'Nam

* I wrote this 10 days ago but didn't get the chance to post it until now :)

HEY. My parents and I just boarded a second class train from Surat Thani in southern Thailand on our way to Bangkok for the next chunk of our trip. It’s pretty dece, similar to the ones in Vietnam, only instead of sleeper bunks there are seats that convert into bunks! What a treat! Also Chang beers are delivered on demand! Ooh but I just saw a cockroach. Better keep that one to myself and not tell mom.

So lets roll back 2 weeks ago. Exams finished up on Nov 20^th (they went really well, thanks for asking!) and immediately after I finished my last one I grabbed my backpack and jumped on a night bus to Kuala Lumpur with Evan.  Early morning I woke Evan up and pushed us off the bus outside Pudaraya so that we could grab a cab to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal outside of KL. Our cabbie was nuts, maintaining 140 on the empty highways at 3am in a little POS car that sounded like it had trouble topping 100. Not to mention she made a few drastically wrong turns but because we set the rate prior it was no big deal. Our flight from KL to Hanoi, Vietnam left at 6:30am and arrived there nice and early. We jumped a public bus to downtown and made our way to the Hanoi Phoenix Hotel, which Jen recommended as a good home base. It sure was!  The staff was super friendly, we got free coffee/tea/bananas and Internet access and we even snuck in a free breakfast though we didn’t stay a single night there.

Through the Phoenix hotel, we booked a trip up to Sa Pa and another to Halong bay as well as train tickets to and from Da Nang. Basically, after paying for these trips I was set for the week although we still had to pay for all the stuff we bought and food and cab rides, etc.

We walked around Hanoi for most of the afternoon. It looked extremely similar to any typical big Asian city but the one thing that set it apart was the traffic. Unbelievable. There were mopeds and scooters and bicycles EVERYWHERE. It was so chaotic its way too difficult to try and explain it. Evan took a few videos though so I’ll try to get a hold of those. In one I strapped on my recently purchased moped helmet and tried to cross the street. The two wheeled vehicles will take you into account along with everything else and maneuver around you, so you really only need to worry about the larger vehicles. Still, just crazy.

That night we grabbed some dinner, spoilt ourselves with a massage and grabbed some shisha before being picked up from our hotel and taken to catch the night train to SaPa. The trains were sweet! They were all super old and broken down but were quite a bit of fun. Two bunkbeds per room and we were fortunate to get good roommates each trip! Food and beverage carts came around and we really just chilled, read books, talked with our bed buddies, listened to music and slept.

Early the next morning we were shuttled from the train station in Lao Cai and taken to a cool little hotel in Sapa. Sapa is a small town located in the northernmost province of Vietnam, pretty much on the border with China. It is at a decently high elevation and therefore, it was fricken cold! Okay, not cold, but chilly. I’ve definitely gotten soft over the last few months in Asia and close to freezing knocked me on my ass. I didn’t bring jeans so I went on a quest to buy some warm socks and a pair of traditional legwarmers that the local Black Hmong Tribal girls wore. Of course I succeeded, so I spent the rest of the trip decked out in chick leg wear. Yup!  So that day we spent hiking all over the hills surrounding Sapa. We went around terraced rice fields, through local tribal villages and over and around rivers through the mountainsides. The scenery was unbelievable and I stopped so many times to take pictures of the rice terraces I was always rushing to catch up to the group. That night we did a home stay in a little house overlooking the valley. There were 10 of us at the house and we were given a delicious home cooked meal complete with homemade rice wine (which was pretty terrible but got you drunk regardless). Our beds were single mattresses on a second level in the wooden house. So so so cool! The next morning we hiked some more, across the top of the valley, through a bamboo forest and to a waterfall. After lunch we walked up to our pickup location and played some volleyball on a court outside a local elementary school. Back at the hotel we were given dinner and then shuttled back to the train station to take another night train back to Hanoi.

