Hua Hin and Vientiane Again

It may seem like I take an inordinate number of vacations, and I suppose I do thanks to the rule that you have to leave the country to update your visa. Alas, I will soon have a work permit and will no longer have to endure this heavy burden. Two weeks ago Joe and I made the “necessary” trek up to Lao again, which happily relieved me of the frequent dreams of cheese that have recently been haunting me at night.

Fortunately, this time I was prepared for the culinary bounty and was able to tear myself away from the coffee shops and French restaurants long enough to see some of the sites of Lao’s capital city. Honestly, the place is tiny, slightly larger than a one-stoplight town in the U.S, and there isn’t really that much to see. We did make a point of visiting Wat Sisaket, the only temple left after the Siamese burned the rest down in the middle of the 19^th century. It was beautiful, and different from wats in Thailand in that you could see the French influence in things like the motifs of the floor tiles and actual chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. You couldn’t take pictures of the inside, but here’s one of the outside.

They even had their own library (see the picture with Joe below), but I doubt that they’re hiring.

Our time in Lao is always too short. I’m thankful that the embassy makes you stay 24 hours before you are allowed to return to Thailand, but I did find myself hoping there would be a mistake in my paperwork that would force us to stay longer.

After a 5 day hiatus at home, we got on the (overnight) bus that started out trip to Hua Hin, a beach a few hours south of Bangkok. This trip was sort of a last hurrah for Joe since his summer break from school is over and in celebration of our 4^th anniversary.

The town was cute and the beach was amazing. Khon Kaen is nowhere near any large body of water (other than a few small lakes), and looking out at the beautiful expanse of the ocean was just perfect. I never thought about how spoiled I was in Miami when I got to see such things every day. It was also low season, so there weren’t as many tourists and the prices were very good. We stayed at a sleepy little place right on the beach. There were 11 “houses” and each guest had their own house with hardwood floors, lovely furnishings, and their own patio. The pool was literally right on the beach and you could sit in it and look out at the ocean. (I’m going to such lengths to describe the rooms because we tragically forgot to take a picture).

Although I was nursing a cold for most of the week, we still were able to take long walks along the beach and through the fishing village nearby to get to Khao Takiab where we thought we might stumble upon some rock climbing possibilities. We didn’t look too hard since I wasn’t feeling well, but we did find a nice little wat with a 20 meter tall Buddha that we could see from our hotel. The picture below is of Khao Takiab from the pool at our hotel. It wasn’t very exciting, just relaxing, which was exactly what we wanted.

As a side note: I can no longer access my blog at home. Don’t worry, I can still post, but I can’t see what I’m posting, so if the formatting is off, sorry. I’ve been told that it has something to do with a government firewall, but that might just be propaganda.