We check out of our guest house and because we have all our bags we decide to eat breakfast there, even though we'd rather eat at N House. Our bus leaves at midday so we have to wait for a while. Tony (our guide) meets us and there are a few other 'Stray travelers' with him waiting for the bus too. Tony is Australian and much more of a guide than Jeremy was. He explains in detail exactly what we are doing. You could say he is the exact opposite of Jeremy. I must point out that Rachelle and I didn't mind Jeremy's 'leaving us alone' style, because when we booked the StrayAsia bus we didn't even know it included a guide; we thought it was just a bus. The tag line for Stray is 'for adventurous travelers', but we don't see what's adventurous about having a guide.
We all get on the bus with our bags. Every now and then Tony updates us on what's going on and offers some local history information. He says typical Australian things like, "too easy" and "cruisin'".
The trip is about 5 hours and we are headed for a town on the Thailand-Laos border. Tomorrow we enter Laos. On the way to the border town, called Chiang Khong, we stop off in Chiang Rei to look at a temple that is still being built by a famous Thai artist. Even though it has not been finished yet, it's been earmarked to become the 8th wonder of the world. It is quite stunning. It's called the White Temple and people were painting the artwork on the inside and the back was still being built. Adjacent they have just started building the Black Temple.
The White Temple represents the three stages of enlightenment in Buddhism: 1) Suffering - represented as hands coming out of the ground, 2) education - represented by crossing a bridge over water, and 3) enlightenment itself - represented by the inside of the temple. It's worth noting that the artist is seemingly keen on mixing traditional and contemporary artworks. On the inside of the temple you find his depiction of the Universe, which includes Buddha, Asians, mountain scenes, George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Neo from the Matrix, Darth Vader and so on.
We continue our journey and arrive at the guest house. The room is spacious and overlooks the Mekong river, on the other side of which is Laos. The 'Stray group' all go for a meal together on the Mekong and it's the last Thai food we will have before Laos. Rachelle and I both order green curry.
Afterwards we have some drinks back at the guest house with an Australian couple and a German guy traveling with us. We play cards and after a while, Rachelle goes to bed and the Australian couple do to, because we are getting up early tomorrow. I stay up with the German guy, Jan. We drink some strange Thai drink which has a fish on it. We have no idea what the drink is and I don't think I realised it's potency. Rachelle ends up having to look after me when I stumble back to the room hours later. Also, we found out Chang beer, despite saying 6.4% on the bottle, varies in alcoholic strength between 2-11%. I think tonight's were strong ones.
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