The next morning we walked to the Phoenix hotel and relaxed for an hour before heading out on our trip to Halong Bay. It ended up being over a 4-hour van ride before we actually got there. Evan and I decided to do the kayaking option so we were quickly separated from our group and placed on a junk (an old wooden boat) that left immediately after we got on it. The whole voyage was beautiful and I definitely enjoyed that part of the whole trip, but our lunch was mediocre, we were rushed everywhere we went and it felt like the people on the boat didn’t give two shits about our experience. Kind of disheartening in such an unbelievable place, but that’s what tourism does I guess. The whole harbor was full of junks trying to get a piece of the Vietnam travel crowd. Anyways, check the pictures and you will see why this place has become such a huge draw for the international crowd… it really is something else. Though I should mention that the Phang-Nga area in southern Thailand is extremely similar and tour companies such as John Gray’s Sea Canoe do fantastic tours through that region. Definitely a 100 times better than my Halong Bay experience.

Okay so that evening we jumped on another bus back to Hanoi (yup, a lot of transit time huh? I only had a week to work with so it had to be that way). We got back just in time to catch the late night train down to Da Nang. The trip from Hanoi- Da Nang was 15 hours, 12 of which are pretty easy to deal with. The other 3 are just brutal. You can’t sleep any more and your body just wants to move. In Da Nang we met a couple who was heading to Hoi An as well, so we spilt a cab there.

Hoi An is a small town/city about halfway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. It has become a pretty big tourist draw because of its middle location, but most importantly, because of it’s experienced and fantastically cheap tailors. I only had one full day to spend there, so I was determined to make the most of it. We shopped around a bit and eventually settled on a tailor shop called Indo Chine. I ordered a cashmere wool suit (so ballin), two dress shirts and two warm jackets for work this winter. Each piece was tailor made to my measurements, completed in about 16 hours and in total only cost me about $250SGD. I could have easily dropped a G there so its probably best that I didn’t stay any longer.  I left Evan there and caught the night train back up to Hanoi. I spent the day relaxing around Hanoi and at the Phoenix hotel before heading to the airport to catch my night flight back to Singapore.

So, there’s my weeklong Vietnam trip in a nutshell. If you are thinking of going to South East Asia anytime in the future, please give me a shout and lets sit down to talk about it! Vietnam is wonderful and I wish I had a little longer to explore, especially down south, but that’s just how it goes I guess.

I met my parents in Singapore 24 hours after I got back from Vietnam and we have already done a bunch of traveling around S’pore and Thailand. If any of you have been paying attention to the news, the Bangkok airport had been closed since Tuesday because of political protests. It has finally opened back up but not before throwing our plans to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia out the window. At least I managed to make a bunch of last minute flight changes and alternate travel arrangements and the last few days have been a good adventure. It’s hard to believe that, looking at the calendar, I only have 14 days left on this side of the world.  It’s going to be awfully strange to come back home and get back into the same old routine, especially since my life has been one hectic adventure after the other. I am looking forward to seeing everyone though, especially my brothers and my Grandma (its been 2 years since I’ve seen her!).

Thanks for reading! When I’m back in Canada, lets do coffee. I want to talk.

Cheers,

Matt

 

Todays Spin: Everything I Build – The Stills

West Phili(ppines) born and raised.

Good afternoon. Mhhhmmmm. I'm legendary anchorman Ron Burgandy. Sitting here in my Aquajet nine thousand enjoying a, well, my usual meal of steak, waffles, french fries and of course scotch. Now if you don't think this song is the greatest song ever, I will fight you... thats no lie. Haha, whats up. Anchorman is hilarious. 

Here's a quick summary of my trip to the Philippines a couple weeks ago! I'm keeping it short because I should be studying. 

