So the story goes...

So the story goes that Tyson ripped off an old Lao man at his silver shop. You will have to keep reading if you want to know more.

The day began with the alarm going off at 5:30am.. to which i rolled over and Tyson asked.. are you getting up to see the alms this morning? To which i some what grunted a no. But i really could have since before the alarm went off this really really wierd noise was heard from outside our room, or in our room or something.. it sounded like some exotic animal.. and I thought here was my chance to capture a helper monkey.. but no dice.. i also thought maybe it was a snake coming up into my bed.. (last night at the market we saw a snake, the first one i have ever seen in the wild.. it was freaky and all the Lao people were freaking out.. but the Aussie girl next to me was like.. "what is everyone freaking out about?" To which I replied "oh there is a snake right there." To which she said, "oooo big deal a snake and everyone freaks out." They have a lot of snakes in aussie land. Anyways I wasn't getting up my throat was still sore and sleep was good. The alarm kept going on and off on and off on and off until Tyson let it ring the whole way through at 7:00am... (at 5:30 I reset the clock to 7am, not keep ringing) Oh anyways i thought maybe he had given up on going on the 8am boat tour to the caves and that we were going to sleep in. No dice.. he politely woke me up saying we have 20 minutes if we want breakfast. So up i got and we rushed to get breakfast and buy our boat tickets.

The boat ride was nice about 2 hours on a slow boat to the cave. We stopped at a floating gas station.. which had no gas.. so we had to go back to the city to get gas... typical haha. So we got to the caves last.

The caves was a tourist destination. I hadn't seen that many tourist the whole trip in one place and not at downtown and it kind of ruined it for me. Kids haggling you to buy a bird in a cage and let it go at the top of the cave only to get captured again... so we think. The caves are a place to store (the book said 400,000 old war torn buddha statues) There was more like a couple hundred maybe a couple thousand. It was nice, but not like WOW! The boat journey was the best part of it. Since it was only 6 people per boat and it was slow and the wind was nice and the mekong and the jungle were nice to look at as well. I even had a cat nap.

On the way back we stopped at a tourist village (how disappointing) that was a Whiskey village... (basically they made whiskey) along with selling scarfs and such. It took me like 30 seconds to walk the joint and then decided to go back to the boat hoping others would follow suite. The couple from the UK did, but these two other ladies took forever! Oh well. (Tyson says like 20 minutes.. but that was all the time we got was 20 minutes). I actually think the boat driver went and got them. We got back to the city at 1:30pm and decided for lunch.

I won't say what i had for lunch because it wasn't healthy. Tyson had wood. Literally.. bamboo shoots. It was nasty.. it tasted like earth. But he ate it all. Now to the best part...

After lunch we took a tuk tuk to the sliversmith because it was like 2074302740297 degrees outside... maybe we were on mars? Anyways it was hot too hot to walk 1km.. maybe a little more than that. Anyways we went to the sliversmith to pick up another item. The shop was closed but the silversmiths were working outside. So we asked if we could get in, they got the old man who i presume ran the buisness with his wife who we dealt with ealier in the week must be the person who does all the books for him while he does the silversmithing. Anyways the little old man was cute and old... and really didn't know how to work the calculator all that well. He actually didn't even know the price but we did because we had gotten something similar for the same price. Well this is how it went, Tyson told him the real price in dollars and since we didnt have US cash we convereted it to KIP. He struggled to do it himself.. poor guy.. and gave Tyson a better exchange rate (8500 to the dollar, when it is actually 8650.. or 8700) anyways the man had no idea and just said ok.. i felt bad because we knew the price and the exchange rate and Tyson just basically took this man's lunch money.. poor poor old man. (Poor old man that chargers the highest rates in town (for the best stuff, but still) and has 5 full time employees silversmithing for him all day long, who's customers are some of the wealthiest people in southeast asia). Poor poor cute old man. (I just did the math, and I underpaid what I paid last time by 6000 kip, or 75 cents) Like I said the poor poor cute old man's lunch money. Anyways.. thats the story.

We then retreated back to our guesthouse but we stopped for something that starts with an I and ends with Cream... which is STUPIDLY hard to find here... Two things i would do if i was to run a buisness in Laos. 1) Build a guesthouse with a pool, and 2) Have more ice cream stalls that are safe icecream.

Anyways Tyson finished life of pi it amazes me how he can read for soooo long with out falling asleep. I as usual had my read and siesta.

We then finished our shopping since we leave tomorrow to go back to Bangkok. Then had dinner and now we found an internet place (we used this one last night too) that is the hub of where monks come to use the internet.. there is currently 6 monks in here right now.. and they use hotmail.. how society evolves blows my mind away.

Tomorrow we fly to bangkok in the afternoon, maybe i will make it up to see the alms giving. (i don't see why you couldn't make it, the monks are here with us now, and they have to get up that early) If i wanted to get up early then I would become a monk wouldn't I? (No because you are a girl, a nun if so choose, they get up early too, but not a monk.) Whatever, am I a nun? Noooooo... am I on vacation... Yesssss. Then we will be home in a couple of days.

Till tomorrow.
Sara and Tyson