Going where I’ve never been

We departed the day after Christmas for a motorbike tour of the “Golden Triangle,” the area of Thailand which borders both Laos and Burma. We took just one bag, rented a bike and headed out of Chiang Rai into what was a strangely drizzly day (dry season?). Gabe did wonderfully handling our first urban highway experience, and we eventually found ourselves on quieter roads. After lunch and obligatory tourist photos at the “Welcome to the Golden Triangle” sign in Sop Ruak (the town where the three countries meet), we pushed on until we arrived in Mae Sai, the northernmost Thai town which sits on the Burmese border.

We had a few drinks and watched the people come and go, wondering if the immigration officials might just let us through “for a quick look.” We decided that was pretty unlikely in a country ruled by a military junta and instead headed down to what might be one of the biggest markets on the planet. We stumbled upon an unmarked antique shop that was just about to shut down, but managed to slip inside before the door went down. What we found inside was essentially a dusty warehouse with absolute mountains of Burmese artifacts, religious items, statues, carvings, thrones, jewelry, swords – you name it. As any true antique store should be, the place was a haphazard cave of a shop with nooks and crannies that would take days to fully explore. Gabe dug out two meter-long dragon carvings, roughly hand-chiseled with faded paint barely clinging onto them, that seemed to have been taken off of some sort of temple. I could tell he was hooked – after getting a price quite (3000 baht apiece), we reluctantly left, Gabe’s mind definitely still on the two items.

That night we had a roaming dinner (this is becoming the norm!) where we simply worked our way down an endless street, lined with food vendors selling everything from Thai to Chinese to Burmese food. Nearly every stall had something new to try, and by the end we were nearly doubled over (but happy!) – neither of us spent over $2 for this gorge-fest.

The next morning we’d hoped to head out early, but ended up waiting around for the antique store to open its door at 8. Eight came, eight went – finally we went upstairs where there was an attached gem shop and were let in downstairs (apparently more of a storeroom than a storefront, which we were luckily enough to have found!). Today the price was 2000 baht, and it took next to no bargaining to agree upon 1000 baht as a final price. The woman and her son helped package them up in mounds of newspaper, plastic and duct tape, then Gabe, myself and his prized dragons got back onto the motorbike and headed out of town…

The drive was incredible. Almost immediately we had a road the width of a sidewalk all to ourselves as it wound around sharp curves and up impossible hills in the misty mountains along the Burmese border. Aside from a few passport checkpoints, we saw almost no one and had hours of breath-taking scenery, giddy at the discovery of a Thailand that has yet to embrace the perils of development. What we thought would be a two hour trip to the town of Mae Salong actually ended up taking over four hours (forgot about those mountains…and missed that last turnoff), but we relished every minute.

We arrived in Mae Salong and were greeted with a quaint, one road town built along the edge of a mountain. This is a major tea-growing region, and every other storefront was a Chinese tea shop. More people speak Chinese in Mae Salong than speak Thai. We checked into a great little guesthouse (there were only a handful) hightailed it for lunch. We had an alright meal at the first place we saw, then spent the afternoon lazing in the sun near a beatiful, peaceful wat. That evening we explored our limited options for dinner – no night market here! -finding empty eatery after empty eatery, all with fairly boring menus. Finally we went up the mountain a bit further, near the day market, and saw a Chinese place absolutely bursting with Asian diners. We knew we’d found our spot and were soon enjoying roasted Yunan duck that was unlike any duck I’ve ever tasted – delicious!

The next morning I had the shortest, yet hardest run of the trip (there are only two directions to run when you’re on top of a mountain, and you can’t go down without coming back up!), then we purchased some breakfast treats in the busy morning market (it began at 4:30 a.m., outside our window) before getting ready to go. We packed our bag, paid the guesthouse, then Gabe got behind the “wheel” while I boarded behind him, clutching the precious dragon cargo. Off we went, coasting straight down the mountain on the sort of road that was created solely for motorcycle travel – scenic, wide, smooth and absolutely traffic-free!

We made it back to Chiang Rai at 11:55, just in time for our 12:00 rental deadline. We retrieved our other bags from our old guesthouse and went straight to the bus station, where we soon found ourselves on a VIP “greenbus” (which was something akin to a spaceship after the buses we’ve been riding for the past month!) to Chiang Mai. It was a sort, ridiculously comfortable trip, and we were in Chiang Mai by 6, having Bangkok flashbacks as we watched the traffic sit, heard the horns honk and fought off the tuktuk touts.

Chiang Mai is actually much less of an assault on the senses than Bangkok is, despite many grating similarities, and it wasn’t much trouble to get a fairly priced ride to a good room and head out for some exploration. Gabe was here back in August and already had his bearings a bit, so we decided to check out the Night Bazaar.

