I barely choked down the need to put my fist through the monitor of the last computer I used. I also swallowed my indignation and paid for use of the fucking machine and tersely suggested to the guy in the shop that he scan his machines for viruses, because he had spyware installed on them all. I typed out a lengthy post, and just as I was about to hit the update button, my browser jumped to some random fucking locally hosted page full of pseudo demands by some virus writer. Pointless and frustrating.

In brief, as best I remember-

Got my bag back. It was broken. Vietnam Airlines gave me $70 to keep me happy. I am happy.
I’ve been feeling kind of sickly - stomach cramps and stuff. Nothing super bad, but still kinda whack.
We saw some sites in the capitol finally, it was good.

I did it all a lot more justice last time, I swear.

Anyway, moving on.

We are now in Vang Vien, if that’s how you spell it. A reasonably comfortable mini bus ride took us over some amazing landscapes. Laos is possibly the most beautiful country I have seen. Finally, after the little bus struggled to pull us up some mountains, we were deposited in what appears to be a massive valley, which I know to have a river in it near the town. The approach to the town was mindblowing. It stops abruptly, meeting a dusty expanse of tableland, there didn’t appear to be any “outskirts” in the typical sense of the word. Around us, on all sides, were amazingly green mountains, reaching into a perfect blue sky studded with one or two tiny, fluffy clouds.

The sun was beating down on us intensely as we waited for our bags to be thrown down to us from the roof of the vehicle, but good moods prevailed. We didn’t bother looking in the book, we just started walking down the nearest road, turned into the nearest guesthouse, were shown a really nice cool, clean room with hot and cold water, and nodded dumbly to the asking price of $4 USD per night.

Is this place for real?

I’ll try and snap some photos at some point tomorrow. Words dont describe what my eyes were seeing today. I hear the only downside to the place is that almost all the food is ‘tourist food’ which is, obviously.. boring.

Our plan for tomorrow is to get taken an hour or so out of town, up the river, by bus or tuktuk, and dropped off with a couple of big fucking tractor inner tubes, and left to float back to the middle of town. Awesome!

Looking forward to the river. I’mma take my dodgy little camera in a plastic bag in the hopese of taking some photos. I’ll probably lose or break the thing. We’ll see.

Off now to celebrate, as best we can, New Years Eve.

Happy New Year everyone.

One last parting shot from Cambodia?

My bag didn’t come off the plane when we landed in Laos. Nope. The baggage carrousel stopped with a clunk and about ten miserable looking people, and one Felix, were left scratching their heads.

We went over to the baggage service desk and started asking questions. One guy turned around and explained to the rest of us that apparently our bags never made it on to the plane in the first place! APPARENTLY, the bags were left off because the plane was full! OHHH, that makes sense then!

Unfortunately, the fault lies with Vietnam Airlines, which meant that the irrate among the group found noone in the airport to express their grievances to.

I was given a number to call “in the morning” when they would know what was happening. So I did, and was told to go to the airport tonight at 5:00 when the bags would arrive on the same flight as yesterday.

We saw a couple who were also missing a bag in the street today and we’ve arrange to meet them and split the cost of getting there and back between us. I doubt we will find any sympathy from Vietnam Airlines.. people in this part of the world dont seem to care about their public image so much, and situations like this are your own problem. Oh well. I dont really mind. So long as my shit DOES make it here from Cambodia tonight. Else there’ll be hell to pay.