belonged on the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars. Instead of putting drugs or weapons in the smuggling holes to get into Lao they instead put cheap goods like purses, pillow cases, sunglasses and the likes. It was a surreal experience because they were legitly smuggling things, but not the types of things you would think they would be smuggling. Anyways the border walk between Vietnam and Laos was a good half mile walk and it was absolutely beautiful as there was a lot of jungle and it was in the mountains. Once on the Lao side, we had to buy our visa and then pay the border patrol guy an extra dollar for weekend overtime that he then put into his pocket. The Lao side of the border was a beautiful journey as we drove on these narrow jungle roads in the mountains, it was absolutely gorgeous and to make it better we all arrived in one piece.

Once in Vientiane I checked into the Mixay Paradise Hotel with this English girl who I met on the bus and since we hadn't really eaten in the last 24 hours since we had been on the bus we decided to go out and splurge on an expensive meal, which was ten dollars. What I have come to realize in Southeast Asia is that the more expensive a meal is the less I like it, as this meal was okay and definitely nothing to complain about, but the local food is just as good if not better. After that we went and sat on the river and saw the most interesting thing. An outdoor aerobics class, the type where you do the dancing and running in place. It was funny because in the center of this sleepy capital city that has no more than 500,000 people in it was this aerobics class with everyone in brightly colored spandex dancing. It was so out of place that it fit perfectly and I loved it. The best part was an older man who was dancing in the front, it was great. The next day I dropped off my passport at the Thai embassy in order to get my 60 day visa that would be ready the next day. So for the rest of the day the girl from England and I, whose name is escaping me right now traveled around the town. We first went to Buddha park where there is a ton of sculptures of Buddha in a lot of different ways and has a temple that you can walk inside of that honestly looks like you are in Indian Jones. While at the Buddha park I met another Japanese guy travelling who is important because as you will see in this blog I kept running into throughout Lao. After the Buddha park we went to an outdoor market and looked around for a bit and then just traveled around the capital. We ended up passing by the Presidents house and it is quite noticeable because in the rest of Vientiane the city is nice, but slightly run down. Once you get to the presidents house the roads surrounding it are completely decadent and immaculate. Next door is a temple that we paid 2000 Kip to get into. After this we headed back to the hotel, got dinner, and went to bed, which was becoming increasingly more difficult with the cough.

The next day we were planning on going to Vang Vieng around 4 o'clock and my visa pick up time was 3. So I hurried down to the Thai embassy and picked up my visa for Thailand. While there I was inline talking to this kind of creepy English dude who was telling me about his business ventures in Thailand, which I will say at the least were very interesting. After I got my visa I hurried back to the hotel and made it in time to get on the bus. Once we hoped on the bus my Japanese friend from the Buddha park was there and we all departed for Vang Vieng together. The trip to Vang Vieng was over some decently bumpy roads as it is rain season so a lot of the road is washed away on a regular basis and they have to hurriedly put it back together.

Once we arrived to Vang Vieng it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It has the same mountain style as Halong Bay, but it is on top of land. Vang Vieng is a very famous backpacker destination in Lao. In Vang Vieng you go tubing down the river and along the river you stop off and have a beer, and if it is your style you can have countless other things notably Opium. I personally stuck to the beer, but a lot of people partake in the different things available. That night we were walking around Vang Vieng and I ran into Tom Norman who I had met in Bangkok the very first time I was there. It was completely random because Tom wasn't even originally traveling in that direction, and we ended up running into each other in a small town in Lao of all places. We talked for a bit and then after that went our separate ways agreeing to meet up in Bangkok when we were both there again in a week.

The next day I went to a few of the caves surrounding Vang Vieng. The first being the Blue Lagoon Cave, and the Blue Lagoon this time of year with all the rain is not blue, more of a brown. The cave was a good hike to get up to it and quite steep as well. When you first walk into the cave. about 5 minutes in, there is a shrine to Buddha which is kind of cool because it is gold and in this dark cave, where the little light there is, reflects off of the Buddha. After the Buddha you continue to wonder deeper into the cave, and then you finally get to the actual cave which is just a huge expanse of emptiness with a lake in the middle. It is quite a hard trek to get to the cave and the friend who I was travelling with at the time decided to turn back and meet me at the outside of the cave. At this point it was pretty crazy because this wasn't a very touristy area so I was the only one in that section of the cave. It was complete darkness besides the little light on my head and you could hear the bats overhead. It was fun but scary at the same time being in the darkness that deep into the cave by myself. After a bit I ran into, once again, two Japanese guys hiking in the cave so I decided to hang out with them for the rest of my cave experience. After we left my friend and I went to another cave where on the way I saw my Japanese buddy from Vientiane again this time riding a motobike kind of haphazardly. I'm not really going to talk about too much about the second cave because it was much like the cave in Halong Bay, where they tried to gear it towards tourist but it ended up looking like a Disneyland line. The river outside of that cave though was a very beautiful color of blue.

After that we headed back to the small city of Vang Vieng and rented tubes for the remainder of the day and rode down the river, which was a really great experience. After that I was sitting with a group of people deciding where we would go next and quite a few of them were planning on going to Luang Prabang further up North, but by this point in time my cough was getting pretty bad and I wasn't feeling healthy at all so I decided to go back to Vientiane. Although I missed Luang Prabang this time around I will hit it up before I leave Southeast Asia as it is supposed to be pretty amazing. The day before I was leaving Vang Vieng I also ran out of money, but fortunately I had already purchased my bus ticket. This basicly meant I had to go a little light on the food for a day, but was still able to get back to the capital.

The next morning I left to go back to Vientiane and the journey back was pretty similar as it was going to Vang Vieng, beautiful but fortunately uneventful. Once I got to Vientiane I checked back into the Mixay Paradise Hotel and had a pretty low key night because as stated above I was really not feeling well. I ended up getting dinner, booking my train ticket to Bangkok, and attempting to go to bed. The next morning I woke up, had breakfast, and headed to the train station. The funny thing about the train station is that in Southeast Asia trains don't cross borders. So since Vientiane is right on the river and on the other side of the river is Thailand the train ride to the Thai border was literally 10 minutes and then we had to get off and switch to a Thai train. The two most eventful things were; one the border patrol guy once again charged me an extra 100 baht to cross the border that he put into his pocket, and then once again running into my Japanese buddy who was on the train to Bangkok as well. I am going to stop the blog here and will write about my last 4ish weeks in Thailand in my next blog that I will post in a few hours.