We got sidetracked on the way by an unnamed night market absolutely packed with Thais and farang alike, everyone vying for spots in front of their choice stalls – I’ve never seen so much choice in my life! We gleefully began yet another sampling dinner and brought up a common question once again – how will we eat when we go home?? We did plenty of walking afterwards, which helped, and I got up for a loooong run this morning in order to make room for our full-day Thai cooking course. I won’t go into detail, but it was fabulous and again, all of you will be the ones to benefit when we return home and have a kitchen once more! Check out both of our flickr pages for visual elaboration – we’re off on a bike again tomorrow and will return to Chiang Mai in 2009!

We reluctantly left Laos and crossed the Mekong for the final time, arriving in Thailand on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. It’s so strange to have come full circle (though there will still be a little Malaysian and Burmese offshoot!), and we knew we were back once we saw the first of maaany 7-11 stores!

We went all the way to Chiang Rai that evening, arriving to find a city so unlike anything that we’ve seen recently; shiny, brightly-lit stores with fancy displays, billboards, plate glass windows, heavy traffic, well-dressed people, lots of 7-11s and a massive night market with a music stage and huge beer garden. We already missed Laos, but it was nice to see Christmas lights everywhere and, well, we were more than a bit excited about having Thai food again!

Christmas day was wonderful, despite the fact that it didn’t have much of a “holiday” feel. We woke up to an absolutely pristine day and set off for the first of many breakfast at what we refer to as “point places,” which are essentially rice/curry shops that have in excess of 30 pots of incredible Thai concoctions, which you simply point at and have spooned over a mound of rice. The price is next to nothing, and the taste is out of this world!

The morning was spent browsing a wonderful used book store (it’s nearly impossible to find books in Laos and we were running dangerously low) and exploring the market, rediscovering all of our long-lost Thai food loves. Lunch was back at another point place, but with icecream afterwards. We both then got haircuts (mine was done by a gay kid with a razor for $3 – he did an excellent job!) and then treated ourselves to a heavenly 90 minute massage (it cost all of $6).

I treated Gabe to a 30th birthday dinner at a wonderful Indian restaurant (we are hooked!), since we were to be back in the middle of nowhere the next day, his actual birthday. It was a nice change to have more of an upscale, sitdown meal, and we discovered some new favorite foods in the process.

Afterwards we agreed to split up for an hour so that we could actually buy some little gifts for each other; we spend 24 hours a day together and it’s next to impossible to buy any sort of presents or surprise each other in any sort of way! We went our separate ways amid the maze of the night market and naturally ended up running into each other multiple times! We’d just smile and pretend to avert our eyes from whatever the other was purchasing – we both knew exactly what we’d be getting…

We both were able to have great Christmas phone conversations with our families, which made both of our days – it was almost like being home! We finished off the night by using our leech socks as stockings for our gifts and then gave in and opened them that night as we enjoyed a few drinks. Certainly not the most traditional Christmas, but will without a doubt be one of our most memorable!

We have to leave Laos on Christmas Day, and are considering this a “gift” of the worst kind. Laos has been raw and real; there is no pretense here, the people are as genuine as they come and this country has consistently surprised us with delight after delight. The latest delight was a trek that we did from Muang Sing, in Luang Nam Tha province; while it was a world away from our Cambodia jungle experience, this was an experience in its own right with several surprises!

We came to Luang Nam Tha from Nong Khiaw, a beautiful and quiet little mountain town that enticed us to stay awhile (electricity or not!), thanks in no small part to the best Indian restaurant in Asia (he was responsible for 85% of our meals). The trip involved several legs – bus to minibus to bus to tuktuk – but we eventually arrived, intent on departing the next morning for nearby Muang Sing, a destination for eco-trekking (meaning that you pay more and the villages actually benefit from our visits).

Muang Sing is a tiny, dusty little dot on the map where the “ethnic minorities” actually make up 97% of the population. It also has one of the best markets in existence, encouraging roaming “sampler” meals that make your stomach bulge and your wallet smile (food blog to come)! We spent the first day stuffing ourselves, checking out all two of the trekking companies, then renting bicycles and riding to China, which was only 10km away (sounds cool, eh?)

We’d thought we’d have to sign up for trek alone, as tourists were few and far between, but luckily (for our wallets) we ended up with a group of six; a great British guy named Adam and his French fiancee (not so great), who were on a year-long round the world trip, and a cool French couple who were also on a year-long Asian adventure. We departed at nine a.m. on Saturday, shivering in the misty morning and hoping for some sunshine.

