Laos

I vacated the Bangkok homestay hostel in the evening though my train was scheduled to depart in the night to Vientiane border as I intended to take a long walk around Thai. Hostel mates and me exchanged good bye’s, all the best’s, facebook and couch surfing ID’s and I never knew I would meet few in Lao and Cambodia. After a 15 km walk I reached the train station without much hassle. I met Rick an Australian who has been working on a farm in Thailand on a Volunteer visa and we happened to be in the same compartment. In a while an old man in his 70’s sat next to us and he looked like a Brit, but he happened to be a Scottish. He was a history professor at Stanford, traveled over 70 countries so far, Cartoonist, an out cast without spouse or children, holding 4 passports..etc. Can I think of a better travel buddy? We stayed awake most part of the night chatting (more of me questioning and he answering) and in the morning the train was delayed by 3 hours, hence the Scotsman had to bare with me for another interview session. I was under the impression that he was travelling with us to Lao until we landed at the border. He was on his way to china and caught hold of a moped guy to get dropped somewhere along the mecow river in the hope of finding a boat. This is what differentiates a tourist and a traveler. I got my passport stamped for 1000 INR and was on my way to Vientiane in a tuk tuk.

Vientiane has two shades, ugly and gorgeous and we were dropped at the uglier side of the city. I started looking for a minivan to take me to Vangvieng, 5 hours drive from Vientiene. A mediator approached me at the bus station and asked me if I wanted to go to vienvieng in his cab and his cab looked neat and he said it was suppose to depart in 30 mins. 30 mins turned out to be 3 hours. I met Florian, a political scientist from Germany working closely with the Lao government to cultivate legal puppy (dope or grass or drug). He happened to be my travel buddy for the next 4 days in Laos.

Vienviang is a small village in Laos with beautiful landscapes, cheap hostels, relaxing climate, more Europeans than the local population..etc. I would not mind spending my retired life here. The prices goes like this, $1 to stay in a hostel per day with free WiFi, a breakfast consisting of a big egg sandwich with cheese and a big cup of cappuccino in front of the meckw river and random shaped huge hills at the backdrop costs 40 INR. The favorite pastime for a traveler here is to hire a tube for $1 and jump into the river, he is pulled with a rope at the first bar he finds and picks a bucket of vodka or whisky (literally a bucket with cubes, 180 ml vodka and sprite) and he keeps drinking and floating along the river and into the alcohol and this process is continued until he is completely slouched and found on the riverbed the next day.  

Myself and Florien hired a moped for 2$ each and setout to explore the village. Florien has never driven a moped in the past and to add to the misery the roads were in a horrible state, and it is a perfect combination for an India to showoff his capabilities in front of an European. I always stayed ahead of him, did not slow down at potholes..etc and he was amazed looking at my driving skills (I could laugh at myself).

Vienviang is also know for the caves in between the river and there are probably 20 or 30 of them and we met Nicha and Candice at one of the caves. They were 2 cute girls going be ladies soon from Thailand on a short vacation to Lao. We had a delicious lunch together and headed to blue lagoon as it slowly started to rain and within few minutes it was poring with roar and lightning. But that did not stop us from going to the blue lagoon, climbing another cave, maybe 1000 ft from the ground, slipping, falling, Florien’s camera slipping from his hand and a beautiful sight to see a Sony digital camera sinking 1000ft in the rain and landing on the ground and to see lenses, battery, body all spread across on the ground. After a good cheer up session to Florien we headed back to our hostels and freshened up and met in the evening for a party near the river which went on till late night.

The next day it was time to depart and bid adieu to all. Florien was leaving to another city in Laos to report on duty, Nicha and Candice to Thailand and me to Vietnam.