So Drew and I flew into the Clark airport two hours north of Manila. From there we took a bus and 5 hours later we arrived in downtown Malate, part of greater Manila. We found a decent room on the main street and headed to a tour agency to figure out our plans for the rest of the weekend. Our goal was to fly down to the main tourist destination in the Philippines, Boracay. The cheapest flight that we could find was over $250 each round trip, plus we knew it was going to be relatively expensive on the island so we were a little hesitant. The plan was to wait until the following morning to make up our minds. That night we grabbed some dinner, bought a bottle of Rhum for under 2 dollars with some coke (cost more than the alcohol) and two plastic cups. We hailed a cab and asked him to drive us to a cockfight. We drove over to Pasay City while sipping on our drinks in the back. Unfortunately, the cockfights were finished at the Pasay City cockpit by the time that we got there so we drove over to another cockpit. This new cockpit was in the same boat and it looked like we were out of hope for the night. The same driver dropped us back close to our hotel and we grabbed dinner and a bunch of $0.80 San Miguels. From there we walked down the street that had, by that time, turned into the Red Light District of Manila haha. Grabbed beers at a few more bars on the side of the road and talked to a bunch of hookers who seemed to be very enamored with us. Who woulda thought? Later that night we checked out the Bedrock nightclub and eventually made it back home where we both crashed in our grossly hot room. 

In the morning we grabbed breaky at Starbucks and made our way to book our tickets to Boracay (we didn't really know what else to do). LITERALLY a block away from the agency, we ran into Hossein and Martin, two other exchange students from Singapore. They convinced us to head up north to La Union with them for some surfing. Done and done. We had the whole day to use up in Manila though so we took advantage of some streetside advertising and headed to a back alley firing range. There we each got to try out a revolver with about 20 rounds each. I've never fired a gun before and it was friggen intense. Not a bad shot though, I'll have to show you my chart. From there we did a tour around some historical spots including the Philippine wall and a monument to their hero, Jose Rizal. Then we hit the mall of Asia and eventually made our way back to the Pasay City cockpit. Lucky for us there was a cockfight DERBY going on! Instead of paying the usual 100peso entrance fee we had to pay 700 but there were fights going constantly all day. We stayed for a good 10-15 fights. 

K here's a description of the fights. I had NO idea what to expect going into that building. Turns out, its very much like any stadium back home with a set ring in the middle and stands surrounding it. There were also vendors walking around and snacks and refreshments downstairs haha. Okay so the fight... Two chickens/roosters/cocks/whatever were brought out by their owners. Two other birds were brought in with the sole purpose of enraging the contenders. For a good 5 minutes they would piss these birds off. Meanwhile, an announcer would count down from 10 for some reason and bidding would start around the ring. Now I'm sure that whatever you are picturing in your head can't compare to what actually happens. A few people stand up and begin shouting around the building with no real target as to who they are shouting at. They raise their arms and shake their hands at each other and continue to change the number of fingers they hold up. Eventually the majority of the building would be up on their feet and would be shouting and pointing and waving at each other which somehow corresponds to bets being placed on the cocks. I have no idea who was taking the bets and who was actually doing the betting but I know that something was definitely happening because after the fight you would see small wads of bills being thrown around the ring to the winners. Not to mention that the people throwing those bills were dead-on accurate every time. 

Okay to the fight. The birds are left alone in the ring after being pissed off. One usually would stand still while the other would slowly walk around the ring and pretend that the other wasn't even there. It would maybe stare at the crowd, flap its wings or make some rooster like crows. Oh I should mention that each of the birds had a sharp razor attached to its left foot, to help inflict maximum damage haha. Eventually the one bird would get just a hair too close to the other and without warning, they would both launch into the air towards each other. What you could see was just a flurry of wings, feathers, claws, beaks and whatever else smashing into each other. They would continue to hit the ground and fly back up at each other. Sometimes one would duck the other. This kept on until one was injured to the point that it couldn't do much anymore, and the referee (yup) would step in and pick up both the birds. He would then hold them up against each other face to face. If both birds tried to peck at each other then he would set them down to continue fighting. If one bird could no longer stand or if it didn't peck at the other, signifying that it didn't want to fight anymore, it would be declared the loser. I should mention that there were never any cheers from the crowd which was kind of weird since there was a lot of money being moved. Cool first cockfight experience. 

