Tha Khaek

I have now left the fun of Vang Vieng and am currently in Tha Khaek after a very long and very interesting mini bus ride last night.

The last 10 or 12 days or so in Vang Vieng have been extremely fun and eye opening. I have proven on multiple occasions that it is definitely possible to have fun and party all night without the assistance of drugs or alcohol and had a few good conversations with people about those topics. I could have stayed at Vang Vieng for longer, but there is so much more to do and more to see and I don't want to stay in the same place for too long. It seems as though once your there at Vang Vieng it is hard to get out (and I almost didn't get out yesterday either in the end!).

My days at Vang Vieng usually involved sleeping in a little bit, getting up for breakfast then heading down to the bar I was working at to organise whatever things we needed for the day before hitting up the river for some dancing and fun on the slides and swings. Basically we were just working as promotors for the bar, at night time directing people where it was. I've made some good friends through the experience and it was very enjoyable. However, I get bored easily and the mornings can be a bit boring as there is not enough time to go out and explore before you need to go work. In the past few days I've been meeting people at Vang Vieng that I met a few weeks ago in Vietnam - always a fun experience when you catch up again! I think that the hardest part about leaving though is the friends that you make, because there are some awesome people you meet. But the problem is you always keep meeting and making new friends so you want to continue hanging around with them and is another excuse to stay. So I decided I needed to continue moving on before I spend my entire visa time up in Vang vieng!

Anyway so a bunch of people from one of the other bars were going south to Cambodia in their own mini bus so I agreed to join them. I was going to be getting out at Vientiene but they ended up deciding they wanted to keep going further and as I was wanting to get to Tha Khaek I figured it made sense to keep travelling with them. Very interesting bus ride. I ended up with the back seat for the entire trip which I am very happy for because it meant I did not have to witness or participate in any of their antics and managed to get away without drinking or having to smoke anything for the entire trip which I was quite happy about (these people are alot of fun, but like their alcohol and drugs I've discovered). Our bus driver was interesting. The roads are now extremely smooth and flat however he did not seem to exceed 40km/h for the majority of the trip.. so.. instead of arriving at 11pm like we should have, we ended up rocking into town at 3.30am this morning! Feeling a bit tired now to say the least. It was a long ride but i did manage to sleep a bit on the back seat.

Anyway so now I am in Tha khaek. I plan to do some trekking here, and would like to do 'the loop' so hope that I will meet up with some other travellers doing the same and link up with them. We'll see what happens!! It depends on time and cost ultimately I guess.