The sun showed its face around 10 a.m., as we walked along a dirt road where some guys were cutting sugarcane. These guys were friends of Ko (our guide) and apparently there was a huge New Year celebration at the Akha village we were spending the night in – these guys handed us all some sticks of sugar cane (who needs candy bars??) and gestured that they’d see us at the party. What luck!

The trek was relatively easy (there was an actual trail!), but lunch was a welcome rest. We were treated to an absolute feast; while it didn’t have the impressive preparation show that we received in Cambodia (it all came from the market that morning), it was one of the most memorable lunches of the trip! Ko picked some huge banana leaves from the forest, spread them on the ground and topped them with each menu item; laab, fried buffalo with onion, hardboiled eggs, steamed greens, smoked pork, scrambled eggs with tomato/onion and chili. We were each handed a banana leaf wrapped around a massive ball of sticky rice; we unwrapped it to make a “plate,” served ourselves small portions of each food item and ate ourselves silly! It was all followed by oranges, and there wasn’t a speck of garbage involved.

The trekking went on a bit longer, through some beautiful forest and lots of absolutely destroyed forest. The Chinese loggers have a stronghold here, and are easily able to pay off the villagers to take control of the land. After they chop down everything in sight and haul it to China, the Laotian farmers burn the land then plant rubber trees (a replacement crop for opium) which are only good for three harvests. It’s an environmental nightmare, but a tough situation. These people aren’t worried about five years from now, they’re worried about what to give their kids for dinner. It was a harsh dose of reality to witness, and you have to wonder how long there will be land to farm.

We arrived in the village around 3:00, and the New Year party was in full swing! Huge speakers had been brought in along with a “DJ” and a keyboard, the first time in two years that this village has enjoyed music. Many people had come for the party and it had the same atmosphere that you’d find at any festival in the world; music, smiles, dancing, carnival games, food, drinking…

The dancing was the main attraction, and performed in a big circle around a banana tree. Four girls would start it off, their male counterparts soon joining, followed by every couple thereafter. Everyone would make the circle in time with the music, and not long after we were handed big bottles of Chinese beer, we were told that we would lead the next dance! There was an older Swiss couple there on a three-day trek, and they had been practicing all afternoon – we all jumped in and had fun with it.

As Ko went to work on dinner preparations at our “lodge,” we remained at the party. Eventually Joy, the guide for the Swiss couple, gestured at Gabe and I. I thought we’d have to dance again, but instead he waved us over to a table behind the DJ where we joined the Swiss couple and a few Laotians for multiple swigs of the communal Beerlao. We were then handed clean-ish spoons and shown to a communal bowl of “buffalo soup.” It was strictly broth and I hestitated to ask what part of the buffalo it was; the large head resting on a nearby porch assured me that it came from the neck down!

The Swiss woman told me that they were supposed to stay in a different village, but that upon arrival the chief had declared it bad luck to pass through on a day of celebration, so it was insisted that they stay. She had brought some clothing donations, and as a thankyou the chief had slaughtered a chicken, which was due to be served that evening. Sure enough, we were soon beckoned (Gabe and I were seemingly adopted) to the chief’s hut and soon found ourselves sitting around a bamboo serving table in a dark room, lit only by the glow of the dinner fire in the corner, with the Swiss and several other Laotians, accepting drink after drink.

We were all given chopsticks and two bowls of fried buffalo with ginger (not the head!) were placed in front of everyone with urges to eat and enjoy. An equally delicious dish came next, some sort of chicken with tomato…we couldn’t actually see our food, so I can’t get any more detailed than that.

Soon the chief (a short, 50ish guy in black pants and a Nike sweatshirt) came in with a few elderly people, and they performed a ceremony of sorts where they tie colored yarns around everyone’s wrists for good luck and safe travels. As each person tied a string, they would grip our hands, chant an Akha blessing then leave us to the next person with a huge smile and nop, or bow. After that the sacrificial chicken was placed in the center and we all contributed a few thousand kip as a gesture of goodwill. We figured it was about time to go find our group, but really didn’t want to go! Everyone was smiling and drinking and eating and candles had even appeared, finally illuminating our food.

The inevitable happened and Gabe left the hut for a toilet break in the forest, where he ran into Adam and was told that our dinner was ready. He came back to get me, we explained the situation to Joy who gave us the okay to go (insisting that we return for more celebration), and we reluctantly headed back to our group, marveling at how incredibly lucky we seem to get!

Dinner was delicious as usual, but lacked the excitement of the meal in the Chief’s hut; we were soon back at the party and eventually enjoying massages in our lodge that are apparently traditional for village visitors (regardless, they felt incredible and gave the women some much-needed income). It was cold and I had no desire to go back out; by 8:30 we were huddled on the floor with the rest of our group, trying to stay warm despite the flimsy woven structure and pathetic blankets. There weren’t enough cushions for all of us and Gabe and I got stuck with the bamboo-floor; we wanted authentic, right? A long night ensued, most of it spent waiting on morning.

