Laos

I have finally settled down into life again! jeez it has been nothing but crazy around here! but I am so excited to show you all about the adventures I had! This vacation was honestly one that I will never forget! It was such a soul happy trip. 
well lets just start at the beginning before I get ahead of myself.
The trip started out a little rocky when we left Tuesday night with our private driver to drive all night to find ourselves pulling up to the Thailand-Laos border around 6 am to cross over and head to the Thai Embassy to re-new our visas. It was a pretty miserable night spending it driving in the van and hopping out of the van at the boarder just after dawn, hoping on a bus to cross the boarder. We looked like the most rachet version of travel. We had to get 15 day Laos visas, when going to pay with our US dollars that the school provided us with from the local Thai Bank, we discovered our money was 100% fake. they ran it through the authentication scanner twice... so we had to pay double the amount to pay with Thai Baht. Once we got in front of the Thai Embassy, we realized that it was closed due to a public Thai holiday. We were all shot with patience and starving! We headed to the hostel to reschedule our travel plans. There we discovered that all the other tourists that were in Vietenne were all there for visa renewal. We also discovered that there was virtually nothing to do in Vietenne except renew visas. So we spent the majority of the day sleeping in our air conditioned hostel to sleep. Don't worry...... the black molded ceilings, mosquito infested bunk rooms, and non gender specific rooms were hardly issues to me once my head hit the pillow. 

Crossing the boarder at the crack of dawn!

The lovely bathroom at our hostel :)

This sign was the rudest thing we had ever seen.. it lead to spending a total of three days in the most boring city in Laos..

The most exciting thing we could find was this Vietnam war museum that was all about them discovering prosthetic limbs.. the weirdest place I have ever been! I'll admit, it entertained us for a good 45 mins!

I find this SO WEIRD! and so creepy! 

This was a lot harder than you would think..

This woman made her living riding her bike around with nail stuff in a bucket in the front basket of her bike! So naturally with nothing else to do and all of the adventuring had been done, i got a pedicure and a manicure in prep for the beach!

The next day at the Embassy we found the "English Teachers" aka MISSIONARIES!!! Laos is a communist country so the missionaries were there teaching English. It was such a nice breath of fresh air to meet and talk with members, also two of the missionaries were from Utah, and the other one that isn't in this picture just happened to be in my Stake and is also coming home on our flight out of Bangkok!! what a small world! after meeting them at the Embassy, we went to lunch with them at a members cafe, and hung out with them for a while. it was so nice to speak English! and talk about the church! Also just being around the spirit. I can't even describe the feel of it all. But it was so good to talk with them and laugh with them, one of the girls in my group got a blessing from them as well. it was such a blessing to see them and for her to receive that blessing! the timing of it all was all too perfect.

This are the faces of nothing but pure joy! we were so excited to have our Visas and to be crossing the Thai Border!! Thailand is so much better than Laos, and it felt good to be home!