That was the wake up call. “Egg fried rice? Chicken fried rice? Buffalo fried rice?” It was an early 6:00 am start, still in the dark, no one knowing if we would make it all the way down today. Some rumours were going around that we would stop in Pak Beng, but then the guy said it was just to let the people get their money back if they paid for accommodation (nice twist.)
We got to Pak Beng, and people off loaded to go get their money back, 20 minutes later they returned (without their money… the hotels had no idea what they were talking about) and we continued down the river with renewed doubt. I have been sick the pack couple days. Sort of a head/stomach thing… not bad, but not making the trip any more fun either. It clouded over and it really didn’t seem like we would have enough light to make the distance we needed, and a lot of us really started expecting another night in the sand, and we didn’t expect this one would be as much of a party. All of sudden there was a massive cloud burst, rain came down in buckets and it was really beautiful. The smell of rain was refreshing and it was neat to see all the locals continue to work as if nothing was changed.
We pulled into Luang Prabang in the dark, it was not at all what we expected. Laos, the untouched, untouristed country; Laos, where the roads are horrible, and travel is a nightmare; Laos, where everything is less civilized, less western. Apparently not. There was a huge river side strip of beautiful restaurants, guest houses all over, the roads were better than back home… maybe it looked even better considering what we had slept in last night.
We happened across a nice place for what turned out to be a really decent deal. We showered, watched TV and headed out for food. On our way out, we saw some boat people (as we call anyone who rode the boat with us) getting off a tuk-tuk… apparently we had much better luck finding a place than they did. Then we found a restaurant, and there were more boat people. We had a crepe for dessert, heard some people who were at the restaurant comment “look, they are eating again already” and went back to sleep. On the way back it really seemed more like we were walking down a street in Victoria… like walking down around the cook street village or something.
Oh, and we had a small pest in our room… a little tiny lizard. He doesn’t have a name, but we did build him a house.
By the way, happy birthday dano!