Nothing to see

26

Woke up early the next morning. My friends insisted that we leave this deserted place (Muang Xai) as soon as possible, saying that there was nothing to see. I told them so. There were actually things to see there. But there was nothing special about it compared to what we had seen the previous days. We were not that interested in seeing more because of the same viewpoints, caves, etc.

In the morning, I walked around the town a bit. There were clothes like in a place like Pettah  World Market. But I thought there were no such people. It was a fake place. I got my dollars exchanged at a nearby gold shop. Is exchanging dollars at gold shops the same as in our country?

After that, I asked the price at the train station from the city, and it was only forty thousand Lao kip. It was raining a little at that time. After hearing the price, I came back and had breakfast. The food there was average. There was a yogurt, which was soup. It tasted great. After the yogurt, we went to the station for a break. As usual, when we went to the counter from the queue, the Chinese woman showed us the same smile and said that there were no seats today, nor tomorrow, nor the day after, nor until Monday. We couldn't go on Monday. So we talked about trying another way. After talking, we came to the Muan Xai bus station.

Like everywhere else in Laos, Muan Xai has two bus stations. The southern one goes to Vientiane. We should be in Bangkok in three or four days. From where we were, it was about 1,200 kilometers and 24 hours to Bangkok. The road we had to take to get to the Thai border through the Lao capital was long. It would be easier to cross the Lao-Thai border to Myanmar. Because that road goes through the plains. But I think there are no buses in that direction either, so the woman at the bus stand told us.

Avoiding the flight

There was a flight from Muan Xai to Vientiane, which cost about seven hundred thousand kip. But the flight was the next day. I really wanted to stay in Muan Xai for another night. But my friends didn't like it that much. So I booked a bus to come back from Vientiane. The bus is in the afternoon.

Haircut

This happened the other day. One day in Vientiane, I saw a salon where beautiful girls were getting their hair cut. I asked the price and they said it was about sixty thousand Lao kip. Since my hair was long, I went and said I needed to cut it. The most beautiful girl there came and cut my hair. She also cut my beard. But she couldn't give me instructions like leaving a little space there to hold it in place. When I first asked her how I wanted it, she showed me a picture that was in the salon. She cut it that way. My friend went to trim his beard a little, but he came back in a hurry. Because there's no way to tell me how to trim it.

The Waiting Place

It was about ten past eleven at that time. One of us was very heavy. We couldn't even stand there with our bags. We went to a nearby supermarket and got something to drink. But we still had time. We went to a suspicious place with a massage board and asked if we could get a massage. Oh. There was no massage there. But they would give us accommodation. They asked for a room for four hours and asked us to pay one hundred and fifty thousand Lao kip. It's okay. We went inside. The rooms were comfortable with hot water and AC. We slept for a while and I went to buy a dress.

We didn't change clothes in two or three days. Since there is not a big difference in the sizes of clothes in those countries, I didn't take many clothes. So since I ran out of clothes to wash, I went out to buy some clothes.

Another friend also joined us. After taking about two clothes, the three of us talked and went for a massage. That massage parlor is in the same Ariel where the nightlife activity was the day before. That girl had seen me before, I wonder.

The massage

The Lao massage is a little harder than the Thai one. In Lao, they hold some of the hard cloths very tightly. So first they put me on a bed and massaged me. Then they put me on a mattress and massaged me. They asked me to sit on the floor and massaged me with their legs. There were a lot of bruises. Meanwhile, the three women who were giving the massage were laughing and saying things in their own language. Are they laughing at us or at some other shit, oh my god. #amila2r