We were up at seven again. Well, actually, I was up a few hours before hand because my brother Elisha woke me up.

We had a breakfast of fries, boiled eggs, hot dogs (gross!!), soup, pancakes and fruit. Everything was cold.

Soon though, we were all done and ready to go. A tour bus came to pick us up at our hotel and we all hopped in. It was not crowded at all thank goodness. My victory was short lived. Soon three girls and one couple climbed in and I got put in the middle of a three-person seat.

Did you ever sit in the middle of two strangers in a bus that is taking turns as fast as it can? It is sort of hard not to bump into one of them.

The tour guide turned around and told us her name and that it was a two-hour drive to the Perfume Pagoda. 

“This is going to be a long ride,” I thought to myself.

We drove past rice paddies and through dense jungle at 80 MPH at least on a road that, in America, would have a speed limit of 40 MPH at most. If it even existed!!!

One time we came to a place in the road that was mostly potholes. We were shaken up a lot.

One of the girls who I was sure was German fell asleep. The other did not. I sat there and tried not to bump into anyone.

Finally we came to a stop. But it was not our destination. It was a tourist attraction. I thought it was cool. There were four people sewing really cool pictures onto fabric.

Everyone stretched and then the tour guide got us back in the car and we drove on. 

The bus twisted and turned around the road dodging scooters and other cars, passing rice paddies and duck farms, rolling through the woods and then roaring past rivers to come to a stop at a large “stream” as our guide said. It was a river.

We got out, used the bathrooms and got into some boats that were waiting for us down at the rivers edge.

As we were rowed up the river our guide told us about all the beauty in the jungle and how it was romantic it was .

“I do not think that word means what you think it means” I whispered to mom, who silently laughed.

After an hour of rowing we watched as the other boat that held the other people on the tour nosed into the bank of the river. We were all out of the small boat in an instant.

“This place is called the Perfume Pagoda. Why does it not smell good?” Ezra asked.

In broken English the tour guide answered, “Because we are not in the cave”

We first went and had lunch at a little restaurant and then I asked the German lady (who I found out was from Belgium) if I could go with her and her friends to walk up the mountain. Mom, Dad, Hannah and Ezra took the tram because Hannah and Ezra had blisters and Elisha came with the girls and I.

We started our walk up the mountain.

It was easy at first. Then it got harder and the stairs got really bad.

The girl that I had asked to go with (because my family was not going) called a five-minute break.

I was too happy for that.

When we started again it took only a few minutes before we stopped again. But this was for a different reason.

We were walking along when out of the corner of my eye is glimpsed I small movement and then I heard a loud screech. A monkey jumped at me! I admit I jumped pretty high. All right, maybe really high. But that was startling!!! I thought for sure it was going to come after me. But when I looked back I saw it was chained to a tree.

“That was scary!” I said

We took some pictures and went on. It was not long till we saw another. This one we gave a little food. I don’t think it could see very well though because his eyes were weird looking.

We continued.

The guide had told us not to turn left or right but when we came to a place that there was no forward path we had no idea what to do. We chose the one that looked like it would be the right one.

We had walked a mile when we saw a poster and I said, “I hope that does not say that we went the wrong way.”

It turns out it did not.

We finally made it to the top and descended into the cool cave.

Our family and our guide were there and they waited till we had a tour of the cave. Then they went back into the trolley and we walked back down.

I had noticed at the bottom that the cost for going up on the trolley was less than it was going down. I think that is because people would walk up and then decide it was too much and trolley down. That’s my theory.

As we walked down there were people trying to make us buy their goods. One of the people sold our tour guide (who had walked down with us) a bag of fruits. We gave some to the monkeys.

It took less time to get down then to get up and when we got to the bottom we all said, “Yes! We made it!”

We looked at another little temple and then got back in the boats and went back to the car.

I fell to sleep on the way back as did the girl I climbed with and her two friends. Luckily I did not have to sit in the same seat. I was moved one seat over and put by the window.

We reached our hotel and I had to climb over two people to get out of the car. It was a little difficult. Then I had to wait a minute or two before the guide was able to open the door.

We went into our hotel and Elisha turned on the TV and I emailed my friends.

In an hour we went out for dinner then came home and went to bed.

It was a very wonderful day.

We saw temples, we climbed mountains, a monkey jumped at me, and we met new people.

We slept hard all through the night.

I was sure that is what the geckoes were singing that that morning as Ezra woke me up.

“It’s still dark!” I complained to no one in particular.

“Get up! We have a bus ride to catch!” Ezra said.

I climbed out of my bed. I had just been having three dreams at once. I liked them all. As I pulled back into myself I saw on my iPod that it was it was five in the morning.

Mom and dad had already had us pack our bags so that was simple. Did I tell you we were off to Vietnam? We’re also going to go to Cambodia and Louse.

Anyway, we all got a breakfast of coffee cake, yogurt, and hardboiled eggs.

We had to take a tour bus to get to the real bus station first. Our driver was already at our door and waiting. We grabbed all of our gear and bustled out the door. It was still dark and yet it was already getting to be hot.

I am not much of a heat person. It makes me feel bad. My comfort zone is seventy degrees and down. Eighty too ninety is ok. Anything higher is not my thing. I deal with it though. Everyone else loves it.

We put to big backpacks in the back and grabbed our other smaller bags and held them with us. We all had our own seats, which we liked.

It took us twenty minuets to get to the bus station and then we waited another twenty minuets or so for our bus. Finally it came. We boarded and found our seats. We were in the top front of the bus.

At first we moved very slowly through the city until we came out and into the countryside. The mountains grew slowly in the distance until we were suddenly among them, twisting and turning, struggling up long hills and then speeding down on the other side.  I kept wondering what sort of hidden magics and wonders there were up those mountains. These mountains were mere hills compared to some we had passed on our tour of northern Thailand.

Hannah and I fell to sleep on one another and slept for more than an hour. Ezra and Elisha played games on their iPods.

Mom had apparently been taking pictures of us sleeping because when we woke up she showed us some of them.

The bus came rolling to a stop at a market/bus stop. Everyone piled out and we started to look around when the bus driver told us to come with him. We walked for not even a minute when we came to a bus restaurant.  The man told us to sit down and then people came out with plates filled with rice and other foods and we sat down at a table occupied by Thai people.  Mom and dad went to sit at another table and left us to be embarrassed. Some how or another we made it through the meal. We left the restaurant and went to the bathrooms where Ezra took another hour. Or at least it felt that way to me. We all got a coke or a fanta and popcorn and jumped back on the bus for the last time.

Ezra and Hannah switched spots. I was not to enthusiastic about that. 

Ezra thought it would be a wonderful idea to go to the bathroom and came back smelling like smelling like, will, like a bathroom. It was a small unclean bathroom in a fast moving bus that was rocking violently. Use your emanation.

We got to our hotel after dark and got three rooms in a small hotel.

While we were getting our clothing out of the bag we found a millon ants in it! We still don’t know why they were there. I guess they were just hitching a ride.

We all fell asleep within moments of our heads hitting the pillows.