city girl

sigh... back in the city of pakse. Taking an overnight bus to Vientiane at 8pm tonight, so i've got half the day to while away here.. no help for it: didn't want to take the risk of missing the bus here from TatLo so had to leave there in the late morning...

on the bus to tatlo. got to the relevant bus station at abt 930 to catch the 10am bus. Of course this being typical SEasian rubber time, the bus only took off at 1140am... in the meantime, everyone on the bus was apparently quite bored, so guess who became their source of entertainment? All of them crowded around my seat, talked to me, kept asking me qustions i don't understand, and when i took out my lonely planet to try to point to lao words so as to have a slighly more meaningful conversation, yet another 2-way language course started. =) then my guidebook got passed around the bus as they flipped thorugh it and looked at all the pictures and made me say where each and every picture and map was from. There was this woman who looked kind of drunk (why do i attract drunk laos?) who keep talking to me in a very high shrill voice, then she started poking and grabbing my breasts and every once in a while her own i went argh! and tried to cover my chest but she always got past my defences.. damn strange.. and when it was time for me to get off she keep pulling my arm and pointing ahead and saying something. i think she wanted me to go to her house or village, but its a bit weird cos she'd been molesting me not 2h ago, not to mention her husband didn't look too happy at whatever she was offering me so i had to decline...

TatLo is another nice place. countryside. villages. tribes. waterfalls. treks. I was walking happily along some forest path when i heard a noise to my right. I turned to look and it was an elephant not 5m away from me. backside to me though. and not a very pretty one either. Land of a million elephants indeed... It's quite a 'resort' place though. some more expensive chalets and lodges in the prime locations over the falls (ok, my standards are pretty low, so expensive is anything more than 10USD/night. my v nice room w double bed was 2USD). Think they attempted to build more at some point but there are just quite a few abandoned half completed houses around... otherwise, typical nice lao riverside village life. Meet a few nice western tourists (!) who i drank and talked with every night. i stayed at a nice place with my hut just over the river, facing the west, so yes, nice sunsets again. though i've been waking up earlier every morning no matter what time i go to bed or how much beer i drank the night before. Today i woke up at abt 5am (with first light). and just had to get out of bed by 530am.. at this rate, i may be able to catch some nice sunrises soon...

the problem with getting too nua3 is that i'm feeling too lazy to even type =P just want to sit and stare at some nice waterfall or river, preferably with a bottle of beerlao in hand... jason, edlyn, please pardon me if i'm only active for half the day then spend the afternoon and evenings just chilling out somewhere....