When I woke up I went to go have a shower but the bathroom at the guest house was shared and it was such a disgusting mess that I really couldn't do anything in there. The bathroom had been fine the night before but someone really made a huge mess of it. I cleaned myself up as much as possible using the tap water but was kind of angry that I wouldn't have a shower now until I reached Bangkok the following morning.
Check out wasn't until 11:30am leaving me four hours to walk around with out having to carry my luggage. I went out for breakfast, did some more writing and then walked around visiting some of the used book stores in the area. I ran into some fellow Canadians (a first on my Laos adventure) chatted for a bit, really I was just waiting for time to roll by to the time when I could pick up my bag and check out. I couldn't pick up my passport from the Thai embassy until 1pm so I still had more time to kill and walked around some more. Ugh waiting.
I ended up migrating towards one of the big temples in the town centre and sitting on a bench outside. I wrote in my journal a bit and just chilled. The great things about temples is you can just go and sit and you don't need to order any food or do anything to earn your right to stay you can just sit for hours if you want. There must have been a ceremony or event of some kind going on because there were so many monks there it was a little over whelming. All of the monks started to stare at me, I guess a white girl just chilling in the courtyard writing wasn't very common. My mind started to wander as to what you would call a bunch of monks in a group... a pack of monks? a vale of monks? (my friend Damien always wanted to know what you call a bunch of turtles and we found out it was a vale of turtles) and exaltation of monks? I put this question to Adina (my younger sister) and she said maybe a meditation of monks.... I think she's right, a meditation of monks sounds about right. So anyway, this very large meditation of monks was watching me so I decided that maybe I was intruding and went on my way to look for some lunch.
After lunch I made my way over to pick up my passport with it's new Thai visa unfortunately this took all of five seconds and I had to wait some more. When I bought my train ticket the shop I bought it from included a ride to the border in the cost and so after more wandering around I went to the shop for my pick up. I was, of course, early and my ride was going to be late so I waited around some more. I ordered a coffee but having learned my lesson about the gritty taste of Laos coffee I ordered something that sounded fancy so that it would be cut by a bit of milk and sugar. What a mistake! I got this drink that had condensed milk and sugar in it it was like drinking coffee flavored syrup, I drank maybe a quarter of the gross drink. At least I would be back in Thailand soon with my plain rice and veggies and Thong's good coffee. After waiting around a van pulled up to pick me up, we drove to a guest house and waited for a family to get themselves in the van and went to a small bus station where we boarded a bus to take us across the border. Once on this bus I had to wait some more for the bus to fill up and then we were off across the border. The border stuff didn't take very long and was very easy. In between the departure and arrival gates there is the Friendship bridge across the Mekong river. I was sad to say goodbye to the Mekong, it's so beautiful and I'll miss it.
Once at the train station I began looking for an ATM, I should have taken some Baht out at the border. I hadn't any Kip to exchange back into Baht so I didn't even bothered to go to the counter and so only had maybe 50Baht in my wallet. I went across the street to ask where the nearest ATM machine was, I wasn't worried about the train coming I still had an hour and a half until it's departure. The woman I spoke to about the bank machine told me there was one at the Lotus grocery store in town and her husband had to go do some banking as well and I could get a ride with him. They were really nice and so I put my bag in the corner of the restaurant so I wouldn't need to lug it around and took a ride form the husband. His banking took longer than mine so I bought a couple of bottles of my favorite tea and some snacks for the train ride and waited at the exit of the Lotus for him. There was a woman with an adorable new baby and I was watching this cute little munchkin when she called me over to take a closer look at her sweet baby boy. She spoke some English, I showed her a picture of Etana and told her it was my sister's baby. She asked me if I wanted to hold her little Punkin' and of course I said yes and held and snuggled her sweet little boy. She took a couple of pictures of me with her son on her cell phone and then just as I was returning the baby to his mother my ride was ready and I went back to the train station. I offered to give the man who drove me to the Lotus some gas money but he said "no no no" and so I grabbed my bag and went back over to the train station.
Remember my first train boarding craziness I boarded the train early and waited for our departure. I sat and sipped my tea waiting around again when I saw that Don was getting on the same train in the same car as me! It's funny how you run into the same travellers over and over again, I'd seen a few other familiar faces again as well.
When Don walked by I said "hey" and so after he dropped off his bags he came and sat with me for a while. Not long after the train left they began turning down the beds and so we moved our chat to the dinner car and chatted there until 10:30pm and then it was off to bed for me.
The day on the whole was such a bore waiting for the next thing to happen all day: waiting to check out of the guest house, waiting to pick up my passport, waiting to get a ride to the border, at least the wait for the train was filled with my Lotus adventure and so not as boring. Now that I was on the train in my bed I wasn't looking forward for the next thing to happen I just snuggled into my cozy bed and listened to my music and let my mind wander until I fell into a nice restful sleep.
Today's picture of the glass work at Wat Xieng Thong in Luang Prabang.
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