Vientiane & Vang Vieng - Laos

Well, I admit it. I now belong to the group of people that until recently I viewed more than suspiciously. I am now also the owner of a pair of colorfully patterned flutter Aladdin trousers, which unmistakably puts me in the ranks of backpackers and dropouts. Except I'm neither twenty nor have dreadlocks on my head. Nevertheless, one cannot deny that I am already noticing the first external signs of change in myself. The pants, which are mainly practical in this unbearable heat, also cover my disfigured legs. No, in principle I am happy with my legs. But the following shades of color reveal my skin color, which is already white to transparent.

From bottom to top:

My toenails (as well as my fingernails) are adorned with a bright red color that a mobile pedicurist on the capital's promenade quickly persuaded me to do and then asked for more than agreed. Well, since I didn't know what the standard program included and I didn't want to ruin the freshly painted nails, I paid the windy businesswoman my respect and paid the still extremely manageable sum.

My flip-flops have rubbed off at the base of my toes due to intensive use, even during the rain. I can only get the pink print lightly scrubbed off every now and then until the next downpour.

In addition, despite regular use of preventive sprays, there are approximately 1,520 bites per foot from various insects at uneven distances on the instep up to the ankle, which itched so badly at night that they turned a bright color, yes, I know, I do shouldn't have scratched! Since I started taking the stuff from the Laotian pharmacy, it's slowly going down.

The blister on the back from hiking (those damn sneaker socks are thin, but they also tend to slip and leave nasty blisters) is healing properly, only a small circular light brown spot is still evidence of it.

On one calf and one thigh there are various blue-black-purple spots on my legs that I retained from the fun kayak tour and a relaxing (!) Lao massage.

Last but not least, there are two parallel horizontal stiffs, one now tanned (sunburn from kayaking, which is now peeling) and the other slightly red from yesterday's bike ride.

The rest of the body has already taken on a slight tint in the exposed areas, which I really like, in the hope of deepening it across the board, and is well on.

But now away from me again to here.

While China's influence was strong in the north, in the capital you can see that only the river separates the country from Thailand. You can pay with baht everywhere. Nevertheless, the proportion of Asian tourists remains quite high. Otherwise, as in Luang Prabang, there are many remains of the former French protectorate. Among other things, as if taken from another world, a triumphal arch that the Laotians built at the end of the 1960s as a sign of independence from the French with cement donated by the USA for an airport. Apart from the now similar well-known temples, nice restaurants and the Mekong, there is not much new to discover here. In addition, the weather doesn't make it particularly easy to pull yourself together and wander through the sweltering heat for hours. The now less frequent downpours are short but heavy, but do not bring any cooling. A live band at the Nam Phu (fountain) gave me a very chilled evening, singing western ballads with a lot of feeling and in English (some of them wonderfully wrong).

The short bus ride of just 4 hours took me to the infamous Vang Vieng, which is said to be a party mecca. The ever-popular tubing (floating on the river with an old tire for 12 hours and getting out at one or two bars) looked far less wild than the stories suggest. The government put a stop to the accidents and deaths caused by the combination of alcohol, drugs, rapids and darkness for about 2 years and closed many of the bars that were operating without a license. This place seemed very quiet to me, admittedly in the low season. Vang Vieng also finally answered my prayers and gave me cozy hammocks and places to relax horizontally, which I had sorely missed in Laos. And that even though everything here is done on the floor. Be it sleeping, eating, cooking, welding or similar.

It's just too bad! It is low season and unfortunately there are no tours for trekking or climbing. I don't want to go alone and it will just be too expensive for me (even with these prices you get stingy at some point! ;o)). The landscape is so wonderfully beautiful that my feet and fingers literally itch. At the same time, I can well imagine that it would have been incredibly hot to spend hours doing sports in the rice fields or even on the wall. The walks were enough for me for now. My body simply didn't feel the need to calm down even a bit for the rest of the day after the bike ride and continued to sweat. I then treated myself to a spot in the hammock again.

Even the lazy idleness and the two evenings of partying that you can have wonderfully here (I'm just wondering why the "youth" doesn't start until around 9/10 p.m. when the curfew is strictly observed at midnight!?) will go away at some point over and I'm heading south.

The sleeper bus (also colorfully labeled "King of Bus", a double-decker, 4-axle coach) takes passengers from Vientiane to Pakse in a mere 13 hours, so the first 4 hours in the minivan and 2 hours waiting at the bus station were already painful. The bunks stocked with pillows and blankets, usually occupied by two people (I'm finally grateful for the off-season!), and a guide's comments that the roads on this main road were nothing short of outstanding, promised a pleasant and comfortable journey. Well, I would like to ask whoever called it the Sleeperbus what exactly they meant by Sleepingbus. Well, there were fewer bumps, but the smaller bumps were taken at appropriate speed (how could you have seen them in the dark?) and there was still a lot of rumbling. Not to mention the noise from the ventilation. After all, there was a natural spectacle unparalleled anywhere else. For about 34 hours there was a storm like I had never seen before! Across the entire plain there is lightning, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, sometimes complete lightning, sometimes just lightning, sometimes ominous behind black clouds like over Mount Doom like in Lord of the Rings, sometimes brightly above white clouds, as if the lightning was showing us the way. I dozed off for a few hours thinking about these natural forces and the thought of what would happen if the bus overturned and why we don't actually have any large tour buses in which you don't have to buckle up and can lie down arrived in Pakse overslept. Now take a shower!