So that night we took a bus north to La Union and luckily found a room when we arrived at 6am. The next few days I spent laying around on the beach, surfing in the ocean and drinking cheap alcohol. Oh yeah and it just so happened that we landed at the beach on the same weekend that they had huge Oktoberfest celebrations, a surfing competition and a stage show. It seemed like everything worked out in our favor this trip!

Allright, I pretty much only described our first two days but they were the most action packed. The rest of the time was relaxing and ridiculous beach time that I won't go into too much detail on. I will mention that we met some wicked locals who were fantastic at Frisbee and actually had their own Ultimate team which was amazing!! Definitely fun to party with too. Oh and I managed to make it back to Singapore, get a few hours of sleep and then go to my final presentation in Environmental. Alllllright!

So I'm in the middle of finals right now. First two went well and my last two are next Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday night I go to KL then fly to Hanoi the next morning. Then its a week in Vietnam before flying back to Singapore on the 28th to meet my parents! We'll spend 4 days in Singapore, then 3 days in Cambodia, then 9 days in Bangkok/Chang Mai, then 7 days in Phuket / Krabi before coming back to Singapore to fly home home!! Yup, so I'll see you boys and girls sooner than we both think. 

LOL (lots of love according to my mom).

Matty

Today's Spin: Divine Intervention - Autopilot Off

Laos

Allright guys I am soooo sorry to keep you on the edge of your seat for so long, I know you've been waiting to hear about tubing down the river in Laos and I'm happy to say that I finally found some time to go through it all! Since I got back from my trip I've been getting caught up in school and for the most part, have been pretty successful. I'm about halfway through my final essay for History (which is a PAIN mostly because it has been over 3 years since I've written a real essay!!) but I think it is really coming along. It's about the Japanese Occupation of Singapore during WWII and how it affected the Singaporean people. I've also almost caught up in Process Control which is good because we have a quiz next Tuesday. Oh and our Environmental project is coming along, although we have a meeting today to discuss a LOT of issues. If I didn't mention it, the project is essentially a big comparison between Singapore's environmental policies with another city (we chose Toronto). In the rough draft we received a 6 page detailed section on wastewater treatment (should be between 1 and 2 pages) and a recommendation for Toronto to 'be aware that since our water comes from a single source, we are susceptible to terrorist and biological attacks to our water supply'. We laugh because Lake Ontario is already polluted haha. Anyways, thats 'real' life for me now. 

Okay so back to where I left off from the last post. 

After meeting up with the girls, we stayed in Vientiane at very nice hotel along the Mekong river. The next morning we got up, had breakfast, and took a bus to Vang Vieng. If Vientiane has the distinction of being the most bombed city in the world, Vang Vieng is known as the 'chill-out' town of Laos, to quote Ashley. It's pretty easy to understand why. On the bus ride there (which was 5-6 hours) you could consistently watch the landscape shape more from flat rice fields to old, forested mountains. Along the sides of the road you would catch glimpses of small towns where people were doing their daily things... most people tended to just be sitting outside their house and be viewing the world as it passes. Another thing that we noticed was that there were SO many children... everywhere! Jumping ahead a bit, I was reading an old National Geographic from 1980 in one of the Cafe's where we had breakfast in Luang Prabang and there was an article about the movement of a certain tribe in Laos to the southern United States if you can believe it. The one woman they interviewed mentioned that it is culturally accepted and actually encouraged for each woman to have many, many children and that she would be shunned by her family back home if she used birth control while in America. For such a poor country, I couldn't understand why a family would want more mouth's to feed. The kids were friggen adorable though!! If they would ever catch your eye they would yell "Sabadee!" and wave at you, which is the standard Laosian Greeting. They were so cute! 

