Fabienne in Asia

sorry, i know it’s been a while. it was a combination of becoming discouraged with blogging, sending heaps of personal emails and not wanting to then repeat what i’d written in them on the blog, and being surrounded by mountains, sunsets, books, and people that were far more enticing than a computer. now i’m in bangkok with my family, in a hotel grand enough to negate all of the backpacking i’ve done during these past months, and the pool and tennis courts aren’t going anywhere. we’ve poked around the city a bit and taken in our share of river ferry rides, night markets, and lavish thai temples. i’m just a tiny bit templed out though. gross understatement. i’ve reached a point where my mind looks something like this when i enter a temple: buddhabuddhabuddha lama buddhabuddha breath! buddhabuddha, all awash in gold leaf and digital flash. night markets widen that hole in my pocket, and i’ve ridden my fair share of boats that pitch and heave across bodies of water far too mighty for their sizes. so it’s time for an update.

luang prabang: the perfect city
the perfect mix of traditional laos and french colonial architecture, right at the junction of two rivers, under green and gnarled dr. seuss mountains. like alisa said, it’s the place to go to decide things in life. the place to sit right down in the dirt on the banks of a river and contemplate, anyway, while a group of laos boys across the water try to outdo one another’s back flips off the stern of their fishing boat, for your benefit. or the place to happen upon a collection of alice munro’s short stories and decide that it may not be so nuts to want to be a writer, after all. or to accept just how crazy a notion it is and decide to plunge.

vang vieng
this place is drug tourism. every restaurant along the main strip advertizes for happy shakes, happy scrambled eggs, happy pizza, and if you walk inside, sit down, and really examine the walls, it’s not too hard to find a small, hand-written sign for mr. ‘o’ tea. someone introduced the idea to vang vieng locals that tourists love ‘friends’, so now just about every one of these ‘happy’ locations is equipped with a few televisions, comfy cushions, and every episode of ‘friends’ since the beginning of time, on repeat, all day.
people who visit vang vieng seem to come away with a pretty strong opinion about the place. there’s the ‘vang vieng is awesome! you can just drink and tube all day, and the opium’s so cheap!’ crowd, and there’s the ‘all of those drug tourists give foreigners a bad name. i don’t understand how foreigners can justify and condone this sort of impact on laos society.’ crowd. i guess i fall a little in the middle.
i’ll try just about anything once. the perfect mix of thrill and relaxation is a day of tubing down a cool mountain river, stopping off for the occasional beer or leap from a flying fox, then hopping back on the tube to navigate the best route around the rapids, bums up.
i met up with the most wonderful group of girls – mostly med students from brisbane (of course, because who else do i travel with but australians?) – and we decided to spend a day white water kayaking and spelunking. spelunking! i had to use that word at least once on this trip. we spelunked on inner tubes into the deep dark depths of a water cave, left our tubes on a gravel bar, adjusted our headlamps, then crawled under stalactites and overhangs until we reach a hidden pool, great for swimming and as cool as a dip in stuart lake in july. also a prime location for sea monsters and anacondas.
i wonder if i’ll ever conquer my fear of water monsters. i mean, i’m 21, it’s a bit ridiculous. i’ll always swim, anywhere and everywhere, and for great distances, across massive bodies of water, but there’s always the lurking idea as i’m out alone in the middle of a lake that the swim i’m on will be my last because i’ll be swallowed by a monster that has risen from the plankton bottom after centuries of laying dormant. i’m getting my padi certification in a week. maybe surviving a few dives with sharks and sting rays will suppress the fear of monsters. i’ll let you know.
back to vang vieng. i don’t think i could last more than 3 days without the cynical side prevailing. a couple of girls i was with rescued a man from the water who was so drunk that he had lost his tube and had practically passed out in the rapids. kids ask you if you want to buy opium and probably press ‘start’ on the blender for 50 happy shakes a day. they must think that we’re all lazy, ‘friends’-loving, bob marley fanatics. i can’t help but wonder what pre-tourism vang vieng must’ve been like, when it was just a quiet little laos town in the mountains.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 at 1:56 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.