Here I Am, Charlie!

Recap the past few days: relaxing and traveling. Past that first day, Don Det turned out to be pretty great. It's the perfect place to chillax (chilling and relaxing at the same time), and we filled the days with just that. The first day Isaac and I chilled out at a riverside bar and put their hammocks to good use. The second day was also great, we rented some inner tubes and floated down both sides of the island with a cold beer. The sunset has a small sand bar where everyone beaches their tube and kicks back, sharing our travel tales and whatnot. Sadly my dwindling money supply and the lack of ATM's in the area forced me to have to leave a day early.

I chose to go way off the beaten path and cross to Vietnam through Bo Y, a small crossing in the very south of Laos. I figured that way was better for a couple reasons: first, it saved me from a twenty-two hour straight bus ride, and second, it put me as far south in Vietnam as possible, so I don't have to backtrack very far when I make my way to the north of Vietnam and then to China. This decision turned out to be an absolute great one. Like I said, it took me well of the beaten track, away from all the other travelers. I was the only white person on the bus, and only one other person spoke a little English, and trust me, it was an enormous help. When I rolled into Attapeu, where I had to stay the night before heading to Vietnam in the morning, I went to eat at a local soup restaurant, where I sat and had a beer with two Vietnamese guys, all the conversation translated through their friend on the other end of a cell phone. Those kind of experiences are always cool, and sometimes hard to come by on the tourist trail.

In the morning I caught a minibus to the border and made it into Vietnam without a hitch. Another cool experience, one that wouldn't have happened on a regular tourist bus, is having an inclusive lunch with the Vietnamese guys on the bus. It was a huge communal meal of rice, soup, vegetables, some awesome fish, and shrimp (you don't peel them either, they eat them whole, eyes and everything). That cool experience justified my route decision even more. It was cool seeing the sharp scenery change immediately after the border. The thick-forested Lao side turns into bald, semi-arid looking mountains with different kinds of plantations on the sides.



And even more justification: the city of Pleiku is really interesting! I chose to spend a night here and catch the early morning bus to Nha Trang rather than jump right on another one. It's fairly obvious the people here don't see many tourists, hardly anyone speaks English and everyone stares at you, but you get some very friendly smiles and hellos when walking down the street. A really weird experience I had was when I walked by these Honda dealership guys, one of them stroked my forearm, which incredibly creeped me out. I felt this way until another guy did it, but then compared his forearm to mine, which revealed the hilarity; they're fascinated by my hairy arms. Considering that Pleiku doesn't even have a wikitravel page, it really is a cool place to visit for a day. I visited a Buddhist temple today that is BY FAR the nicest one I've visited in my entire trip. It was absolutely incredible, the architecture was amazing, as were the immaculately manicured gardens. It had a Chinese feel to it, I'm thinking it could be a preview to what I'm going to see in that country, and that makes me feel even more stoked to be heading there next month.