Anyways, in Vang Vieng we were dropped off at a specific hotel which was actually a set of bungalows set right along the river. It was actually sort of lucky, because we never would have found that place if we had been dropped in the main part of town which was a good 10 min walk away. So for the rest of the day, we checked out the restaurant at our guest house, walked to town, set up a tour for the next day, checked out an internet cafe and then made our way to a small bar where they had a season of Friends playing haha. It seemed to be a popular thing in Vang Vieng, some other restaurants had Friends, Family Guy, Simpsons and Seinfeld playing. Kind of bizarre in that sort of a setting... in the middle of the mountains in Laos and we were watching Friends while drinking cheap BeerLao's. 

The next day was AWESOME. God... where do I even begin. Okay so we had breakfast, got picked up by a tuk-tuk and driven what I will assume as north from the town for about 30 minutes. There we got out and hopped in a big, long wooden boat that motored its way across the river that was flowing pretty quick. On the other side we went for a walk through a small village with pigs, cows, chickens, kids and water buffalo's roaming around. On the other side of the village we checked out a small buddhist temple in a cave called the Elephant Cave. They named it this because there was a small natural rock formation that looked a lot like an elephant. It was pretty cool, but in retrospect it definitely doesn't compare to the temples in Luang Prabang. From there, we took a hike through a couple rice fields, climbed over some fence barriers and made our way to a little shack on the edge of a small river/stream. There we were given old school battery packs that we hung around our necks and a tangled mess of wires that connected to a headlight. We jumped into some inner tubes and started floating in the pool of water just outside of a cave. From there our guide led us into the cave by pulling on ropes that had been fastened along the edges of the rock. It's really tough to describe how it was on the inside because we were all a little on edge I think, but we floated for a while while dodging stalactites and eventually dropped our tubes when it got too skinny to float through. From there, we crawled on our hands and knees through the cave for about 30 minutes, only getting to stretch out a few times. It was super muddy and wet inside, so John (our guide) showed us how they apply their natural sunscreen which is basically just smearing clay on your face haha. I came out of that cave looking awesome. A few times in the cave we would have to wade through parts of the stream in order to get around and once we even had to army crawl to get through a small hole. Oh and I saw a bunch of these HUGE spiders that I moved past awfully quickly. Still, so cool.

Outside the cave we were given lunch which consisted of chicken rice, chicken and vegetable skewers and fresh baguettes!! Laos used to be under French colonial rule, and they left a lasting impression on the people because there were so many fresh bakeries and fresh baguettes were available everywhere. It was wonderful, Singapore doesn't have a whole lot in the fresh bread department unless you go looking. 

After lunch we made our way back to the tuk-tuk and drove south a bit until we reached the set-off point for our TUBING adventure!

This is the highlight of a lot of people's Laos trip so I want to do it justice. Basically you start sometime in the early afternoon after a good lunch and you are ensured a long day of drinking. You float down the river and paddle your way to the side when you see a bar coming up that you wish to partake in festivities at. A helper would throw some sort of buoyant object such as a tube or a ball or even just a stick of bamboo that you would grab onto and be pulled into the bar. There you would dump your tube and head up to a chill area where you could get large BeerLao's (750mL, oh yeah) for 10000kip which is the equivalent of about $1.50 CDN. The first bar we stopped at was super busy and there was some techno/house/euro bumpin. They also had a HUGE rope swing that you literally had to climb up a tree to get to. At the top you were given some quick instructions and given the go ahead. Pretty lax, just like everything else in Laos. I should mention that we had plenty of warning before attempting these rope swings. We met two people just beforehand at the cave and they showed us their bruises from landing incorrectly on the water. That scared me enough to make sure I didn't do anything stupid... right away that is! Haha so as I am finishing up my first BeerLao, Jen and Ash took a walk up to the platform. Ash went first and she had me videotaping the whole thing. Unfortunately, the guy at the top failed to tell her to keep her arms straight while swinging and shortly after she pushed off, her bent arms couldn't hold her up against the gravity and she pretty much belly-flopped into the water. Seriously bad news considering she was the first of the lot to go!! She came out with the wind knocked out of her and some nice war wounds to show off the next week or two lol. At least she's a tough girl and that didn't put a damper on the rest of her afternoon! OH and I got it on video!! It's funny to look at after the fact :P Jen went next and did a magnificent 1 1/2 full swings and landed nicely in the water. Phew. Our guide said he was goin up so I pounded the rest of my beer and went with him. He was a great guy, lots of fun, even though he only knew a very limited amount of english which mostly included random nouns so that he could explain things! He decided to swing down on one arm haha. I opted for two and figured out the sweet spot quick enough to land properly. 

