Back to the update...I had a lovely solo expedition in Luang Prabang, in which I walked from end of end of the city, taking oh roughly 30 minutes. I even happened to come upon this young boy training to become a monk, twirling his rich, thick orange robe in the air, right outside his wat, or temple. That night, we left for Vientiane on a night bus from (for lack of a better word), hell. Now, I pride myself on my strong, nothing can faze it stomach, but this bus ride was the most nauseating nine hours of my entire life. The one bright spot in an otherwise dismal trip was meeting Wei and Steve - our two new British friends!
Finally, after scaling the winding, turning, lurching Lao roads, we arrived in Vang Vieng at about 3am. Tired, crabby and with stomachs ready to revolt at any moment, we found the closest guesthouse and immediately crashed, despite the scratchy blankets and odd noises (including roosters, children yelling and clanging) all through the night. Then we awoke to finally see this hippie town in action - which, if you ever go, must include a tubing trip down the Mekong River!
However, we were crunched for time. After spending less than 12 hours in Vang Vieng, we embarked on our own mini Amazing Race. We woke up, ate breakfast at a cute cafe (thank the Lord for the French influence here - baguettes galore!), hit up a travel agent for bus times to Vientiane, found out the last bus left at 1:30pm, scheduled an hour tube ride down the river to begin at noon, lazily tubed about the river, raced out of the river, took a tuk-tuk back to our guesthouse, arrived at 1:20pm, grabbed our things, then took another tuk-tuk to the bus station, where we arrived promptly at 1:30pm, just in time to take off for Vientiane! If anybody ever wants to challenge me in the Amazing Race, all I have to say is bring it on!
Usually when I arrive in a country, I get an immediate vibe about the city and in the first half hour or so, can tell whether I like it. Unfortunately, I am not exactly feeling lots of love from Vientiane. However, after the yummiest Indian dinner of nan, channa masala and a baked eggplant dish (look at the mouthwatering spread below :), who happened to walk right past our restaurant, but Wei and Steve! Since our brush with fate, the four of us have been Vientiane buddies! They didn't even care that Lauren and I had not showered since our tubing excursion in the not-so-clean Mekong in Vang Vieng. If that isn't friendship, I don't know what is.
Now, if I only I had known before waking up on this glorious, bright day how much Vientiane was not feeling me either. The day started off with forking over 130$ for my visa for China - every other country in the world pays 60$, but if you carry a U.S. passport, the fee is markedly more. I'm convinced they are still upset about that whole communism thing (okay, that's a joke - I'm not serious!). Then, Lauren and I have been trying to figure out some logistics about our China trip and then, there is the motorbike incident. Cue dramatic music.
Since it seems that half of Vientiane gets around on motorbike, the four of us thought, why not spend an afternoon cruising the streets of Laos' capital just like the locals? Motorbike rentals are everywhere so we stopped by PVO - a restaurant by the water that has some of the best bikes in town. PVO wanted to charge us 80,000 kip (roughly 8$) for one day of rental, which isn't much by Western standards, but in Laos, that's definitely a rip-off. So, I put my sweet-talking skills to the test and spent the next half hour striking a deal with PVO. Naturally, my powers of persuasion won out in the end, and they offered us motorbikes for the rest of the day for 40,000 kip (4$). Done deal.
Now the story gets good...Lauren had never ridden before and after persuading the PVO man time and time again to give her one more chance, he finally told her, "You are going to crash if you keep riding." Strike #1. Then, as I am practicing along the trail, I tried to make a tight turn. All would have been fine except it was really rocky, and my bike skidded to the ground. When I bent down to pick it up, I grabbed it by the accelerator and before I knew it, the bike lurched forward. There I was running with my bike across the grassy field, making several close calls with pedestrians and trees. Finally, I let go of the accelerator and my bike flew forward, landing a few feet from the busy main road. Strike #2. Then, after Lauren had hopped on Steve's bike, and I had re-convinced PVO I indeed had ridden before, and I was not a liability, Wei ran his bike into several bushes. Strike #3.
The PVO man came over to us, and I believe his exact words were, "None of you can go." So after a half an hour of negotiation, a half an hour of practice and another half an hour of re-negotiation, motorbiking in Laos was just not in our future. With that, he grabbed my bike, and I was left to break the news to Steve - who was the only one of us not to make a mistake that day. The best part: right after we left, I saw an 8-year-old (yes, I swear!) cruise right past me on a motorbike, acting like driving one was no big deal. Whatever.
We decided our only option left was to go old school style and rent...bicycles. Yes, bicycles. We spent the rest of the day biking our little hearts out around Vientiane on old, half-broken bikes - visiting Patuxai (the Lao version of Paris's Arc d'Triomphe) and grabbing dinner along the Mekong River. However, our bad luck followed us like our very own shadow that day, seriously! At dinner, Lauren lost the key to her bike lock, Steve started not feeling so good, the chain fell off my bike on the way home, and the night ended with Wei and I spending three hours at an Internet cafe next to our guesthouse. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard in one day as I did on October 16, 2007 in Vientiane, Laos!
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