Heated here in Laos 7/16/2010

We had an uneventful morning. We packed, ate a little fruit, watermelon, pineapple, and papaya, and sofit cake, and checked out of the hotel at 8 this morning, Thai time.
We arrived at the airport in plenty of time for our flight to Laos. We checked our baggage, skimmed through passport control, and the security check point. Our flight to Laos was on time. We boarded a bus that took us to our jet and once again into the steamy Bangkok air. Once in the air we were given our choice of beverage and received a meal of jasmine rice, chicken, mushroom salad, some sort of delicious cake, and tea. We are now approximately 19,000 feet above the ground with an hour to go to our destination: Luang Prabang.

We landed onto a short archaic air strip, which seemed to be in the middle of the jungle, striding to the airport, small building, to be first in line at the visa counter. On the way in we stopped for a quick swine flu test as we walked into the building. We went on to the visa counter where our passports were not be checked as their computer was down. We waited for a half hour, sweat slipping down our legs amid the chaos of trying to get the computers running. We did get through only to be stopped by immigration who would stamp our returned passports. We were then met by the owner of the Air Bel Villas himself, luggage thrown into the van, and water graciously given to us by this man. A few minutes later we were on the way and shortly were at our destination: paradise. It truly is beautiful here: the river, the huts, the people, very friendly. It is just the heat that we are having trouble getting used to.

Late this afternoon we trekked into town walking on the old bridge, hardly daring to peer down towards the reddish, muddy waters of the river. We walked awhile before finding Tiger Trails where we would sign up for elephant camp. After that we were off to the Mekong for something cold to drink while watching the sunset. During this time the sweat started pouring out of the pores we didn't know we had. The sun was beating down on us fighting the day coming to an end and we were losing 5 pounds. Afterwards we were off to the night market where families were selling anything you could imagine. We passed through to a sandwich shop where we would eat anything but lettuce. So much for a BLT. Afterwards we found a rusty, dirty, dingy tuk tuk that would drive us back to the bridge, to walk back across, in the dark. We are now back in our hut with air conditioning cooling us.

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