From Chiang Mai we booked a mini bus through a trusted travel agent that Whitney happened to meet and who consistently gave us the absolutely best deals around. The Mini bus took us to Chiang Khong, a beautiful small town on the boarder of Laos and Thailand. We stayed in a picturesque little guest house on the Mekong river who's owner was apparently some very very famous Thai woman. But she recently suffered a stroke and we never met her, the place was run by her niece who was a very friendly and nice woman. It was here we started to meet people that we would see again and again. And more than likely will see a few more times. We met a trio of English girls that were not happy about the simplicity of the accommodations or anything else really. For them everything was "Shit". We also met a man named Corey who was an ex-navy officer whom just finished serving 13 years in the military. Quite a character, obviously his military life was quite reserved and conservative but after his re-birth into society everything was so new and unexplored and amazing to him. It was like he was 32 going on 16. Actually the most interesting part about Corey I think was his lack of material possessions and his lack of a plane flight home. AKA a trip around the world almost without bounds. Apparently he left San Diego with only a paper trader Joes bag containing a few clothes and other necessities. Upon arrival to Bangkok he upgraded to a 15 liter drysack. Which needless to say is quite tiny.
After a night in Chiang Khong, and a midnight torrential downpour that woke most of us and sent the employees scrambling for buckets and 55 gallon drums to collect any leaking water and prevent from flooding the ground floor, we took a small boat across the Mekong to a small port city in Laos. I cannot remember the name and i just tried to look it up on Google maps but apparently that place is also Lost in Laos. From there we immediately grabbed some provisions for our journey and hopped on a slow-boat that eventually would take us to Luang Prabang (as its known to Google but to us it is Luong Proboang or apparently any variation thereof). I highly recommend the slow-boat to any and everyone. We heard many mixed thoughts about the boat and the journey but it was so awesome. We met even more people that have become friends. Most notably an Australian couple, Mark and Erin. Who are two amazing individuals. They are the two most traveled people I know. Erin only has two more pages in her passport and Mark has a double thickness passport brimming with stamps and visas. they have been on a worldwide escapade and we are extremely lucky to have happened upon them and befriended them. But i digress, The slow-boat was not even that slow. We journeyed down current on the Mekong powered by a fat diesel at a perfect pace. The way thew boat was organized we were able to sit on the railing and get some fresh air from the non-stop chain smokers sitting a few rows ahead of us. We were late boarding the boat so we got the cheap seats but it worked out for the better. We were able to move them around to arrange card games and tables, we could stack them up so we could lay down and sleep, and we could just move them so that we could stand up and stretch our legs. There was a bathroom on board complete with toilet paper.
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| Me, Mark, Martina, Whitney |
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| Mark, Erin, Mac, Martina, Corey. On the slow-boat |
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| Our Chiang-Khong guesthouse |
I don't know what it is about Asia but paper is scarce. I am all for conservation but with the plethora of trees, bushes, herbs, vines, bushes, grasses and shrubs around you think they could spare some to wipe our asses. I am totally digressing again but there is more to be said about the interesting bathrooms. Most "nice" bathrooms do not have TP but instead have the exact equivalent of that little sprayer nozzle on your kitchen sink that you can pull out to really get after some dishes. The same thing that you can wrap a rubberband around to blast your mom or sibling the next time they use the sink. So this little device sits right next to the toilet as your own personal bidet. You do have to be careful in some places because the water pressure is so strong that you're likely to give yourself an enema. The problem with this is that you obviously end up with a wet ass and you never know exactly how clean you are. So needless to say, I and everyone else have become TP pirates. You harvest anything you can from anywhere you can. Restaurant napkins are fair game but mostly if I see a bathroom with TP I take the roll with me or at the minimum spend a few minutes rolling it onto my hand and jam it into my butt-pack. And with my loose bowels which are still a problem at this stage of the narrative, TP is of paramount importance. In the lesser bathrooms which are most common in temples, public, or poor places. There is a simple porcelain bowl raised a few inches off the ground that you must perch and squat on. To flush you just scoop some water from a nearby bucket or basin and dump it in. I was warned and prepared for these but they are still quite a challenge. I guess MY biggest problem is that they are always wet and my feet are not Asian sized so i am always worried about slipping off and falling into the thing butt first. Back to the slow-boat, sorry.
