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Published: October 27th 2010
Bridge pillars
The loop outside Vang Vieng was a perfect getaway from the mayhem in town. We were charged 10.000 kip every time we crossed a bridge. That is a little less than a euro and a clever way of getting some money out of the tourists and into the more remote villages.Oh My Buddha
This is going to be a very long post, but also with a lot of nice photos.
I had spent a week in Singapore trying to get a visa to Myanmar. No luck. It feels strange when you just want to visit a country and your motives are being questioned because of an upcoming election, but that is what happens when you put "unemployed" as your occupation and your application is subsequently sent to Yangon for further scrutiny. I never really got an answer and I am a bit tired of visa sections in Southeast Asian embassies by now. So many wasted hours.
Anyway, my backup plan had been Laos all along, so when I finally gave up, I booked tickets through Bangkok the following day. That is not the cheapest way of getting there, but I was well beyond caring. Vientiane, here I come.
I had spent most of my time in Singapore researching Myanmar, so I quite frankly had no idea what I was flying into. I knew that Laos is very poor country. I knew that it had been a single party socialist state since 1975 just like Vietnam, so I
guess I expected it to be a slightly downscale, dirtier and poorer version of Indonesia or Vietnam.
I guess my preconceptions were challenged already at the airport. First of all the immigration card was sponsored by a cell-phone provider and that is a first for me. Secondly the visa on arrival had different prices depending on the passport you could produce. The most expensive ones were for Indians, Pakistanis and people from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. They had to cough up US$40. For most Europeans it was US$35. For some obscure reason the bloody Swedes only had to pay US$31 and if there had been one of my neighbors in the line, I would have punched him (or at least wanted to punch him) for this outrageous and unexplained discount.
It was a very neat airport. Similar in both size and cleanliness to the one in Billund where my journey started. And it got "worse". As I got into a cab and drove into town it became obvious that Laos was going to be a major surprise. Clean and pleasant and nothing like the "slightly worse than Indonesia" that I had expected.
I had met Frank in
Vang Vieng view
The hills, fields and roads outside Vang Vieng. Moni on Flores (See "Trans Flores") and we had similar plans and since he had also given up on Myanmar we could meet up in Vientiane. He arrived a day before me, but I could simply go to the guesthouse he had emailed me and we met shortly afterwards.
Frank is German, 45, has quit his job and is now travelling to figure out what he wants to do next. This sounds familiar doesn't it.
Vientiane is a very cute and tiny capital but with only a few interesting things to do. I basically just spent 3-4 hours there on a bicycle and I don't feel like I have missed out on much. We went into a mini-mart and they had fresh milk and boxed wine. Slush ice and hotdogs. It was exactly like my local 7-eleven but this one was on the banks of the Mekong.
Vientiane is in the middle of the country and we wanted to go north first. The hotel arranged a minivan for us and I have not seen such a comfortable mode of transportation for months (outside of Singapore and KL of course). We were in Vang Vieng in about four
hours and I actually felt rested. Well, almost because the crowd in the minivan revealed the one big problem about Laos. It is touristy and many of the tourists are very young. That should not necessarily be a problem, but in this case it is. There are a hell of a lot of 20 year old British morons who have obviously just taken a small detour from Thailand and they are excruciatingly stupid. I wasn't a genius at age 20, but I haven't been this clueless since before birth.
Vang Vieng is a backpacker destination for a reason. It is set beside truly beautiful limestone mountains as a miniature version of Yangshou (in Guangxi in China). There is a river that runs through town and the surrounding countryside offers tons of different options for fun. But as mentioned it has also attracted mass tourism and in a bad way. Well mostly.
Frank and I found a guesthouse on the "other" side of the river and it was perfect in every way. Quiet and with wonderful views. We could hire motorcycles and drive further inland to investigate the countryside and a very impressive cave. And we went for another
drive on the other side of the river to a very nice and refreshing waterfall and all of that was perfect.
