Sad to leave

We have been staying in Vientiane in the home of our friend's friends whom we have fast become very fond of. They are couple about our age with a one year old boy who is very active and adorable. They have recently moved to Laos to help run an NGO. They also moved into the house we are staying in the day before we arrived!

We have seen the sights of the city, booked our bus tickets to Cambodia, helped unpack, cleaned, celebrated my birthday, babysat, and painted some furniture; all while relaxing and enjoying each other's company. It is sad for us to leave. We will even be attempting to put our Thai cooking skills to the test tonight for dinner. Today we will be going to a gym/pool/massage facility.

Another reason we are sad to leave is that we have a thirty-five hour bus ride to look ahead to. Tomorrow evening at seven we will be boarding a night bus that will take us close to the Cambodia border. From there we will switch to a mini-van which will take us across the border (hopefully expediting the process). We have no idea how long the mini-van ride will take and we are dreading that the most as they are much smaller and tend to be much more speedy than the buses making it easy for them to whip around corners and other vehicles. They also usually try to fill them to their full potential of seats which is fifteen passengers in what looks like a seven passenger mini-van. Ugh.

The heat here is astonishing for me. Ashley has been places with sustained high temperatures without any relief but I have not. We have been other places that have been similar in heat but have offered luxuries like an ocean nearby or cool evenings and nights. It is just a good old fashioned oven here and it is only supposed to get warmer the further south we go. The only relief here is air conditioned houses and businesses which we head directly to when traveling about town. It is hot!