Laos Vang Vieng
Gal at Nam Song River
Time to travel up to Vang Vieng. The lady whom i bought the ticket from a travel agency told me that a tuktuk will pick me up from my guesthouse at 9am for the 10am bus to Vang Vieng. I was all ready to go at 9am but when the tuk tuk didn’t show up by 0930pm I started to ask around. A shopowner outside the guesthouse told me not to worried, the tuk tuk would come sooner or later. True enough the tuktuk turned up at 9:52am! I guess this is Laos way of ensuring you turned up on time. :p
Vang Vieng was a slow 4hrs bus journey away and it was almost 3pm when the bus rolled into Vang Vieng. I decided that I would stay at this guesthouse Maylyn that was situated across the Nam Song river. It supposed to have a beautiful garden and full of butterflies. Not a bad place to do some photography i thought. Apparently many people thought similarly too and so there was no room for me! However that was a blessing in disguise as I followed the sign and found another better one – Molina guesthouse. It was a pretty new guesthouse so it was not reviewed on any guidebook or website yet. It costed me US$4(US$5 if you got one with hot shower) for a big bungalow style Lao style wooden hut on silts. (they called such huts as bungalows) . I liked it alot. It was just next to the riverbank with the rice fields and hills behind it. Both sunrise and sunset views were unobstructed. I spent much time on the hammock drinking BeerLao and watching sunset.
Free Ad for Molina GuestHouse : Pls contact Mr Phet at 856 020 2005234 if you need to make a reservation. Mr Phet speak French, English, Vietnamese, Thai and of course Laos.
The other side of the river were where all the rest of the guesthouses, restaurants, travel agency, adventure trips company were. There is a private bridge where you would have to pay a toll to use it or you can use another free bamboo bridge at the other end. The more adventurous ones simply waded across the river as water level was at most just below knee level at this period of time.
Christmas Eve has a lot of meaning to many. Usually it had little significance to me. I am usually more concern with do I get a half day off that day. 2006 is different because Molina guesthouse’s owner, Mr Phet had kindly organised a campfire cum BBQ dinner for all the folks staying at his guesthouse that night. So a couple of Finns, a couple of Swiss, 2 Japanese guys , one Dutch guy and his Chinese girlfriend from Zhejiang, one Singaporean (me) and Mr Phet and his family enjoyed a Lao meal of BBQ fish, beer, lao lao (lao whisky) and talked the night away sitting by the warm the warm fire. We were far from the maddening crowd and I thought it was really a meaningful Xmas Eve. One that I remember for a long time.
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