The rest of the story

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When I hit Luang Prabang in Laos after my boat trip, I just chilled out. Laos is a good place to do that in as it is a much more relaxed country than Thailand, and that is saying a lot b/c Thailand is pretty relaxed itself. I don't know if it is the communist influence in Laos or just the people themselves (chicken or the egg) that make it so laid back. All businesses must close by 11:30 at night (including bars) and many times by 11 pm you are the only person walking the streets. The people are also pretty laid back. Whereas in Thailand if you were anywhere near someone selling something, you knew it. You would hear the familiar sales pitch of "allo, where you go?" or just a plain old "allo, welcome" but in Laos you had to FIND someone if you wanted to buy something. There would be stalls or shops with no one in them. And then once you did find them, they didn't really seem to care if they sold you something or not. It was sort of nice after the intensive hawking that occurred in Thailand.
Luang Prabang itself is on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list and so has become a pretty popular tourist destination. And when I say tourists, I don't mean the backpacker types. I mean the older, with-money types, that get flown in and stay in the $100 a night "boutique" hotels. It is a nice little town with lots of shops and things to buy. You can still stay there fairly cheaply if you look around a bit.
There was a temple on top of a hill in downtown Luang Prabang called Phu Si. Now, because their h's are silent, this was often giggled by the local girls at the base of the hill "do you want to see our Phu Si?" It was quite a good view from up there, the mountain that is (you pervs!). See some of the pics.
After a few days taking it easy in Luang Prabang, it was on to Vang Vieng. I had heard a lot about this place before getting there. It is legendary as a rite of passage through the backpacker circuit. Legendary for mostly 2 things, its tubing down the river and for its party scene. And as I learned, the rumors were NOT exaggerated. In fact, the partying began WITH the tubing.
I had arrived in Vang Vieng after the nastiest bus ride I had been on in Southeast Asia. The road was incredibly windy and in terrible condition. There were major potholes big enough to break a bus axle. At one point, half the road had simply slipped off the side of the mountain leaving our bus to carefully traverse the remainder of the road. The scenery was tremendous however. The land there is filled with limestone formations called Karsts which beautifully dot the landscape. Vang Vieng was another major camera faux paux, as the only photos I got of Vang Vieng were of my first night at the Bucket Bar, and that was someone else taking wild photos with my camera.
After settling in to a guesthouse in Vang Vieng I promptly nestled down on a bunch of cushions to watch some "Friends" re-runs at a restaurant. This is another hallmark of Vang Vieng, many of the restuarant/bars show a particular TV show. There were several that showed only Friends episodes around the clock, some had branched out and were showing Simpsons episodes and yet others showed Family Guy re-runs. It wasn't uncommon to walk down the main drag in Vang Vieng and see everyone lying on their cushions in the restaurants, drinking a beer ( or maybe on something a little stronger!), entranced by their particular TV show.
Just as I was falling asleep on my cushion after a really good pizza, I ran into good ol' Tom (of monk curse fame, see last entry). He had been in Vang Vieng for a day already, and as we chatted and downed some LaoLao beer, I realized that the festivities were evolving once again. I will spare you all the ugly details but as an example of how out of control that night was, I woke up the next day with all sorts of strange pictures on my camera. Most of which were of me and all the people that I knew, so someone I DIDN'T know had been taking photos with my camera. Most of the photos were terrible and contained half faces and such. I included a couple of fine examples of said photography.
Anyway, the next day I woke up so hungover that I missed my meeting time to tube with some friends and almost decided to skip the whole deal altogether, but realized that I wasn't going to have a lot of time in Vang Vieng and this would be my last full day here. So by two o'clock, I got off my duff and hit the river. I was thinking a nice relaxing tube ride on a beautiful sunny day wouldn't be so bad hungover.

The tubing procedure is a little something like this: you rent a big tractor tire tube in town, a truck type taxi takes you about 6 miles up the river and in you go. Sounds simple and fun right? Well as it turns out, there is more to it than that. It looked like I had just stepped into a version of MTV's spring break. They drop you off at this bar called the "Organic Mulberry Farm" which got you started with the drinking by telling you it's for charity. And the hard part was that it is. They actually do a lot of good for the local kids there. Which made it impossible NOT to start the day with a Mulberry Mojito, their specialty. Ya know, for the kids!
Then once you put your tube in about 20 yards down the river was a bar blaring music, full of people drinking, dancing and flying off a zip line into the river. So we stopped there. An hour later we got back in the tubes to continue the journey to make it another 20 yards down the river to the next bar. This one also had music, beer and an ever increasing population of drunks, but also had mud pits for wrestling. The next one the usual bar and music, but also had a huge slide and a giant rope swing into the river. On and on it went. After many beers, a couple of rope swings, and a victorious mud volley ball game, I realized the sun had gone down. My entire tubing distance was maybe 1/2 a mile of the total 6 mile ride. We got a taxi back to town, and I crawled to my guest house knowing when enough is enough. The last thing I remember thinking that night was why in the world hadn't MTV been to Vang Vieng yet?

