Arrival in Vang Vieng

So after going from the travel agency and when I mean travel agency  and by that I mean a guest house that organizes people to get to from one place to another.  On to a tuk tuk then onto a nice and fairly  comfy old school A/C bus a 4 hour ride to Vang Vieng a head us. 

So we caught the end of the festival ‘’AWK PHANSA’’ So here is some information on it. Monks make ‘heua fai’ (a little bamboo boat and float them down stream. Thousands of people everywhere are buying these little boats; they look like these beautifully crafted pieces of organic art with candles on them. So by floating these downstream they believe that their bad luck will float away with them. I was just wondering where these little boats go.

With the arrival in Vang Vieng we got here for the last day of the ‘’BUN NAM’’ (River festival) boat races are held across the country of Laos. Rowing teams get together for three nights and there are tons of food stalls set along the river side and I have read that there are carnival games and discos being held during these three days. Since we didn’t know in advance about it, I think we missed the chance to enjoy these awesome perks of the Bun Nam festival. 

So back to trying to find a guest house, after meeting a fellow traveler from New Zealand we were off to find an acceptable place to stay for the night until we go tubing and finding a new place tomorrow. We are working on a budget now and trying our best to stick with it. So after checking tons of places and with our luck the Bun Nam was going on during our  afternoon arrival giving us some hassle. 

1. Guest houses were full

2. They were charging high season prices                                            

                                                              

After a relentless search after vetoing a place where we had to pay a fee to cross the bridge every time even thought it was only 4000 Kips the guest house didn’t have screens on the windows.... we finally found a place splitting the cost of the room with 2 others (one more not including Karrie) it ended up costing us 20,000 Kips = $2.67CAD a night per person. That is about as much as a meal costs! 

During our early, but felt like a late dinner we ran into our two Switzerland friends we made back in Chaing Mai. I like how when you travel this particular route around South East Asia you are bound to meet some people you partied with in previous cities.  

Heading down what seems like bar street in what I believe to be the Northern inner city of Vang Vieng we see places that have signs saying that it has the coldest beer and TV screens playing F.R.I.E.N.D.S. J For the people who know me well enough I love my friends.