Well, I don’t remember if I had mentioned before, but the place we got the “tour”/trip to Laos was at our guest house. We checked a few places, felt good about a couple, but eventually settled on getting it from our guest house because it was such a nice place and the people were always so helpful. We got a really good feeling for sure from it…
So we wake up in the morning, they let us leave our bags at reception and we went off to have our breakfast at the hotel we stayed at previously (which is connected to the guesthouse by management and proximity.) It was really tastey as always. The bus shows up (kind of like one of those big vans you would expect a bunch of rich Chinese tourists to pile out of, and once again we are the first people on. As we pick up people we realize that they are from some pretty upscale places, so our expectaions of the planned guest house (from the tour) went up a fair bit. I mean the pictures looked nice, but the pictures ALWAYS look nice.
We had a nice little pitstop and got some food, a little bathroom break, and then it was back to the airconditioned minibus/van; back to enjoying the countryside until we eventually pulled up to the guest house. We roll in, and WOW, this place is like some garden of Eden or something. The buildings are gorgeous wood siding, hidden among the trees, the brick and greenery paths through the gardens were picturesque. The pool looked fantastic, there was a little waterfall included, warm showers, lounge chairs, the works. Then we start reading the signs, and the rip-offs begin. Pool, an extra 50 baht, towel annother 120, cusion for the boar 40 baht… etc etc etc. They tell us that the way the tour is set up they need to send our passports ahead for the exit stamp, even though we insisted we wanted to do it, they said it wasn’t possible, we needed to fork over 180 baht for it too, plus they wanted 3 pictures for the visa (we wanted a visa on arrival, which shouldnt need a picture for obvious reasons.) They wouldn’t budge, and we didnt want to get stuck on the wrong side of the river with the tour carrying on so eventually we gave in.
I drew the line at water. I wandered through town to find cheaper water (as I drink a lot of it) and I refused to buy one of their damned cusion (it’s almost like I have some dutch in me eh?) We (Amy and I) DID give in to the pool fee as it was so warm, and granted, it was enjoyable, but when it was time to use the warm showers after… I think I spent a good hour in there enjoying the hot water after.
After dinner (no one understand a buffet over here I suppose) and a movie, we went to sleep in our room under mosquito nets, leaving the door open to try and stay cool through the night.