Vientiane, vang vieng, vasectomy?

After a stopover in Pakse (southern Laos) my Lao aviation flight to Vientiane continued without problems and i made it to the capital in time for lunch. visa was without a problem and i managed to get a full 30 days despite being informed previously it would only be a 14 day visa. (lonely planet sometimes is the biggest piece of trash) i shared a taxi with an old american lady and we quickly found out that the rooms in the capital were neither cheap or empty. this was unfortunate for me as the only room i could find at less than 20$ was a shitty little guesthouse at 3$. my first introduction to the capital was not a good one. my room was exactly how i presume old soviet block hotels would look like. freezing cold, dirty as hell, infested with bugs and producing a fear within ones self that touching the walls would result in catching leprosy. (thankfully i made it 4 days without any body parts falling off.) suppose for nearly 2 quid i could do a lot worse. things did infact get worse, i soon found out that the flush didnt work, neither did the taps or any other means of getting water into the shared bathroom. shower didnt work for most of my four days either, as you can tell, i loved this place so much.

as for vientiane, its quite a nice place, its just that there isnt much to do there. i figured, intitially, that i'd spend a week there. 2 days later i was gagging to get away. for a capital city, it must be the most laid back and smallest capital in the world, Swansea is a bigger place. unfortunately its only now in Luang Prabang, that i find out the place has awesome nightlife. after generally wandering around, as i always do on the first day, i had seen most of the wats and tourist sights. the market they have is friggin crazy, just one insane place, after entering to buy some cds and maybe a dvd player, it took me nearly an hour to get out. however it did reward me with my favourite purchase so far: a lao football shirt. fake naturally. it seems the lao tourist industry is rather naiive, one of vientiane's big sights, is affectionately described as a 'concrete monster'. managed to see the most revered Wat in Laos, Wat Luang Prabang (i think). that would be the big gold one you see on all the postcards and lonely planets. unfortunately i wasnt allowed inside, maybe they were scared i had some wierd gold fetish and presumably would hump the stupa, guess we'll never know. once again this sight was quickly enjoyed and i had sweet FA to do in vientiane once again. upon returning to my lepper colony it was time to leave vientiane. i did have one slight problem which was to prove a complete pain in the arse. due to some earthquake (inconsiderate things) all mastercard facilities were down in laos. this resulted in the often used phrase in law exams: 'dearan is fucked'. there are no ATMs for westerners anywhere else in laos and therefore no way for me to get any money. thankfully i was able to get my dear parents to wire me 660$ to a western union. the joke soon turned out to be on me once i got there, they wouldnt give me dollars. presumably for shits and giggles, the lovely man behind the counter proceeded to give me the entire sum of 6.6million kip in 10,000 notes. yes thats 660 individual notes. oh how he laughed when he handed over enough paper to choke a donkey, still i didnt mind, the resulting wad of cash enabled me to partly realise my lifelong goal of becoming a pimp. (if anyone has a purple crushed velvet suit, send it my way)

thankfully i left vientiane early that morning on a 'VIP' minibus. (VIP in laos now stands for Very Inconsiderate Pisstake). well, we would have left had it not been for the small problem of a border hopping south african. to this day i still dont know how he managed it, or why, but this crazy bugger somehow hopped the border between thailand and laos illegally and without an entry stamp. he reckoned he'd be fine when he got to Huay Xai (other side of laos) and tried to leave. in a communist country, with their paranoid bureacracy, methinks he is absolutely screwed. rather him than me.

the bus to vang vieng was pretty good, awesome scenery and a relatively short hop. the town is set amongst the nicest scenery i have encountered so far in laos. giant limestone mountains surround what is a backpacker haven of basically two streets. i wandered round and found a decent room for 3$, thankfully without the added bonus of disease. vang vieng is basically a shithole and there is no real reason for anyone to stay there longer than 2 or 3 days. i stayed 7. i have no idea why. well it isnt that bad, its just purely for backpackers and a convenient stopover between the capital and Luang Prabang. nearly every single bar has tvs blaring, mostly showing friends from 9am til 11pm. despite the fact i hate nearly every character on that show, i did partake in a breakfast ritual: bacon, eggs, friends for an hour. days just drift away in this town, its a nice change compared to running round like a blue arsed fly and doing stuff, and its nice to piss off the 'travellers' who whinge about everything western. note to them, you're still a fucking tourist no matter what way you look at it, and yes, you do look stupid in your white boy dreads.

