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Today was going to be a day of recovery. We'd discussed with the German girls that we weren't planning on getting up early for breakfast or anything else, for that matter. We emerged at 11am, ready for something to eat; it was raining again, so we wore our waterproof jackets - a stark contrast to the week before where we were so hot we wore as little as socially acceptable.
We met the German girls at a local café and went across the road to a market. As in Thailand, their business sense was seriously lacking. Every stall was selling exactly the same thing: shakes and crepes. Literally, there was absolutely no difference between over 10 stalls lined up in a row along the road.
A dog that clearly had a broken neck disturbed us; it was a female that was clearly still feeding puppies and her head was cocked at an angle… Permanently. We discussed the possibilities of how she got that way and why/how she was still alive, let alone breeding.
We ordered sandwiches and crepes and sat down under a dripping canopy for breakfast/lunch. We discussed different options for the day and then eventually decided we needed an afternoon nap (I know we'd just got out of bed, but we were still pretty knackered).
We bought bus tickets on the way back to our guest house, at a local tourist centre (we'd checked the cost in the Lonely Planet book and the price was correct) for the Saturday to Vang Vieng. We enquired about the sleeper bus that went at night, thinking we'd save a day of travelling and a night of accommodation; the issue, however, was that it got to Vang Vieng at 3am. No one was awake and you'd probably have to sit at the bus station for 4 hours before you could start checking out places to stay. We didn't fancy that and decided to book the VIP bus for 7 hours, arriving at 5pm instead. We also booked a took took for the next day for the waterfalls - we wanted to spend the whole day there and therefore didn't want to go on a tour as they only allocated 2 - 3 hours for you to explore; in our previous experience in Kancahanburi, this was not enough.
We got back to our guesthouse and Edd went straight to sleep. I read my eBook for an hour and then joined him for an hour's nap (he slept for 2 hours in total!)
We got up at 5pm and decided to take a walk around the palace. It was situated in the middle of the city, on top of a hill - a bit like Table Mountain, but much smaller. We walked up 200 stairs to what we realised was a resting point in the middle, we paid 20 000kip each to go right to the top and had another 190 stairs to go. I decided this was my work out for the last 3 days done and dusted.
We got to the top where a stall was selling cool drinks and 2 tiny birds in a bamboo cage - they couldn't move around at all, it was more like solitary confinement. You could pay her money for a cage and set them free; I got the camera out to take a picture and she got snotty with me, putting the tray of tiny cages away. I laughed and we carried on to the palace -she knew what she was doing was wrong and cruel, but did it anyway. I could never live in these countries, animals aren't treated properly. (I managed to get a sneaky picture of her bird-jails on a tray, from around a corner).
We took pictures of the breath-taking views from the top and the clouds parted in the distance, allowing a few rays of sunshine through. We walked around, took a look inside and found a large Buddha surrounded by the usual incense and flowers; a resident cat was asleep at the door and there were people knelt around praying.
We spotted a young girl releasing some of the jailed birds and I asked her if I could take a photo. She agreed and then let the birds go; I was quite surprised when they flew to a nearby tree. If I was stuck in a tiny cage and then suddenly released, I'd fly as far away from people as possible - clearly the birds had other ideas.
We walked back to the night market and bee-lined for the 10 00kip buffet dinner. It was all vegetarian food, cold, but cheap. We heaped our plates with unidentifiable objects and various noodles. We spiced it up with sweet-chilli sauce and soy. We were definitely getting what we paid for.
We finished our bland, cold meals and continued walking through a side street filled with other 'buffet' options. We'd missed this part of the market the night before and decided to come back the following evening to have some of the other food on offer.
There was deep-fried pig face, chicken feet on a stick, whole fish and an array of other strange meat products on skewers up for grabs. I was glad to be a vegetarian. We were alarmed at how much rubbish was distributed in the process of consuming food: everything in Asia is sold in plastic bags with rubber bands, or polystyrene trays; nothing is recycled and you can accumulate an entire shopping bag of rubbish in an hour, quite easily.
We considered buying a bed set, but then quickly discovered the quality, or should I rather say lack of quality; they looked gorgeous at a distance, but up close you noticed how they were put together in messy patches. You may be spending 200 000kip (£16.50) on a bed set, but you were definitely getting what you paid for. We decided against it, bought crepe and then headed for our guesthouse, ready to sleep - again.
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