We were freezing and reluctant to get out of “bed” in the morning, only doing so after the breakfast fire was lit around 6:30. As we huddled around the fire with Adam and the French couple, we couldn’t help but gawk at the 17-year old mother who had been recruited to help with breakfast. She was tiny, could easily have passed for 12 years old, and wore nothing but a skirt and ragged short sleeved shirt that covered up pretty much nothing. We finally convinced her to take a rest and warm herself up; we all felt a bit guilty at our warm clothing.

When we’d all helped ourselves to big bowls of glass noodles with egg and vegetables and glasses of boiling coffee, we insisted that Ko tell her to finish off the remaining food. Her face lit up and she polished off a massive bowl in no time – even when you interact with these people every day, it’s hard to comprehend how poor they are (the per capita GDP in this province is $280).

The day was enjoyable but uneventful (aside from an unexpected river crossing that required everyone to strip to their underwear and plunge into the icy water) – we saw more nice forest (“for the tourists”), lots more barren, scorched hills (thanks, China) and a village full of the most enthusiastic, most camera-friendly and happiest kids that I’ve ever encountered. There isn’t a single child in the developed world that has a smile like these kids have, I guarantee it.

We were back in Muang Sing by 3:00, left to reflect on our experience over more Beerlao and realize that we had a meal with the chief that will stick in our memory longer than any Christmas dinner or New Year’s meal ever will. We are some lucky, lucky people.

*See photos and have a very Merry Christmas – miss you all!

…and check out both of our Flickr sites, lots of new stuff from Laos!

…as soon as I finished the last post, it was insisted that we join the shop’s owner, his boss and his family for a meal (and a lot more alcohol). We couldn’t communicate via words with anyone but him, however the smiles said it all!

We were handed plates, spoons, chopsticks and presented with a Lao feast of grilled meats, sticky rice, various soups and shots of lao-lao between each bowl. Our new friend informed us that his family was extremely happy to have us, that we were the first foreigners to share a meal with them. Once again, he would take no payment for the food or the copious amounts of alcohol, and charged us for barely a fraction of the internet time we’d used (and only after we insisted on being charged).

Laos is the winner.

*I’m sorry for the post slowdowns, but we’ve been in very few places with reliable electricity, much less computers! I’m sure that readership is slowing down with the holidays (Christmastime? What?) anyways, so it works out well. Photos should be up tomorrow!

There are many, many things we love about Laos, but now that we’re in a remote, nearly tourist-free eastern corner of the country, we’ve found even more. No one in any part of this country has overcharged us, looked suspiciously at us or been anything but 100% welcoming. The food is good, the people are phenomenal, and the Beer Lao never stops coming…

….ever. We arrived in SamNeua after a loooong 11 hour mountainous bus trip without the slightest indication of civilization and were happy to see that there was in fact an internet cafe in town. After dinner we headed straight there and found a painfully slow connection at a painfully expensive rate, as is the norm in Laos. The place was soon devoid of kids and a group of guys had gathered and were popping open the Beer Laos around a coffee table.

One guy soon brought over two glasses of beer and offered them to us, saying “please join when finish! Friendship!” We couldn’t refuse, and soon abandoned the frustrating email attempts for the party on the other side of the room. We were warmly welcomed, and informed by the shop’s owner (who spoke excellent english, thanks to a six year education in Vietnam) that he’d just had his first baby on December 1 and that his friends had come into town to celebrate (In Laos, men drink and drive things while women do pretty much everything else).

The Beer Lao kept coming, as did shots of lao-lao, and our communication with the non-english speakers got better and better! They would accept no payment, and charged us for only a fraction of the internet that we’d used. It was a great time, and my love of Laos grew even more! The next two days were spent elsewhere (including the find of the trip, a steaming hot spring located across a rice paddy that allowed us use a heavenly private bathing room for merely 50 cents), but we returned tonight and found that the owner’s boss had come to visit.

Result? We’ve had unlimited glasses of Beer Lao placed in front of us (though Gabe went across the street so that we could contribute a few beers of our own), and could care less about the crappy connection. Everything in Laos has been a delight, and we hate to see the time flying by the way that it is!

Last week we left the party scene behind and headed east towards Phonsavanh for yet another history lesson and sobering dose of reality. The main attraction around Phonsavanh is the Plain of Jars, which is composed of 52 sites of 3000 year old stone jars, each one at least as tall as I am. There is no explanation for these jars, the two theories being that they were used as burial urns or as storage for lao-lao, the sticky rice whiskey. Of those 52 sites, there are four open to visitors. The remaining 48 are inaccessible due partially to a lack of roads, but mostly due to the danger of UXO, or unexploded ordinance.