Then we also spent a bit of time on the "wrong" side of the river and that was pretty terrible. Kids having almost passed out and watching re-runs of "Friends" and "Family Guy" for hours. The party Island with bars that served buckets of alcohol and whatever kind of drug you would want. Even bloody opium!! One of the major attractions in town is to go "Tubing". Normally that just means that you flow down a river in an inner-tube and enjoy the landscape, but the Vang Vieng version includes stops at bars all the way and basically get as drunk and idiotic as possible before going to the "Party Island". Frank and I did not do any of this and it makes me feel old but also quite wise 😊
After we had stayed in Vang Vieng for a couple of days we went further north. We went on a tourist only bus and although we quite violently blew a tire along the way it was a very nice drive. Stunning views despite of a bit
Stupa
The stupa on the top of the Phu Si hill in the middle of Luang Prabang. of rain, plenty of legspace and a reasonable climate in the bus, so I just couldn't help myself laughing out loud when a young British guy proclaimed as we left the bus "This ride was bloody terrible". (His words was actually more explicit). I didn't know whether I should really laugh straight at him or simply punch him. It was the same guy who had pointed at a Bemo (a pick-up truck with a roof) and mocked the people on it. I kind of wanted to shout into his empty head that this was how the people, that he was fortunate enough to visit, was travelling, but it would have had no effect. When you are that young, that stupid and that spoiled, the only cure is time.
My big brother once got his hands really dirty when he was very young. My grandmother on my fathers side was the kind of person who could be genuinely concerned about something like that. "But Anders, how are you ever going to get your hands clean again". And he just said: "With time and soap". Hopefully that will work for British morons as well.
Luang Prabang
Our goal was
Sayo River Guesthouse
I have stayed at the Sayo three times now and I enjoy every second. As I am writing this caption I am sitting on the white balcony and looking at the Mekong. Luang Prabang that is a real gem. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site quite a while ago. That is both good and bad. It means that strict rules for urban development are enforced and that everything is clean and beautiful, but it of course also means that it has basically become an open-air museum and most houses are either a guesthouse or a restaurant or serves some other need that a tourist might come up with.
Don't get me wrong. I really, really like Luang Prabang and have spent quite a bit of time here. Walking through the wonderful streets with well maintained French-colonial style houses and Buddhist monks and sitting on my balcony looking the Mekong River across the street is truly fantastic. As I am writing I am in the town for the third time and staying in the same quiet and picturesque guesthouse on the northern end of the peninsula and I am sure that I could stay here forever. But I really would have liked to have seen it ten or fifteen years ago.
You are constantly offered "tours" in Luang Prabang but since my friend Katka that was also on Mount Sinabung
Drop Dead Gorgeous
A few minutes later I was also swimming in this perfection. the day before the eruption had recommended it twice, we decided to go see the waterfall. That was just incredible. Surprisingly there were hardly any tourists there and it was so pretty that only Cameron or Lucas would be able to CGI something similar. That is a place that makes you pinch yourself, but hey. Look at the pictures.
Lovely Mae Uak
I really wanted to do something out of the ordinary after a while and I managed to persuade Frank to join me for a two day mahout-training course. A mahout is an elephant keeper and that sounded perfect to me.
We went to an elephant village outside of town where elephants that used to work in the logging industry have been converted to tourist traps but I really didn't care. They used to work very long hours and a few of them was systematically drugged with for example amphetamines to make them work harder and longer, so carrying tourists around for a few hours a day is a very pleasant life for them. The logging industry is declining rapidly in Laos which is a good thing, but that means that many elephants are without a
First ride
It is pretty scary at first, but as you begin to relax you can't help smiling when riding an elephant. job and that means even worse living conditions for them and their mahouts.
So I had a really good feeling when I climbed onto the first one. Our "training" should allegedly enable us to control an elephant ourselves but they didn't listen as much to me as they did to their real mahout, but the "seung" command worked like a charm. It raises it front-right knee, you put your foot on it and grab the top of its right ear and then it pushes you quite forcefully up and ta-daa - you are sitting on an elephant. "Bai" is forward, "Kwa" is right, "Sai" is left and "How" is stop. I could have shouted as much as I liked. It really was the mahouts running the show. So we did a quick tour around the camp with just me on it, and that felt fantastic. After a longer trip in a seat through the Nam Kham river (elephants relieve themselves as soon as they get in water and walk slower than the current) we had some lunch and then it was time for some real elephant riding.
