We sleep soundly….until the Monk’s Alms call at 4:15 AM, followed by the drum banging for the final Alms call at 4:58 AM. Sigh. This goes on every morning, making sleeping in a challenge. No matter how cool it is that they are calling for Alms, 4:15 is a bit early on most mornings. This morning, we’re not complaining as we want to be up early so we can take a long nap before our late night flying journey begins.
So, we are up. Drinking coffee and wasting time until breakfast is served at 7:00. It’s a long morning already. Of course, we are the first down to breakfast, and they don’t even come out to set the tables for about 10 minutes, but, we’re all about wasting time this morning – until we can take our nap.
After breakfast, we walk down to the river, to wander through the now empty park on a search for some statue at the end of the park. We walk along the deserted paths, through the scrubby grass and end up crossing over to the river side, to walk along the marsh lining the Mekong. The river is pretty far away across the marshlands, and there isn’t much to see over here, besides another whole permanent market complex, so we cross back to the park and end up at the Chao Anouvong Statue – which turns out isn’t the statue we were aiming for, but becomes our final destination nonetheless.
The statue is impressive, looking off across the Mekong to Thailand on the other side of its banks.
King Chao Anouvong is considered a war hero, who fought to his death trying to regain Laos independence from Siam in the early 1800’s. There is a small altar at the base of the statue for offerings, but what really catches our eye are the hundreds of small elephant statues placed at the base of the statue.
Pretty neat. Turning away from the river, we make our way through the park, past the embassies and out onto Setthathirath road, heading toward Lani’s House. We take a detour through what we are somewhat affectionately calling “our” Wat – Wat Hai Sok. It’s a lovely Wat, with Monk’s quarters in the back of the compound, Stupas, some interesting Naga depictions and that blasted drum that wakes us up every morning.
Time for sleep. We’ve paid for an extra half day in the room since our flight doesn’t leave until late this evening, and we plan to make the most of it. We’ve re-packed and organized, so now all we need is a little shut eye, and we’ll be ready for our 30+ hours of traveling.
We do manage to get some shut eye, and are relatively bright eyed and bushy tailed as we drag our luggage down stairs to check out. After a little tussle with the cab fare – won’t even go into it, but Sullen Boy actually smiles as we work out the details – will miracles never cease! (Personally, I think he was just happy to be rid of us!) – we are on our way to the airport with 4 hours to kill. Of course, when we arrive, after standing in line for about 15 minutes, we find out we are too early to check in. We were afraid of that, but figured we’ve got nothing but time, so we’ll stand in line. We have another 2 hours before check in, so first we drag all our bags up the escalator and hang out in a little cafe for wine and beer. After way too much time there, Ed scopes out the restaurant on the top floor, and we decide to head up there (there’s an elevator, thank heavens) for a quick bite before we fly. It’s called the “West Coast Restaurant” and it is a buffet, but also has ala carte items. We are not hungry enough for the buffet (although it is only $16 US and includes beer and wine), so we order ala carte. Ed gets the Pad Thai, and I opt for the fried spring rolls – figuring I’ll just eat something small. Oh my God. Talk about overload. The Pad Thai is fantastic, perfectly cooked and seasoned – and huge. Had we known – we would have just shared that – but we didn’t, so after digging into an obscene amount of really cheap noodles, my spring rolls arrive. Holy cow – there are probably 10 spring rolls? Cut into thirds? Who knows – it is a crazy amount of food – and it is really, really cheap. At an airport, no less. Crazy!
Needless to say, we didn’t finish everything on our plates! But, boy, we sure don’t need to eat again for hours – which is probably good since our main airplane meal won’t be until after midnight. It’s finally time to go check in, which we do, checking all our bags so that we can travel fairly unencumbered, then head upstairs to the small, jam packed flight waiting area. We choose to go to the lounge and use our last Kips, combined with USD, for entry, then sit in comfort and silence, with wifi, for the next 2 hours until our flight is called.
After that, it’s pretty smooth flying. All the flights work out well – great snacks on ANA…
…We’re on time most of the way, smooth air, lots of great movies! We land at Dulles pretty much on time on Thursday 2/22, after losing a day to the International Date Line and air travel. We take Lyft to my parent’s house (the driver trying to rip us off by saying we have too many bags – NOT – don’t even start with us buddy), have a lovely visit, then hit the road, stopping over night in Durham and having a great dinner at a brewery there (yeah, well, we are priming ourselves for Asheville). Sleep really well and then make the drive back to Asheville arriving safe and sound after a fabulous 60 day adventure through SE Asia.
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