anyway, the one thing that sucked about vang vieng was that hardly anyone spoke to each other. all seats face forwards to the TV. after remaining mute on christmas day, i was not going to let new years head the same way. whats the best way to meet people here? jump in an inner tube and head down a river pumped full of booze. what could possibly go wrong with that idea? that was the plan anyway. the journey was uneventful to the tubing launch site, despite there being 17 of us crammed in the back of a toyota Hi-ace. upon getting there, and promptly removing someones bodypart from my anus (was it friday nght already?) we set off. lets be honest, floating down a river is a genius idea, add beer and its the best idea ever. my tubing experience lasted about 10 minutes. i got to a bar, got out of the water and got a beer. lao people think of everything for drunkards. cheep, good booze, a 35 foot swing and booze. thankfully my new years was about to get interesting. while ordering a beer i got chatting to brian from ireland and some english guys who invited me to get pissed with them. therefore new years was sorted, i had me some friends for the first time in a week. perry, beaver, red and some other guy who was miserable. we started the party with beer and more beer. stupidly i was persuaded to try the flying fox. what shall we do for the drunken sailors? we'll build a massive zip line/trapeze thing up a tree and let them swing in from about a 30ft drop. i quite possibly pissed my pants upon climbing to the top, i was wet so i couldnt really tell. i grabbed the reins and went for it. i realised afterwards that my face must have been similar to steven hawkins having sex, but hell, i'm sure the 100 plus crowd loved it. it certainly gave me a rush, so we decided to play a game to see who could leave the trapeze at the highest point over the water. i think i came second to red, unfortunately both my testes took a complete battering, hence the vasectomy in the title of the blog.

that evening i met the guys in JDs bar ready for the nights festivities. we picked up two OAPs who joined us for the evening. hershell (woody allen lookalike) and jeff (scarily like harold shipman), 63 and 65 respectively. to be fair, they were awesome guys, ex-drug dealers from san fran and basically trying to shag anything that moved. at least jeff was honest about it - 'i'm 65, i dont wanna girlfriend or wife, i wanna pay a girl who wouldnt have me normally'. while smoking nearly the entire golden triangle's supply of weed, the two codgers came with us to check out the town. in the next bar i asked a lone girl if she wanted to join us as she looked down. her reply consisted of the following: 'i dont think i would be much company tonight, i tried to kill myself yesterday'. she then showed us both her heavily bandaged wrists. hershell, being such a gent, was insistent on her joining us and wouldnt let it drop. felt sorry for the girl but she eventually got to leave without the old jewish stoner. the rest of the night was just a good new years. i bought and shared some lao-lao whiskey for a dollar (lao moonshine), unfortunately the effects of it seemed to hit jeff and hershall pretty hard. both were pissed out of their brains as we continued to Pan's Place for the party. as a result of their booze/drug orgy, jeff fell over and smashed his face into the pavement. ouch. 2 men down, we continued to get rightously smashed and partied the new years away. big change for me this year, i wasnt naked. guess travelling changes people ;)

the rest of my time in vang vieng was spent watching family guy and some awesome films. (the departed especially) strangely enough they have the best pepper sauce i;ve ever tried. didnt see the english guys again so i went for a 30 odd km bike ride. note to self, exercise in the sun is bad. the scenery however was amazing. time to leave vang vieng, off to luang prabang where i'd hopefully meet jude and rowan again.

happy new year, depsite it being 18 days late. busy (read lazy) boy

dearan over and out.

(pics are only of vang vieng so far)

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