Cloudy day

So we made it south to an island near the border of Cambodia called Koh Chang but just our luck there is a cyclone on the other side of Thailand and it's giving us rough shores and cloudy weather. All the same, we're happy to be by the beach. We're staying in a bungalow perched above the ocean on some rocks. Matt calls it "rustic"--but it's cheap and clean.

The haul here from Lao was long. We left on Thursday at 1:30pm and again discovered that it's futile to make travel plans because nothing runs according to schedule. The bus picked us up at 1:30pm but we didn't actually leave the town for another hour and half. So when we got to Vientiane it was nearly dark and we were the last people (literally) over the bridge back to Thailand. Then we missed our flight back to Bangkok and stayed over night at a B and B next to the Mekong River. The folks who ran the inn were wonderful and woke at 5am to drive us to the airport--nearly an hour away, we had no idea. Then we flew to Bangkok, took a quick taxi to the bus station and got on a 6 hour bus ride south, to a tuk-tuk, to a boat, to a tuk-tuk and ended our night having dinner with our feet in the sand at the beach, a very nice way to end the day!

Some thoughts on Lao: Matt and I have talked a lot about it. It's an interesting place. The people are extremely poor financially and it's definitely 3rd world, but it's a lovely country that is fantastically beautiful. Around where we were in Vang Viang were the lowland people that in the last 20 years have been horribly persecuted and only recently repatriated from Thai refugee camps. They're still discriminated against (their children aren't allowed in the schools) and poor. The typical homes are built on stilts that perch them high above the ground and the walls are made out of a sort of thatched bamboo. The towns seem mostly to line the main roads and river--where the water is used as both a place to bathe as well as a place to water crops etc. Under many of the homes are enormous looms that the women work on to weave the most fantastic silk scares (of which I bought quite a few). Matt also noticed that there are very few old people--not doubt the result of years of war and hard living in general. The Lao people were unbelievably welcoming and kind, desite obvious communication problems. We were only sorry that we didn't get to spend more time there.

Well, that's it for now. We were supposed to go on a snorkling trip today, but have delayed it for tomorrow in the hopes that the weather will clear up. So we're off to a fishing village in the south of the island...