And this was when I met
Mae Uak. Her eating habits are
Doorsmeer
The Nam Kham river is perfect for elephant-washing. a bit extreme at 2-300 kgs a day, she is indeed as big as a house but I really, really liked sitting on her head. We rode into the forest where she spends the night and she is such a gentle, friendly creature and although I was almost thrown off every time she investigated the undergrowth for something to eat and my legs where hurting from sitting in a weird crouching position I really enjoyed every second.
These elephants end their workday around 2 o'clock so we had plenty of time to go up the river and see another waterfall and then go tubing all the way back. That was so peaceful and relaxing and on a tube you can really sneak up on birds and I saw some quite spectacular kingfishers and herons along the way.
The next morning we got up at shit o'clock to pick up the elephants in the forest. It was a nice morning walk and after having waited a while Mae Uak and her friends came sneaking around the corner. An elephant puts less weight on the ground per square centimeter than a deer, so they are really stealthy. It was in
And then she went for a dive
Mae Uak is a real water baby. I was struggling just to stay on her. other words a very quiet and since I dared put more weight on her forehead also a much more comfortable ride back to the river.
As we reached it a couple of kids threw a firecracker next to the elephants. After a few seconds of contemplating the girls decided to get scared and angry and with much trumpeting and a deep growling that shook every bone in my body they scared the pants of the two boys. The guide later said that if the mahouts hadn't been there the elephants would most likely have attacked the kids and - well - they would probably not have survived that. Mental note to self: don't scare elephants!
But then came the highlight. One of the two daily baths. So Mae Uak went into the river and I started scrubbing her the best I could. She REALLY liked that. And unlike all the other elephants in the camp she enjoys fully submerging herself and when you sit on top of her that means that you get very, very wet. As I sat there with basically just my neck above water and scrubbing as much as I could she used her trunk
as a snorkel and I knew that it would take a while.
When she finally came out of the water again I simply hugged her head and I am pretty sure that I kissed her forehead a few times. Then of course the mahout decided to have some fun and had her shift between standing on her front and hind legs which basically turned her into a rodeo bull from hell. Still it seemed like she controlled herself so that I could stay there, but if an elephant can giggle then that was what she did. Sweet Mae Uak.
We spent the afternoon trekking through the hills on the far side of the Nam Khan river and visiting Hmong and Khamu villages. Very nice but nothing much to write about.
Crusing the Nam Ou
And then Frank and I decided to go further north. Get away from most of the tourists and see some of the "real" Laos. So we went down to the boat landing to catch a slow boat to Nong Khiaw. Even before we had boarded the boat a young girl started to talk with me and I pretty much immediately knew that
Gas station in Nong Khiaw
Even more primitive than the ones in Indonesia. I love the colors. this would be fun. Angie was born in South Africa, has lived in Malaysia and Indonesia while growing up and went to university in Australia. Her parents currently live in Manila and she is desperately trying to get a permanent residence status in Australia.
See what I mean. Not going to be boring. Within minutes we were talking about religion and other topics that interest me and then it happened. She told me about a recent experience she has had and after a while I knew that I had to do the same thing. It more or less immediately was named BFCE (Biggest F****** Challenge Ever) in my head, but I really don't want to reveal too much. It requires quite a bit of planning and even though it is not dangerous at all it scares the crap out of me. Well, there is a quiz at the end of the post so that you can try to guess what sort of adventure I am going to embark on.
Across from Angie was Jonathan, a Wallonian Belgian guy and just like that our little group had grown to four members. It was a wonderful boat ride. After about
20 kilometers the Nam Ou separated from the Mekong and the landscape went ballistic. Sheer cliffs going all the way down to the river. Bamboos exploding along the brinks. Small villages with naked kids the same brown color as the river playing in the water. Just a wonderful way to spend a day.
In Nong Khiaw we found accommodation according to tastes and budgets and then met up for dinner. The first night of travelling with new people is usually lots of fun. All the stories are fresh and just getting to know each other is an adventure. Jonathan speaks English very well but to the enjoyment of the rest of us there were some pretty amazing errors here and there and his accent was perfect. Here is a trick that can keep you well entertained if you find yourself in the company of someone with a french accent. Get them to say "I like possums". It is fantastic. Jonathan was a very good sport about it and gave it an extra notch once in a while just to make us laugh.
