In Luang Prabang Call Me Tamaal.

Luang Prabang! What a random city in Laos. It is really pretty--lots of French colonialism influence in the building architecture and stuff. Great market where people do not hassle you and harass you to buy things and REALLY spicy street food!

Once we got to Luang Prabang pier I had to find my hostel and I was now leading 5 more people to it.  Would have been no problem except for the fact that there were no directions what so ever to this place and all I had to go off of was a mental picture of the map with no labeled street signs. Not that my hostel had a street name for me to go off of. All I knew was that we had to walk up a few blocks and to the right. Great. This will take no time. Also didn't help that none of the locals had the slightest clue of any of the streets we actually were on. And there was no English being spoken to even try that path. We did make it eventually, and it was a fabulous hostel pick that I made. :) Huge comfy beds with super clean showers and toilets. Sweet. I was sad I only booked in two nights.

We went to grab dinner, and even though I wanted street food, I knew if I saw everyone else eating I would get major food envy so I decided to go halfsies with the crazy Canadian on a veggie pizza. I figured one day of eating Western food wasn't going to kill me. Little did I know that the pizza was only the beginning. haha. After a quick stroll through the night market we went to one of the 2 bars in the city to have some drinks. I was all for having a quiet night, but somehow the majority of the people I was out of with were quite keen to have more drinks so we had to decide between going out to the club or bowling because those were the only two options for more drinking. We decided to go out to the discotheque.  I guess that was reasonable since the bars close at 11pm. haha.  The Laos nightclub we went to was plenty of fun, although whenever the Laos music came on it wasn't as great. The dance floor was huge, but there were these massive barrels all over and we figured it was to prevent boys and girls from actually dancing with each other.  Having the barrels to dance around helped to prevent that I guess. It was still a pretty early night though, since the club closes at 1am.

We spent the next day at this beautiful waterfall park just outside of the city. It had all of these pools that we could stop off and swim in while we walked along a trail, and the water was this really pretty blue color. There was even a big pool where you could swing off a rope swing or jump off a cliff. I figured I would never be able to carry my body mass far enough over the water to use the rope swing, so I opted for the cliff jump. I thought it would be the easier of the two since all you had to do was jump.  Well I got over to the cliff, which was maybe 15-20ft high, and ended up holding up the entire line for 5 minutes before I could jump. It was so embarrassing! haha. I just got so nervous once I was actually at the edge! I kept trying to jump but my body wouldn't move.. It was like trying to tell me I was being stupid for flinging my body off a cliff. Point well taken body. The line was about 7 people long and no one would go in front of me, and I finally had to just go off a countdown (the 3rd countdown since I missed the first two..haha).  By then a massive crowd of people was watching from the water's edge. Awesome. haha. I ended up going up to do again after the first time. haha. It was easier the second time around but still not completely easy. There were even some sun bears at this park that were being taken care of. Really cute little things.

Since we went to the discotheque our first night out, it was only natural for us to decide to go bowling.  And the best part about bowling was that it was open the latest out of everything in town--we could be out until 3am bowling. I am so bad at bowling. Obviously I lost our game miserably. I think I might have scored 47 points. The worst part about bowling? I was hungry by 2am and decided to buy some Lays chips. I asked for the ones that were supposed to be "Extra BBQ" only to get BBQ squid flavor chips. Ughhhh. Really? Wasn't it enough to have maybe eaten pork testicles (which btw, could have just been balls of meat that were pork)?  Worst chips EVER. But I still made myself eat them while trying to share with everyone since I was so hungry. I just grabbed some gum afterward to make the fish breath go away. Ew.  The reason my name is Tamaal in Luang Prabang is because I was re-named by some Israeli guy who came up to me at the bowling alley because he thought I was from Israel.  I had literally just spent the afternoon telling a Jewish girl from London that I had met that I was somehow confused by people to be Israeli and she had the hardest time believing me.  She had spent the last 20 min talking to these guys trying to make them believe that she was Jewish and they came up to me and thought I was Israeli.  It was funny until the guy got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  After I told him that couldn't work since he wouldn't have Jewish kids, he was like that's fine, we can move to London together and I can just come live with you! And I was like umm buddy...I'm American. Then he decided to rename me with an Israeli name, so I am now Tamaal. It means some sort of sweet fruit. So awkward. My friends gave me a pretty hard time about that one.

There are so many great people I met off the Slow Boat trip that we are getting our own minibus to take us to Vang Vieng, where we're going to go tubing! It is supposed to be a pretty rough car ride though, so hopefully it goes well!