The slow-boat allowed us to really see Laos in a comfortable manner. We were cruising down the Mekong which is only populated by very small villages and surrounded by extremely dense jungle. We are not talking Amazon size and diversity but some humbling stuff nonetheless. The country in Laos is far more hilly than Thailand. I want to say mountainous but it is not quite that impressive. The country is just rippled with ridge after ridge of never ending peaks and valleys. There were some areas that i swear are equivalent in grandeur to the Yosemite valley. Hopefully pictures will accompany this blog but it will take some time. I am talking about gigantic Limestone cliff faces nestled right up to the Mekong that are repeated for miles. So I loved the slow-boat. We were on a two day journey and day one took us approximately 7 hours upon arrival in what I remember as Pak Bang, but i could be wrong. Pak bang is a series of guesthouses, restaurants, and stores with the sole purpose of serving the people from the boats. By the way, there are speed boats. But these are noisy and considered dangerous. They are powered by an outboard uncovered 4 cylinder gas engine and you often see the tourists wearing orange life-vests and sometimes even full face helmets. If you have ever seen a Mission Impossible or James Bond movie you know what I am talking about. In Pak Bang we were able to find very affordable accommodations, approximately $5 US, with spacious rooms, 2 beds, a fan, and an attached and commodious bathroom. We had a lovely candlelit dinner with our new friends, I had the water buffalo steak which was delicious regardless of its chewiness and my exhausted mouth muscles. Many people that night ordered the traditional Laos dish of Lap (or Lab/Lamp/lapb). A Dish of chopped chicken mixed with veggies, basil, and Kaffir lime leaves. This night also earmarked a remarkable turnaround in my health and eating prowess. Erin the Australian provided me with a single antibiotic pill for stomachs that she acquired from a friend in Africa. The next morning I had a glorious surprise! I pooped solid! For the first time in over a week. Thank you Erin! Needless to say i am still very careful about what I eat but my quality of life has vastly improved.
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| My first experience with Laosian fireworks |
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| These kids were having a blast blowing these things up by the slowboat and freaking out some tourists. During the night they would be up on the hills and forests in pitch black dark setting them off. Tourists are all just WTF? |
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| Whitney and Tice Hasselhoff (one of the dutchmen) |
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| This is one of the epic cliffs I talked about but it does the site no justice. I have no idea why I did not snap more photos. |
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| Amy, Amy Winehouse/Maria, Mac |
I love Luang Probong, it is a small city protected under UNESCO that sits at the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan. Sit on a porch or stoop anywhere there and you are immediately taken away to the paradise city of your choice. I always felt like i was in Bogota, Cuba or New Orleans (even though I have never been to Bogota). I think this was most attributed to the preserved architecture, city streets, and alleys. We had a wonderful dinner at a buffet style street food vendor adjacent to the night market which we meandered afterward. We began our first night out in Luong Probong by finally drinking my bottle of rum that I bought in Chiang-Mai and going out to bars and clubs. I forgot to mention that back in Chiang-Mai Whitney's friend Martina met up with us and was a wonderful compatriot. So the four of us met slow-boat friends at Hive Bar and then went out to a large and local club. The club was awesome, good music and good crowd but no dance floor. It goes without saying that we made our own and partied all night. As a side note on the way to Hive Bar, Mac heard Bob Dylan playing in a different bar and had to go there instead. From there I am not really sure what she did but I do know that she met some locals including a bar owner whom I think took her to get food and drinks elsewhere on her scoot. We ended up seeing her again at the club. I swear you get a few drinks in that girl and you never know where she will go. That night ended with a jam-packed tuk-tuk ride home.
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| My kind of watch |
In the morning we grabbed some delicious breakfast sandwiches (sub sandwiches are incredibly popular in Laos) and got a tuk-tuk ride to some waterfalls that are almost an hour away. These waterfalls were beautiful. The water was a chalky blue color, definitely attributed to some dissolved minerals. There was an area for swimming where you could jump off the waterfalls and a rope swing attached to a nearby tree where you can swing into the pool, if you were agile enough to climb up to it. The water was also a very comfortable and cool temperature, a welcomed reprieve from the constant heat. There was also another large waterfall further up that was probably 30m high and quite spectacular. There were also a bunch of Sunbears in a large enclosure. Cool to see but sad also. At the waterfall we happened to see Corey who arrived via scooter. For the ride home Whitney, Martina, and I took the same tuk-tuk and Mac decided to ride with Corey. I found this a little amusing considering it took quite a bit of persuasion to get her to hop on one in Chiang-Mai. So we had a beautiful relaxed ride home, each taking turns to hang off the back of the tuk-tuk, feel the wind in our hair and get a better view of the sites. Right after we returned home, up walked Mac and Corey both with somber looks on there faces. It turned out that they almost made it all the way home safely before Corey decided to take a detour. The detour landed them both on the asphalt. No other vehicles were involved and it was at a fairly low speed so they both just received road rash on their elbows, wrists, hips, and knees. I am glad it was not me. We had another dinner at the night market buffet. This time I got the biggest best piece of bacon/porkbelly ever. It was probably 60% fat and gristle and I ate the whole thing. Along with a spicy sausage, chicken breast, and a plate of noodles rice and veggies, absolutely delicious! Then we repeated the night before with meeting everyone at Hive bar and going to the club. The highlight of the night for me was watching everyone jam in the tuk-tuk, I am talking 20 big westerners minimum, then watching the tuk-tuk try and leave only to do a wheelie and stall out.
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| I miss you girl! See you on snow!! |
The next day we spent biking the city. We purposefully got lost in the "suburbs". Where the streets are dirt and rock, the houses are very simple and poverty abounds. We saw beautiful river views with naked kids playing in the sand, toured beautiful hill top temples, got exhausted, bought fireworks (which 50% of the time blow up underwater!), recharged with a delicious Laosian lunch, and made it to the central temple which is on a much taller hill to watch the sunset.
