The Long & Winding Road

So it's been awhile since I've written but I'll try to do a little recap of the past 10 days.  Our last day in Hoi An, we made a trip to the post office to send our suits home as well as some more souveniers and artwork I bought.  After we cleared that up we went down to the beach on the bicycles we rented.  It was an amazing beach and a really good afternoon.  The next day we booked a bus up to Hue which used to be the capitol of Vietnam back in the day.  The first night in Hue was definitely an interesting one.  We went to a great Japanese restaurant but Matt started to feel really weird during dinner.  He felt like crap and it was raining so we just chilled at the hotel after dinner.  Then all of a sudden, Matt feels really sick, his face is red and he burning up.  Midway through the night, he starts feeling even worse so we decide to go to the hospital to see whats up. This hospital was the most unorganized and unprofessional place I've ever been to.  They reduced Matt's fever with paracetamol and then did some tests and left him with an IV hanging out of him.  After about 2 hours of waiting, I go for a stroll to find an English speaking doctor to see if we can leave or if he has to stay overnight.  During my walk I notice some pretty brutal injuries including one guy who must have bailed off his motorbike onto hid face because most of it was missing.  Everyone was in the same room, they didn't have separate rooms and no one was getting any attention.  So finally I'm told that Matt has to stay overnight, so I cruise back to the hotel.  The stupid part about the doctor was that as soon as we got there initially, he tells Matt it's probably Dengue Fever or Malaria scaring the shit out of Matt before they did any tests at all.  When he gets back to the hotel in the morning, he tells me all the bullshit they were feeding him at the hospital.  So he slept until 6am, a doctor then told him he definitely had dengue fever, they swithced him to a new bed and told him he had to stay for 2 days at $100 US a night.  He fell asleep again and then 4 new doctors woke him up later on.  They tell him he doesn't have dengue fever but a chest infection and something was low in his blood.  They didn't know the English word and Matt couldn't read it when they tried to write it down.  So then they tell him he needs an x-ray which will be an extra $20 on top of the $40 he had already paid just to be looked at.  So after the x-ray Matt feels fine and wants to leave the hospital.  The another doctor comes up to him and tells him that he doesn't agree with the first doctor and thinks he's fine other than the chest infection and go home right away.  The only way he's allowed to leave is if he writes out a huge statement saying it was his decision to leave.  He felt fine and thought they were just trying to get money from him so he left.  He just chiled at the hotel room for the next two days, took the meds they gave him and he got better so thankfully he didn't stay and pay the hospital $200.  During those 2 days, I explored the city of Hue on a bicycle and celebrated Tet which is the Vietnamese New Years Festival.  We decided it was getting too cold going up the coast of Vietnam so we booked a bus to Savanakhet, Laos after 3 rainy and cold days in Hue.  At the border we are surprised to hear that out of all the countries on the visa list, being from Canada means we have to pay the highest price for our Lao visas.  The damage was $47 US!!  I don't know what Canada ever did to Laos but they sure have it out for our canadian bank accounts.  Savanakhet was a pretty small town without much to do there so we stayed one night and then grabbed a bus to the capitol Vientiane the next morning.  We took the local bus to save some cash but no A/C for 9 hours is really not that fun.  We were pretty exhausted after that ride and all we wanted to do was lie down.  The problem was every guesthouse was full.  It took us like an hour of searching and phoning places to find a room.  We ended up dropping $23 US on a room which sucked because  we usually try to keep it under $15 a night.  Vientiane was pretty cool, the first day we rented bicycles and just cruised around town and saw most of the sights.  The next day we grabbed bikes again and saw their national monument which we missed the day before.  Our afternoon was spent at a Lao sauna and massage at a Bhuddist temple in the forest.  It was really relaxing.  The next day we went to the bus station to catch a bus to Vang Vieng to do some river tubing.  The bus was full cuz we were late but we got offered a ride in an A/C minivan from some guy.  So were waiting for the other 5 people to show up for about 15 minutes.  All of sudden 5 lao girls walk up, open the door, give us the weirdest lookever, then pile in around us.  They didn't speak a word of english and we obviously knew no Lao.  But it was a hilarious drive with them at really high speeds around mountain corners.  They all got out at random villages along the way and we were dropped in Vang Vieng, the Koh Phagnan of Laos.  We fell asleep right away for about 5 hours.  I went out for a couple drinks that night while Matt slept.  This town is pretty strange, it has a small town feel but it is party central at night on the island in the river.  On my way home that night, the streets were full of drunken tourists and police with Kaleshnikovs staring everyone down and searching some people for drugs as well.  Very weird scene, kinda scary with all the huge guns around!  The next day which was yesterday we went tubing.  It might sound like a nice relaxing afternoon but it is quite the opposite.  It's more like drinking at riverside bars with dangerous ropeswings and diving boards into the river and tubing a little inbetween the 10 bars all the way down.  It was a really fun day even though I did fall down some wet stairs, kicked a rock really hard underwater and hurt my neck on one of the ropeswings.  Matt didn't do any swings all day until the last bar.  It also happened to be the biggest on the river.  I went first and landed ok after being launched like 30 feet into the river below.  The I proceeded to watch Matt do a 180 onto his chest from the same height.  He said it felt like his ribcage caved in.  After tubing we crashed hard from about 7-10:30pm, almost went out but we were so sore from tubing, we just fell asleep again until 10am.  And today I remain very sore from the tubing trip.  My foot is the worst after kicking that rock.  Today we are doing nothing but recuperating from out injuries.