Now on to the next bar!! We jumped in tubes and hit another techno style bar just downstream. Another beer for me but a bucket to split for the girls. This rope swing was a bit lower and less extreme than the last. I went off it a bunch of times cuz I was feelin good, but the excitement came when we tried to convince Alisa to go off one! With the help of a lifejacket, the support of the entire bar and a lot of persuasion she went off it!

The next bar was a bit further down, but was probably the best of the bunch! The music was more rap/hip hop and there were little cabanas to sit down in. There was also a volleyball court complete with a volleyball, only instead of a level playing field, both sides were made up of MUD pits. And instead of another rope swing there was a zip-line that zipped out to the middle of the river!! Another beer later and Jen and I headed up to give it a try. The line was actually really long and you could pick up speed pretty quick!! In order to signal the end of your ride, there was a large buckle in the line that initiated your exit. You would clip the buckle if you held on long enough and it would make you do all sorts of flippy's in the air because of the momentum! I saw a lot of people land on their backs and stomachs and heads because they just let it do it's thing. I was feelin it though, so as I zipped along I pushed my body weight into the buckle and did a backflip into the water. It was AWESOME! Jen zippyed with no problem and decided to drop before the buckle. We both thought it was so awesome that we did it again! When we came back we found the rest of the group tackling each other in the mud pits, so of course we joined!! Haha so gross but so fantastic. Lets see, from there we went to ONE more bar but John told us that we had to get a move on down the river in order to avoid the darkness. So we quickly finished up our volleyball game and our drinks and I got a beer for the road. The float back was a good hour, but it was wicked. Just some good fun and good conversation while floating down a river in the middle of Laos, no big deal right?

The rest of the night was also a little ridiculous. We made our way home and Ashley and Alisa passed out while Jen and I decided to chill out and listen to some music on my laptop. This next story is not a good representation of Matthew acting on his better judgement, but I'll tell it to you anyways! As we were sitting there, a huge bug somehow got into our room and was flying around very noisily. Now I don't know much about Laosian bugs, but for the story lets assume that it was poisonous and would probably attack me when I slept. So I got fed up with the buzzing and decided to do something about it. I grabbed my Nixon and Kennedy book from the shelf (good book by the way, best $1 purchase ever) and followed it around until it landed on the window curtain. See where this is going? Raising the book high above my head and swinging with all my strength (to make sure I killed the thing) I smashed the curtain, bug, and window in one blow. Yeah... The sad thing is, Jen had caught on just a second too slow and as she opened her mouth my arms were already in motion! The next few minutes were a nice blur because like 5 or 6 people came out of the office (people tend to work in groups everywhere, where one person does the work and the others just hang around) when they heard the sound and I attempted to explain my way out of the predicament. They wouldn't have it, so I had to pay 1500baht ($45) to replace the window. Haha, wow.

So later that night we went to grab some food and catch some friends, but ended up crashing fairly early since we had such an eventful day. 