Yes, Laos is yet another country that has more or less been crippled by American bombing, and the story here is perhaps the most heart-wrenching and angering (as an American). Between 1963 and 1974, the US conducted a “secret war” against Laos that was unknown to the American citizens, and even to Congress. The bombing was most heavily concentrated in the northeast, where the communist Pathet Lao leaders resided, and in the south, near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Despite signing the Geneva Accords that declared Laos a no-go zone, America dropped over 2 million tons of bombs on Laos, more than we dropped on Germany and Japan combined in all of WWII.

Many of the bombs that were dropped were merely “leftovers.” On days when missions couldn’t be completed in Vietnam due to various reasons, the planes would be ordered to drop their bombs onto Laos enroute to their Thai bases so that they wouldn’t have to “bother” with the safety process of landing a plane with ordinance onboard. An American working in Vientiene was one of the first people to bring this all to light. He saw the thousands of refugees from the rural areas fleeing to the city and reporting what was happening. Hundreds of villagers were being killed every day; those that could were hiding in caves and suffering from lack of food. The American went to Washington to confront the government and was told that the country’s “official position” was that we’d never dropped a single bomb on Laos. He persisted and it eventually was all exposed; the US was spending over 2 million dollars per day to secretly destroy this unknown country, a blatant violation of the agreement we’d signed.

Nine years of such atrocities are bad enough, but the worst part is the lasting legacy of it all. Unlike Cambodia, where we mostly laid landmines (not that those are any better), the majority of the bombs dropped on Laos contained “bombies,” as they are known here. Basically the huge 500 kilo bombs would break open, spreading hundreds of smaller ball-sized bombs everywhere, each of which in turn were full of explosive pellets. These were effective in nothing but killing villagers; the Pathet Lao were hidden deep in a cave “city” (more on that in a bit), and only the civilans fell victim.

An estimated 30% of the bombs did not detonate, and have resulted in a country that today is one of the poorest and least-developed in the world. The mountains around Phonsavan and SamNeua, where we are right now, are absolutely covered in bomb craters, massive bald spots where nothing will grow. Hundreds of people, mostly children and farmers,are killed every year by these “leftover” bombs. The poverty that grips this country 30 years later is directly due to the fact that nearly half the land is unfarmable; this is a culture that lives by subsistence farming, and they simply cannot use the land that they have, it is so littered with UXO.

A major part of school curriculum in Laos is to teach children not to pick up bombs; the bombies look like toys, and hundreds of children die each year after finding one alongside the road. Even more frequent are deaths that occur when an adult or child sees a bomb and cannot resist the temptation of trying to pick it up; the scrap metal trade is one of the most lucrative around, and for people that can only grow enough food for half of the year, there is nothing that can convince them not to take that risk.

There is a British group called MAG (Mine Advisory Group) that is the central bomb-clearing organization in the country. They train villagers as bomb-clearers, providing a new industry and slowly helping to clean up the damage. Huge bombs are regularly found in schoolyards, under roads, in rice fields. At the current rate of clearance, however, it will take over 100 years to make this country safe.

It honestly makes us feel sick to be American at times. These things are horrible enough to read about, but actually being here makes things that much more real. I have never felt as welcome anywhere as I do in Laos; these are the kindest, gentlest, hardest-working people I’ve ever encountered and there is absolutely no justification for it all. Yesterday as we toured the cave network that the Pathet Lao leaders resided in for those nine years, we saw the MAG people on site, working to detonate yet another bomb found next to a village. Our guide told us that they are there five days a week, every week, searching and clearing a seemingly endless number of discovered explosives.

This is real, and somehow these people hold no resentment or show any anger towards us. It has become a way of life for them, and, as in many Asian countries, they simply look ahead and do what they can, right now. We can’t help but compare it to 9-11, which was horrible but did only a fraction of the damage that we did to this place; the result in America was the shunning of an entire Middle-eastern race, and yet more war has resulted. I have nothing but respect for this entire country, and how incredibly welcoming every single Laotian has been – I will definitely be back to this place, and hope that I can help it in some way.

We didn’t arrive in Vang Vieng with very good attitudes. Actually, we arrived with horrible attitudes, expecting a cesspool of backpackers who never left their freshman year of college, all set to “get wasted!!!” and stumbling around town in swimsuits and aviator glasses between pizza gorge-fests. You know the type.