So we had quite a few laughs. And Beerlaos. But even before we had left the
Rice
I love rice. The impossibly green color. The neat paddies. Everything. Except I am a bit fed up with eating it by now. table we had been invited to a game of Petanque which is a favorite pastime in Laos left behind by the french. That was bloody dangerous. They kept bringing Beerlao and everyone got increasingly worse at the game, but sharing a night with Laotians like that was brilliant. Whenever one of us made a decent shot and said something like "Oh my good" we would be politely corrected that in Laos you should say "Oh My Buddha" instead 😊 Beer, laughs and fierce competition. We were not popular with most of the other travelers in town.
Next day I spent in bed and only managed to get up for dinner!
The following day we wanted to go further up the river to Muang Ngoi Neua. Angie and Jonathan had already met Yvonne from Germany so I bought boat tickets for the five of us while we were waiting for our breakfast. It was a short trip - a bit more than an hour, but across from me was Carol, an English lady slightly older than the rest of us and after we had all found places to stay we met up on a pile of mattresses in a
Motley Crew
This is Carol, me, Emma, Angie, Yvonne, Jonathan and Frank. Funny bunch of people. restaurant. A young English girl, Emma, had joined the group and then we were seven.
The Motley Crew
So there we were having a brilliant time. Frank, Angie, Jonathan, Yvonne, Carol, Emma and I and we decided to all go on a two-day trek together. We are, to put it mildly, quite different, but sometimes that makes it all the more fun. So the following morning we started out through impossibly green rice fields with towering hills all around.
During one of the breaks one of the girls went off track to - well do what girls do off track. When she returned there was about ten leeches crawling on her shoes and legs. We got them off quite quickly but she sure wasn't very comfortable anymore. She asked me (the self-pronounced leech expert) whether one might have made its way further "north" but I assured her that they don't move that fast.
When we stopped for lunch she disappeared after a while and then suddenly we heard a scream "there is another one" from the bathroom and one of the other girls ran to rescue her. I tried to get our useless guide to get
Preparing Bamboo
This is one of Emma's shots. She really is a fantastic photographer. some salt and it required some assertive screaming to get him to do it. The leech had attached itself in the one place where a girl really, really, really doesn't want a bloodsucking bastard to hang around and it had been enjoying itself for a while. But once the salt was applied it fell of and the unfortunate victim was an exceptionally good sport about it. Within minutes she was joking about having had sex with a leech. She did get pretty jumpy though when something touched her unexpectedly.
We stayed in a hill-top Khamu village for the night. The villagers seemed quite dis-interested and left me feeling like an intruder for the first few hours but it got better. We had squirrel for dinner (Yup, I am not kidding. Squirrel) and the farm animals took turns keeping us awake through the night. Frank, Jonathan and I slept on the second floor of a house with a family and since the walls are made of bamboo so that you can hear which neighbors are snoring (or having sex) then you can also hear all the animals. So the cattle held the fort with their goat-on-acid bovine symphony until about
Afternoon fun
Apart from Petanque this game seems to be the most popular one. It is somewhat similar to volleyball but only head and feet are used and the ball is made from bamboo. They are ridiculously acrobatic and jump up to smash and block the ball with their feet. 2 o'clock. Then all of a sudden every single rooster in the village seemed to be confused by the full-moon rising and went nuts for about half an hour. This was when Jonathan and I woke up everybody in the neighborhood by giggling like schoolgirls about the absurdity of it all. They are used to roosters but not schoolgirls. Then the dogs sort of took over for a few hours but didn't do a very good job since I actually managed to fall asleep for a few hours.
But around 6 o'clock as the sun was rising a cacophony of biblical proportions just erupted in the village. Every rooster, pig, dog, cat, cow, radio and the few televisions went to full atomic power in a matter of minutes. Such mayhem in the middle of nowhere. Crazy place.
