day 197, the bus to Luang Prabang

Having not slept enough, woken by the owner who is a bit of a dick, got some breakfast in which went down a treat, got fed up with the owner of the guesthouse so walked to the ferry terminal myself and down to Thai Immigration. Despite everything I have read and talked to people I had to pay 500baht for overstaying one day, whereas I believed you had one day’s grace; it was particularly encouraging to see when I gave the bloke a thousand baht he took the 500baht change from his wallet which was in his pocket. Caught the one minute ferry to Laos, filled in my forms and handed over my 35 bucks, got a visa and caught a tuk-tuk to the bus station to catch the 9 o’clock bus. There isn’t a bus at nine, only two or five. Sat down for 5 hours waiting, watched kick-volleyball which is a strange sport, plus some boxing, talked to a Swiss bloke called Chris who has been travelling asia for 3 years, he spent 6 months on a island living with a family just chilling out, had to visit the mainland by a 2 hour bus ride every four days of commodities plus didn’t have electricity but he fucking loved it, and is now in the process of becoming a bamboo tattoo artist. The bus finally left which was 13 hours of fun, thankfully it wasn’t full so could commandeer two seats and be uncomfortable over two seats, stopped off for some dinner and chatted to two dutch blokes who are cycling round SE Asia on the bikes which you lie down on, seemed pretty cool. Arrived at Luang Prabang at 02:30, only tuk tuk around takes me to my hostel, wake up the security guard who puts me in the movie room and hands me his sleeping bag to crash out, bloody knackered, dehydrated and stinking.