As it happened, we found exactly that (many restaurants had “Let’s get wasted!” menus – really), but it was more entertaining than obnoxious, easy to escape and, well, there were too many fun distractions around for it to matter all that much!

Vang Vieng is set in a gorgeous area of Laos, surrounded by huge limestone karst formations that create a landscape nearly identical to that of El Potrero Chico in Mexico, one of our favorite places. It is a major destination for the activities on offer, including kayaking, cycling, cave exploring, rock climbing and most notably, tubing.

Any of you Texas folk know exactly what tubing is, and you’ve probably enjoyed many summer days floating down the Guadalupe in a big inner tube with your fully-stocked cooler of Lone Star beer floating next to you. I’ve enjoyed that myself, but after “floating the river” in Laos, Texas will never, ever be the same. Let me explain why…

First of all, tubing in Laos is cheap. $6 gets you the tube and tuktuk transport several kilometers upriver to an organic farm, where you put in on the Nam Som river and eventually float back to town. You have to return by 6 p.m. or there is an overtime charge – this is their real moneymaker and I’ll explain why in a bit.

The scenery is of course amazing and the river is incredibly clean- no beer bottles like you find on the Guadalupe! Why? Because no one brings coolers! Instead you pick one of the many bamboo bars lining the river and, when you’ve made your choice, there is always someone with a long bamboo pole to help pull you in to shore. You toss your tube onto the pile, climb up to the crowded deck, order a big Beer Lao (3 mug equivalent) for about a dollar, receive a free whiskey shot with that, then relax in the sun, enjoying the music and watching people make fools of themselves.

When you’re ready for some activity (ie there’s enough alcohol in your system to justify plunging yourself into ice cold water), it’s time for the best part…trapeze!!

Yes, the bars along the Nam Som have erected a number of rope swings, trapezes, water slides and the like, all of which are free of charge and, as always in developing Asian countries, highly safe. Simply climb up the planks nailed onto a tree, grab the bar and go! The daredevils drop at the great height of the first swing, while others pendalum a few times to make the jump a bit less intimidating. Some people (including “elf girl,” a blonde bikini-clad character who wore a colorful pointy hat and pranced around pouring whisky shots for people…she must’ve stumbled into an opium field on the way over) were truly adventurous and swung over the water by their knees, while drinking a beer…let’s just say it didn’t get boring!

Once you do get restless, however, you get back in your tube and float along until another reggae-playing bar catches your eye, at which point you pull over and do more of the same, maybe ordering a plate of pad thai or barbecued meat to go with your drink. There are no police, no “cooler restrictions,” no ID-checks – and it works! People are there to have fun, there’s no pretense of liability – if you mess up, it’s your problem, so drink/swing/swim/float at your own risk! It’s beyond fun.

We aren’t exactly binge-drinkers and were able to have a great time, enjoy a few beers and still be coherent enough to notice the sun starting to sink and guessing that we’d better float on back before all of the warmth of the day was lost behind the mountains! The second half of the float was downright serene – the bars spaced out (everyone was still at the first one anyways), rice fields appeared, and we had it pretty much all to ourselves. We passed a large deck marked “Last Bar!” and knew that it would soon fill up; we moved on.

By 4:30 we were pulling ourselves out of the water, just before the temperature really started to drop. There was conveniently another collection of bamboo platforms right on the water’s edge – we ordered some sodas and watched the sunset. At 5:40 we hauled our tubes up the hill and back to the warehouse. We were the first ones back! At 6:15 we watched the tuktuks start dropping off loads of people with their tubes; most everyone stumbles their way into “Last Bar,” drinks just one more and eventually realizes that it’s dark and they still have 30 minutes of floating left! Conveniently, tuktuks wait right outside for these unfortunate souls (return trip is NOT included in the rental price) and make sure that they wait on a full load (they somehow seem to fill up right around 6 p.m.) before returning to town, where everyone is slapped with an overtime charge. Brilliant!

Anyways, the Guadalupe has a few lessons to learn (and laws to get rid of)! Vang Vieng has made an art of it, and they’ve got something else that is simply brilliant – Friends bars. Yes, I do in fact mean the television show Friends, which plays on rotation at all hours of the day in several restaurants, all of which are outfitted with cushioned bamboo platforms, perfect for lounging on for hours. We had scoffed at such an idea, but come on…it’s great! It’s important to get over all of that “cultural experience” stuff when you’re in this town.

We got over it, and we enjoyed hours of Friends (there were also venues offering Family Guy and Simpsons), ate from pancake vendors and did the whole “thing.” We drew the line at hot dog sandwiches, tours, beer at breakfast and walking around town in bathing suits, which an appallingly high number of people do. Laos is a country where even shorts/tank tops are considered inappropriate – it felt strange enough to be wearing a swimsuit on the river and I couldn’t believe the classless way that soooo many people presented themselves! Actually, I could believe it. It’s exactly what we’d expected. But still!

