| hello, hello,first of all i have to say that my family has abandoned me, since none ofthem has written anything in quite a while. i know stanton and barkleywould write if they could...thank god for my friends though!just kidding (partially), but mama, tata si roxi, you'd better write bythe time i get to the next town... so we've been in laos for 4 days now (i think). my first impression wasreally bad, and i was almost ready to turn back to thailand (poor ed hasto put up with these moods sometimes, i can be a real pain in theaaaa...). anyway, after we crossed the thai-lao friendhip bridge (this isthe border crossing), we were going to bike ~20km to vientiane. well thiswas the ride from hell. the road was really bad. there is only one mainroad in laos. it's paved but sometimes you wonder what the hell -tons ofpotholes and pebbles and dust everywhere. much much worse than inthailand. and on this particular ride to vientiane, because we were soclose to the capital, there were trucks constantly streaming by, raisingall the dust so that your eyes are completely shot. i was not having agood time, so i didn't even appreciate the little goats by the side of theroad, or the cows lying in the road as i normally would've.anyway, eventually we got to vientiane. we found a really nice guesthouse,old and with lots of character, right by the mekong river. i really likedvientiane, although there were tons of westerners, and the part of town wewere in was totally geared for tourists. ed didn't really like it forthese reasons.we spent that day and the following just wondering around the center,sightseeing lots of wats and gathering info for the biking ahead. we gotsome really good maps and went to the tourist authority of laos forwhatever info they might have to give us. we also went to the us embassyand found out what parts of the country aren't safe. finally we decidedthat we would bike from vientianne to louang prabang (~400km away) andthen decide there whether we would bike the rest of the way to china ortake a bus, plane, etc. all this depends on road conditions, accomodationsalong the way, etc.we left vientiane 2 days ago and biked 90km to the first place with decentaccomodations. the riding was bad again near the city (~20km), but it gotsignificantly better after. at one point we rode through tar, anddiscovered this was not very bright, as we are still covered with ittoday. but other than that, up to date, i have to say that all the pain ofriding into and out of vientiane was worth what came after. the scenery isabsolutely spectacular, much more mountainous and rustic than in thailand.yesterday we rode 100km, and although most of this was through themopuntains, the pain didn't matter at all compared to the beauty of whatwas all around us. i already took a lot of pictures...we were also curious how the people would be different from thailand, thisbeing a comunist country and all...well, our celebrity status still standshere, the people are still very nice and always smiling. this is how itgoes: we ride through the mountains and come upon a village of thachedhuts in the middle of nowhere. maybe 30 huts alltogether. little kidsrunning all around. one sees us and yells "farang" which means foreignerboth in thai and in lao. then all the kids start yelling (and i meanyelling) at the top of their lungs 'hello, hello, sabadi, sabadi (goodgday in lao)'. this invariably happens in every village we come through,and there are lots of them, spaced ~10km apart through the mountains. thekids are really nice, we always laugh at all the commotion that we causeand at all the excitement they show. Although by the end of the dayyesterday, ed remarked that the celebrity status can be tiring, and i hadto agree. after all the riding in the last 2 days, we were both pretty shot, so wedecided to take today off. we are in vang vieng, which is a small villagebut pretty popular with tourists, so we found places to stay and eat. i amreally happy we stopped here, since the scenery is very nice. this morningwe got up pretty early and went to visit some caves in the mountains, bythe side of a river. they were really amazing, and we were the only peoplethere. we were walking through really thick vegetation, a joungle really,and then we just came across these caves, some small, some very big, allwith intricate twisted passages going through. one cave had a torrent ofblue water coming out of it, and just downstream there was a beautifulbathing area, so we spent some time relaxing there as well. While in vientiane, i also got some new books, as I was hoping. i got '7years in tibet', 'the lover' by marguerite duras and 'on the edge' (truestories of adventure by various people). i am very happy and relieved thatI will have enough books for a while. ed also got a book which talks aboutlaos and its past a lot, so it's good to read while we are visiting thecountry. Well, that's about it for now. My long emails are back!!!Thank you for all your replies, I was very happy to read them today, and Iwas definitely looking forweard to them on previous days.All is good here, and I hope that all is good with you as well.Has the weather been better in mtl anmd ct lately? Cu drag (literaly, this means means 'with dear' in romanian, but I thinkit should be translated more like 'with love' or 'with affection'),raluca |
|
