the latest

Tonight at the internet cafe I saw no less than eight transgender/transvestite men to women. They were propositioning left and right, particularly to the Frenchies, who abound in Vientiane. We appeared in Vientiane the other night after leaving Hanoi at 5 pm the day before. This was a 23 hour bus ride. Getting into the bus station, about 10 sangthaew (little trucks with 2 benches in the back) and tuk tuk drivers who call wanted to drive us into town, bum rushed the seven dirty, exhausted, impatient and oh-so hungry falang (foreigner) as we tried to go down the bus stairs. All shouting prices and waving us over, grabbing our arms, steering us toward their vehicles... Kellie and I and two Welsh people broke free and headed away from the chaos towards the entrance to the bus station where we bargained another, seemingly-understanding driver to take us into the center. Little did we know.....The picture above is the Welsh people (Zeb and Holly) and Kellie in the back of the coal truck we found ourselves in after we realized that we were not in fact heading towards the city center, but were more than 40k towards the next town. There had been only a slight miscommunication and he had thought we said 60,000, not 6,000. Oops. The coal truck we waved down from the side of the road was happy to accommodate us and dropped us off just outside of the center and we had to take another tuk tuk to a lovely little Indian restaurant to finally eat dinner....Ahhhh.