The Young Man Odyssey

There are re-occurring characters in this novel.

Sitting in an internet cafe on the Thailand border, reading an email from my friends from Pai, they said they had crossed the border in the morning. Coincidentally moments later Steph and Alex walked in, stating they had overslept their crossing. We had a buffet dinner where you take pieces of raw meat, including by mistake chickens feet which we fed to the dog, and barbeque them on hot coals set upon your table. We ended the night drinking Whiskey at a table on the Mekong river, looking upon Lao, and reazlizing we’d be there tomorrow. Fitting, I thought.

In the morning we took a 90 cent boat across the Mekong, and were in Laos. A thirty day visa was $35, and I proudly had a new stamp in my passport. We planned to take a bus about 250 km or so. The bus left at 10 am and did not arrive until well after 6. Imagine the fire roads of the trails of Mt. Tamalpais, but in worse conditions, these are some of the roads in Lao. Periodically when the roads got too steep, we would have to walk periods uphill, and we were delayed for 40 minutes because they were actually building the road. It was a dirt road, with no concrete, and I have never seen a bus contort in such odd positions. It was fun and comfortable, an experience albeit a long one. A group of seven of us from the bus bombarded one hotel and gave it quite good business.

So this morning our group of seven shall part ways, although Alex, Steph and I shall continue on together. Upon my recommendation we are going to Muang Sing, where a lovely non-profit company that regulate the trekking industry runs backpacking trips for $10/day. I look forward to it, and I don’t know how readily accessible internet shall be. Cheers.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Thailand, Laos, Vietnam 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.