The next morning we were able to organize 10 people; our group of four, the ozzie couple, and 4 dutch guys from the slowboat into booking a minibus to Vang Vieng. The trip there was insanely windy and our driver loved to go fast, use his horn, and not yield to oncoming traffic (the norm in south asia). I tried to sleep during the 5 hour journey but could not due to the constant rolling back and forth of my head on the sinuous roads. We arrived just in time to find cheap riverside accomodations, grab some food and head to the Bucket Bar. I had a bacon cheeseburger with egg at the Aussie Bar. I was craving a burger and man did that hit the spot. The Bucket Bar is where for 30000 Kip ($3 US) you get a bucket sized cocktail of your choice. My first was cheap Tiger Whiskey and soda, very strong. There were flaming limbo bars and dancefloor everywhere, quite fun.
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| Best bathroom on the face of the planet |
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| Bucket Bar. Mark and Erin. |
We rented bicycles the second day in Vang Vieng to go do some spelunking. It was 15k to the caves and I was joined by Whitney, Martina, Mark, Erin, and Simon. I counted Simon as one of the four Dutch guys earlier by mistake. He is actually English and was tagging along with the dutch guys for a bit. The bike ride was awesome, somehow and someway it felt downhill both ways. The water cave was by far the best. You hop on a tube and strap on a hefty head lamp with neck strap battery pack. The cave is formed in Limestone by an underground river. You hop in the river and pull yourself into the cave through an overhang by means of a network of ropes. You then enter a cavernous chamber and continue to pull yourself upstream until you reach a beach. At the beach you disembark your tube and continue to walk, crawl, and wriggle through the cave until you circle back to your tube and get free time to explore the channel. That was pretty exhausting in itself. Afterward we briefly got lost in some rice paddies, got rained on, and hopped on our bikes. On which we had some hilarious encounters with puddles that were more like ponds. Like I said the bike ride back was very nice and beautiful. We were basically following the river and valley that Vang Vieng sits in and on and it offered some spectacular views. My favorite of which should be at the top right of the page some where and has some cows in the bottom left. That night was full of more buckets and dancing.
The following day was amazing! We caught some breakfast and loaded our bellies with water for the day of debauchery. So basically people come to Vang Vieng to drink and tube. Most of the bars offer employment to westerners which consists of making buckets and marauding through town trying to entice people to the early free bucket specials. Payment is given in form of food and drink. The food being fried rice for every meal and the drink being all the alcohol you want. The very first night I was there I met a girl that had been there maybe 10 days and that night was her 2nd to last. She could not stop vomiting and she could not keep anything down but she kept trying to "drink through it" in order to enjoy her night. You can find stories like this all over town. Most people that stay there long enough also contract pink eye, supposedly from the water. So needless to say the place is a cesspool. But with that said I had so much fun. There are about 8 bars arranged on no more than a mile of river, so there isnt much tubing. When you approach a bar by water employess throw you a rope with a weighted end so they can drag you in. Once at the bar they have buckets available (of course) and all of them offer some sort of a ride. My favorites were giant swings that you hold onto with both hands and jump off a 40 foot platform, ziplines that send you flipping 20 feet in the air, and giant slides that you ride down on your tube and knock the wind out of you. Its a 20 something year olds paradise, kind of.
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| Dont say it! |
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| I said it! |
So in the end i could only take 1 day. The next day was all recovery, drinking water, sleeping, going on the internet and posting some macro shots. And sadly enough we3be again loses some members. Whitney and Martina caught a bus to Ventiane, the capital of Laos, on there way to South Thailand. And eventually for Whitney, India and Nepal, tear : ( I met up with some friends that afternoon who had just finished tubing and they were making me laugh so hard. They were hammered and telling me all the days stories, I sobered them up a bit and went out again to Bucket Bar. I made it out pretty late that night, Bucket bar closes at 1 something and then the next bar opens, then that bar closes at 4 and the next bar opens. Communism and madness i say.
The following day we hopped on a VIP bus or basically a big tour bus to Ventiane (or on google maps Viang Chen). It was uneventful other than the fact that the bus had a minimum of 5 pink eyes and we could hear coughing and sneezing everywhere. By the end of it my skin was crawling and itching and I realized we should have taken the 10am bus instead of the 1:30 bus because none of the sick drunkards could have possibly woken up in time. We got there and found accomodations which just happend to be where Mark and Erin were staying. The four of us went out to a very nice french restaurant with very modest/low prices and enjoyed a delicious meal with some real red wine. There is little to no wine in South Asia. When you do find it it is very expensive, so that dinner was awesome and indulgant. We had salad, entree, wine, and dessert for less than $8/person. I love Laos. And not because of the drinking, my favorite parts were the slowboat and Luong Probong. Offer to go with me when my bank account allows and I will get you Lost in Laos....
Muah!
Aufwiedersehen