As we left the village Frank and I gave our remaning
Big Brother Mouse books at the local school. It is a brilliant idea that enables tourists to buy really nice children's books made by other Lao kids and then distribute them in the villages they visit. Much better than candy and money. I bought the
"New, Improved Buffalo" for myself. It is brilliant.
The hilltop school
Another one of Emma's. As mentioned we were a very mixed group and as a true motley crew we needed an enemy to bring out the best in us. That enemy was our guide. He was completely useless, annoying and I really don't respond well to that. Especially not when he once in a while talked to me as if I was a child. So we got really tired of him even on th first day, but it just got worse and worse. As we were wading down through a beautiful stream to reach the river it became too much for me and I basically refused to talk with him after that. I still have quite a bit of work to do with myself.
But the group ranging from 23 to 61 years of age worked surprisingly well. When we hit the river again and had a quick lunch we all went tubing in the most spectacular landscape and it was wonderful. The aquadynamics of the river moves people around as if guided by a giant hand. Well that hand ensured that Emma and I spent quite a bit of time chatting as the limestone fortresses were passing by and everything was as
Eating sticky rice
The hilltop village was dirt poor but food seemed to be abundant. Especially the noisy animals. it is supposed to be. Bliss.
The split-up
We got back to Muang Ngoi Neua and enjoyed a very nice last evening together. Lots of Beerlao and I ended up swimming in the Nam Ou. But we were going to split up.
Frank, Yvonne, Angie and Jonathan headed back south while Carol, Emma and I headed further north. They both had a plan of going into Vietnam but I just wanted to see more of the Nam Ou. And it was pretty spectacular going further up but at this point we spent more time talking than looking at the spectacle outside the boat. And boy, were we in for a surprise.
Our goal was Muang Khua, a town very close to the Vietnamese border. As our boat made its landing in town there were giant canoes flying past us and we knew that this must be the practicing for the annual boat festival. I knew there was one in Luang Prabang the same weekend but stumbling into one so far away from the beaten track was such an incredibly welcome surprise. We stood there on the concrete slope leading into the water for about ten minutes
Beerlao
Emma in her Beerlao t-shirt in front of Beerlao crates in the Beerlaoest place in Laos. just trying to fathom the spectacle around us. And this was the practice part.
Muang Khua is nothing like the rest of Laos. I don't know if it is the proximity to Vietnam and China that makes it different, but it is by far the noisiest town I have seen in this country. They only got 24 hour power about half a year ago and it seems like they are still celebrating that. Every television and oversized soundsystem has been turned up all the way and is going full throttle from six in the morning till late in the evening. But that would prove to be the smallest problem.
Carol left us the next morning to go into Vietnam. To be perfectly honest Emma and I had sort of left her as she went to bed and we went out for a few more Beerlaos. We had already decided to share a room and that plan was pushed forward a bit as we sort of fell into bed that night.
Saturday was the big warm-up day for the festival. Tents were erected on bamboo structures and a big party was certainly in t.he making We were struggling
Fascination
This guy stared quite a bit at me and - well - particularly Emma. with hangovers and trying desperately to get some money and messages back home to our families, but we really were very far away. And then it got worse.
As we went to bed the acoustic nightmare went from "OK, I can live with this with my earplugs in place" to "You shitheads are fucking insane!!". The deciding factor in this was the soundsystem in the Beerlao promotional tent. That thing could be used to vaporize giant stadiums. And it wasn't just the horrible, horrible music that they played in that tent or the 2-3 minutes Beerlao promotional speeches that was the problem (I barely know a word of Lao but when a word like "Beerlao" is used more than five times in every sentence then I can pretty much figure out what is going on).
The problem was the pauses in between the music and the promotional preaching. They would last at least 15-20 seconds. In other words just long enough to give you a little bit of hope that it was finally over. At around 3 o'clock in the morning it sounded like Emma was at her breaking point and no matter what I did to try
Holding hands
Making a chicken feet skewer. to gently distract her it was really getting to both of us. I went out on the balcony around 4 o'clock to look down the riverbank at the bastards who were doing this to us and when I went back into the room Emma screamed in terror because she had forgotten where she was in that half-dozed way that only a hangover combined with enforced insomnia can create.
But then it was quiet. Absolutely quiet.
