Wheels on the Bus go Nowhere Fast

Day 339
Around 6:30 am I woke up to a huge amount of noise from the kitchen next door. I managed to sleep a bit more, but by 9 we were both up. Nicole and I had already decided to leave as early as we could and packed quickly.

The cost of the home stay was 30,000 kip, or about $4 each. We decided to give 50,000 kip each instead. The family had been very kind and we wanted to thank them for letting us stay. The mother of the family tried to give us half back, but we were able to motion for her to keep it.

As Sayaburi isn't really a tourist destination it took a long time for us to find a tuk-tuk. Due to the popularity of the festival buses were leaving as they filled up. We figured this wouldn't take very long. We bought our tickets, and I tried to find us some easy to eat on a bus food. We ended up with chips and some rather mankey oranges. We figured that we would be back in three hours so there wouldn't be a problem. I gave Nicole my ipod to watch while I took a nap. The bus didn't fill up until around 1 pm and didn't leave until 1:30. We had gotten to the bus station at 9:30. This was highly annoying.

At the river crossing there wasn't much of a line, but the ferry must have been on a break because we waited for about an hour. We were both really hungry at this point and had two food choices. Rodent on a stick or river washed chicken. We went with river washed chicken and tried not to think about it. One woman had hard boiled eggs and threw the shells on the floor of the bus.

Once we were across the river the bus seemed to stop every two feet. Really, people would yell to give off, the bus would pull away and then two houses down someone would yell again. As the ride went on it got dustier and dustier. There was no way to avoid being covered.

By the time we got back it was almost 5:30, the day was shot and we were completely covered in a rather thick coating of dust. We didn't care much what the tuk-tuk to the guest house cost. We were just happy to not only get to take showers, but to have hot water.

Our day was shot and we decided that we really needed some western food. Just around the corner was one of the nicest places I have eaten at for this whole trip. It wasn't even very expensive. We both got pizza. This wasn't quite enough though, ice cream was needed as well. For this we went to a place just across the street from where we were staying.

Nicole is the only other person I have met who is traveling with Uno cards. We sat there for some time playing while we got funny looks from the staff. They must have thought we were nuts. When the place closed at 11 we headed back to our room and went to sleep.