Tha Khek (Part #2)

We woke up early the next day, I dragged my sorry arse through the rain to go to the bank. It was closed! I grabbed a tuk-tuk driver to take me to the other bank further down the road, he was trying to tell me something but I simply couldn't understand. It too was closed. That is when it dawned on me, it was Saturday!

Oh no, little or no money, no way to pay for our guest house and definitely no way of getting out of town. I made my way back to Sam at the guest house and explained our cock-up to her. After sitting a little depressed by this turn of events, we went to see the guest house people and explained our situation. They were really good about it, saying that we could stay until Monday and settle up when we managed to get to the bank. Until then we could eat and drink on account. Life-savers.

So the weekend was spent milling around the guest house. We watched terrible TV, on the cable we had in our room. The only English speaking channel being NOW TV, which repeated all its programmes at least 3 times a day. Most of the programmes were either about crap sports or computer games, but we watched them none-the-less. The rest of our times was spent on the patio reading or playing cards. I finished reading Howard Marks, Mr. Nice and Sam started on the Brautigan novels.

Our last night was spent sat in front of a small bonfire they'd built in the grounds of the guest house. Overall the experience of being trapped in a place hadn't been too bad, it could have been much much worse. Finally Monday came, again I was up early and did the necessary at the bank. We paid our bill, I swapped a book to read on the bus back to Vientiane. It was too late to head further south now, we had to be back in Vientiane to get ready for our meeting.

On the bus back I read the whole of my new book, by Mitch Albon, called The 5 People You Meet In Heaven. It was an easy and pleasant read, killing the 6 hour bus journey nicely. Sam finished off the Brautigan, so we really needed to sort out new books when we landed in Vientiane.

Around 4 to 4.30pm, we made it back to what is quickly becoming familiar territory, almost home to us now we've been here so often. In fact it is so bad that people recognise us. We are familiar faces to everyone, from the beggar lady sat outside Jo Ma's to many of the staff in restaurants and shops in the town centre near to the Mekong. Oh well, we may become even more familiar soon. If the voluntary thing does come off, then we'll be residents for a month of so. We'll know on Wednesday, we can't wait.