The never ending travel day...

32 hours later and we finally arrived here in Vang Vieng. Yesterday morning we left Don Dhet island at 5:30 am on a little canoe motor boat where I proceeded to slip and rammed my leg into the boat as I tried to get in. With my bruised shin we boated over to the main land, where we hoped on a local min bus (a truck with benches in the back-all natural air con!) and drove to Ban Lak 30 where they dropped us off. Expecting to find lots of tuk tuks to take us to Ban Muang, where we told to catch the ferry boat to Champasak, we only found a truck which drove us down to the water. From here we got aboard a SE Asian style ferry boat (two canoes with wooden boards lade on top) and cruised over to Champasak. There is not much to do here, but visit the famous Wat Phu ruins which are spoken very highly of. The Wat Phu ruins are about 8km outside of Champasak so we were in desperate need of finding a tuk tuk that would drive us out there and watch our stuff while we visited the ruins. Within a few minutes we found a tuk tuk and arrived at Vat Phou. Vat Phou literally means mountain temple. It's divided into two parts with a steep stone stairway connecting the lower part to the upper part. As we climbed up the steep staircase we saw the beautiful view of the Mekong Valley. The upper section is the temple sanctuary itself which was originally built by Hindus in the 6th century but was later converted into a Buddhist temple during the Angkor period of the 9th and 13 century. Just outside the temple, we saw the elephant stone and the crocodile stone- both very cool to see. After our visit we decided to make the steep climb down the stairs and of course I slipped and fell down the last four or five steps (fall #2 for the day!). Laughing and bent over from falling, all the locals came over with there concerned words and looks and helped me up. With just a minor scratch on my foot we thought it was time to head back and figure out how to get to Pakse. Upon boarding the ferry boat which was much bigger then the first one, we found a local bus that was heading to Pakse. We asked the driver if we could join...he pointed in the direction of Pakse laughed and said yes. So we threw our bags on top and climbed in the back... realizing shortly after that we may have imposed ourselves onto an eighth grade class excursion (since everyone was about 13 years old except for two male teachers and ourselves). With several giggles and stares, an hour and half later we were kicked off the bus and handed over to a tuk tuk that drove us the rest of the way into Pakse and dropped us off at a VIP bus station. Pumped to finally take the "famous" overnight bed bus that we had heard about we booked our tickets to Vientiane. With a few hours to kill before the bus left we headed into town and had lunch/dinner, visited a small Catholic church, tried Laos coffee, and walked through Wat Luang. Our few hours flew by and before we knew it we were settling into our VERY small narrow beds for the night. The bus is stacked with bunk beds and two people sleep parallel to each other on top as well as on the bottom...there is no room for personal space. Both Heather and I were feeling thankful we had each other because we would not want to be sleeping on this bus next to a stranger. After a rough night sleep we arrived in Vientiane homeless, tired and hungry. We, along with a few other travels whom we had met, roamed the streets in search of a hostel, but no where were there vacancies. Frustrated and impatient both Heather and I decided to just keep going and catch a bus to Vang Vieng. After we booked our ticket we settled ourselves down for a relaxing breakfast and just waited for the bus to pick us up. Roughly three hours later we made it to Vang Vieng and that completed our 32 hour travel day (days).