Until 6 o'clock when the Beerlao tent deemed it prudent to test their soundsystem before the big day. Try to say this with your most desperate voice: "no, no, no, No, No, NO, NO, NOOOOO". Well that was my reaction. And poor Emma was almost crying.
The Beerlao tent really just kicked off what was going to be the soundscape for the rest of the day. So many rhythms trying to drive you insane. It wasn't even possible to try to keep the beat from one of the "songs" that were charging towards our earlobes because there were so many, so loud, so out of sync, so invasive of every single thread of sanity still left.
But at 9 o'clock the
Pre-race parade
The teams had been practicing for a week and now the racing could begin. racing started and Emma and I stumbled out onto the balcony that was already half-full with Beerlao drinking locals and boats flying down the river.
The races
The races are pretty simple. You have a giant canoe with around 15 rowers and an asshole with a whistle that tries to make them go faster. The teams do best out of three and if you loose two matches you are out. Men compete against men and girls against girls. Each team represent a village, school or a neighborhood and everybody is out to support their team.
And this part was really fun. Khampan sat down next to us and his English was brilliant, so he guided us through the basic rules and then he also got to tell a bit about himself. It is a life story you don't hear that often in Denmark.
He became a novice monk as a very young child and then a monk. A novice has to abide to five rules, a monk has more than 200 to think about. One of them being not to look at a woman for more than three steps. Rules that deprive or rather prohibits these
young men from everything that nature has put into them. That is a bloody tough way of growing up, but they do get a decent education, so Khampan became a tour guide later on and now he is a teacher. And a very friendly guy.
Emma and I armed ourselves with our cameras and headed down to the riverbank to immerse ourselves in the craziness laid out before us. And here I have an unexpected confession to make.
Emma is a better photographer than me. Not just a little bit, but blowing me out of the water. I have so far just relied on my eye which I still think is pretty bloody good, but here comes this wonderful girl with a shitty Nikon D40 but really nice lenses and superior technique and an eye that is at least as good as mine (I am not even kidding myself. It is BETTER than mine). Apart from just trying to learn as we went through the stalls by the river I realized that I have to invest in some better lenses and some actual training in photography if I am ever going to aspire to her level. She has
Beerlao Bastard
One of the guys from the Beerlao tent that had kept us awake all night. allowed me to use some of her photos further up in this post, so enjoy.
The riverbank was crazy that day. As the competing boats were pounding down the river we went past one perfect frame after the other. The Akha or Hmong women in their traditional headgear. The drunk woman vomiting behind a tent. The incessant blaring from the Beerlao tent. The fried chicken feet on sale. The massive engine powering one of the gut-wrenching soundsystems. The half-naked kids running around with plastic weapons. The monks just staring at the entire thing. The crowd across the river cheering for their boat. Kids throwing darts at perfectly colored balloons. The woman trying to sell a load of green oranges. The kids with helium "Hello Kitty" balloons and the boy who was playing with his green plastic car in a plastic tray that he had picked up and an empty potato crisp bag.
It was just such a bombardment of every possible sense but we made our way all the way down to the Beerlao tent where we all of a sudden were enrolled in a very scheduled celebration. I would not be surprised at all if sometime soon
Beerlao tent
I would not be surprised if one of the countless photos that was taken of us in the Beerlao tent will be used in a national ad campaign. "Look. The Whities also like Beerlao. And we can make them look like complete idiots." a national campaign was launched in Laos with a picture of Emma and I wearing stupid yellow Beerlao caps. But the free beer just kept on coming. And the Lao Lao which is just the run-of-the-mill rice wine that I have learned to drink in incredible quantities but never really enjoyed or gotten drunk from. A couple of weeks in Guizhou and that becomes standard 😊
So we went back to our room to enjoy a bit of relative peace. It wasn't like we were missing out on much. Every single sound penetrated the walls of our room, but I was still surprised as I ventured out on the balcony at 5 o'clock and found the riverbank more or less deserted. Emma and I found pleasure in seeing every single soundsystem being freighted out of there, but the Beerlao tent seemed to be undisturbed by the general exodus.
