Advertisement
Published: January 27th 2007
Tuk tuk surfing
can you tell i was pissed?Well, I'm in a communist country, so you get a communist blog title. (suitably changed to fez style.)
Anyway, i managed to leave vang vieng after a week of being holed up there, heading north to the world heritage site of Luang Prabang. this has been described as Laos' finest city and a gem of a place. that morning i clambered into a tuk tuk which managed to fling my rucksack onto the road as we bundled down to the bus. a good start as ever. thankfully the bus ride was pretty damn good and only about 7 hours. once again, the scenery was stunning, kinda looked like the moon, just with grass and goats. it was upon the journey i met Wes, an american guy from washington and his kinda missus (i'd find out first hand later) Xyn (sin). despite the bus once again running on lao time and it constantly overheating, we chatted for a few hours and i got me a new buddy. i seem to collect americans on bus rides. think i'll bring home a few in my rucksack for katie or someone.
upon arrival in luang prabang, we searched for a cheap guesthouse. this
waterfall
the gorgeous pools we swam in place, compared with the rest of laos aint friggin cheap. eventually finding a decent wee place down a back alley, we met up with 3 hungarians and set about exploring the place. as usual, food and beer were the order of the day. food markets dont get any cheaper than this and so we gorged ourselves on cheap booze, chicken and rice while hearing some filthy stories from Christian the hungarian. he didnt speak much english so Till had to translate, but i swear hearing some of his tales, my bladder relaxed and i was soon thanking the fact i was wearing dark shorts. strangely enough, for a straight man (allegedly), he had a fascination with pre-op ladyboys. one story recounted, let us know it was possible to have sex with a ladyboy, while he has sex with your girlfriend - at the same time. imagine a conga line and you'll get somewhere near it. (apparently the ladyboy couldnt take it anymore after 3 nights and said no more.)
luang prabang is a really nice place. its very charming, a nice place to just wander round for a few hours and eat water buffalo burgers (fatty), while watching the
hundreds of monks go about their business. i spent most of my days just reading and watching the world go by. the evenings of course were spent under the influence and we had a good laugh. sadly, everything closes here at 10pm, so us pissheads are fucked when we need our fix. after emerging from one of the later closing bars (a whole two of them til 12pm) we were approached by a tuk-tuk driver. he said some magic words which were enough to make a ginger bearded man cry with joy: beer. bowling. 4am. so of course we went off to go bowling in a suprisingly high tech alley. wel the bowling kinda came second to the fact that we had another 4 hours of boozing to do. met about 20 english/dutch/wherever people and had a really good laugh. eventually i managed to pry myself away at 3am and ran into a slight problem. i jumped into a tuk tuk and was asked where i wanted to go. 'i dont know'.
what was it called? 'i dont know'. as you can see here, i didnt really take notice of where i was staying, what it was called or how
John
crazy bastard john to get there. so me and mr tuk tuk driver went around and around trying to find my guesthouse. eventually stumbling upon it, i rang the worlds loudest doorbell and was let in by a rather pissed off looking laotian women. she'd looked like she couldnt sleep and had been dragged through a hedge backwards. once i lay on my bed i found out why. upon entering my pit of manly smell (my room), after taking in the wonderful aroma, i decided drunk sleep was in order. unfortunately for me i was reminded that Xyn and Wes had the room directly above mine. for the next hour i was given a first class rendition of that famous musical 'sex above the boy downstairs as loud as possible'. i was not amused. though to be fair wes was kinda embarrased the next day when i informed him of the fact. i pleaded not to have an encore.
rest of the days were the same generally. wander, eat, drink, bowl, try to hang off moving tuk tuks and touch the floor while drunk. the usual. thankfully i did get to speak to till (atilla) quite a bit over the few days
Posse 1
Xyn, Wes, Till and have found him to be an incredibly smart person, but without doubt, the funniest man i have ever met. once again, i was thankful my trousers were dark and most of the bars already smelt of piss. hopefully i'll see him again in phitsanoluk, if i ever leave chiang mai.
sadly everyone left, so i spent 2 days on my own just riding around on my bike and watching the sunset on top of mount Phu Si (yes you can say it like the cat). wandering down the main strip one evening, i heard a cry. i turned around and found that rowan and jude were having dinner across the road. this was awesome. they'd brought gary and toby from chiang mai along with them too, and both guys turned out to be cool dudes. so i was no longer on my todd and things were looking good. once again the evening followed a familiar course, hive bar or lao lao gardens then bowling. sadly we had what probably amounted to the worlds worst bowling session, especially as i spent most of the time falling on my arse. also met john and chantal and spent the night singing
Luang Prabang
from the grounds of the royal palace train-wreck versions of the big lebowski soundtrack (bob dylan's - man in me).
cant remember doing much except heading to the waterfalls about 40 odd minutes away. now i'd heard these things were spectacular, but i was pleasantly surprised when we got there. the place was freaking stunning. apart from phi-phi, this is probably the most beautiful place i have ever been. in addition to the 5 of us, we had 2 swedes and 2 canadians, a good bunch to spend a day with. there were cool asiatic bears that had been rescued and a tiger called Phet. unfortunately the tiger had been rescued too, but looked a little worse for wear just pacing up and down its enclosure. the waterfalls were great and we decided to go for a dip into the pools at the bottom. it was freezing and once again i got to show off my 12 year old like body. i felt so proud standing next to properly built guys 😊 despite getting icicles on my testicles (testicicles?) the swim was nice and we got to do waterfall jumping. from a whole 3 feet 😉 after our dip, we headed up to the massive waterfall,
Jude
getting herself dolled up for the hunks she was travelling with ;) which unsurprisingly was massive. me and toby went for a wander and ended up scaling the makeshift track up to the top. if i ever wanted to have a heart attack, this would be where i wanted to do it. the views at the top were awesome of the surrounding scenery, and worth the hike. as we traversed the top of the falls, we found actual steps on the otherside to the top. bugger. had another dip and just pissed about in the water pools, finally got to see girls in bikinis again, felt like dirty harry: my day was made. i made a conscious decision that i wouldnt be rude to my hosts and wake them up at a rediculous time. i'd go to bed early, or at least that was the plan. i went bowling. i took my key out with me so i could jump the fence and head into the house the back way, it was a foolproof plan. so that night i came back sometime between 3-4am and jumped the fence. wahay! then disaster struck. the outer door was locked. i dumbly made a decision that i would wander around and wait to see the
Ever happy
toby and gary monks get their alms. after borrowing a jumper from rowan, i set off round the town. i managed to fall asleep on a bench for an hour maybe then wandered some more. twas cold, but then again i was a twat for not ringing my doorbell. i bought some rice from a girl on the street, who presumably waited up all night long for cold, hungry and drunk idiots like myself to sell rice to. it should have been for the monks but a) i was hungry and b) i;m not a buddhist, so filling their alms is somewhat of an empty gesture. eventually it started to become light, but not after i had a scare. whilst wandering around i heard a slight noise. when i turned around, i was greeted by about 30 monks quietly hotfooting it down the road. quite a sight at 6.10am.
the rest of the day was the same as usual. only i was far more tired. we rented some bikes and buggered about for a bit. myself and rowan looking suitably cool by riding from the back seats. but as ever, all good things must come to an end. the next morning i
hooray
the waterfall said goodbye to judith, gary and toby (i shall see you one day in the future miss bomphray) and i set off with rowan on our journey up north to nong khiaw.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.031s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0498s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
jude
non-member comment
ha
Thats what you think Mr Ferris! :P oh yeah and ..that picture is horrible! What is it with you and horrible pictures of me!! Grrr! :P