We woke up the morning after hangover day to get on the bus. Alex and I went downstairs for our last Central Backpackers breakfast which took half an hour to come and almost made us miss our bus. When the bus got here, Alex couldn’t find his shoes anywhere, so we had to leave without them. We took a crappy bus to the train station. It was packed, smelled, rattled, and made so that only a baby could sit comfortably in the seats. Alex was like Bigfoot compared to this bus. His smell was the only thing that made us fit in with the crowd that all looked as though they had been on this bus for years.
We arrived at the train station five minutes outside of town and waited for our “VIP” bus to take us from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang. By the way, in Laos you basically don’t pronounce the last letter of any word ever. We got on our “VIP” bus which was a little bit more comfortable. Then we met this girl from Vancouver who lives in Calgary now to work, but is originally a gypsy from the Dominican Republic. I think. We talked to Rosa, this girl, for the next 8 hours on our bus. Finally got to Luang Prabang and ended up staying in this crappy place downtown for 40000 kip a night each. It’s incredibly loud but we have our own bathroom and beds. I haven’t slept more than about 4 hours each night but I figure I’ll be tired enough tonight to get some rest.
We woke up the next morning after the bus to Luang Prabang, and caught a bus at noon to Kuang Si Falls which is a place with a whole bunch of waterfalls and small pools to swim in. This part gets pretty interesting, and I don’t want you to freak out Mom. I’m going to include a picture, I am fine now and it is nothing serious at all. When we arrived at the waterfalls we went to the biggest one at the very top and even though we weren’t supposed to, we jumped off of the rocks directly into the waterfall. So far so good. Next we walked down to a smaller one and jumped in. No problems here. Swam around a little bit. Then went to a smaller one with a rope swing. Alex went first so that I knew where to land. When it was my turn, I took a few steps, jumped from the tree, and when my full body weight caught on the rope, it came back and hit me so hard in the eye that it split my eye lid about 3/4 of an inch. Now, that sounds a lot worse than it actually is. When I got out of the water everyone freaked out and thought I hit a rock because it was gushing blood. I think I scarred a kid about Tyler’s age for life. We groped our way up a hill covered in really long grass to a cafe on the hill and got ice and a napkin. I just put pressure on it since our bus didn’t leave for three hours.
Coincidentally, on our bus was a German Gynaecologist who offered to stitch it up back at her hotel. (Tyler, make sure you ask mom what a gynaecologist is). We arrived back at her hotel and at the very last minute, needle in hand, she jumped ten feet in the air and declared that she would just tape it shut instead. Much to Alex’s disappointment as he had been standing there patiently, I-phone in hand, waiting for his moment for a clear cut shot, she taped it shut with some weird thing down the middle of the eye. This is a picture, I’m hoping you read all of this before you see the picture. I took a few pictures of it, I even smiled nicely but I think that this one looks the greasiest and worst so I picked it.
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