Vang Vieng and Vientiane

Vang Vieng is spring break with no rules.  It is anarchy gone mad, it is another world.  It is a small town along a river with beautiful muontains.  As you walk through the town all you hear is family guy and friends playing at every bar and restaurant. Sometimes you can catch the simpsons or a movie.  The reason for this is that by the time people get to the restaurants they are smashed, high, drunk, tripping, pie eyed, messed up or coming down. 

The main attration of the town is floating down the river for a few hours in a tube.  The river is lined with bars.  Each bar has a giant slide or zipline to catapolt you into the water and they serve lots of drinks and shots and the famous bathtub made drink Lao lao.  This is along with 'happy pizza' that will make you see god and the devil or both and the same.  My first zipline... you hold a bar then let go over the river was fun until my feet hit the ground in the river... I didnt break any bones but I realized safety might be an issue hear, and as the river was running low at the time I didnt go for any more of the 'attractions'.   As you walk through town there are drunk and screaming tourists googlyeyed and unable to deal with the feeling that the laws of gravity seem to be on holiday too. What could be better than to plop down for 4 hours of family guy!  At the bars you can get the 'happy pizza' either green or fungus,  you can buy spliffs or go for the happy 'O' tea.  I didnt go for this but I did enjoy the fact that happy hour at the bars mean a spliff with every order.  So why was I here you might ask?  One reason is that Sam (remmeber Sam? form the last post) well he was there and we hgappened to be destined to run into each other everywhere...  As well there is stuning scenery and some good hiking...Aparently caves too but it was closed when I went.  Here is the way up this knob...  There was a sign saying this way to go up the ountain, I had thought it was a day hike, but it was only 15 minutes, but well worth it...

On top I founs this neat nest/hive that I watched for al ong time...so cool to see the wasps goingin and out, crawling all over each other...I pointed it out to some other peole and except for one man eveyone freaked out!

The view of Vang Vieng

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The mountains the river runs through...

This is the Knob

I headed next to Vinetiane the capital of Laos to get a Visa for Thailand...Here is my one picture of the city...  I was happy not to have to spend too much time there...  On the street the dy I arrived I once again bumped into Sam who was on his way to a nature reserve for a night....

My hotel had a strict policy w\hcih helped explain my sudden popularity...

It is not every night I walk home and have 5 or 6 beautiful girls (atleast they all looked like girls) try to pic me up... Then I realized they were more interested in my wallet than me... but i felt like a star for a while... It takes on night to get a visa which gave me a day to walk around some which I did with a girl I met at the Thai embassy.  We happened to be eating at the smae indian restaurant a 30 minute walk form the embassy so that was to large a coincidence not to talk about.    At night I was half spectating and half participating in a conversation about Israle between to very opposite ends of the spectrum.  On side was a right wing Israeli... and the other a left... while I am usually left sided they both had great arguments, many dates and facts and truly elieved with their hearts whatthey were saying.  It was very interesting... 

The next day I received my visa and headed to the night train to Bangkok....  Guess who was in my car??  Thats right, SAM!  The last Sam sighting was in the morning at the Bangkok train station but who knows...maybe he is right next door... and maybe he is looking over your shoulder..if he is say Hi for me!

Whe I crossed the border to thailand...you take a short train to the border, wlak across and get on the sleepr train to Bangkok, this army officer was taking pictures of the people coming through.  So I smiled and took out my camera and took a pic of him.  Luckily he smiled and thought it was funny... It is generally not good to joke at borders....

The night train was great, it is very comfy and I slept most of the way...It was also christmas eve and when I woke I found to my dismay that Santa had not found me!  (Last year I got a pair of socks)