So we went down there. Basically dead apart from the horrible music, a few left-over men well beyond their last-use date and girls paid to be there. And then we went dancing. Not just one dance which would have been enough to meet the requirements for "crazy places I have
And there was much rejoicing
The team representing the part of town on the other side of the Nam Ou had just won a race and their supporters went crazy. been dancing" but Emma got us into another one.
This is how it goes. You get an assigned partner. At this point Emma and I were married and had lived together in Switzerland for three years, but that didn't seem to deter the guy who was dragging Emma back onto the dance floor. I was assigned a girl in a t-shirt from a mobile company and I would have gotten more of a response from talking to a bag of sticky rice or possibly a fried squirrel. And then we went around in a circle. Well not just one. An endless number of circles making only weird spasmodic hand gestures. Round and round we went with only the exhilarating shifting of male/female positions to distract us from the brain-mushing noise from the speakers. I did send Emma a few "I am going to kill you for this" stares during this prolonged test of "cultural exchange".
But we finally escaped and went back to our room. The Beerlao tent went silent around 1 o'clock and that gave Emma a couple of hours of sleep before she had to catch the bus going to Vietnam. She was heading for
Dien Bien Phu,
Beautiful Emma
Our cameras nearly overheated on that day in Muang Khua. the scene of the deciding battle of the first Indochinese war, and if only I had had a Vietnamese visa I could have fulfilled a big dream of mine. I had set my iphone to wake us up with Flunk's "Probably" and within a few chords I was wide awake. I dare you to find a better alarm clock song than that.
Since we were not exactly sober the packing and goodbyes where not at all as we would have wanted. As I saw Emma stumbling down the flimsy stairs and across the riverbank towards the boat landing I knew that it would hurt. The "rules" were clear since we were going to go in different directions, but it still stings like hell to see a girl like that disappearing behind the shacks along the river. In Indonesia it is good fortune to hear a big gecko do seven "Hei-hoooo"'s. That morning I heard for the first time a gecko do eight in a row and for one ridiculous second I fell asleep with a conviction that Emma would return. Superstition is not only a waste of time. It just makes things worse.
After a few more hours
Ronaldinho
This guy was running a throw-darts-at-balloons stall. of sleep I went to the bus station and after a simple 13 hours of travelling I was back in Luang Prabang and the guesthouse where I had forgotten the charger for my laptop. The ever-increasing beauty of the landscapes along the way. The friendliness of everybody at the bus-station in Udomxai. A very interesting lunch/beer with Aaron from Grand Rapids, MI. The beauty of Luang Prabang and the intoxicating comfort of room #2 at Sayo River Guesthouse should have put my mind at rest but it kept drifting towards Emma.
I will be OK. It will fade as I fly through Vientiane to Pakse in the deep south of Laos tomorrow. And that will bring me closer to accomplishing the BFCE.
Burn like a good bonfire
Jens
The Quiz
So here is the quiz. You can post a comment with, let's say, a maximum of three guesses about what BFCE (see above) actually is. What could I possibly do to challenge myself in a way that makes the jungle trek on Sumatra and the carnage at Lamalera look like a walk in the park. You have to think in terms of "Wow, Jens was
Attention whore
This beautiful lady really wanted to have her picture taken and I was more than happy to fulfill her wish. She giggled like a schoolgirl when I showed her the pictures afterwards. the last person I would ever have thought would do something like that" and then you may be on the right track. If anyone guesses correctly or comes pretty close I will come up with a very nice personalized prize, but I am pretty sure that I don't have to worry about that 😊 If you have no idea, then come up with some funny suggestions instead. You may get closer than you think. Both English and Danish are accepted.
Members of the Motley Crew cannot participate since - well - you already know the answer.
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Henrik
non-member comment
Guesses
Hi Busse, Go to Hard Rock Café (even if it is situated next to the best local resurants)and order a Big Mac and complain about the service and the fact that they don't have a Big Mac on the menu. Be rude, high voiced, not leave a tip and if you have a chance to run off without paying the bill you will do that as well. Spend 2 weeks in a Mövenpick resort in Thailand - and not leave the place for 2 weeks. Only order room service and get drunk by the pool side. Go into training as a buddhist monk /henrik