What boat?

After leaving Luang Namtha, I went straight to the next couchsurfer, who was a german guy named Chris from the same volunteer program as my host in Namtha. There were 4 germans in the house and I went out to dinner with them and then to a Lao club, which was really fun and cute. That was my one night in Oudom Xai. Actually, the night wasn't over. We returned to their house and to my surprise the party had beaten me home. I was feeling a little nauseous from a questionable lunch and ended up not sleeping at all, feeling too nauseous to sleep, but not quite enough to vomit. The next day in the bus was miserable, but since I'm reading The Power of Now and it tells me to just be present and not keep thinking about the past and the future I tried to sit with my discomfort. I'm not quite there yet. I found myself having very high expectations of getting off the bus. Happy to be out of the bus I headed towards downtown Nong Kiaw.

View upstream from the bridge in Nong Kiaw.

What a beautiful place, deep in a valley bellow limestone cliffs split by a tranquil brown river. I shared a room with a Russian named Taras, and then went to check out some caves with our neighbors, two German travellers. I decided to take the boat down from Nong Kiaw to Luang Prabang with the German's. We went to the pier and bought a ticket around 9:30 and waited for the boat to leave. At 11:30 we were informed that although people had signed up to take the boat, only 7 people had actually showed up and gotten a ticket. They refused to leave unless we pay double or find more people to fill up the boat. So we walked to the bus station and waited there for 2 hours for a minibus to fill up. On the 4 hour bus ride we had to get out and wait for an hour for the bus to cool down. We finally arrived in Luang Prabang, and after much searching found a cheap room. Once we got over the frustrating day, which wasn't too hard for me, since time is not really a precious commodity in my life right now, I found the town to be quite charming, just as everyone had told me.

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One of my favorite parts of being here is the lack of safety regulations

It's packed with old temples and has a great evening market. I spent 3 night in LP with the Connie, the German girl, visiting temples and roaming about.

The king's palace in Luang Prabang

The only reason I haven't taken more pictures like this is that it's so normal here.

We also visited a nearby waterfall with a rope swing downstream.

I spent an hour that evening skipping rocks and taking pictures with 3 local kids. They had very high expectations of my Lao, which I repeatedly failed to meet.

Two of the kids I hung out with at the river.

This morning I finally managed to get up early again and went to see the monk's alms procession. This involves lots of monks walking down the street with a container and lay people sitting on the sidewalk giving each monk a pinch of food(rice). The monks must have amazing immune systems, since every person who they receive food from touches it. I found the procession to be unspectacular, so I slipped away to the top of the hill in town where I sat alone and took pictures of the mist and sun rising.

Now I'm in my room in Vang Vieng, which I am sharing with an Indian I met on the bus ride down here.