The next stop was Vientiane, Laos' very unremarkable capitol except for its obvious French influence. The streets were all named Rue something or other, and there was a good bit of french cuisine around. Apparently some of the older folks there can still speak French but the younger generation had focused their linguistic efforts on English, but again, much less so than the Thai as Laotians didn't really care about the almighty dollar as much.
I didn't spend a whole lot of time there but rather tried to move on to my next destination. I was scheduled to take a flight from Vientiane to Bangkok and then another flight from Bangkok to Phuket. However, there was a bit of political unrest in Bangkok at the time which had closed the airports. The cause of this unrest is a whole different story, but it was very safe if you were a tourist. I've felt more threatened walking the streets of Boston than I ever did in Thailand, even during these times of protest. Thai people are so non-violent it isn't even funny. I wasn't in Bangkok at the time of the airport closures, but even those in Bangkok said they didn't notice anything different during this time other than an occasional demonstration near the government buildings. I did hear about a grenade that went off somewhere that apparently killed someone. This was originally billed as a bomb but turned out to be a grenade instead. The last time someone was killed in a Thai protest, it was a self-inflicted accident. As far as protests go, these were very non-violent. My alternative to flying to Phuket was to travel for 2 days via bus or train. Since I wasn't down with this, I decided to go to Ko Chang instead, a closer island near the Cambodian border.
The idea for Ko Chang was to just chill on an island, soak up some sun and all around relax. Ko Chang, as described by Lonely Planet, "Rises like a rugged, verdant leviathan from the waters". Well said LP, well said. It is indeed large, taking 2 hours to motorbike around it. It also has seriously massive peaks in the interior. There was a lot of outdoor stuff to take advantage of here but I was having none of it, being hypnotized by the beautiful beach, warm waters and gorgeous sunsets. It is also one of the few Thai islands where you can still get a cheap bungalow on the beach. Many of the other islands are being developed at such an alarming rate that the cheap bungalow is becoming a thing of the past as the modern (and expensive) hotels take over.
I spent most of my time there in one of 3 places; either on the beach, in my hammock reading a book or in my bungalow hanging out with my friendly gecko. There were some festivities here and there, some new friends made along the way, some "old" friends that I had met earlier on the backpacker trail and saw again, some great food and basically serious amounts of indulgence.
All right, I can't just gloss over a whole week in Thailand without giving at least one highlight! One day I had kayaked out from Ko Chang to another small island close to Ko Chang. This island was uninhabited except for a few daytrippers like myself who had just come to check it out in kayaks or had been dropped off by a taxi boat. I spent the day doing nothing in particular, knocking down coconuts and hitting on a spanish flamenco dance instructor. When I got back, some Swedish friends I had been hanging out with were very curious about the little island I was just on. I told them that it was a "naked island" and everyone on the island had to be naked. Aside from a topless girl (not the one that I was talking with), no one was really naked and certainly not completely naked. The Swedes thought this was super cool, especially one of the guys named Till. He couldn't wait to get there. So the next day, they packed up their kayaks and headed out. I didn't think they would actually show up in the buck, but I underestimated the Swedish desire for nudity. Till apparently scared most of the other people off the beach when he got out of the kayak, naked as the day he was born.
After a week of Ko Chang, it was time to head back to Bangkok and then home. The protesters had gotten their way and had vacated the airports allowing flights once again. I was actually a little sad that the airport was now open because it meant that I had to catch my flight home ( I had checked in to postponing my departure but it was costly).

Thailand is a great and easy place to travel. I can see why it is so popular with the rest of the world. I was going to miss the beaches, the beautiful weather, the affordability of it, the food (not once did I have intestinal issues!) and the variety of things to do here. Most of all though, I would miss the people and their great smiles. If you ever want to see a truly genuine smile, go to Thailand. But be careful, they are contagious and you just might come home with one.

Next stop, Buenos Aires!

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Photos

this sums up Vang Vieng
Yes, he is wearing a dress and no, I don't know these people.