Well aside from learning French, which should really be my priority i know, i have learnt some Thai in the past few weeks. This provides both useful and hilarious to the locals who find it especially funny when you barter with them in Thai. Very strange but hey.
So the last time i blogged i believe i was in Vientiane in Laos and writing about how the next day i would head back in Thailand with a new group of people and go camping up a mountain. Well i left the internet cafe, bumped into Jess who was having the passport trouble and in short she had to leave Laos asap, so we packed our bags and jumped straight into a tuk-tuk headed for the border. It has ended up being the craziest, fun-filled and packed few days i've had on this trip. Basically it went like this: We left Laos, crossed the border and 8 buses/tuk-tuks and 24hrs later we arrived at the bottom of the mountain. For some reason the Lonely Planet has only one tiny paragraph on this mountain and the trek up it, which i find very strange because backpackers would love it, even though it is way, way off the beaten track! So we left all of our stuff two bus trips back at a hostel as there is nowhere for it at the bottom of the mountain and there was no way that we were lugging our stuff up there. We have to have been THE most unorganised, chaotic bunch of people i have ever seen, somehow we didn't prepare whatsoever and ended up climbing this mountain of 1200m (yes, i'm not kidding) with less than a litre of water each, one mango between six of us, no spare clothes, only a few of us had a jumper and waterproof clothing (i was one of them you'll be please to know mum!) a toothbrush and in flip-flops. Don't ask why, i'll never know, it was crazy, but extremely good fun! So the main idea of going up this mountain was to watch the sunset and sunrise, we missed the sunset because it was so cloudy and you couldn't see anything but the rain and dark clouds. We got given a tent and some very smelly blankets at the top (yes we forgot sleeping bags too) but the leeches were on the prowl and even though we got given some leech preventing powder we got attacked, it was like the Blob! So we got moved to an army tent that was pitched indoors and woke up at 4:30am to see the sunrise. It was still quite cloudy, but pretty and worth it all the same. Then it was time to walk back down and by this time my feet were so blistered from the flip-flops that i had to go barefoot. My feet at the end were in such bad condition, so bruised! I'm very glad we did it though, it was away from any tourists and something very different to do. Apparently locals youths go up the mountain to camp and drink as a Spring Break type thing!
So another 4 buses later and we are back in Bangkok and i am now going to go and buy my ticket to the islands today to leave tomorrow. I plan on sitting and lazing around on the beach for the remainder of my trip! Then bring on Paris! I spoke to Dave a few days ago for the first time on the trip which was fantastic!
Hope you are all well, Janelle i hope you enjoyed Toronto!
Love Katie xxx