BootsnAll Travel Network



Vientiane: I ate goat meat

September 16th, 2006

It’s true.

I was walking down the street in Vang Vieng, and went into this local sundry shop. There was a family outside, eating a communal dinner. I couldn’t find what I was looking for (shower soap), and said “khop jai (thank you)” on my way out. But they motioned me over — about six people. The owner of the shop, Vong, could speak a little English, but the others… not so much. Anyway, they start thrusting some beer in my hand — filling a small glass, and motioning me to drink. And what am I going to do, refuse?

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Luang Prabang: Laos is rad

September 10th, 2006

Pai -> Chiang Mai -> Chiang Rai -> Houayxai -> Pakbeng -> Louang Prabang.

This was my route over the past week or so. And now I’m in Laos — pronounced Lao, yo. Silent “s”.

Laos is rad. It’s clearly much poorer than Thailand, but it seems more laidback and friendly. There are still a bunch of travellers all following along the tourist trail, so it doesn’t really feel like I’m off in the hinterland or anything. At all. And Louang Prabang is both a very touristed town and an authentic town, as it is being preserved by the UN as a World Heritage site. Which makes it both comfortable and interesting.

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Pai.

September 3rd, 2006

The sky in Pai looks neat, with all sorts of different clouds looming high, or cascading down over the surrounding hills. Pai is located in a valley, but high up — they call it Pai in the Sky. I ended up taking a bunch of photos of the sky (most of which didn’t turn out so great), but the sky always looked especially cool at sunset.


the sky in Pai

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Bangkok: The Royal Palace, and so on

August 23rd, 2006

Sawat dii!!!

A quick post here, to show some of the photos I’ve been able to upload from my old, crashed-upon camera. It’s a nice encapsulation of the first couple weeks of the trip. I really like a lot of these photos — you can see the whole set here. But here’s a quick teaser sampling, first from all around the Royal Palace in Bangkok…

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Koh Chang: Motoscooter mayhem, a king cobra and barbecued barracuda

August 15th, 2006

Sawat di krap!

So my trip has started off with a bang. An actual bang. The bang of my knee hitting pavement.

Yes indeed, yesterday I crashed on the rented motorbike I was riding around here on Koh Chang. It’s monsoon season and it’s been fairly well monsooning, but that’s not why I bailed. Nope, I fell only because I’d just gotten on the bike, didn’t know what I was doing, and on a downhill slope somehow hit the gas and hit the brake at the same time, which caused my tires to fishtail — and me to eat it. I messed up my left knee pretty good, it’s all bruised and scraped up and I got a bandage on it. Nothing broken or anything, thankfully — I just limp around like Johnny McTourist. Because you do see all these backpackers around who have bandages on knees and elbows and ankles, and it’s clear that the regulations for operating a motorized scooter in this country are pretty lax.

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San Diego: there are no bad experiences

July 27th, 2006

People keep asking me what I’m doing setting off on this months-long backpackin’ excursion across the sea, what it is I hope to accomplish with this trip — in essence, why, why are you going? And my best and only response is… well, why not?

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