We’d expected to last a single day in such a place, but in actuality we stayed three. We had a great day of bike riding and cave exploring, a lot of fun with a motorbike yesterday and I was able to get in some long, solitary (no one gets up at 6 a.m. in Vang Vieng), scenic runs. Yes, the majority of the people were those I thought I left behind when I left college life in Tampa and it was next to impossible to escape the dumbed-down (priced-up) western menus, but overall it was, as one description read, “not Laos, but still good fun!”

Things move slowly in Laos, and we are following suit! Tomorrow will mark our fifth day in Luang Prabang, and while we’ll soon need to tear ourselves away, we really have no desire to.

 The bus ride to Laos was slow, but uneventful, thanks in no small part to the time of year! November marks the beginning of the cool/dry season; the 8 hours of winding, unpaved mountain road that led us here would’ve have been virtually impassable a month ago (evidenced by an uncountable number of recent landslides!). The lack of A/C on a rickety, incredibly crowded bus wouldn’t have been very nice either…I welcomed the morning chill!

We saw nothing but small thatch villages the entire way; aside from the border crossing (strangely modern, having only opened to foreigners a year ago), there was nearly no sign of modern development until we reached Muang Khua.

Modern development is stretching it, actually. We piled out of the bus on the side of the river and were loaded with faarrrr too many other people into tiny wooden longboats and ferried across the small stretch of water. Muang Khua has one road, one market, a handful of guesthouses, three identical restaurants and electricity for three hours per day (the whole town is run on a generator). We found a nice, clean room with hot water (during those three hours, of course) and ended up staying a day. The transition from Vietnam to Laos couldn’t have been better – we didn’t hear a single honk, barely saw a single motorbike and definitely weren’t sold anything. The restaurants were a bit pricey, as the locals have no use for them, but the return to soup-less foods was welcome and we also soon discovered a tom mahk hung (papaya salad, or somtum in Thailand) vendor in the market whom we frequented!

After a day of walking around the surrounding villages and enjoying the first run I’ve had in Asia where I not only had an entire road, all to myself, but had a gorgeous mountain and tree-lined background to boot, we boarded another bus made for midgets (or at least not those with “Europe legs”) and endured the 10 hours to Luang Prabang. Aside from a transfer point in Udomxai, one of the only towns with an ATM in the entire country, we saw nothing but rural countryside and small thatch villages full of smiley people the entire way. The roads were virtually traffic-free and the vehicles that we did see didn’t engage in horn-blowing competitions or defy death by driving on the wrong side – orderliness that  I didn’t know could exist in this part of the world!

We arrived around 7 in Luang Prabang and were assured by a friendly monk and fellow bus companion that we were not being gouged for the tuktuk ride – everyone paid the same. We were dropped in the center (though it turns out that this entire place is the center, it’s tiny!) and warned that guesthouses tend to be full at night – many falang! We brushed it off, as we’ve never arrived anywhere and not had someone pulling us to their place within 30 seconds – all you have to do is look white and carry a backpack!

Alas, no one came. We started walking down the spotless main street, full of beautiful old French shophouses full of candlelit restaurants, bars, handicraft stores and foreigners. Guesthouses were abundant and we turned into the first one – “sorry, full!” became the tune of the evening. Everyone was full! The few that we found with space (and many of those without) wanted anywhere from $30-60 for a room – where were we??

 It turns out that we were in one of the nicest cities out there. Eventually we came across a kid at an alley guesthouse who said that it was full, but that his father would give a ride to their other guesthouse, which had a room for $12. That’s on the high side of what we’ve ever paid, but it seemed to be typical here and we were more than ready for a home! We were tuktuk-ed to a pristine place with hardwood floors, a huge comfy bed and no flourescent lights. Seriously, where were we?? We soon headed the direction of the huge night market and found a row of vendors serving up everything from vegetarian buffets to spring rolls to grilled sticky rice to barbequed everything. We bought the world’s most incredible grilled chicken (on a bamboo skewer of course) then snacked around before retiring, saving further exploration for the next day.

 Unfortunately, our pristine guesthouse had an extremely tempermental hot-water (non)heater, unacceptable with such cold nights. The next morning we set out to find a new place, and quickly found a beautiful riverfront house and were shown to a corner room with nothing outside the wooden shutters but palm trees and breezes. Perfect! The day commenced, and we found yet more papaya salad for breakfast before spending the day wandering around, browsing handicraft shops, discovering all of the responsible development initiatives (lots of efforts to revive traditional handicrafts and practices, which are dying out with younger generations) and lazing by the river. We capped off the day with a painting-like sunset and a few Beer Laos on the Mekong – see photos!