The next day we were picked up by the same travel group and given some rickety old bicycles. We had chosen to do a 35km ride around Vang Vieng and into the surrounding areas, not really realizing that the weather was going to be so unbelievably hot. For the most part, the ride was along a crappy gravel road that stretched through unbelievably green rice fields and green mountains but we did take a pit stop at a place called the Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon is a location along a small river that is nice and deep so that you can swim around and jump from a tree into it. The area was beautiful and we spent some time in the water and just sitting around. John (yup same guy) made us lunch over his barbeque (a pan full of hot wood coals) and then we headed out for the afternoon of riding. It was a long ride full of dehydration, a little heat stroke (ash), some huge puddles of mud as well as water buffalo blocking the road. Not to mention all of the people that we passed! We went by a bunch of schools and when we did, every single kid in the yard came running over yelling "Sabadee" and waved at us!! It was the cutest thing ever. A couple little boys came running up to me and I gave them high fives as I rode by! Honestly it was so great. That night we were all exhausted and slept like babies...

The next day we hopped in a minibus headed to Luang Prabang up north. This was easily the most terrifying experience of my life. Jen and Alisa can agree, but Ashley was in the back and couldn't really see the road ahead. First of all, the road was super windy and in terrible condition. It went up and down mountains and didn't seem to really have any sort of planned path, it was only an attempt to connect every town and village together. Secondly, the driver was crazy.... he was going WAY too fast in my western opinion and didn't seem to have any much of a regard for things and people around the edges of the road. He also took pretty much every 'chance' that was possible, such as passing a car when not knowing if a huge truck is coming around the corner up ahead. A few times I felt car sick and definitely couldn't sleep throughout the full 5 hours. Ohhhh southeast Asian travel...

Luang Prabang was fantastic though. It is labelled a UNESCO World Heritage Site and for good reason. We got in, found a cheap ($4 a night!) guest house and went for a walk around the city. Along the walk, we saw monks in their orange robes EVERYWHERE. It was really cool. One of the menu's I had in LP mentioned that the monks don't understand why people are so enamored with them. They are exactly like us, their life just revolves around Buddhism. Every morning the monks do the alms giving ceremony where they give out what is usually rice to people in need as an act of religious virtue. We were actually led around one of the temples by one of the young monks who was very nice, but awfully shy. He told us his name and asked for ours but didn't say much else. That night we relaxed and had a few drinks with some friends we met in Vang Vieng. We also caught dinner with them at this really cool outdoor restaurant. Oh and then we checked out the night market and ended up buying a bunch of stuff. But shhhh, I can't tell you what since a few are gonna be xmas presents! 

The next day we walked around again but went into a few of the different temples. Not much to say about them other than that they were unbelievably beautiful. Here are a few of my favorite pictures, but there are soooo many more! I took a total of about 1000 photos in Laos alone. Oh, at the top of the largest hill in LP where there is a temple called Phu Si, I met a nice Australian couple who I chatted with for a good 20 minutes. Seems that Laos is one of their favorite places in all of SEA and they have been there on vacation the last few years. They said their overall favorite was Sapa, a small town in northern Vietnam. So basically, that's one of my next trips :)

Okay! So I totally forgot about this until I went through my pictures again, but we spent a few hours in the afternoon at a bunch of waterfalls!! Haha wow, only 2 weeks after and I'm already blanking on things. The falls were awesome and we got to go swimming!! Yeah!!

The next day we hopped a 10hr VIP bus ride that was pretty terrible as well so I won't talk about it. Eventually we made it back to Vientiane where we found a guest house, grabbed some dinner and a few drinks, and then made it to bed. Our flight out was the next morning that brought us to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and a 5 hour bus ride later, we were back in Singapore! For me that signaled the end of a sweet 2 week vacation but also the beginning of my catch-up in school.

So there you have it. This took 5 hours to write and post pictures so I HOPE SOMEONE IS STILL READING THIS. Do me a favor and post a comment! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know someone is keeping up with me! Till next time. M.

Today's Spin: Another Day (2007 Remix) - Dream Theater