Over the mountain, through the rain, and to Luoang Prabang

Hello, and grettings from Luoang Prabrang or however you spell it.

This morning was just packing up, picking up some delious coconut bread, and getting the tuk tuk out to the bus station. The bus was suppose to leave at 10am but was delayed 30 minutes by the fact that one group of passangers slept in due to massive overconsuption of cheap alcohol the night before, as one could tell by how they sheepishly dragged themselves onto the bus.

Then we were off, Sara by request had the window seat. The air conditioning crapped out about 30 minutes in, but the windows could open so it wasn't so bad. The trip winded its way over the mountains twisting and turning every which way. Luckily no one ended up throwing up that we were aware of. I had my bets on a particularly hung over girl, but she didn't pull through for me. The scenery was some limestone krats to start then just rolling but very steep red clay mountains. The villages we passed especially very high up were quite poor. You could easily tell the difference between the wealth of each house. Poorest houses were built on wooden posts raised off the ground (all were raised off the ground at least a foot) and were weaved bamboo sides with a thatched roof. Next was either the thatched roof and weaved sides built on concrete pillars, or the wooden pillars with weaved sides but a metal roof. Next was the concrete pillars with the thatched sides and metal roof. Following that was the concrete pillars, wooden sides and metal roof. After that was the most expensive looking homes in town which were a full town stories with concrete pillars a metal roof, wooden upper story and concrete bricks filling in the area for the first floor. I had great interest in hopefully correctly figureing this out during the trip.

We passed through a number of rain storms, through the clouds once or twice, and had to stop twice once for the engine starting to overheat and once for the breaks starting to smell. Sara doesn't remember or disagrees that we stopped because the breaks smelled.

At the lunch stop, since we had brought food I was just walking around when I was approached by a number of kids. They ended up being from the local school and I figured that they probably came down here often, as their goal was to practice their english. I was happy to help and spent 15 minutes answering whatever questions I could. One of them was quite skilled, basic but skilled compared to most.

We arrived in Luang Prabang around 4:30pm (left at 10:30 after delay) and failed to reduce the price of the tuk tuk into town. We hoped that the hotel still had our reservation, which they didn't. But they still had a room open at their second hotel, which was the most expensive room in the place, but was very nice. So we took it.

We caught up with the world via BBC, and then went looking for dinner. On the way we dropped off our laundry, and Sara was invited to play badminton with some kids. As per usual she got competitive (go figure eh?) (note the kids looked no older than 8) and the birdy ended up in the sewer. Sara felt really bad and sent me back to the hotel for stuff from Canada. So we unloaded pencils, stickers, and an inflatable ball on the kids. Sara says if she finds a birdy she will buy one and go looking for the kids. Also on the way to dinner we saw a group of young men playing takaraw (a game like volleyball but no hands allowed we think) I remember trying it in gym once, and the whole class failing terribly. We would have watched for a while, but we were both hungry as we didn't eat much of a lunch.

We didn't bring the guidebook because we had an idea where we wanted to go for dinner, but we weren't impressed by the price or the lack of customers, so walked blindly around looking for a busy and nice looking place. It turned out to be only so-so and the menu didn't reflect what we got very well (I ordered from the stirfry part and got a soup). Sara has a bit of a headace and has had it all day, probably I think for dehydration, but we'll go relax and drink some water now.

Tomorrow will be an easy day, lining up a plane ticket to Bangkok for the fifth, shopping, and lining up tours, and maybe a Wat (temple) or two after we get our more appropiate clothes back from the laundry.

Tyson and Sara