Day two was similar, though we capped off the night with some traditional snake wine (seriously, a jar of rice whiskey with a giant cobra curled up in the bottom) – this is a place where you just sit back, relax and smile. The weather is beyond perfect, chilly at night and warm during the day without a cloud in sight. Everything is so well-maintained, the architecture/land/flowers/river are out of a dream, the people are beyond friendly, want nothing from you and it’s the first place we’ve visited where hoardes of foreigners seem like a positive thing. Not one annoyance befallen us yet.

Yesterday we set out on some mountain bikes (very expensive, in an effort to keep traffic levels low) for Kuangsi Waterfall, a mere 35 km away. It was a bit hilly, but very doable, and the two hours of countryside and ecstatic schoolkids swarming us for high-fives (scary when they come from both sides!) made us both happy that we weren’t in a tuktuk. We finally reached the falls, more than ready for the picnic we’d packed! It was a beautiful area, the water a brilliant turquoise, and we spent a couple of hours relaxing and writing.

We were supposed to have the bikes back at five, so we re-boarded all too soon (where did I leave those padded shorts? And why did I think it was a good idea to run beforehand?) and Gabe soon found out that expensive does not mean maintained! His bikes kept slipping in and out of gears, and kept getting worse. Finally, with 10km to go, it was done. We figured we’d have to flag down a tuktuk or a truck, but pushed on in the meantime, walking up hills and coasting down them. Eventually we got it to work (maybe that’s too strong a term) and somehow made it back to the city before dark. By that point our exhaustion levels allowed for nothing but dinner and sleep!

Today called for rest and replenishment, so we signed up for a cooking class with a place called Tamarind Cafe, which turned out to be excellent. There were about ten people in our group, with an abnormally high percentage of Americans (seriously people, start travelling!), including a great older couple from Austin. There was a great group dynamic and everyone hit it off as they took us to Phousy market for an hour of extremely informative explanations of Lao spices, cooking methods, traditional practices and opportunities to sample.

We were later taken to a scenic riverside spot where the outdoor cooking class was set up. We were greeted with a tray of lemongrass-ginger tea and then began by learning how to prepare khao nieow (sticky rice), the quintessential Laos food and eating utensil (traditionally, they don’t touch regular rice and foods are never made oily or soupy for this reason). The entire day was done with a mortar/pestle, “barbeques” made out of clay pots, bamboo steamers, a knife and a cutting block. There is no garbage or waste in Laos food – ingredients are whole, banana leaves serve as packaging, bamboo as fasteners.

By 4:00 we had made khao nieow, mok ba (fish and herbs steamed in banana leaves – unspeakably good), chicken/lemongrass “meatballs”, laab (a meat/mint salad that is my all-time favorite Asian food), a stew called orlam, several jeow (spicy eggplant and tomato dipping sauces) and were treated to drinks of lemon lao-lao (whiskey distilled from sticky rice) and pineapple to cap it all off. I couldn’t move by the end, and it felt great!

Actually, I still can’t move, which is why this blog is being written! I was definitely mistaken in claiming that Lao food is the same as Thai – both are delicious, but certainly very different. Lao food has never really been “discovered,” as it’s a landlocked country with no ports and, historically, no foreign trade. Luckily, it will soon be found in Austin and all of you, our dear friends and family, will be treated to more than a few dinner parties (we’ve got some great outdoor “kitchen” ideas…)!

I’ll update whenever we manage to tear ourselves away from the place and slooowly move on – until then, enjoy the photos!

There’s a saying that Thailand grows rice, Cambodia watches rice grow and Laos simply listens to it. Having visited all three countries, I can say that there is no better way to sum it up. Laos is a little slice of heaven – unbelievably quiet, virtually traffic-free, almost completely undeveloped (yet far from neglected) and home to some of the friendliest, most genuine people out there. Not one person has tried to sell something to us, overcharge us or hassle us to take a ride. It’s Thailand, without the touts, consumerism, cellphones, beach parties, prostitution or protests. It’s nearly perfect, and nothing could be better after our time in northern Vietnam. The language, traditions and food are nearly identical to that of Thailand, so I’ve already got a good grasp on communication basics and cultural mores.

We’re in Luang Prabang right now, which I believe will be our absolute favorite spot at the end of this journey – one of the cleanest, most beautiful “cities” on earth with absolutely no signs of the negative impacts of tourism. Responsible, controlled development has taken root here, and it’s wonderfully apparent! The blog will come in a day or two (we’re in no rush to leave), but I’ve posted the first of what will be many photos of this incredible place. Take a look…