Wholy mind trip

So after three days of traveling, six buses, six tuk-tuks and a song-taw I made it to laos. Tuk-tuks are miserable inventions too I might add. They seem cute and foreign and authentic the first time you see them, but the drivers are always hassling you and they're overpriced to boot.

But what really mixed me up was not really knowing what the exchange rate for the Laos Kip was. I was just getting comfortable with the Baht at a 30/1 ratio. Everything is divisible my 3 (or so) and that math was going pretty well.
I think I checked yesterday online to find out what the Kip:Dollar conversion was but I must have forgotten.
I thought I recalled something like 6000:1 from three years ago when I was here. So I was going with that.
Still a multiple of three so I thought I could work with that.

I finally made it to the tourista area from the bus station and before that from the Friendship Bridge, which sounds more glamorous than it is by the way. Then I spent like an hour and a half wandering around looking for a cheapish guesthouse. Most of them were either full or started at like 150,000 kip.

I happened to walk by a closed money exchange shop and the exchange is 8380:1 or so. 8000! Nothing is divisible by 8! So all evening I've been struggling to figure out how much things cost in both dollars and baht. Man it's a struggle I tell you.