Vang Vieng

Saara and I took a terrifying 6 or 7 hour minibus ride through the mountains with a sharp cliff dropping off one side of us, cows and goats wandering freely on the road, and nine other terrified nauseous foreigners.

Partway through, we stopped for a (much needed) break, and some local kids came up to us. Luckily, Saara and I had visited Big Brother Mouse, a literacy project in Laos, and we had bought a book to give away. I thought that it was kind of lame, but I was SO suprised by the looks on the faces of these kids!! I'm not so sure that they can read, but they definetly appreciated the book (according to the people at Big Brother Mouse, even wealthy Lao kids don't own books)! Saara and I will definetly be buying some more books once we get to Vientiane.

Finally our minibus arrived at Vang Vieng... and kept driving... through town... to the other side of town where it dropped us at a remote guesthouse. I guess the driver got some cash for dropping us there instead of at the bus terminal. Saara and I rode in the back of a pickup to get back to the town and found a new, better-looking guesthouse, Thaviosouk. Last night we realized that the place is overrun with bugs that bite us, the shower is crazy-style, and the room floods when we take one of these crazy-style showers. This of course is sno problem; we just put our backpacks and clothes on the bed when we want to have a shower, then wear our flip flops indoors to give us grip on the soaking wet tiled floor.

It's been pouring rain every day here, and as the main attraction is tubing 3 km down the river, we haven't been having an awesome time. Luckily there are tonnes of lounge bars with many TVs playing Friends reruns. All day. Friends here, Friends across the street, Friends everywhere. I have no idea. Hopefully we'll get out of this place tomorrow.