Floating through Laos

Looks like I’ve kind of slacked off on my end of the blog-bargain for a few weeks, so maybe it’s time to let rip. First we gotta pick a starting point. Hop in the Delorean with me and we’ll back it up so it’s holiday season again. You know, bells are ringing… children singing… something-something Barry N. White. You pickin up what I’m puttin down?

December 23, 2007: After Julie and I became Advanced - you heard right - Advanced Open Water Divers, with nine dives under our belts, including depths of 100 feet and dives in the pitch blackyness of night, we prepared ourselves to leave the island of Koh Tao on a ship (and train and plane) bound for Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. “Haven’t Julie and Alex already been to Chiang Mai?” you ask yourself. That’s what we said… only we used more first-person pronouns.

As fate would have it, our ferry (the first leg of our journey towards Chiang Mai) was running late. And guess who was running early. Well? The ferry to a little island called Koh Phangan, home to the next evening’s (Christmas Eve’s) full moon party. While attending the full moon party previously hadn’t even registered on our radar, we kind of figured, “WTF?” and, at the last nanosecond, we ditched our plans and traded our ferry tickets for tickets to Koh Phagnan. Christmas is just like that sometimes.

Now… we had spent a lot of time during the course of our adventures belittling all of the Western kids in Thailand who plan their entire trips around attending the full moon party in Koh Phangan. It’s basically just an excuse for white kids in Asia to hang out on the beach with a crap-load of other white kids in Asia, all while listening to crappy techno and drowning in a sea of Thai rum. Partying with drunk Americans? I’ve done that. Back then they called it Harvard, and I’m still paying for it. Not this time, bucko!

(And let me revise for a moment. The music wasn’t all techno. There were actually 10 separate sound stages, and, as advertised on the website, each represented a different genre. Those genres are as follows: techno, techno, techno, techno, techno, techno, techno, techno, techno, and jungle-psy-core-polka-trip-roadkill-donkey).

So Julie and I found ourselves at the epicenter of young white drunken Asia for a few days. Kind of a far cry from those intimate connections with rural Chinese villagers that are the main reason we took this trip. But, I’ll admit, we did have a blast… although we pretty much only hung out with each other.

The morning after Christmas, we were up and running, so that we could take a series of boats, busses, planes, tuk-tuks, and ferries (did I mention the crazy rasta-caterpillar that we rode through Surat Thani province to reach the flying monkeys) all the way up to northern Laos by the morning of the 27th. And that led us into the Gibbon Experience, which I believe Julie has detailed for you all in a very recent post.

All’s I think I can say about GibbonX without being redundant is that when you’re talking wild monkeys, ziplines, and treehouses, it’s pretty hard for a trip not to turn out amazing. The fun-ness of GibbonX even withstood a relentless onslaught of loserity from the 6-star general of the Celestial Douche-Trooper Squadron himself… he’s like a futuristic evil hybrid Robo-Hitler-Judas-Hugh Grant. The dude’s name was Jasper and people like him give travelers the world over a bad rep. But GibbonX was like the power of puppy-snuggles for fighting back his evil. It was like the claps that brought Tinkerbell back.

After GibbonX, Julie and I hopped on the “slow boat” to Luang Prabang. The boat takes you down the Mekong River for two lazy days. It was nice and relaxing and the scenery was beautiful. Some pictures will find their way in here. Halfway along, you spend the night in Pak Beng. Pak Beng is a tiny Laos town that I suspect only exists because it’s halfway down the river between Houay Xai (a popular border crossing between Thailand and Laos) and Luang Prabang (a popular tourist destination). There’s a handful of restaurants and hotels, along with hundreds of touts trying to herd the boat travelers to those hotels and restaurants, but really nothing else. Oh, and electricity goes out at 10. Guess where we spent New Year’s Eve.

Apparently, Pak Beng does have the desire to be party central, because we couldn’t walk 15 feet without being offered opium. The dude at our guesthouse even tried to convince me to have opium in my pancakes the next morning before the second leg of the boat ride. Hey Eggo, are you paying attention?

We ended up spending our New Year’s posted up in our guesthouse parking lot with a handful of people we met on GibbonX, a half-dozen candles, a few bottles of liquor, and one very lively fly whose death throes (after becoming a victim of the candle flame) very closely resembled B-boy moves. Times Square ain’t got nothing! Check the pictures and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.

I’ve spent a series of emails expounding on the virtues of Luang Prabang to my parents and sister, because it’s a town with a very distinct mellow charm that I think would appeal to a very wide spectrum of people, while also being a very easy place to melt into and find yourself feeling like you wouldn’t mind staying. It has beautiful architecture, with a melding of French colonial stylings with a more traditional Laos aesthetic. Pretend your left hand is New Orleans and your right hand is a petite Angkor Wat. Now lace your fingers.

In Luang Prabang, Julie and I mostly just hung out and explored a little. We didn’t really do anything, so it’s a difficult period to describe. I had the most amazing sandwich I’ve ever had in my life… thrice! (And that’s another thing, Laos is crawling with bakeries, which is a welcome addition to an otherwise bread-less life in southeast Asia). It was some kind of fifty-cent pork sandwich from a lady with a cart on the street, and Hey Steve! I think I talked her into coming with us if we meet you at next year’s Subway Convention in Vegas.

Luang has some really pretty wats and is a nice place to wander around. We also visited a beautiful waterfall that’s just a short ride out of town. All the previous waterfalls that have been advertised on our treks and such have been beyond disappointing, but Kuang Si Falls was the real deal, and it came complete with a badass rope swing. The Falls also had a set of enclosures for a handful of Sun Bears and a tiger that had been orphaned by poachers. That was a really moving set-up, and it was cool to watch the bears wrestle around. Unfortunately, most of these animals are beyond the help of rehabilitation for future re-introduction into the wild, which is kind of sad. But, on the bright side, they make good sparring partners for practicing my Kung Fu. Hee-yah!

After Luang Prabang, Julie and I took an overnight bus to Vientiane. We got here at four in the morning, which is a really awesome time to be stuck in a deserted downtown with two backpacks and a deadweight girlfriend. Yeah, I said it.

I’m gonna need everyone’s help in issuing a statement to the culinary delights of Vientiane. Be ready… on my cue. Could somebody get the culinary delights of Vientiane’s attention for me? Now everybody scream: “YOU SUCK!!!” For starters, Julie and I have ordered pizzas before that tasted like they were probably composed of toe jam and cardboard. And you know what? No matter how bad it tastes, you can always finish the F’ing pizza. Not this time. Hey Vientiane, chalk that one up as a winner… first ever pizza that’s so gross you stop eating it. We also had the blandest noodles and blandest fried rice on the face of the planet. At supposedly the best restaurant in town, one renowned for its Western food, our spaghetti was covered with a “marinara” that would make Vito Corleone put a horse’s head in Vientiane’s bed. So thin… and the color! You could mix that sauce with champagne, and I swear you’d think you had a mimosa.

The worst… at the place where all the expats in Vientiane hang out, I ordered (on positively glimmering recommendations) a plate of bangers and mash. I spent that entire evening puking my guts out. You know when you’re so sick that the thought enters your head that you might actually die, and you’re filled with dread. This time it filled me with hope. I’ve never felt more sick in my entire life. I’ve been recovering for what seems like ages, and that’s why we’ve spent so much time here in Vientiane when we could have been at Angkor Wat days ago. So say it with me just one more time, and this time with feeling, will ya? Hey culinary delights of Vientiane… YOU SUCK!

---

---

---